Kindred Folk -- Into Sidhe

[FennWenn]

When Fenn next woke, he found himself face down in musky furs and knobby wood. Judging by the scraping noises of slats as they slid downhill over the snow, this was probably a sled-cart sort of deal. Ropes dug into his back and his legs, tight enough that he couldn’t quite feel his feet anymore. Or perhaps his tingly toes were simply an aftereffect of the blue draft.

Fenn bared his teeth involuntarily, his face flushing grey from chin to the pointed tips of his ears. There was a spot in his chest that felt heavy with betrayal. Thanks, Aengus.

The bonds that pinned the boy were a stiff woolen fabric, interwoven with strands of something metallic in strength. Good fucking grief. Did they think he was actually dangerous? If it weren’t that he’d be much happier with an arrangement he could escape from -- handcuffs yielded well to lockpicking skills -- Fenn might have been flattered. As it was, he wriggled and rolled around the unforgiving surface of the sled, but to no avail. Well, he did managed to chafe himself a bit. Ow. Alright, so nix escape for now. It was probably better to get a scope of whatever crazy situation he had landed himself in this time.

At least they hadn’t tied his neck down. Wide-eyed, Fenn propped his head up on the edge of the cart so he wouldn’t have to stare at the dirty floor of it again. It gave him a neckache, but he figured that was a worthy price to pay. Daugi lay on a separate sled a few paces away.

The sight of her laid out and vulnerable made his heart skip a fearful beat. Yet, she seemed relatively unharmed. If anyone so much as touched a tuft of fur on her head, it was not going to end well for them. He sighed and glanced forward to the creatures drawing his sled. They were giant goat with eyes of white fire and obsidian hooves (trampling their way through the pass between the double mountain peaks, the boy noted). Fenn had a better view of their asses than their more impressive features though. And who was it but Knarl commandeering the goats? A scratchy hiss was drawn out of the boy’s throat. The snowpig was an ass in its own right!

Irked, Fenn looked elsewhere… and noticed something very, very wrong overhead.

A green sky.

He could hardly believe his eyes. Had he been unbound, he might have jumped out of the sleigh trying to get a better look.

“Awake? Welcome to Sidhe, outsider,” the snowpig grumbled, glancing back to find Fenn blankly staring upwards. There was a wicked glint in his eyes. “Mortals know it through many names -- Faerie, perhaps -- if they know of it at all. And you...”

The boy was hardly listening to him. It was a dreamy, strange world that he had been dropped into, and he needed a minute to take it in. The heavens above were a pale green, frothing with seafoam clouds. Two pockmarked moons and a descending sun bathed the world in their twilight glow. Rolling landscapes splayed out before Oision’s hunters, silver with snow, thick with forest. Impossibly slender mountains stretched out like claws -- and they seemed to be at the base of one. The hunter’s steeds were hurtling down the slope.

A rough taste of of something like fir resin was in the air, along with a new crystal purity. In fact, the air itself was strange; colder than the mountaintop, and yet with a warm, beating undercurrent. Magic.

Realities beyond the Althanas he knew were not something unfamiliar to the boy. He had heard Vince spin a yarn or two about Earth, a little blue world devoid of magic, yet filled amazing contraptions that flew and chattered and wheeled themselves around without a steed to draw them.

Still, if he could've sat up, Fenn would have been on the edge of his seat.

The fuzzpig grumbled when he glanced back to find him grinning. “Muzzle that cheer. You won’t enjoy the sights for long.”

In reply, Fenn stuck out his tongue and went back to his gandering.