Chapter Text
Chapter Two
Despite the admittance that it used to live a human life, the fae stubbornly remains an enigma in their new lives, unlike anyone they’ve ever known in small, rural, Morepesok.
Still, despite the ominous gathering they were brought to when they first arrived, they begin to settle into a mundaneity as the days go on. It begins to feel almost… normal.
The mornings begin with the sun’s rays peeking in from the room they’re cloistered in. (The fae had offered separate rooms, but Tonia shot that down immediately. No matter how awkward or how human it used to be, she can’t lose family.) The sunshine glows pink across the freckled, healthy cheeks of her brothers, who seem to have taken to this new life far easier than she will ever let herself. They sleep soundly in the gossamer-soft, warm sheets, folded up atop the cap of a mushroom shaped into a nest-like shape, curling over them protectively.
She is loathe to wake them each time, for they look far more well-rested than they’d ever been in their lives, without the stress of needing to tend to the hearth or search for firewood or draw water from the village lake. Teucer’s soft snores flutter in the silence, and a heavy thing curdles in her chest as she places a hand upon his cheek.
Still, one of them must keep vigil, and that means encouraging them to stay awake for as long as healthy, so that the fae doesn't have a chance to try anything nefarious. Even if it truly hasn’t. It must mean Tonia’s vigilance is keeping them alive, somehow.
As always, when she finally manages to work up the courage to shake her brothers awake, they pad into the largest room (the one facing balcony, the sky, and the forest beyond) where the fae sits in a swing braided of vines and hums a song that tingles faintly familiar in her ears, eyes turned upwards to the sky, still bleeding purple and carrying the ghost of stars that have not yet disappeared with the sunrise.
“Ah, you are all awake. Would you care for breakfast?” It asks as always, cutting its tune short to turn towards them, fluttering their wings to float off the swing, to which its delicate hand flicks at the wrist to let the vines curl back up to the ceiling, where they crawl back to join the bushes and vines that crawl over the balcony’s railing.
“Will it be poison?” Tonia asks as always, eyes narrowed.
“It never is, Tonia,” Anthon yawns with as much prepubescent sarcasm as he can muster. “Just let us eat already.”
“Your brother is right,” the fae laughs. “Besides, you are all tethered to this realm now. Eating fae food will be of no consequence.”
As follows the schedule they’ve fallen into over the past few weeks, Tonia relents, and lets the boys rush towards the table— the cap of another mushroom, brown and flat, and surprisingly strong enough to withstand the rough handling of two children. There lies a veritable spread of strange fruits and soups, in ways that Tonia has never imagined of seeing. The boys are ravenous as ever, with Anthon peeling open a spiky, purple fruit to reveal some sort of pale blue flesh that he eagerly bites into, and announces is sour. Teucer zeroes in on a soup with something that Tonia would assume is cucumber, if not for the fact that cucumbers should not have insides that look like lemons. There are various grain-based foods, as well, though Tonia wonders how they grow any in the snowing, wooded forests.
The centrepiece, this time, though, is a monstrosity coloured bright, dangerous red, with the pincers of a crustacean peeking out, and flowers Tonia has never seen before peeking out of the soup. It is loaded to the brim with seafood, which Tonia also wonders how they get, considering the fae seem too elegant for an endeavour as messy, slimy, and nauseatingly smelly as fishing. An octopus curls its blood-red tentacle out of the soup.
“My specialty,” the fae says proudly, spooking Tonia as she jumps in fright at its voice behind her.
“I can’t imagine you gutting a fish with those hands,” Tonia says, squinting at the delicate, bony things. They are clawed, sure, but their movements are too fluid for something as raw and brutal as gutting fish.
“I used a knife,” the fae replies amusedly, wrapping its spindly finger around a fruit— yellow, like a lemon, if lemons glowed as one bit into it. “We’re not that different from humans.”
“Is that Calla Lily Seafood Soup?” Anthon asks curiously, poking at the octopus delicately with the offered spoon. “Like from Father’s book.”
Tonia stills. “You know Mother said not to…”
“Blame me for being curious about Father,” Anthon says, “I’m sure you’ve been, at least once.”
She wishes she could say it wasn’t true, that she had been the perfect daughter— but it simply isn’t.
She has wondered about the man, whose existence was carved into the walls of the house— the carpets that covered their walls were woven by their father, and the furniture was of the same wood as the forests— carefully sawed and varnished by his expert hands. The shed behind their house was prohibited, but from the glances she could sneak through the fogged-up panels of the dim shed, there were numerous diagrams and tools left to dust in the old thing.
“You shouldn’t have,” Tonia says hollowly. “But I don’t think it matters anymore, doesn’t it.”
Something seems to strike at her, swinging her out of balance. She feels like she’s reeling, honestly.
Still, she breathes in, and settles herself. Squares her shoulders.
She has to take care of the boys, stupid as they are— she must be responsible for them.
“I don’t know the name,” the fae shrugs, taking a helping into its own bowl. “To my knowledge no one else here consumes this.”
It lifts the spoon to its lips. There’s something human about how it lets the soup settle in its mouth, warming it as it shuts its eyes contentedly.
“Anyways,” it says, sighing as it sets the bowl back down. “Feel free to enjoy the spread. Once you are done I will take you hunting.”
“Hunting?” Anthon resounds. Tonia narrows her eyes. Teucer gobbles through another piece of yellow fruit.
“Yes,” it says, blue eyes glittering with glee, “hunting for potion materials.”
Tonia lets out a sigh of relief. Something about this tells her the fae is much more than the haughty and severe disposition it put up initially. There is amusement in those eyes that is far closer to the childish jesting that Anthon and she used to engage in rather than actual malice.
“Potions? What kind?” Tonia asks. “What do they do?”
“Many things,” it replies, punctuating their sentence with a bite of fruit. “How would you like a taste of flying?”
The moment it says that, Tonia knows she’s completely lost her two brothers, whose heads perk up with eyes glittering with excitement.
She tells herself she’s just coming along to supervise them, but really— something in her is secretly excited at the prospect of flying too.
—
The fae leads them down winding platforms of mushrooms down the tree its loft is crammed into, and Tonia feels the slight bounce of the mushroom beneath her feet as they inch downwards.
“They used to be quite small, when I was first given the home,” the fae laughs, “you could barely get up without wings or teleportation. Before I was Turned, every day I would struggle to reach to the next platform— I ended up getting quite skilled at climbing trees.”
Tonia had initially began by helping Teucer down herself, jumping down to the next bouncy platform before reaching up to catch Teucer. Eventually, though, noticing her weariness the fae had opened its arms to carry Teucer, who, though quite heavy, did not seem to faze the fae as it fluttered its way down, trailing Anthon and Tonia clambering down.
“Why couldn’t we teleport like we did before?” Tonia asks, as she carefully steps down to the next mushroom. Anthon wobbles slightly on landing, and she reaches out an arm to stabilise him.
“Only works if you know and remember where to go,” the fae says, “And try as I might, it's quite difficult to remember the trees below my house. I might inadvertently teleport us to the other side of the Realm.”
A reason for everything, Tonia grumbles. But she keeps her mouth shut— until she can find a way to get out of here without having a host of angry fae after her, she has to play slightly nicer with this fae.
They finally clamber down to the base of the tree, the ground dusted lightly with snow, yet not so thick.
“Spring is coming, as you know,” the fae chirps, as it bends down to let the wriggling Teucer free of its grasp. Teucer immediately bounds out to roll in the snow. “This is the perfect time to gather the necessary herbs for some potions. I’m no good at the more complicated ones, but I’m handy with the healing ones, in case you get sick, and, of course,”
It grins.
“Levitation!” It waggles its fingers in an exaggerated display. “We can’t have you taking hours to climb up and down the trees.”
“What are we looking for?” Anthon muses, nudging at a particularly pink mushroom spouting up in the grass with his shoe. It’s fluorescent in a way Tonia has never seen in the bright morning sun, and fanned out like the gills of a fish. “This?”
“That is poison,” it chuckles. “For the healing potions, we’re looking for something like this.”
It withdraws from beneath the mass of sparkling blue robes a thick leather-bound book, to which it begins flipping practicedly to the middle.
“This one,” it says, a spindly claw pointing at an illustration of a delicate white flower, with jagged-edge leaves. “Make sure to avoid the flower, it releases a toxic sap when you touch it. You just want the leaves here. They’re not the flower’s leaves, by the way, those leaves are parasitic and only on those specific flowers.”
“Easy enough,” Anthon says, scanning the treeline. “Isn’t there one over there?”
Tonia squints at Anthon’s finger, follows the line right to the edge of a far-off oak, where the same white flower rests sweetly on the base. A clump of said leaves cling to its stalk.
“Good job!” It exclaims cheerfully, patting Anthon on the head, its fingers bent to avoid the claws catching in Anthon’s hair.
“Teucer, don’t run off, please,” Tonia says, noticing Teucer has ambled off into the copse of trees to prod at an outcrop of brightly-coloured ferns. “Remember the last time you ate something you found on the forest floor!”
“Acorn,” Teucer agrees happily. Tonia feels exasperation tug at her lips.
“Come here, Teucer,” the fae beckons. “I’ll show you something fun!”
“Fun?” Teucer immediately swivels his head to face the fae. “Is magic?”
“Yes, magic,” the fae says, cooing. It twists a claw into orbital patterns in the air, generating silvery, thin, sparkles that catch rainbows in the light.
Teucer bounds back into the fae’s arms. Tonia sighs. Why her two idiot brothers are so enamoured with this thing is beyond her. They have no sense of self-preservation at all, do they? It’s times like these she wishes she had an older sibling to guide her through this hell.
“Now, while he’s distracted,” the fae whispers. It pulls out the book again— “These are the ones you’ll need. Don’t stray too far, yes?”
Anthon excitedly runs off into the woods to search for the newest flora. Teucer prods at another crop of ferns that, thankfully, is one of the desired ones for the fae’s potionmaking, and not poison.
No self-preservation whatsoever.
Still, someone has to look after Teucer, and so Tonia with a sigh scoops Teucer into her arms, heavy and squirming as he is, and ambles after Anthon so he doesn’t get eaten by a mythical reindeer or something.
—
The scavenging takes long, and by the time the fae leads them through into the loft they are all weary and willing to fall asleep.
Not Tonia, though. She’s on something of a streak of anxiety, ever since she met this bedamned fae. It hasn’t shown any signs of hostility, but one never knows. Technically, they’re all his servants under weird fae rules. Whose to say he won’t flip out and force them to do all his dirty work?
She finds herself tossing and turning in the shimmering— after some time, she has quickly gotten used to how extremely obsessed the fae are with iridescence and shimmer— gossamer blankets, a thin line of moonlight streaming through the shut window curtains. The room is simultaneously too warm yet too cold, frigid at her feet, tepid at her ears and getting unbearably hot at her calves. Her heart ricochets in her chest, its hammering echoing through her ears. Teucer and Anthon snore soundly on the other side of the large mushroom-nest, swathed in blankets without a care in the world.
… It’s nighttime. They shouldn’t wake up. Perhaps she needs a walk to cool off. After all, her prospects of protecting and defending her brothers are moot if she isn’t well rested.
It is with that she slips carefully out of the nest, making sure she doesn’t displace anything, leaving her brothers well rested as she tiptoes her way out of the room, shutting the door ever so quietly.
— Only to be met with the fae sitting upon the balcony, the moonlight falling over its shadowy form as its translucent wings flutter in the cold night air.
“Ah, Tonia,” it murmurs, turning languidly towards her. “Is there anything you need?”
It’s been many days spent cohabiting with the fae. Yet she always feels pinned by those wide, deep eyes. So empty, so void of life, like a twisted version of Teucer’s.
“Nothing,” she says, moving to turn back. “I’ll just— go back to sleep.”
The fae halts, makes a jerky movement, and then seems to reconsider it. Then, it hums: “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but… you can’t sleep, can you?”
“No,” Tonia snaps. “Try sleeping in the home of someone who kidnapped you.”
It clicks its tongue, gaze drawn away from Tonia to shift guiltily to the ground. “That… I’m…”
It swallows, and then shuts its eyes. “I’m sorry. I should’ve thought about how it looked like to you. Taken away from your home, your family…”
“Well,” Tonia says under her breath, “not as if we have anything to go back to, even if you released us.”
The fae halts. It has always been a very expressive one, never ceasing movement. Wings fluttering, robes swishing, its hands clasping at each other. Yet in this moment, it is almost completely still. Even its wings pause in their frantic movement to lay flat against its back.
“...What?” It whispers. Its voice loses something of its ethereal quality as it says this. Almost rough, for a fae.
“You sound so surprised,” Tonia says, even as her fingernails press and bite into her palm. “Did you not notice just a quarter a mile away from the forest our village burning? Why would three children—”
Something catches in her throat. She fights it. “— Why would three children venture so far into the woods alone— if their mother— if their home—”
She draws in a deep, stuttering breath. Control— she has to keep it together. For the boys.
“Morepesok burned down?” The fae asks, hollow, as it draws away from the balcony, coming closer to Tonia.
“You know the name?” Tonia says, surprised.
“Morepesok…” it says, shutting its eyes. “I remember little of my days as human. But Morepesok… that was my home.”
It makes sense. Logically. There is only one village so close to that forest on that side. Only Morepesok could have contributed anyone to the fae. It still feels jarring, knowing this. That there is a reason for that bright, ginger hair, endemic to Snezhnaya. That somehow, Morepesok, her home, had lost a child, that the fae in front of her was once in her shoes.
“Well, there’s nothing there anymore,” Tonia says, clenching her fists. “Not if the intruders had to say anything about it.”
“The intruders,” it breathes, something wild in its eyes. “Who?”
And air of danger seems to coat the air around them, electrifying. Like a sleeping beast stirring slowly.
“I don’t know,” Tonia shuffles. “Mama never let me hear anything. But some of the kids in the school said things. Something about an empire. Who knows? Dunno what use a tiny town’s got for an empire.”
“An empire…” it murmurs. “There can only be one.”
“You’re not going to go after them, are you?” Tonia says. “Even if you’re fae, there’s one of you and thousands of them.”
“Are you not incensed?” The fae asks, bristling. “Are you not completely suffused with rage? It — your home, did you not care for it? You speak so coldly, so clinically.”
“How else am I supposed to speak of it!” Tonia snaps. Something seems to ring in her, like a bout of tension, wound so tight, unspooling itself, bounding back in full force. “Am I supposed to think about it? Waste my time thinking about how— how my mother—”
Mother. Mother. She never got to tell Tonia all their secrets. What was she hiding? It didn’t matter anymore. But maybe— she had always thought that she’d had time. So much time. Time to tell them about the workshop, about the picture frames with the pictures ripped out. Time to tell them how she’d loved them, time to tell them not to eat acorns off the floor. Time, more time.
“But there’s never time. I must move forward, I must,” Tonia seethes. “I can’t dwell on Mother when we live here, forever wondering when you’ll get bored of us. When you’ll decide we’re better off waiting on you hand and foot instead of treating us like— like children you’re babysitting. Admit it, Childe, this charade is getting tiring.”
She heaves in a breath. The fae in front of her has stilled. It draws a hand across its face, and when it withdraws the hand Tonia sees the faintest glimmer of a dewy tear upon its hands.
“I— I will not,” it says. The stuttering is out of place in its carefully crafted elegance. “Never. I— I know, I don’t know what’s right or wrong for a human anymore. I’m not human enough for the humans, not fae enough for the fae. But I swear— I’d never intend any harm on all of you.”
“Pretty words mean nothing,” Tonia spits. “Playing house with us as if we're your siblings doesn’t detract from the fact that you took us away.”
But as she says this, it feels hypocritical on her tongue.
She sighs.
Mama never taught her to be ungrateful. Even to… to fae who kidnapped them.
“But.” Tonia manages out, “I suppose in this one instance you saved us. It wasn’t intentional— and thus it was wrong. But… you saved us.”
“I never knew,” it says simply. “I was caught in the thrill of finally pleasing the court.”
“Yes,” Tonia murmurs, “but… I’ll admit. This is the best possible outcome.”
She eyes the fae warily, but she feels her chest lighten somewhat.
“I can’t say,” Tonia hiccups. “I can’t say that I’d have been able to give them a home, or feed them a feast, or even keep them alive in that forest. Mother placed all her trust in me, but I don’t think— I don’t think I could’ve made it far. I wasn’t even smart enough—”
She looks at the fae right in the eyes. It, too, seems to be halted by the tension.
“I wasn’t even smart enough to question your riddles,” Tonia finishes lamely.
In the cold moonlight, it seems to wash her inhibitions away. Here she is, conversing with the fae, admitting to it things she has never admitted to herself.
The fae’s words cut through the silence with firmness. “No,” it says, shaking its head. “No, it’s not your fault.”
Its hand hovers over her shoulder, and Tonia lets it settle, where it gives a comforting grip. “It’s not your fault at all. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You’re awfully contradictory of a person,” Tonia sighs. “I don’t know if you relish in tricking us or if you’re actually good behind all that pomp.”
“Fae must be tricksters,” it mumbles, in a flat tone, almost like a mantra. “Fae must guile and deceive. Fae must— Fae must not feel.”
“You don’t sound very convinced by that,” she says.
Its grip on her tightens. “I used to be human. Sometimes… it leaks out. My old nature.”
It’s said in a way that seems angry at itself.
“Do you…” Tonia falters, but rejuvenates her courage. “Do you remember anything else of your old life?”
Great going, Tonia, she thinks, once the words leave her mouth. Ask the fae who calls being human ‘leaking out of an old nature’ whether it remembers anything of an upbringing it is clearly meant to forget.
Still, it humours her, for some reason.
“Warmth,” it whispers reverently. “I remember…” it shuts its eyes, almost pained. “...A man. He used to… used to pat me on the head… like this. He taught me many things… that escape me now. The only thing… i can really remember… is the soup. And…”
It winces.
“What… what happened after… to the man?” It whispers, to itself. Pained. Vulnerable. “I can’t remember. Only… only the soup.”
In her mind’s eye, Tonia thinks of the Calla Lily Seafood soup. It is nothing like what one would think ethereal fae would eat. Gutting an octopus, knuckle deep in spices. Warm and messy. Human.
“Hearty,” it continues, “I remember nothing else but how to make it, as if my hands have made it a hundred times before.”
Then, it sighs as well. “Perhaps I am not made to belong anywhere, now that I am like this.”
It flutters its wings slightly.
“Everyone deserves a place to belong,” Tonia says hollowly, “even if they are manipulative faes. I know what it feels like to not have anywhere to go.”
Then, a silence falls between then like a veil, or perhaps fog. Twisting, turning. Settling.
It is broken once more by the fae.
“How would the three of you like…” it begins, eyes fixed on Tonia. “To visit your home one last time?”
—
“Your Majesty.”
“My darling damselette. What is the matter?”
“Those humans… they look awfully similar to Tartaglia.”
“Ah. So you have noticed it too.”
“Is he a traitor, then? How did he manage to get past the memory block?”
“He hasn’t. Dear, loyal Tartaglia. He has not betrayed us at all. Rather— he doesn’t even know who he has just taken in.”
“Should we separate them?”
“Ah… we have been awfully cruel to him, haven’t we? Hmm… let him be. It is not as if he can turn back, either way. He will never be fully accepted. His claws, fangs, and wings— those are all marks of ours.”
“Wouldn’t they make him a liability?”
“Not in the heart of our domain, no. Rather… that gives us leverage.”