Chapter Text
“I can’t thank you enough for coming…” a small, blonde fairy was murmuring as she petted the snow bunting’s soft head. “No matter what I did, I couldn’t get her to calm down enough to stay off that leg. Everything I tried just seemed to make it worse…”
“You did the best you could,” Sora said with a reassuring smile. “And now that you’ve got the best animal healer fairy in all of Pixie Hollow on the case, there’s nothing to worry about!” He flashed an exaggerated grin and put down the supplies he was preparing so that he could place his hands proudly on his hips.
The other fairy—Naminé—gave him a tinkling laugh. “If you heal her, I’ll happily call you the king of Neverland.”
The bird resting in the nest beside them had caught her leg on a crack in a snow-covered branch, and Sora had been called in all the way from Summer to come take a look at it. He’d bundled up well enough, but his wings had been prickling ever since he’d crossed the border, and not even an insulating layer of frost had been enough to stop the sensation. He’d have to ask another healing fairy about it once he’d finished here.
“King of Neverland? I like the sound of that.” Sora laid out his cleaning supplies, and had Naminé help him shift the bird to her side so he could get a clear look at the wound. It was pretty concerning, but Sora didn’t let it show on his face. “And what’s my patient’s name?”
“Dawn.” The bird let out a soft peep at the sound of her name, and Naminé laughed again.
“Dawn, huh?” Sora asked, giving her wing a fond pat. “She’s just as pretty as her name!”
Naminé nodded, letting a small smile break on her cloudy face. “She’s my best subject.” The walls of the hut were covered with her drawings, and there was a whole section—the space closest to her bed—that was adorned in sketches of the snow bunting.
“All right Naminé,” Sora began, “this next part’s gonna sting a little, so can you keep her calm?”
Naminé gave a resolute nod, and Dawn tried to squirm as Sora began his work, but Naminé kept stroking her head, soft and even and soothing.
“So how did you meet her?” Sora asked as he methodically cleaned the bird’s wound. Naminé’s voice kept Dawn from shifting too much, so he wanted to keep her talking. The wound wasn’t going to need sutures, but it was beginning to show signs of infection.
“My friend found her nest. He works high up on the mountain, at night, and he knows how much I love drawing birds, so he told me where to find her. I started flying up there to draw her every day, and he comes with me sometimes, when he's not too sleepy.”
“He sounds like a good friend.” Once the wound was clean, Sora started applying a poultice one of the flower fairies had made for him—one with a bitter taste that kept animals from licking it off.
“He is,” she said warmly. “And so talented. His paintings are beautiful. I used to have to get my paint colors imported from Summer, but he makes some all on his own, and he lets me use them.”
“That’s so nice,” Sora responded automatically. To stop the infection, he’d have to teach Naminé how to apply the poultice and change the bandages a couple times a day, or else he’d need to make trips here to do it himself. A concentrated light might help the healing process, too—he could ask a light fairy to come back with him next time.
“I think his work last night was some of his best,” Naminé went on. “I asked him how he did it, and he just he said he was feeling inspired.”
Sora nodded, focused on his own task. He was in the middle of wrapping the leg with leaf bandages when a distracting shiver shot through his wings, like they’d been hit with a cool breeze.
“Oh…”
Another shiver came, sending Sora spinning towards the source of the new voice: a winter fairy standing in Naminé’s threshold. His shoulders shifted uncomfortably as his lavender wings fluttered, like he was having a similar sensation.
As their eyes met, Sora felt like he was falling, then flying, as the fairy’s eyes shone at him with the same spark of teal green that he’d seen painted across the Winter Woods’ night skies.
“I’ll come back later,” the snowy-haired fairy said. “I didn’t know you were…” He trailed off, breaking the connection as he averted his eyes. To Sora, it felt like the sun had been pulled behind a sudden cloud.
“You should stay, Riku,” Naminé said. “Dawn likes you. You can help me keep her calm while he finishes up.” She gestured to Sora with a dainty hand. “This is Sora, the animal healer from Summer. Sora, this is my friend Riku. He’s the one I was talking about.”
Riku shifted, like he was uncomfortable with having been talked about, or he was also being assailed by persistent shivers through his wings. His clothes were a deep, night-sky blue, and streaked with familiar color. Like his eyes, they were the same colors Sora had seen mixed in the auroras of a hundred nights he’d spent looking at the stars when he couldn’t sleep.
Sora realized he was staring, and blinked the stars out of his eyes. “R-Right! It’s just the bandages now, and then we’ll have to go over aftercare.”
Naminé nodded, and Riku hesitantly took a step closer. The moment he moved, it sent another shiver through both their wings, and their eyes met again, confusion running between them. The sensation wasn’t painful, or even unwelcome, but it was strange, and unlike anything Sora had ever felt, or even heard about.
Riku came gingerly closer, sending the shivers into a prolonged thrum that seemed to resonate between them. Naminé was unaffected, cooing at Dawn and nuzzling her beak. Finally, Riku reached out to give Dawn his own familiar pet.
Sora spun his attention back down to the injured leg, and wrapped the bandages as quickly as he could. He stuck the end of the bandage together with a glob of honey, and stood. His heart was flitting in his chest like he’d eaten an entire coffee bean, and he didn’t know if he liked it, or if he should already be en route to his own healing fairy. For several moments he stared down at the bandaged leg, lost in thought.
“Aftercare?” Riku prompted, pulling Sora’s attention back. Riku’s cheeks looked flushed, like he might be coming down with something too.
“Yes! Aftercare!” Sora scrambled to dig through his bag, trying to ignore how Riku was staring at him now, and laid out the supplies he’d been using. “You’ll need to change the bandages twice a day. Apply that poultice to the affected area, seal it with honey, then wrap it in clean bandages.” He pointed to each in turn, then looked to Naminé to keep himself from getting trapped in Riku’s eyes again. “I’ll come back tomorrow with a light fairy who can help stimulate the damaged tissue.”
“A light fairy?” Naminé questioned, looking from him to Riku, whose eyes widened. His mouth opened slightly, like he was about to protest, but she went on. “You don’t need to bring someone all that way—if you tell him what to do, I bet Riku can help with what you need.”
Sora’s heart flipped. The auroras. “So Riku’s a…”
“A light fairy,” Riku finished, running a hand over the back of his neck with a shrug. “I… I’ll do what I can.”
Sora felt like he might faint. He had to leave before he dropped like a butterfly in the middle of someone else’s house. He had to have himself examined immediately. Riku should probably be looked at too—closely, long and hard and—
“I’ll be back tomorrow to check on Dawn again,” Sora quickly said, before stranger things could cross his lips.
Naminé beamed. “Thank you so much, Sora!”
Dawn cooed her own thanks, and Riku let out a strange noise between a grunt and a cough.
“My pleasure!” Sora gave Dawn a parting pet, and lifted off his wings to leave.
As he passed Riku, he felt a pull between them that nearly stopped him mid-flutter, and in an attempt to avoid looking at Riku’s eyes again, Sora’s gaze glanced across the other fairy’s wings. They were a soft, light purple, different from his creamy yellow, but traced across them was the swirling pattern of half-hearts entwined—the same pattern that graced Sora’s own wings.
They were like a matched set.
Sora focused on flying back toward the border, but his mind was racing, running in tight circles that were making him dizzy. Pixie Hollow had discovered that the wings of fairies born of the same laugh—siblings—lit up when they were near each other, but there’d been no light with Riku, and he was a light fairy. If anything, there should have been more light. If they were brothers, that is. So what were they? If they weren’t brothers, how could their wings match so perfectly? And what was that feeling?
The shivery sensation was fading with every foot of distance between him and Riku, and by the time he reached the crossing log and looked back, he couldn’t feel it at all.
The sun was getting low in the sky, and other summer fairies visiting winter were making their way back to the border crossing, cheeks pink from being out in the cold all day.
“Sora!” one of them called with a wave. “How’d it go with the bird?”
“Did you already get your wings thawed?” another asked.
“Huh?” Sora realized the wings of the other two were still covered in the frost that kept them from getting brittle in the winter cold. Sora was hovering, wings easily fluttering, and he did a midair spin just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, or feeling things, or not feeling things he should be feeling.
But it was true. The frost had melted from his wings without him noticing, and he hadn’t even felt the cold. He’d been in such a hurry to get out of there that he’d completely forgotten that he’d walked the whole way to Naminé’s house.
The old healing fairy listened to Sora recount the day’s events, and when he finally finished, she gave him a wry smile. “So you’re saying this boy gave you shivers?”
“Yes!! Exactly!”
She patted his hand. “That’s perfectly normal for a boy your age, sweetheart.”
She wasn’t getting it. “But our wings match!”
“Wings are all different, even if they might look similar at first glance,” she said, albeit uncertainly. “Unless of course, you were born of the same laugh, but since you say neither of you lit up, it must mean you aren’t related.” The confirmation relieved Sora, even if he couldn’t articulate why.
“But we are connected,” Sora pressed. "Aren't we?"
“You must be, for you to have had such a… reaction.” She chuckled and gave his hair a fond pat. “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you, Sora. But it sounds to me like you two have something to discover together.”
That night, Sora flew to the highest branch of his favorite tree—an old knotted oak filled with burrows and nests, and turned his sights towards the Winter Woods. The sky above the peaks lit up every night around the same time with auroras, but he’d never even considered that someone made them. And now that he had a face to match to the beautiful lights he loved…
The revelation had him feeling ignorant and silly—under-appreciative of the winter fairies’ contribution to the beauty of Pixie Hollow. After all, the summer light fairies wove rainbows through the sky, even when it hadn’t rained, lit the paths to help diurnal animals return to their dens and warrens, and so much more. Of course there must be light fairies in winter, too. Had he insulted them by offering to bring a summer light fairy to help heal Dawn?
Right on time, an aurora burst from the peak of the mountain to draw Sora out of his worried thoughts. Color wove itself through the sky, but it wasn’t weaving itself, he knew now. He was far too far to make out Riku’s shape, but if he followed the pulses, traced the patterns, he could picture where Riku must be flying—the course he was making as he soared through the cold air, tossing streaks of light across the sky that spread like paint through water.
Sora watched until his eyes began to droop, and when he closed them, he could still picture the lights dancing on the other side of his eyelids.
Naminé had been right. These were Riku’s best works yet.