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Saccharina Ghee.
Processed sugar and clarified butter.
She used to hate her name, how it almost reduced her value to those who looked down on her in the nunnery. "Trash", they'd call her. "Junk." She hated her name, and by extension, she hated all it stood for.
Saccharina was so young when her mother pried herself free of the grief that came with a lover leaving her. To Catherine, all Saccharina was a reminder that turned her so sour. Even at that age, Saccharina knew what it meant when Catherine wouldn't quite meet her eye, or flinched at every peeling laugh. She was a brand, a mark of all that Catherine had lost- her land, her people, her title, her love. But that didn't excuse her for this. Grief was not an excuse to drop her at the doorstep of hell paraded as the pearly gates without so much as a stumble in her steps. By every whisper on the sweetening path, if Catherine had looked back or showed any remorse, perhaps Saccharina could have understood. But she didn't, and so Saccharina didn't either, but held her head high through the precession of same-faced nuns who held steadfast to the ideals of purity. Purity meaning unlike her.
A buttermilk maid yells at her to keep away from her wares. She does not trust her slender green hands.
A sour cream fisherman chases her from the docks. He does not think anyone with her sly eyes could be anything but trouble.
A Ricotta baker gives her only scraps. Sure, she has the money, but how can they say those coins have been earned through honest means?
And so go her days.
Until the night where they don't.
The night she meets Bailey.
It was late, and the nuns had long since extinguished the candles in the corridors, their nightly threat of boxing in her ears for misbehaving having lost all fear factor. A threat is only good so long as it isn't all one knows. Saccharina nimbly hopped down from her window, no bag in hand, for what would she bring? She vowed not to return. On a whim, she found her feet leading her to the docks, a place not particularly full of good memories, but one of history nonetheless. Her mother had brought her there in her youth, as though she were still waiting for the man with the easy smile. Saccharina's inner monologue convinced her this was part of the plan, that she'd borrow a boat and be done with this island home, when she was stopped short and saw them. A slight figure, a bottle, like many were on this island, but with a shimmering in their hands and eyes, unlike anything Saccharina had ever seen before. Well. Anything not produced by her hand.
Her steps fell silent, the ice cream maiden certain no one had heard her over the whistling of the seaborne breeze, as she allowed herself the curiosity to watch the figure weave sparks together in a dancelike display. It was incomparable to anything she'd ever seen. Her eyes darted to her own hands, the chilling winds wrapping securely around her like a shawl as the tips of her fingers turned a delicate frosty blue. It was different. Not in the way the bulb's light was different, all burning yellows and empty hums, but the dancer on the beach carried with her a rolling rhythm of the sea. Her own hands were so gentle, so prone to trembles, and not made for the rocking motions of the lone silhouette on the beach. In that moment, with no nuns at the ready with their hawklike eyes, Saccharina capable of leading a storm.
"You can come out you know," She was shaken from her musings, the wind which had swirled around her dropping just as quickly as it had been pulled. She stiffened, ready to run.
"You haven't ratted me out yet, and I won't be doin' the same to you anytime soon." The lilting Irish accent was so gentle, and it echoed in a way of safety that Saccharina had never known before.
A moment passed, and she threw caution to the winds she'd set free, ignoring the warnings of the nuns in her head as she stepped forth to join the magic-user, thankful not to trip on the fine powdered milk sand. The stranger didn't turn.
"It's awful late for a wee thing like you to be out. Are we running away?” Saccharina bristled, her guard high despite the warmth in their words.
"I don't believe it's of importance that you know that."
They chuckled, "Ay, that it's not."
The two were quiet for a moment, watching the lapping sea whisk away shining granules into it's hungry maw.
"Look," the stranger raised a finger out to the horizon, and for a moment, Saccharina wondered if they were mad. But then she saw it too. Wisps of light, skirting across the surface of the waves, and leaving moon streaked trails in pinks and blues in their wake.
"The faeries," the stranger murmured, without taking their eyes from the dazzling display. Saccharina knew of believers of the fae. The church turned their nose at them all, dismissing them as heresy, as children's stories taken too far. Her silence spoke louder than anything she could say now, her shock colouring the air with a wonder befitting the child she was.
"You know..." The stranger had stopped dancing long ago, but their words seemed not to get the memo, waltzing through the silky air as though they were singing. "There is a general respect from the Concord for the worship or practices in one's home country."
Such an offhanded fact. Such an assured reading of Saccharina's soul.
Saccharina had never really had much reason to take the word of the church, anyway.
"Who are you?" The malice was gone from her voice, awe and the curiosity she was never afforded in her adolescence clinging to her shaking breath.
"Bailey of House Frostwhip, at your service, miss." At last the figure turned and in their eyes, Saccharina saw the sea.