Archive of Our Own

Wilbur is hungry.

Winter has shed its pearl-white skin, releasing the ironclad grip it had on the land as the days pass. Each sunrise means a longer day now, as the frost melts into dew and as the trees start to bud. Winter had been long and brutal this year, with long sharp fingers devastating the crops and starving the children. Wilbur is not a child– not anymore, no, he has grown past that gangly long-limbed stage of being young, but he’s not old, either. He’s somewhere perfectly in the middle, old enough not to garner pity and young enough not to receive handouts from the town’s storage center. He’s clever enough not to get caught when he steals, but he’s stupid enough to sit for hours on a street corner and strum the strings of a guitar, hoping that people will have coin to spare. 

(They never do. Winter has been long and hard and everyone needs all the money they can scrounge up at the moment. As good as Wilbur’s music is, it’s not good enough to make people part with their coin.)

He’s fucking hungry. His pockets are empty, though, and he’s not hungry enough to shamefully write a letter back to a quiet house three villages over– his brother, who surely has money to spare but will tell him simply: I told you so. 

Wilbur is going to make it on his own. He has to make it on his own and be known for more than the silly songs he writes for the schoolchildren. He needs to be more than his brother’s responsibility, a charity case. There’s a desperation in his chest when he thinks about it. A longing ache that vibrates just underneath his sternum, the same kind of feeling that comes when he thinks about a girl from the summer before, or his mother.

He’s been panhandling in this town since the last frost, so almost a week now. The sun has been out every day since then, temperatures rising. Wilbur sits on the corner by the general store and sings and people look at him, but they do not stop. Sometimes the shopkeeper offers him dried apples, which he gladly takes. Most often, they offer nothing at all. Once every two days, people come in from the outer rim of the village and set up a market in the middle of their square, people coming and going. Bartering and shouting, catching up. Wilbur sits in the center of it all and sings.

And now that they’ve gotten used to his presence on market days, he steals. 

It’s so easy. A smile there, a charming wink here, and Wilbur has his hands on half a loaf of bread and two green peppers, tucking each item into his bag with care. There’s a stand on the end of the row that sells dried meat and he’s fixing to make himself a good sandwich, but that’s when things go wrong.

“THIEF!” someone shouts behind him as Wilbur tucks away his stolen goods, and dammit, he’s been seen. He’d had a good run.

“Shame,” he mutters, breaking out into a sprint that has his guitar case bouncing painfully across his back and knees. He’s in better shape than most– but apparently, the baker wasn’t the only one who saw him steal. Before long Wilbur’s got a good three people on his tail and there’s a thrill in the chase, in the adrenaline of it all. A hungry thrill (his stomach is still growling as they go) but he’s got the bread and peppers despite it. Lunch, as long as he can outrun them.

He hops a stone wall, ducks below trees and weaves his way through fields of waist-high grasses and flowers. A cow raises her lazy head as he bolts past, baying echoing behind him in time with the shouts of the people still following. 

“Give it up!” he shouts over his shoulder, mildly breathless. Ahead of him is a treeline, and he does not hesitate to turn and hop over yet another stone wall (thick with moss and fresh greenery, spring’s bosom flowering gently between the rocks) in order to make his way towards it. 

Someone shouts something unintelligible behind him, but Wilbur’s already hit the line of thick woods and he’s happy to duck among the trunks. Tall heavy oaks, thin birch and perfectly straight pin-needles of pine trees swallow him whole. Leftover fallen leaves from last autumn crinkle under every rushed footstep, and his chest heaves with exertion. 

The sounds of people chasing him fade out, until all Wilbur can hear is the rush of blood in his ears and the pounding of his own footsteps against the forest floor. After a while he slows, the guitar bouncing painfully on his back as he stumbles slightly, catching himself on the trunk of a tree. His satchel hangs off his side, thigh numb from where it had been hitting him, and his back aches as well. He breathes, running a nervous hand through his bangs and glancing behind him.

No angry townspeople in sight. He’s alone.

Quietly, Wilbur tips his head upwards. The sun is still high in the sky, and he knows the vague direction of the village, so he’s not too worried about getting lost. The trees echo up around him like lost giants, their branches stretching outwards and new leaves rustling, some still only just buds. Beneath his feet is a mixture of new growth and old decay, the orange-brown of last year’s leaves crunching as he lifts his foot and places it down once more. He breathes, the tightness in his chest from running dissolving over time as he takes a moment to gather himself. He can feel sweat dripping down his back, beading up across his forehead, but a moment later a light breeze is brushing across the back of his neck and he leans into it. 

The forest around him is golden, sweetened honey-silver and rough bark under his fingernails. He digs one hand into the tree he’s leaning against, tipping his forehead against the bark.

“Thanks,” he says to no one in particular, shutting his eyes against the wood. There’s moss under his hand, soft and humming.

He’s not sure why the village avoids these woods. They’ve been nothing but kind so far.

Something rustles in the brush behind him and he whips around, eyes peeled for any angry townsperson. What he finds instead is something else entirely.

A fawn is watching him, light spots dappling its back and betraying how young this baby is. It holds its head high, watching Wilbur with wide, dark eyes. It stands there as Wilbur holds his breath, frozen in its spot until he gently lowers his hand from the bark of the tree.

“Hello,” he breathes, and then the fawn bolts. Crashing through the trees with a clumsiness that’s hard to ignore– this baby is young and he does not see its mother anywhere, so of course Wilbur follows. It’s not hard to track, following the sounds of bushes snapping and twigs cracking, the baby deer leading him further and further into the thicket of the woods. 

“Hey!” he calls out, then shushes himself again, because he’s probably scaring it. He slows down, and eventually, the sounds of the baby fawn stumbling away peters out. The woods go quiet, and Wilbur crouches down, squatting in the dirt as he peers around him. He catches a flash of fur in his periphery, and smiles.

“Hey,” he calls out again, voice softer now, soothing as he watches the trees for any signs of movement. High above him, the wind rustles the branches of the trees and a few stray seed packets drop, littering the air with movement. Wilbur hardly dares to breathe, and after a moment, the fawn appears once more.

On shaky legs, it creeps forward. Wide eyes stare at Wilbur, who stares back in turn. He holds a hand out, palm flat and tilted towards the sky.

“It’s alright,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

The baby takes another step forward, and then two, and then bumps its nose against Wilbur’s palm.

Leathery soft skin rubs against Wilbur’s hand, slightly damp and warm as the fawn sniffs at his hand. Searching for food or something else, Wil’s not sure, but the baby is fearless as it nips and then suckles at his fingers. Wide eyes turn to him, dark and all-seeing, and Wilbur is silent in his fear as he tries not to move too suddenly and scare the baby off again. 

“Where is your mother?” he murmurs, watching as the baby tips its head upwards and then collapses, knobby little knees folding as it sucks on his fingers and Wilbur lifts his other hand, petting the top of its head gently. Its hair is coarse and thin, light-colored and frighteningly delicate. When Wilbur stops petting it, the baby stops suckling and instead just stares up at him with two eyes that sparkle. He thinks if this baby could speak, it might be saying something very mischievous at the moment. 

“I see,” Wilbur says, still keeping his voice low and gentle. “Keep your secrets, then.” 

The baby bays then, long and high. It startles a laugh out of Wilbur, and the fawn has the audacity to look affronted as he does.

“What?” he asks, lowering his hand again to pet the fawn’s head. It leans into his touch, and brays. “Don’t talk back to me, little one.” The baby stays quiet then, and Wilbur smiles. What a day this has been– first he’d been chased out of a village, and now he’s got a baby deer by his side. It’s warm where it lies against him, whole body shivering in the dewey grass they’re sitting in. This is a moment of bliss– and then the baby stiffens, stops shaking entirely. Wilbur looks up.

“Oh,” he says, because there is its mother. Or– its father? The deer has antlers , huge, glorious, magnificent things. They rise up against the trees and all manner of things decorate them, moss and lichen and hanging strips of grass and greenery. Wilbur raises his hands to his sides, palms flat and keeping his voice low. 

Oh, god. Okay. 

The baby stumbles back up to its feet, hobbling to its father’s side. It bumps against the other animal, which doesn’t move an inch. Instead, it stares at Wilbur, eyes dark as the night and unmoving. He inhales, then exhales, and rises to his feet with a slow, gentle care.

“It’s okay,” he mutters, ducking his eyes low and still keeping the creature in his vision. “I wasn’t hurting your baby. I promise.”

The fawn bays, long and loud. The buck huffs, a snort of warm air that billows before dissipating. Wilbur ducks his head farther down, and continues backing away. Step after step he takes back, fingers trembling as they hover in the air, until finally he feels like there’s a good distance between them and glances up again.

Both creatures are gone. The forest is empty, and when Wilbur tips his head in circles he cannot find a single scrap of evidence they were ever even there. Only the rough remnant of fur against his fingers, and the echo of the buck’s huffing breath in the back of his mind. He inhales, and then exhales, and then looks to the sky.

The sun has sunk low, lower than he thought possible in what he’d thought was a short amount of time. There’s barely any sunlight left for him to find his way home, and it’ll be dark by the time he stumbles out of the woods, still clutching his bag and dreaming of a baby deer and its father. When he manages to stop shaking enough to run through the woods, they are long, long gone. 

The village is not happy to see Wilbur. He sticks to the outskirts, sleeping in barns and sneaking out before the sun rises. He should move on.

Something keeps him here. It’s the forest, maybe– the way it calls him when the sun rises, as spring echoes on. Mornings get warmer and warmer, until the chill of the winter is gone completely and planting season begins. Wilbur helps out on a farm for a week or so, tilling the earth with his hands and a hoe, but he’s never been good at it. Not like his brother. 

He sends him a letter, eventually. Just one. To tell him he’s alive, and that’s all.

The forest looms in the edges of his vision, ever-present and commanding. Wilbur resists it, for a little while. He doesn’t steal as much now, instead bartering his services for food. Bygones are not bygones and he still gets nasty looks, but at least for now they let him live in peace. Just enough for him to pack a lunch one morning, slip out of the barn he’d been staying in, and walk the short path to the forest’s edge. 

Grasses rise high around him as he goes, the path trampled short by people and animals alike. A stone wall runs along the side of it and Wilbur easily hops over it, crossing the barrier and finding himself entrenched in pine needles and sap before long. The village fades behind him as the sun rises, dew clinging to every edge of the woods and making the whole world shine silver, as though diamonds have emerged from every surface. Wilbur stops for a while and stares at a spiderweb, until the creature itself emerges from a hiding spot and shakes off the remaining wet with long, spindly legs.

He goes deeper. The forest doesn’t get any more dense the farther he goes, but it does get more strange. Wilbur finds himself turning abruptly as things dance in and out of the corners of his eyes, mushrooms rising along the floor in strange patterns. He avoids them with care, taking each step like the ground is a battlefield, and as he does, the quieter the woods get. First the birdsong fades out, and then the quiet rustling of the breeze. Eventually all that’s left is the sound of Wilbur’s own breath, air rushing in and out of his lungs with each movement he makes. There is a finality in the stillness of the woods, as though the whole world has been paused just for Wilbur’s presence. 

He spins in a vague circle, eyes combing the trees around him for any hint of wildlife, but he is alone. The sun shines down on him, warming the top of his head and making him strangely sleepy for how early it is in the day. He resists the urge to sit down at the trunk of a tree and instead creeps a few more steps forward, holding his breath for some reason.

There is a child in the trees ahead of him.

He can only see parts of the kid. They’re small, tiny, even– pale skin, golden hair the color of spun straw, and a flash of a red tunic. It shines against the background of greenery and Wilbur freezes as the kid darts behind a tree, disappearing for a moment and then reappearing, only to dip behind another. There are small hands on the trunk, and Wilbur stares, and then the kid peeks his eyes out from behind the wood.

He’s small. His eyes are so vibrantly blue Wilbur doesn’t think they can be natural. The boy is standing behind the tree almost shyly, watching him from a distance as Wilbur stands in the woods and grips the shoulder strap of his bag. His hands flutter– like the other day, with the fawn, he’s unsure of what to do. This kid is in the middle of the woods, but he doesn’t look abandoned. In fact, he looks loved and cared for. His cheeks are thin but not gaunt, and his skin has a healthy warm glow. Wilbur tips his head to try and get a better look, and the kid shrinks back, hiding further behind the tree. 

“Hello,” Wilbur calls out quietly. There’s rustling as the kid shuffles his feet, and then his bright eyes appear once more. The kid watches him with wide, sharp eyes, hair shining as light dapples it from above. He almost looks like a deer caught in the headlights (again, the fawn comes to mind) with how his eyes widen and he freezes, a bear caught in a trap. Wilbur takes a careful step forward, and the kid watches him, head turning to follow his movement with an unnatural grace.

“Hey,” Wilbur says again gently, “are you lost? Can I help you?”

Bells, faintly. The kid starts to smile, with teeth.

Wilbur has the sudden and overwhelming sense he's fucked up. It’s a growing dread as the kid smiles wider and wider until Wilbur is sure that human mouths cannot grow that big, that the kid is changing with his own perception. He stumbles backwards and in a flash, the kid is by his side, fingers digging into Wilbur’s sweater. He feels like fog on a fresh autumn morning, smells like the saltwater sea two leagues east, and looks like a little prince. His tunic is embroidered elegantly, golden thread the color of his hair marking the edges and collar. Wilbur catches himself against the trunk of a tree as the kid grins up at him, the unsettling feeling swallowing his chest whole and taking his breath with it.

“Hello,” the kid says, and he sounds like a siren. Voice high-pitched and sweet, exactly the type of thing that Wilbur would follow into the woods. “You can help me, yeah.” 

Wilbur fights against the unease in his gut and smiles back, lowering a hand to gently detangle the child’s fingers from his shirt. “Oh, actually,” he says. “Respectfully. I believe I’ve made a mistake.” 

“I think so too,” the kid says, smile dropping as Wilbur manages to get his grimy little hands off of him. He holds his hand out, hovering it like he’s not sure what to do with it. “You owe me for my kindness in overlooking it.” 

Wilbur grimaces, and then after a second, glances down at his bag. “I could offer you an apple,” he says, thinking of his own pitiful lunch. “Dried. Sweet.” 

“No deal,” the kid says, dragging his gaze up and down Wilbur for a moment. Those bright baby blues catch on the strap across his chest, and the kid wobbles on his own feet as he tips his head and peers at the guitar behind him. “You play?” 

“Sometimes,” Wilbur says. “I like it.” 

“Play for me,” the kid says, grin sharp as shark’s teeth. “And we can dance.”

“No thank you,” Wilbur says gently. He’s heard stories about dancing in the woods. “I think I’d actually like to just go. I’ve got work to do at home.”

“In the village?” The kid narrows his eyes for a brief moment, and then dips around Wilbur. He’s slippery, like a seal, fingers brushing at his guitar and then tugging once again at his shirt. “I will show you the way out. But you owe me double, now.” 

“I’ll be sure to repay you in full for your kindness,” Wilbur says, stumbling for a moment as the kid tugs him backwards, squirming in his grasp to right himself and then continue walking as they go. He’s… more lost than he thought he was. The trees seem to have shifted, unfamiliar landmarks and rocks rising from the forest floor as they go. He thought he didn’t need a guide, but apparently he does, and now he owes this creature double his debt. 

“What is a child like yourself doing so deep in the woods?” he asks, unable to help himself as they fumble through the brush, the child’s hand gripping his sweater tight. He has the urge to take the kid’s tiny fingers in his own and hold them that way instead, but for the moment he’s unable to even get a grasp on his own balance for anything more than a moment. 

The kid whips his head around, eyes narrowed in a slight glare. 

“None of your beeswax,” he spits, and Wilbur raises a brow. “Besides, I’m much older than you are, human.” 

There it is. Wilbur guessed right, then. He’d heard stories of fae creatures lingering deep in the woods, sung a few tales of his own once or twice. This child is too golden and too perfect to be anything but a faerie, even if they seem somewhat new to the world. Wilbur has a sneaking suspicion that the fawn he had met a few days prior had been anything but natural as well. This is both good news and bad– you never want to find yourself crossing the wrong path of a fae, but if you can maneuver through their trickery, well. Wilbur just hopes he’s clever enough. 

“You look like you’re six,” he says. “And I’ll punt you like you are if you don’t get me home by nightfall, courts and courtesy be damned.” 

The child stops dead in his tracks, turning around. Wilbur freezes as well, watching as the kid stares up at him with narrowed eyes. They glimmer, and then the kid huffs, blowing air out of his nose and turns once more. Wilbur hides a laugh behind his hand– he’d guessed right again. This little creature, while older than him, is still a child. 

“Answer all my questions,” the little fae says, continuing their trek forwards. “And I’ll consider both debts cleared. Deal?”

Wilbur considers it. “I’ll answer them until we get to the edge of the forest,” he says. “And then sure. Deal.” 

“I could stretch this journey to take hundreds of years,” the little creature says, voice sharp and fierce, not turning to look at Wilbur. His voice bounds across the trees, leaping from branch to branch ahead of them. The little kid is loud. “We could reach the edge of the forest and all your folks’ll be dead.”

“I don’t have any folks,” Wilbur says simply.

“Liar,” the child says, turning. His eyes flash. “Liar, liar, liar! Our deal is made, so I’ll forgive that. Who do you have, out there?” 

Wilbur looks back, through the trees, and then down at those blue eyes. “A brother,” he says. “Older. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Brother,” the fae says, tasting the word on his tongue. “What does it mean to have a brother?” 

“It means…” Wilbur struggles for a second, pausing. The kid allows them to stop, the crunch of leaves quieting as they stand in the center of the woods for a moment. Wilbur thinks of their small home in a village a few leagues over by the sea, the smell of fish and the docks in the morning, the calluses on his twin’s hands. “It means to have someone to come back to,” he says. “Even if you’ve wronged them.”

“Seems inefficient,” the fae says. “Thank you for your honesty…?” He drags the word out, letting go of Wilbur’s shirt and dancing forward, leaning so far back on his heels that Wilbur thinks he might tip over. But he doesn’t. Instead, he looks towards Wilbur expectantly.

“Hm?” Wilbur asks.

“I don’t know what to call you,” the kid says. “May I have your name?” 

“Absolutely not,” Wilbur says with a smile. “But good try, gremlin.” 

The kid sticks his tongue out and blows a raspberry. “Then what should I call you?” He asks, and Wilbur shakes his head.

“Nothing for now,” he says. “A wanderer.” 

“That is what you are,” the kid says. “But not something to call you.”

“Sure it is,” Wilbur says. “Haven’t you ever heard stories of princes and knights? It’s the same thing. The heroes never have names, just titles. Consider it my title. What should your title be?” 

The little fae seems to consider the idea, tapping his chin and staring out into the woods. “Trickster,” he eventually says. “I’ll be the trickster, and you are the wanderer. A good duo for a story, I think. Do you know many stories?”

“I like to think I do,” Wilbur says, smiling wide. He knows many, many tales– most of them in song form, some in just spoken word. He knows lullabies and sea shanties, he knows epic poems and fairytales. He knows stories about forests who don’t give back their travelers. 

“Tell me one,” the faerie demands. 

“I don’t think I shall,” Wilbur says, because he knows that giving in once to this little creature might make it like him, and that would be very bad. The kid stares up at him and squints, and then smiles.

“Tell me one?” He asks. Wilbur goes to say no once more– and then pauses. The faerie is grinning with those sharp, white teeth again. He opens his mouth and shuts it, and before he can answer the faerie juts in once more: “Our deal was you would answer all my questions. I just asked one!” 

“Right,” Wilbur says, because that had been the deal. And while he could break the deal and still refuse to tell a story, the consequences of that would be far worse than anything else the faerie could do to him. He inhales, taking a moment to think across all the tales he knows, and then settles on something short and sweet.

“Once upon a time,” he says, because all good stories start like that, “many, many years ago, there was a kingdom.” 

“This better not be about a princess,” the faerie says, sounding a bit grumpy. When Wilbur tilts his head to look at the child, they tip their chin up to look in turn with a disgruntled look. 

“What’s wrong with princesses?” Wilbur asks. “I like them.”

“They’re prissy,” the trickster says, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. Tell a different story, one without princesses.” 

“You don’t even know the story I was going to tell,” Wilbur says, slightly affronted. “There weren’t any in the first place.”

“I was just checking,” the child says, sounding particularly exasperated as his shoulders rise and fall with a huff of breath. He crosses his arms across the front of his expensive-looking, dirt-streaked tunic. “Stop being a bitch and tell me a story.” 

“Stop being a brat and maybe I will,” Wilbur shoots back, swinging his arm around a tree and loping ahead with long steps of his legs. The fae child follows with a shout, moving quicker than Wilbur thought possible and far more gracefully, too. They end up next to him again, hand stubbornly stuck in his shirt. If he didn’t know any better, he’d tease the child about leaving fingerprints. But for now he just walks, allowing the grip on his shirt to tug him over just slightly, shoulder falling with a hum. “Once upon a time, many many years ago, there was a kingdom,” he says once more. When no interruption comes this time, he continues. “In this kingdom were two princes.”

“Three,” the fae says. “Three princes.”

“Two princes,” Wilbur says firmly. “And one thief in the market. One prince was tall, and the other was short. The Crown Prince– the shorter one– was jealous of his brother. He thought that since he was going to be king, he should be tall. So he visited an apothecary in town–”

“What’s that?” his companion asks, and Wilbur smiles.

“Like a witch, but legal,” he says. “Now shh. One day, the Crown Prince visited the apothecary and got a potion that would make his brother short. The Crown Prince was still young, and didn’t seem to think this was childish at all.”

“It’s not,” the little fae child says, nodding his head sagely. “I’d make myself taller, too.”

“Of course you would,” Wilbur says with a sigh. “You’re like the Crown Prince. He got this potion one day and was headed back to the palace when a young thief bumped into him. Unaware that he had just been pickpocketed, the Crown Prince scolded the thief and continued his way home. But the thief had taken the potion vial from his pocket– and now had it, unsure of what it could do. Was it poison, he wondered? Was it a secret potion meant for secret royal things? He wasn’t sure, so he put it aside on a shelf. When the Crown Prince returned to the palace, he couldn’t find the potion in any of his pockets and he realized what must’ve happened. Angry, the Prince wanted to hunt down the thief, but if he did, that would reveal his plot to make his brother shorter. So he thought about what to do for a whole day and a night.”

“He should just have bought another potion,” the fae interrupts. 

“You’re being rude,” Wilbur points out, and the child kicks a rock into the underbrush.

“Apologies,” he says, and sighs. “I will make it up to you by leading you home in a timely manner. Now, story please.”

“Of course.” Wilbur grins, and they keep walking, side-by-side as his own voice fills the air. Techno had always said Wilbur talked too much, but here he is. “After a whole day and night of both the thief and the prince wondering what to do, they both returned to the market. Unaware the other even existed in the first place. The thief made his way to the apothecary and procured the potion, asking to sell it to the witch who ran the store. She bought it off of him, and he left, brushing shoulders with another cloaked man on the way out.

Excuse me, he said. The cloaked man simply shrugged at him and continued inwards. They parted ways.

Inside, the cloaked man let down his hood and asked the apothecary witch for a potion. She smiled, and brought one up from beneath the counter. There, the Crown Prince bought another potion– unbeknownst to him, it was the same one he’d lost the day prior. He went back to the castle and poured it in his brother’s tea, and the next morning he was taller than his younger brother. The end.”

“Wow,” the fae says, and when Wilbur looks down at him he’s frowning. “That was a shit story.”

“You never asked for a good one,” Wilbur points out, grinning as he looks back out across the trees. The fae grits his teeth and Wilbur refrains from laughing, biting his tongue for this one moment. 

“I could make you tell me another,” the fae says. “A good one, this time. One full of war an’ shit. And blood and guts. Not vain human princes and stupid thieves.”

“Most of the stories I know are bad,” Wilbur admits. “Or they talk about your kind.”

“Yeah?” the kid asks. “My kind?”

“Fae folk are talked about outside the woods,” Wilbur says.

“What do they say about us?”

“Warning tales, mostly. Don’t give a name. Never be rude.” Wilbur looks down. “Although, I will admit I’ve been callous at times. My deepest regrets.”

“Don’t regret it,” the fae says, smiling up at him with his sharp little teeth. “I like a good challenge.”

“You are a spitfire,” Wilbur tells him.

“And you’re too smart for your own good,” the fae says. “My father wouldn’t be so nice.”

“Do fae have fathers?” Wilbur asks, and the fae huffs at him.

“ I’m the one asking the questions,” he says. They step over a fallen log together, the top of it mossy and soft and the bottom adhered to the forest floor with a layer of fallen, decomposed leaves and dirt. A mushroom colony is hanging off the side, and Wilbur makes sure not to disturb it. The fae child waits on the other side, staring at him with those wide, unsettling blue eyes. “Why are you a wanderer?”

“Why not?” Wilbur asks. “I get to see the world.”

“But you don’t always wander,” the fae says. “Sometimes you stay put. Why?”

“The weather gets bad,” Wilbur says. “Or I don’t have money. Or I like a place enough to stay a while.”

“Why are you staying here?” the fae asks. “Which of those is it?”

For a moment, Wilbur pauses. The answer dies on his lips, because for a moment, there is no answer. Why is he staying? Money and food, but also the forest. And there was a girl in the village, but also this is the farthest place from his brother–

“Well?” the fae asks, impatient.

“Sorry,” Wilbur says on instinct, then tries to backpedal a bit. “I mean– I was just thinking. Sometimes questions deserve good answers.”

“All of my questions deserve good answers,” the fae says, a bit crossly. 

“Thoughtful answers,” Wilbur amends. “And to that… I don’t know. Why am I staying here for as long as I have been? It’s the harvest, which means more food, but it’s the harvest everywhere, so food’s everywhere. I guess I just like the woods. I like the distance.”

“Distance from?” the fae asks. Wilbur sighs. “You don’t have to answer that one, actually,” the fae says before he can answer. “I changed my mind. Look. The edge of the forest.”

“Hm.” Ahead of them is a break in the trees and beyond that, fields and a stone wall and barns and thatch roofs. “So it is.”

“This is where I leave you,” the fae says. “Your answers were unsatisfying, and your story even more so. A deal is a deal, wanderer.”

“So you say, trickster,” Wilbur says with a smile. “Goodbye, child.”

“I am older than you,” the fae kid says, with his face that doesn’t look a day over six years old, pouting and crossing his arms. It really puts on the act. Wilbur just laughs, allowing himself the mirth now that they’re so close to the edge of the woods. 

“How could I forget?” he asks, turning to glance over his woods at the thinning trees. By the time he looks back– the fae is gone. 

A tinkle of bells is all that remains, distant and echoing like laughter.

The next time Wilbur is in the forest, he is running again.

This time, it’s not from an angry farmer or shopkeep. This time, the planting season is over and food for Wilbur is more abundant than ever, and Wilbur hasn’t technically stolen anything.

Sally’s father would beg to differ.

“I’m gonna kill you!”

The words bounce off the trees around them and ring through Wilbur’s head, the same mantra he’s heard since the man barged in on him and Sal in the back room of the mill. He’d hardly had time to grab his shit and run, guitar case banging off his spine in a painful way as he ducks and weaves between the trees. It’s warm out, warm enough that sweat drips out from under his bangs and down the hollow of his back, collecting on his skin in salty rivulets as he runs, and runs, and runs. The trees are thick and green around him, the ground covered in foliage and soft ferns, and Wilbur runs like a clumsy stag through it all, crashing and breaking branches. He’s not hiding his presence, not really– if anything, he’s broadcasting it.

He thinks the gamble might just play off. If only because after a while, the man’s voice disappears. Wilbur slows to a stop and he can’t hear his shouts anymore, nor the sound of him trampling the underbrush behind him.

Stopping entirely, he breaths. Leans over with hands on his knees and gasps for air like a drowning man as his lungs catch up for lost time. Then, he sinks to the ground, resting his head against his knee and sitting there for a moment. His whole body feels like gelatin, jiggly and weak.

He isn’t surprised when, in the distance, he hears bells.

“So,” he gasps, still not having caught his breath as the sound of soft, jingling footsteps patter up to him. “I suppose I didn’t lose him myself, did I?”

When he looks up, a small hare is sitting in front of him. Soft fur, twitching ears, upright on its hind legs as it regards Wilbur with one eye, then the other. In a flash, the hare is gone, and in its place is a small boy. The same one with golden hair and eyes like glaciers, crouched in front of him just as the hare had been. Animalistic, but graceful.

“No,” the fae child says. “The woods decided it was time for him to go home.”

“I suppose I owe the woods a great thanks,” Wilbur says, pushing back his hair a bit and wiping more sweat from his brow. It is hot out, and he desperately aches for a drink of water.

“I speak for these trees,” the boy says. “You can thank me, Wanderer.”

“Well,” Wilbur says. “Thank you.”

“You owe me,” the fae creature says, still in that unnatural crouch on the forest floor. Wilbur sits up a bit, and raises a brow.

“Do I now?” he asks.

“Without me, you’d have been caught by him,” the fae says. “And I don’t think you wanted that. So, you owe me.”

“A minimal debt,” Wilbur tells him. “I don’t think his threats were founded.”

“Regardless.” The fae boy’s eyes flick from his to the guitar strap on his chest, to the shape of it over his shoulder. “You owe me a song.”

“Is that what you wanted?” Wilbur asks, and the boy moves finally, pushing himself up from the crouch and sitting back on the leaves with a thump. Wilbur shifts as well, sitting more firmly on the ground and swinging his guitar over his shoulder. “You know, you could’ve just met me on the path outside the woods and asked.”

“I’m not allowed out there,” the fae says, voice and face eager. Wilbur considers asking why not– plenty of fae make their way into human territory, although it’s not hard to spot them from a distance when not in the woods. Out there, their tricks work less. They like to stick to their home turf. But Wilbur’s never heard of a fae being forbidden from going out there. “Play your song and I’ll lead you back out, just like last time.”

“One song,” Wilbur says.

“One,” the fae affirms.

“A fair price,” Wilbur agrees. “Just give me a minute to catch my breath, child.”

“Still older than you,” the fae says primly, turning up his nose at the insult. “Would you like it if I called you an old man?”

“Maybe not,” Wilbur admits. “Gremlin, then. That shapeshifting trick was a neat one.” He’s already harboring suspicions about a certain fawn he saw back in the early days of spring– and he thinks that just might’ve proved them all correct. 

“Thank you!” The fae seems genuinely delighted at the praise. “I like the hares. They run fast, but not as fast as I can when I’m like them, because I’m better. I’m better than everything in this forest– or, most of everything. The animals, at least. They are all losers, unlike me, because I am a winner.”

“Are you now?” Wilbur asks.

“I won you, didn’t I?” the fae asks slyly, and Wilbur shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “You didn’t. We made a deal. There was no winning involved.”

“Spoilsport,” the fae grumbles. “Your breath is back. Sing now, please.”

“Alright, alright,” Wilbur says, drawing his guitar out of the case and running a hand down its spine. Checking for any bumps and bruises, fingers deftly giving a rough strum as he checks the tuning. A couple adjustments later, and she’s ready to go. He settles into the warm grass beneath the tree, leans his back against the rough bark, and poises his hands over the strings. “Any requests?”

The fae is looking at him, head cocked to the side. His legs are crossed and he’s leaning one chubby childlike cheek on his fist, waiting. “Something human,” he says. “I’ve never heard human music before.”

“Something human,” Wilbur hums, and nods. “I can do that. Let’s see– have you heard of Tim Finnegan?”

Wilbur grew up on the coast. He knows songs– too many songs, from too many places. Some in languages he doesn’t even understand. If this fae wants human songs, he could perform a hundred of them for him. 

He starts with this one, a silly little upbeat tune about a man who drinks too much and falls down dead, only to be revived later with a splash of whiskey. It’s a dancing song, a drinking song, and he finds himself singing and playing as loudly as he dares in these woods. The words fall from his lips like fish from a river and his fingers fly like birds, and all the while the fae watches him. Never moving, never dancing, never dragging his little blue eyes away from Wilbur’s hands on the strings. 

When it’s over (and Wilbur drags the chorus out a few more times than necessary, just to feel the calluses on his hands sing) he glances up, and even then the fae doesn’t move. Just sits there, staring.

“Well?” he asks, once the echoes of the music have faded from the woods. His voice sounds so much smaller than it had just a moment ago.

The fae boy sits up a bit straighter. It dawns on Wilbur just now that his ears are pointed at the tips.

“You could be a siren,” he says. “Have you ever thought about it?”

“No,” Wilbur admits honestly. He laughs, then. “But it would make my life a lot easier. Maybe then people would listen.”

“I could make people listen to you,” the fae says slyly, but Wilbur just gives him a smile and moves to sling his guitar back over his back.

“One song was my price,” Wilbur tells him. “And it’s been paid. It’s your turn to fulfill your side of the agreement.”

“And take you home,” the fae sighs.

“And take me home.” Wilbur can’t seem to stop smiling now that he’s started. His fingers still tingle, even now as he moves to get up. The fae child stays on the ground however, and when Wilbur turns to look at him, only his eyes track his movement. For a moment, the boy pouts, lips quirking downwards, before he sighs and rolls his eyes.

“Fine,” he says. In a flash, there is no longer a boy, but a hare.

Wilbur grins the whole way back to the edge of the forest, even when he has to run to keep up.

He gets a letter back.

The heat of the summer is in full swing by the time he receives one. It’s short. It’s to the point– Wilbur would never expect anything less.

It upsets him anyway. The worst part is, it’s not even angry. Techno wishes him well. Techno is glad he’s alive. Techno says he’ll always have a bed to come back to if he needs it. Techno mentions the fucking potato harvest again. 

So he goes for a walk. A walk by the forest, on one of the paths outside the tilled land. Bordered by a stone wall on one side and the woods on the other, he feels… better. Not great, but better.

He still hasn’t left this town. They’re almost used to him now, calling out to him by name on the street corner. That’s not necessarily a good thing. He still gets nasty looks from Sally’s father. 

Green trees whistle in the wind. Leaves flutter around him as he walks, the guitar over his shoulder just as heavy as always. He hasn’t… ever since he played for the fae trickster, he hasn’t been able to play like he had that day under the tree. His tongue doesn’t feel the same, his fingers don’t vibrate the same speed as the strings. Even Simone seems different, as though she feels just as off as he does. Like they got a taste of wine– the good wine, from down south, and now regular wine just doesn’t cut it. And Simone is a guitar. She can’t exactly feel things.

Nevertheless, Wilbur thinks he knows why he’s sticking around and why he can’t quite leave this trail alone. It’s close to the woods. Closer than anything else, and a pretty walk to boot.

Here, it’s almost like he can hear the jingling of bells if he listens hard enough.

He’s not listening today. Not paying attention one bit. He’s too caught up in emotion, turmoil and roiling water in his mind that it’s hard to focus on one thing or anything. Bells in the woods are too normal now, too background noise to notice. He walks, and he kicks rocks, and he curses his brother’s name over and over in low grumbling tones until something catches his eye.

It’s a button. Tucked in the grass, shiny and blue. Almost offhandedly, he bends down to pick it up.

It’s smooth under his fingers, cold and small. It fits into his palm nicely, and just down the way– there’s another one. After that, another.

A trail of breadcrumbs.

He realizes too late where they’re leading.

When Wilbur’s foot hits the stone, he simply takes a step over. It’s a little thing, covered in moss, the only one in his sightline. He steps over it and leans down to pick up the last shiny button he can see– he’s got a few of them now in his hand, cradled between his fingers and palm. They clink together there like tiny shards of glass, and he glances up. It dawns on him that all of the sounds around him seem to have been muffled. Even the buttons in his hand don’t click together nearly as loud, and confused, he looks down at the ground once more. Then spins in a circle, eyes jumping from mossy stone to mossy stone until, one by one, they connect into a wide circle.

Recognition dawns just as something pops! behind him, and the sound of laughter fills the clearing he’s in.

“Shit,” Wilbur whispers, spinning on his heel.

“Hello,” says the little fae, who is standing right behind him.

“Shit!” Flinching hard, Wilbur stumbles backwards, startled. Alarms fire through all his neurons, flashing lights and the sound of dogs baying in his ears as he peddles backwards so quickly he nearly falls over, managing instead to halfway gracefully fall into the long grass. He’s not on the path anymore– he’s not anywhere anymore. No stone walls and no tilled farmland, no houses in the distance. Just him, and the trees, and the meadow, and the fae.

“Wanderer,” the fae says jovially, smile so wide it stretches beyond comprehension. “You found my things!”

“Did I?” Wilbur asks, glancing down at his hand that still holds the buttons. “Oh. It appears I did. Would you like them back?”

“They’re a gift,” the fae says, still smiling. Wilbur moves to get up, legs wobbly underneath him as he pushes up from the soft grass. It’s so soft. He could lie down in it and sleep for a hundred years. 

And that’s the problem. He doesn’t want to sleep for a hundred years. But here, he could. Here, the sun shines brightly but not too bright. Music sings to him in the ways of grass and willow fronds and a pond that wasn’t there when he blinked last, music that sounds like violins and laughter.

“I can’t stay here,” Wilbur murmurs, mostly to himself. He turns again in a circle, pulling against all the strings that are calling him to rest, to be merry. “You know that.”

“I want to hear more of your music,” the fae child says, eyes turned upwards to him. –

“You could’ve just come found me and asked,” Wilbur says, trying to be gentle, but it’s hard when he can hear birdsong overlaying the piano and choir in the background. 

“I’m not allowed outside the woods,” the fae child says slyly. “But you’re allowed inside. So I simply pulled you in. It’s that easy. And now you owe me for stepping into my circle.”

“It was an accident,” Wilbur tries to defend. “I wasn’t aware it was your property.”

“I mean,” the fae child’s smile only grows. “It’s not mine. It’s my dad’s.” 

Wilbur’s heart drops out of his chest and into his stomach, then even farther into the ground. The expression on his face must be funny, because the fae child cackles, dancing backwards and away from him. He runs in a circle, arms spread wide as though he’s a little bird in the skies. Wilbur supposes he could be, if he wanted to. He could be anything, laughter spiraling around him as he runs.

“Your dad’s?” Wilbur asks hesitantly, taking a step and following the child a bit into the grass. “What does that mean for me?”

“My father’s property is also mine,” the kid says, looking back over his shoulder and grinning. “So you’re stuck with me for now.”

“I can play you another song?” Wilbur offers, slinging Simone over his shoulder in some desperate attempt to weasel his way out of this. “I know a lot of them. I can play you three. Or five. Or even ten, I could do ten.”

“I don’t want one song, or three, or five or ten,” the kid says, skidding to a stop in the grass. He turns to look back at Wilbur, eyes shimmering. “I want all of them, Wanderer.”

“I can’t give you all of them, Trickster,” Wilbur fires back. “If I give you all of them, what will be left for me?”

The trickster taps his chin with a finger, faux-thoughtful. “Nothing?” he suggests.

“You can’t leave me with nothing,” Wilbur says firmly. 

“But you trespassed.”

“You tricked me into it.” Wilbur puffs out his chest now, still doing his best to ignore the lingering call of the faery circle around him and sound authoritative. “I never would’ve trespassed if I had known. I’m not rude. I’ve been respectful. I have paid my tolls and you have paid yours in turn. I offer my deepest regrets for stepping into the circle and am willing to pay a toll in order to leave, but not an unreasonable one. There are laws in your land, and I have not crossed one yet. I am not a threat, and do not need to be punished.”

As he speaks, the fae child’s face drops from something delighted and cheery and mocking to a pout, to a deeper pout, to something distinctly displeased. Despite it, Wilbur doesn’t stop talking until he’s laid out the fact that he is not staying and will not submit to this little fae’s whim at the drop of a dime– or, well, in this case the drop of a button. Carefully he reaches out and pours the buttons from his hand into the fae’s.

“I appreciate the thoughtful gift,” he says. “But I’m afraid I must refuse. I’m in no need of buttons.”

“You’re missing one on the top of your shirt,” the fae child says ruefully.

“That one’s on purpose,” Wilbur deflects. “I will sing for you–” he doesn’t think he can resist much longer, honestly– “but at the end of five songs, you will let me go.”

“Ten.”

“Five.”

“ Ten. ”

“Seven,” Wilbur says firmly. “That’s my final offer.”

The fae child pouts so hard Wilbur’s surprised his face hasn’t frozen that way. “Bitch,” he mutters under his breath. Wilbur’s kind enough to let the slight pass by. “Fine. Seven songs and you can leave.”

“Much gratitude,” Wilbur says carefully, and then looks around at the grass. “Well, sit then. Seven songs for you. Any requests.”

“Something human,” the trickster says, sitting next to Wilbur when he sits, going through the same routine as before with his guitar. Check the strings, check the tuning, settle his hands into practiced places. The fae watches with wide eyes, a lingering displeased look on his face as he observes, occasionally leaning forward and tipping his pointed ear towards the instrument with a look of interest. Wilbur strums and does a quick little scale, just to watch his ears perk up, then starts in on the first of their seven songs.

He picks something slower than the one he’d played before. A thudding, deep tune that’s more suitable for workers in a coal mine than on the boards of a ship or tavern floor. His voice rises and falls, echoing in a way he didn’t think possible with the trees and meadow fading in and out around them. 

The world is a multicolored kaleidoscope of movement, flowers slipping from view and then back in again without so much as a whisper. His music seems to shape it, pulling tendrils of reality back and forth without so much as an ounce of effort from Wilbur. He gets lost in it, repeating a chorus over and over as he watches the world bend to him, and it’s…

It’s…

“Hey.” Smack. A hand bounces off his temple and the sting drags him back. “Even I know there are more verses than that.”

“You hit me,” Wilbur says, eyes fuzzy and mind a little woozy as he looks down at the little fae boy. He’s frowning again, not looking at Wilbur. Instead, he’s looking at Simone.

“Yeah,” the trickster says. “Play your second song.”

“Right.” Wilbur lets the remnants of the first die down, and then picks back up with another from the same key– quick, upbeat, short. The fae grabs his attention the whole time, moving and shuffling in the grass, fingers plucking the soft green blades from the ground and deftly weaving them into a sort of crown. Wilbur watches his hands move as his own dance across the strings, lyrics coming to his lips without thought as the fae stands up– he’s barely taller than Wilbur sitting down– and places the crown on his head. When the song ends, he ducks his hand in thanks, and the kid grins.

They go on like that for a few more songs. One or two Wilbur cuts short, verses disappearing, only to bring them back around for longer choruses and dragged-out notes in others. By the sixth song, the child is leaning against his side. 

He’s as warm as any real six-year-old. One hand pressed to Wilbur’s guitar, presumably to feel the vibrations. He even catches on to some of the lyrics and choruses when Wilbur sings them, humming along happily although he hasn’t smiled since he’d hit Wilbur on the forehead. His golden hair is as soft as worked flax, shining in the brilliant sunlight. He ends the sixth song and starts up on the seventh, and the kid is humming right along, fingers dug into the earth and leaning like a little brand against Wilbur’s side.

When the last of the music fades out, and the world stabilizes just a little, the kid sighs.

“That was seven,” Wilbur points out.

“Yeah,” the fae grumbles. “Yeah, it was.”

“You have to let me out now,” Wilbur hums, and the child kicks his feet out into the grass.

“Don’t you want to stay?” he asks, a little pleadingly. “You’re a good songbird. The forest likes listening to you.”

“I have other forests to play to,” Wilbur soothes, brushing a hand daringly over the top of that golden puffball of hair. The fae looks up at him, frowning. “Other people.”

“But you don’t,” the trickster says, and Wilbur can’t forget that. Can’t forget this young fae is just as otherworldly as any full-grown. “You told me. You could stay. Here, with me, playing songs forever.”

“I would die before long,” Wilbur reminds him. “I’m only human.”

“Not anymore,” the kid grumbles, and before Wilbur can process that he’s bouncing to his feet, dragging Wilbur up with him as he hurriedly slings Simone back over his back. “Come on. You can leave. This way.”

“Wait,” Wilbur says, because he can’t just forget what he said a moment ago. “Wait, what did you–”

“Exit’s here, hope you enjoyed your stay, goodbye!” the trickster says, all in one breath, rushed. He gives Wilbur’s a shove on his legs and he stumbles forward–

And it’s as though he’s exited a bubble. His ears pop, and all of the sudden it’s dark out, the bright sun and daylight gone in a flash and turned to the moon and stars and inky velvet night sky. The difference is jarring and he nearly falls right over, staggering to his feet. His hands are wet, and when he looks down at them they’re stained with dirt and grass. Something droops into his field of vision, and when he reaches up to his head he pulls down a bundle of dead grass. The crown the little fae had made for him– but now, it’s dead and dry, brown instead of green.

He shivers, and realizes just how cold he is. Looking up, the stars are all… wrong, somehow. Not different wrong, he’s still in the same place he was when he stumbled into the circle, but those… Those are winter constellations.

It’s then he realizes the trees have no leaves.

The town has answers for him that leave him confused and disoriented. It’s mid-fall– not late summer, as it had been when he’d walked into the faery ring. They thought he’d left. Sally won’t even look at him, scorn in her eyes as she walks past him in the market. There’s a letter at the inn from his brother from only a week or so ago, sounding worried behind the life updates and asking at the end if he’s moved on yet. Wilbur can’t even bring himself to write back. His mind is reeling– had he really been gone for near two months? It isn’t time for the harvest yet, so he hasn’t been gone a ridiculous amount of time, but he… he’d just walked into a faery circle, played seven songs, and stepped out two months later.

He haunts the street of the town like a ghost, sitting on the corner and absently strumming his guitar. It doesn’t feel the same as it did in the circle. Not at all. The world doesn’t bend to his whims.

He sleeps in barns and plays on the street corner religiously– trying to find that feeling, trying to connect back to the physical world and feel again. He doesn’t even notice when instead of coins, people leave him food and hot drinks. He barely registers the worried looks they give him, the whispers that follow him in the streets.

Beyond the edge of the town, the woods rustle and call.

Two days after he returned, someone walks into town.

Wilbur’s not paying attention. He’s busy with Simone, ghosting his fingers over her strings and painstakingly tuning her by the smallest degrees. Maybe if he gets it right, maybe if he gets her the same as she was in the meadows, she can play like he had in the woods. His focus is so pointed on the guitar and the music that he doesn’t notice the man walk into town, nor the way he stops and stands in front of him for almost twenty minutes.

Eventually– “Wilbur.”

That gets his attention. Deep voice, familiar to his very core.

He looks up and finds Technoblade staring down at him.

His brother looks tired. Bags hang under his eyes and his hair is a mess– his pants are stained with mud and his shoes are dirty, as though he’s walked a long way. Maybe he has. Wilbur doesn’t see Carl behind him, so walking is the only other way he could be here.

“Techno,” he says. He wonders how he looks to his brother, face turned upwards and surely looking as exhausted as Techno looks.

“You haven’t written,” Techno says. Wilbur laughs. “I got a letter from the tavern keep, of all people. Saying you’d been fae-touched.”

“So you came to look for me?” Wilbur asks, only a little mockingly. “Come to rescue me?”

“Something of that nature,” Techno says, reaching down and hauling Wilbur to his feet in one tug. He stumbles a bit and Techno catches him, frowning. “When was the last time you ate?”

“No idea,” Wilbur murmurs as dizziness overtakes him for a moment, and Techno frowns harder. 

“Come on,” he says with a sigh, pulling Wilbur down the street, towards the warm beckoning door of the tavern inn. “Let’s get you warm.”

He hadn’t even noticed he was cold, but now that Techno mentions it– he’s freezing. The chill seeps into his very bones, and he shivers up until the moment Techno plops him down in front of the hearth in the inn and slams a couple of coins down on an empty table.

“Two ale and two dinners,” he requests from the tavern-keep, who looks grateful someone is here and dealing with Wilbur. He doesn’t pay much attention– too busy warming his hands over the fire. “And a room for the night. We’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Are you bringing me home?” Wilbur asks.

“Something of that nature,” Techno says, dragging over another chair to sit beside him. He takes Wilbur’s hands in his own, studying the calluses and the bleeding around his nails. Then he looks up at Wilbur, eyes aching in a way Wilbur doesn’t think he’s ever seen on his brother. “Wilbur.”

“Technoblade.”

“What have you done?” Techno asks in a low voice, still gripping Wilbur’s hands tight. “You look awful.”

“You’re not exactly a peach right now either,” Wilbur jokes weakly, and Techno looks as though he’s restraining from slapping him. “I’m– I’m fine. I am.”

“You are,” Techno says quietly. “Fae-touched.”

“Just a bit,” Wilbur admits. “To be fair, it’s all been accidents. Nothing I’ve sought out.” No matter how many times he’s thought about trampling into those woods, looking for that small fae child with his bright soft hair and his laugh like a rippling brook. 

“Still,” Techno says, and it’s softer. More concerned than angry, which makes Wilbur concerned. “I’m taking you home tomorrow. Away from these woods. Somewhere safe.”

“Home?” Wilbur asks, then laughs. “That’s not my home, and you know that.”

“Yes it is,” Techno says through gritted teeth. “I’m not arguing with you about this again, Wilbur. Not now. Not when you’re like this.”

“Like what?” Wilbur hisses. “Like myself? Like I have always been? I’m not any different just because I’ve been out in those woods. And it was an accident. I didn’t want– I didn’t–” He cuts himself off, because with a hitching sob, he realizes he’s crying. Tears pour from his eyes in a way that doesn’t feel natural, because they’re not… his tears. This sadness doesn’t belong to him, this mourning, this grief. It belongs, he thinks, to whatever is in the woods.

“Wilbur,” Techno says, and gentle is not suited to Techno’s voice but he wears it anyway, ill-fitted and clumsy. “Come home.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Wilbur confesses to him in a terrified whisper. Techno just sets his jaw and leans back, gripping his hands tight.

They sit there for the rest of the day, eating and drinking what Techno’s coin can buy them. Wilbur doesn’t have much of an appetite, but he tries, and it seems to make Techno a bit happier when he does. Night falls within a few hours, and Wilbur sighs as Techno drags him up to the room he’d rented in the inn, a threadbare thing with one bed and a chair by a cold hearth.

“Lie down,” Techno tells him, moving to sit in the chair. For the first time since he’d arrived, he swings his sword around from behind his legs and displays it neatly in his lap. “It’s the third night since you got back?”

“Yeah,” Wilbur says hoarsely. The ale had stuck in his throat, made him feel clogged up. Even now it lingers.

“The most dangerous, then,” Techno hums. “I’ll watch. You try and sleep.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to,” Wilbur admits, settling onto the thin hay-filled mattress. It doesn’t bother him. He’s been sleeping on worse. Techno turns his head and looks out the window, just a square hole in the wooden wall, and grimaces. 

“That’s alright,” he says. “Just… try.”

Wilbur lays down and shuts his eyes. The strength to argue seems to have been sapped out of him and Techno both, which is rare for them. All they seem to do is run on things to argue about, even when it gets down to just fumes. For a while it seemed like it was all they could do, and that is precisely why Wilbur left.

Maybe there’s just nothing left to argue about. Wilbur knows Techno is objectively right. He messed with things he shouldn’t have, accidentally or not, and now they’re on the third night after stepping in a faery circle and he’s tired. So tired, as though he hasn’t slept in ages. Yes, he’d just told Techno he didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but he thinks maybe that was a lie. Now that he’s in a bed– a proper bed, one with a pillow and everything– his eyes are heavy and his heart is too.

That doesn’t mean his sleep isn’t restless.

Things come to him in his dreams– birds, flocks of them cawing and pecking at his face and arms and eyes, pecking until he is blind. He doesn’t bother to bat them away. He knows a useless battle when he sees one. The birds don’t stay for long, and like in the meadow with the trickster he finds himself warping the world with his fingers, dragging the skin of his hands through the fabric of reality and weaving and sewing things together. 

He sews himself new eyes. New clothing, new faces, new names, everything he could ever want. He sews Simone into his arms and croons a mournful song as he sews himself a new brother, Technoblade disappearing beneath the veneer of falsehoods. 

When he wakes up, his hands are bleeding again.

The hearth is still cold and the night sky is dark– their one candle has gone out, leaving the room freezing cold and silent. Eyes adjusted, Wilbur can see Techno in the chair still, head lolled back against the headrest and eyes closed. His sword lies in his limp hands, and his chest rises and falls slowly. Each breath that exits his mouth and nose comes in a cloud of glittering silver, caught by the cold air. Wilbur sits up, and with mild interest, notes that his own breath is not doing the same.

Outside, the moon glimmers, casting pale lines of moonlight across the floorboards. Gently Wilbur slips out of the bedsheet, setting his feet on them and standing up. Techno doesn’t wake– doesn’t so much as twitch. Slowly, Wilbur creeps over to the window; in the distance, he can see the waving branches of the woods just beyond the town.

Perhaps he should say goodbye.

Just a small one. He’ll go to the edge of the woods and say farewell. He won’t even see the fae child, theoretically. Just a wave and a gift– he’ll leave Simone.

He thinks the child will like her.

So with the utmost care not to wake his brother, Wilbur slips. He picks Simone up from the corner she’d been placed in and slings her around his back, tiptoeing across the floorboards and out the door of the room. Down the stairs, to the quiet tavern space and the hearth coals still burning a soft orange. He leaves the warm room behind and steps out into the cold, wrapping his arms around himself to fight the chill.

The roads are familiar to his feet by now, and he travels down the sleepy main street and to the farmland beyond it. Following the stone wall to the end, then picking up on the wooden fence until there’s another stone wall. He turns, following this one until the trees are on his left and the town is on his right. Wilbur stands there in the dark, lit only by moonlight, and stares deep into the woods. He stands there until he’s shivering so hard his teeth are clacking and Simone is trembling against his back. He should leave her here and moves to do so, but before he can, something cracks in the distance.

All his nerves fly alight. He freezes in place best he can with the way his hands shake, and stares out into the forest. Images of wolves and predators fly through his mind, but before he can truly panic, a wave of calm washes over him. He straightens up, staring harder, and then he sees it.

Between the trees is a stag. A great one, shining in a shaft of moonlight. Moss and greenery is draped over its antlers, which tower above its already great stature. Its eyes are bright and intelligent, and a bold blue. It walks forwards, paying no mind to the branches snapping beneath its hooves. Wilbur watches, wide-eyed and alarmed until it makes its way right up to the edge of the forest. Then, it turns, and on its back he sees the trickster.

He’s just a little boy. Tiny on the back of this huge stag, but he slides to the ground from where he’d been sitting on it without a second of hesitation. He stumbles, catches himself, and then runs forward towards where Wilbur is. Wilbur opens his arms on instinct, catching the kid when he launches himself into his arms. He’s wearing a red tunic again, like the first time Wilbur had seen him in the woods.

“You came,” the kid breathes into his chest, burying his head into the fabric there. “You came.”

“Did I have a choice?” Wilbur breathes back, and the kid tilts his head up.

“You always had a choice,” he says. Then turns his eyes back over his shoulder to where the stag is standing. For an animal, it looks… vaguely amused. “This is my dad.”

It’s the same stag he’d seen in the spring, he’s sure of it. Which means the kid was the fawn. They’ve met before, then. Wilbur bows his head after a second, and the stag bows his. 

“It’s an honor,” Wilbur says.

The stag says nothing. He just looks at him, long and amused. Wilbur looks back, at least until the kid tugs on his sleeve and makes him look down.

“Will you tell me your name now?” the trickster asks. Wilbur raises a brow and glances over his shoulder, back towards the smoking chimneys and roofs of the town he’d left behind.

“I came to say goodbye,” Wilbur corrects him gently, but the argument sounds weak to his own ears. 

“No, you didn’t,” the kid says, grinning. He wants to argue, he does, but…

The longer he looks at those darkened woods, the more he knows he won’t be going back.

“You can call me Wilbur,” he says. “I’ll keep my name for now.”

“And you can call me Tommy,” the fae says. “I’d also like to keep mine. I quite like it. My dad let me pick it out and now it’s mine.”

“You didn’t steal it from anyone?” Wilbur asks teasingly, and Tommy grins at him, tipping his head to the side.

“No,” he says. “I haven’t stolen any names. Not yet. ” 

“I’m sure you’ll be a very prolific name-stealer,” Wilbur reassures. 

“The most proliverant.”

“Prolific.”

“Whatever! You can tell me more human words later, come on,” Tommy says, leaning backwards and tugging him. “I have so many things to show you. The gardens and the pools and the flowers and the apple tree and–”

“I have–” Wilbur reaches out, settling a hand on his shoulder. Something tugs at his heart in the opposite direction of this bright little fae child. “I have a brother out here,” he says quietly. “I can’t just leave him.”

“I can be your brother,” Tommy says. “You came back to me, and that’s what brothers do. Like you said. You said that’s how brothers are.”

“No, this is different,” Wilbur argues. “He’s not like you. He’s human.” Unspoken are the words: he’s not like me either. Not anymore.

“So we can take him too,” Tommy says cheerily, missing the point. “He’d like it, I’m sure. Is he like you? Is he a songbird?”

“No,” Wilbur says, shaking his head. He tries to imagine Technoblade here, and winces. “No, he’s more like a wild boar.”

“We have plenty of those in the forest,” Tommy says slyly, grinning. “You know, once you’re in here, you could convince him to come yourself, pussy.”

“Excuse me?” Wilbur asks. In his shock, Tommy drags him forward another few steps. “Wait–”

In a flash, the night is gone.

The meadow is bright and springish around him, the chill melting away like a first frost in the early morning. The dew soaks the lower parts of his pants in seconds, and the sunlight blinds him. Wilbur drags a hand up to shield his face and once his eyes have stopped weeping from the sudden light, looks around. It’s the same meadow as before, but a little different. And instead of the stag–

“Hello,” the fae man says to him, standing there with his hands clasped in front of him. The long, great sleeves of his tunic hide his hands, but his ears are sharp and his teeth are long. He wears a ridiculous amount of golden jewelry and trinkets on his belt; upon his head sits a thorned crown of flowers and twigs, dotted with small spring plants. Below him, Tommy is grinning that same smile. “Wilbur.”

In the distance, he can hear music.

“Welcome home!” Tommy says.