Chapter Text
It was a hot and muggy summer night. Seth lay in bed, starting at the ceiling, wide awake. He’d spent the whole day praying for rain, to no avail. The air was sticky and humid and despite the open windows and the attic was still hot after a full day of cloudless skies in the heart of August. There was only a hint of wind catching in the trees.
Kendra had somehow managed to fall asleep under her blankets, to Seth’s horror. He didn’t know how she did it. But that had been nearly an hour ago and sleep still evaded him.
He was totally alone, starting down yet another sleepless night. His only company were the moths flitting by the window every so often. It was a coin flip these days. He’d either spend a full night sleeping through nightmares or staring at the ceiling too exhausted to sleep.
As though that wasn’t bad enough, Seth was almost willing to bet they were all slowly drowning. The weather forecast had said there was a 95% humidity index today and that there was a thunderstorm alert up. He really wished the thunderstorm part would get here faster. At least if it rained, the temperature would drop.
In the meantime, he lay on top of his covers, in a damp pool of his own sweat.
He was miserable.
To make matters worse, he felt guilty for being miserable in the first place.
It wasn’t so much the weather - though it wasn’t helping - but rather the fact that he knew he could be perfectly comfortable if he wanted to. All he had to do was make his wings re-appear and he would start feeling better. It was easy. It was going to happen the moment he fell asleep anyway, so why not do it now?
He could have screamed in frustration. Why did he insist on staying uncomfortable? Why did he always have to make things harder for himself?
He almost wished the wings weren’t there, so he could just be miserable without any way out.
It wasn’t fair how well things had turned out for him after everything. He got to keep magic and keep the wings and have his injuries healed and -
He bit his lips almost to the point of bleeding to stop that particular train of thought. No. No. No. He didn’t want to think about what else he thought had happened that day, that moment.
It wasn’t fair to all the people he’d let down, who had died because of him, back in Wyrmroost. It wasn’t fair to all the dragons he’d killed and to everyone else who had ever come to harm because of him. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair.
He missed Coulter.
He hadn’t know the man for long, really. But he’d really liked him. And now he was gone, by Seth’s own fault. The six month mark had passed when Seth’s memories were still gone. So it was now that he thought back on it, with a hollow feeling in his chest.
Would he have been able to tell Coulter everything he was thinking about now?
No.
He couldn’t tell anyone the worst of it. He’d sworn not to say a word. So he couldn’t tell anyone at all, not even Kendra.
His heart started to beat faster and his hands shook. He pulled his pillow close and held onto it like a lone buoy at sea. He wasn’t crying yet, just trying to slow his breathing and wait for the sudden panic to wash by. He felt oddly disconnected from his body. His mind felt clear, watching himself freak out about the thing he wouldn’t even let himself think into words.
If this kept up Kendra might wake up, though.
He kind of wished she would.
She’d ask him what was wrong, and she’d try to comfort him… But he wouldn’t be able to talk about it and she wouldn’t be able to understand. Then she’d be worried and tell other people and he’d have to be subjected to rounds of kind worry and it would make him think about it. During the day. The thought almost made him scream, and he shook his head in frantic despair. No, no, no, absolutely not. No way, José.
He had to calm down. Think about something else. Anything else. What had been sort of bothering him before? The wings. Right the wings. Focus on that.
They were great, really, in a void. When he was alone, he loved them. He could fly, what could be better than that? Beyond being alive and not undead and having his family — No, too close. Too close.
He always woke up feeling comfortable these days. No matter the weather. Hot, cold, muggy, dry - so long as he was touching his wings, he felt perfect. Went away the second he made them disappear, but still! It was nice, if only it wasn’t so, so frustrating. He wasn’t sure why it was annoying, feeling like something was perfect, but it was.
It hadn’t been before. From the day the Fairy King gifted him the wings, he had spent every night sleeping in comfort, regardless of where he was. Of course, back then his wings couldn’t disappear. He hadn’t been able to make them go away, so there had been no need to really notice them that much, beyond admiring them a little at first.
But now it was up to Seth whether or not he wanted them out. And that choice made things difficult. Well, in a perfect world he would have them out most of the time. It felt right and it was comfortable. He often felt like he was suffocating a little, having them put away for long stretches of time.
It wasn’t a perfect world though. Right after leaving Selona, Seth suddenly found the wings to be difficult to deal with. Not because he suddenly had issues moving them. No, he just… He could feel the distance they set between him and everyone else. Kendra looked at him oddly when he had them out. As did everyone else. The only person he spent any time with who didn’t care at all was Vanessa.
He had asked her if it was alright to have his wings out when around her, because though she couldn’t see them he didn’t want to feel like he was lying. She had just smiled and said it was no trouble.
Well, it wouldn’t be fair to say that she was the only one who didn’t react. Bracken didn’t. Most of his non-human friends didn’t act oddly about the wings. They usually just acknowledged them or made jokes about them, in the case of Doren and Newell. When he was hanging out with them, out of sight of the main house, he would have his wings out the entire time. Like a kind of tight rope around his heart loosened a little and he could breathe a little easier. He could just be Seth, as he was now.
But back home… the thing was that it just felt uncomfortable, being stared at. Having close family members see all the time that he probably wasn’t human anymore. And to be honest, he wasn’t much of a fan of the fact himself. He really did like the wings, loved them even. Flying was everything. Better than any meditation he’d ever been forced into.
And, well… better than the alternative. If he hadn’t gone into the Source, he would still be trapped, partially turned into one of the undead. Even the memory of the cold in his bones made him shudder again.
He took a deep breath.
There were worse things than being aware he was probably going to outlive just about everyone he’d ever cared about.
He knew that.
But it still made his stomach drop with dread every time he thought about it. It still made him feel like he was running out of air and there was no escape. It almost scared him more than when they’d been trying to save the world. Because ‘the whole world’ was such a hard thing to picture. But he knew about immortality. He’d met plenty of people struggling with it, plenty of people who had chosen to die rather than continue.
He didn’t drink any water from the Source. He wasn’t truly immortal.
But he’d been stupid.
Because right before Konrad had died, he had said his wife had bathed with water from the Source and gone on to live longer than any other of the Fair Folk. And what did Seth do right after? Jumped into the pool like a total moron.
Alright, he wasn’t a moron. He just - he hadn’t really been thinking straight by then. He’d been desperate to not be in pain anymore and for the cold to just go away and he was so exhausted that everything was spinning slightly. He couldn’t blame himself for not putting two and two together before jumping in.
Given the option again today he would say yes. He still adamantly refused the idea of being a Shadow Charmer again. The idea of demons trying to manipulate him and gaining all sorts of unwanted attention made his skin crawl. And the most important part was not being kind of undead. He’d be willing to do all sorts of things to never, ever have to experience that again.
But he still wished they had told him word for word, “Hey, just so you know, even if you don’t drink the water, you’ll still live to be really old. You good with that?”
And, sure! That would have been fine. But he’d refused the Live-Forever part, partially because he really didn’t want to outlive almost everyone. Because outliving everyone was one of the worst things he could imagine happening to him, short of becoming undead. Because it had always been Kendra who had considered becoming an Eternal, while he had always, always known he couldn’t deal with that.
So of course he would end up being the one stuck between both of his worst nightmares. And of course he would be the one to make the choice without even realizing, without even thinking…
It was kind of dumb, but he really hoped it would take a while before he stopped ageing. The last thing he wanted was for people to think he looked like a teenager for years. Oh wow, that was a horrifying thought.
Had he drunk the water, he’d be stuck as a fourteen year old for all eternity. He’d never reach his growth spurt.
He shuddered, torn between laughter at how ridiculous that was and crying over how scary the thought truly was.
Kind of funny how it was a well-meaning gift that somehow managed to scare him far more than any number of scary monsters. He’d managed to forget a little, in the thick of it all, just how terrifying the abilities of creatures of light really were. They got your guard down in ways dark creatures rarely succeed. But the fairies had still turned him into some kind of walrus-thing that first summer, and the naiads still made sport of drowning people. Just because he’d been exposed to far more good associated with light, didn’t mean the light was good.
It was somehow so much scarier to know how close everything had been. To look back and know just how close he had come to dying, time after time. The near misses stressed him so much more in retrospect than they had at the time they were happening. And to think he’d only just started having less nightmares after the whole deal with Zzyzx… only for it to all get worse after going back to Wyrmroost.
He was crying silently into his pillow by then and he desperately needed a tissue. He tiptoed out of their part of the attic and down the stairs to the second floor washroom, dodging the creakiest steps. There he blew his nose and glared at his reflection. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, his dark brown hair looked like a bird nest.
He couldn’t help noticing how young he looked. He felt so old these days, forced to mature so quickly. How was he only fourteen? His reflection made him feel miserable so he sat on the toilet seat and stared at the floor. He cried for a long time, as quietly as he could.
Eventually the tears ran out and he stared into space, feeling empty.
It could be worse, he guessed. At least half of his friends were immortal in some way. Even if he got really old, he’d still have Newell and Doren and Raxtus. Bracken was human now, but he was probably human in the same way Lena had been, ageing very slowly. So he would probably have Bracken as an old friend too. Calvin, too, and Merek and Eve. He didn’t know how long trolls lived, but Bubda and Hermo were still his friends. The Fairy King too, but he didn’t think they’d be seeing each other again for a long while, if ever.
He took a long, slow breath of air. Right. He had plenty of good friends that wouldn’t die to old age any time soon. And those were just the friends he had now! He would probably make plenty of other good friends in the future too.
He wouldn’t be alone.
He would be alright.
Feeling a bit better, Seth went back upstairs and laid down on his bed. Still damp with cool sweat, the bed felt uncomfortably cold now that the summer heat had faded slightly. He grimaced and finally relented. His wings phased back into sight, like two faintly glowing ghosts appearing at his shoulders. He sat up enough to shove one wing between his body and the blankets, before flopping onto it and letting the other drape over him and the edge of the bed.
He hadn’t been able to describe what they felt like before, but he had a better idea now, after making them appear and disappear all the time. They felt like having another set of arms. Longer and stronger hand-less arms with long feather ‘sleeves’. Like with oversized sweater sleeves, you needed to be careful about knocking stuff over or stepping on the trailing edges. Trying to get up was a great way to make yourself fall over again, if you didn’t roll off the feathers, but he’d managed to roll off the bed a few times by accident instead.
That had been kind of funny when it had happened though.
Seth put one arm on the top wing, and stared up through the window above his head. He could see the stars. Where was that thunderstorm? He sighed. It was definitively past midnight, but he still wasn’t tired. He tried counting stars but eventually gave up in sheer boredom.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t see the stars well. Somewhere along the line, probably right after the Wanderer had given him the wings, he’d started being able to see distant things very, very well. When flying with Raxtus he’d noticed they could see the same distance clearly now. Still, stars were stars and you could only count so many before losing track. He closed his eyes, instead, annoyed at how dry and gritty they were after crying.
He combed his hands through his feathers with his eyes closed, sorting them all into the right order. It was kind of relaxing, like brushing your hair when there aren’t any knots. But eventually he got bored of that too.
Eventually he found his mind drifting back to the thing that had been bothering him earlier, probably hours ago by now. He’d been trying to hide his wings whenever anyone from the house could see him. Even though it did make him feel like he was suffocating if he let it last too long, he could endure it. Unfortunately, every single time he fell asleep, the wings would reappear.
This wasn’t so bad, since he was sharing the attic with Kendra and she was just about the only person to see him in the mornings. His wings typically appeared under the blankets anyways. But people did come wake them up sometimes and he knew there was a growing list of people who had given him surprised looks when coming to shake him awake and finding themselves grabbing a wing instead of his shoulder.
That was… fine, he guessed. Embarrassing, but fine.
Way more embarrassing, though, was what happened last week. He went to take a nap on the couch for the first time in ages, luxuriating in the joy of knowing he wouldn’t be accidentally sat on. The light was a little dim, but people would be able to see him! He fell asleep to that happy thought… Only to wake up to find he had almost knocked over a painting with one wing and was blocking the entire walkway on the couch side of the coffee table with the other wing. Oops.
Worst of all, his mother was sitting on one of the chairs, watching him. He made his wings vanish immediately. She had tried to say something to him, but he’d just blushed beet red and said, “Um, sorry” far too loudly and run off. It was dumb of him, but he didn’t know how to react any better in the moment.
He didn’t want to talk about this to his parents.
He didn’t want them to not love him anymore. It was already bad enough they’d felt so… distant from him and Kendra after they’d been brought into the loop. He didn’t want to make things worse.
So of course, he avoided them. Because that would help, wouldn’t it? he asked himself sarcastically. Of course not! But he just couldn’t find the courage to face them head on. Scary, deadly things, he could face. Life or death, consequences and magic, he could face all of those challenges with courage. Even the realization that he was probably some kind of immortal now, he could face in the darkest hours of the night.
But there was something about human interaction these days that made him so anxious.
The Source had helped him emotionally, a little a first. Though he hadn’t had the time to stop and think about it, he had been utterly exhausted, mentally and physically burned out and on the edge of a meltdown for far too long. The Source had helped temporarily soothe those pains, giving him the impression he had had a full year’s worth of full nights of sleep, nightmare-free.
But it wasn’t some kind of cure-all for human existence. It took two nights of him dropping dead asleep, still in recuperation, before the nightmares picked back up again and the emotional stabilizer started to fade.
So yeah. He was Seth, fourteen almost fifteen, horribly emotionally scarred from a whole bucketload of terrible events and also probably not even human anymore… But still human enough to have an existential crisis every other night! Yay!
It could be worse - it could always be worse. The Source could have changed his mind the same way Lena changed between naiad and human. He shuddered at the thought, goosebumps appearing on his arms and the sensitive feathers where his wings met his back flaring up. Best not to think about that!
He thought he was still himself. Lena had said she could tell the difference before and after, and Bracken had told him and Kendra the same. He did think that he might be finding it a bit easier to accept immortality than he would have before, but his mind was such a mess right now that it was hard to tell the difference, if there was any.
Well, accepting was a big word. The thought still made him panic most nights.
His thoughts drifted a bit, touching a few subjects but not really settling on any. Eventually he found his way back to thinking about his wings, their warmth a welcome comfort despite how much he had resisted it. Sometimes they didn’t really feel like they were his. Sometimes it felt a little like wearing your favourite sweater, gifted by someone you loved, and whose presence helped you breathe a little easier. It was a warm reminder that even though the Fairy King had been through so much, he had been there to help Seth at his lowest. They didn’t know each other well, but there had been such an easygoing kindness to the air around the Fairy King. Seth hoped he was feeling better by the Source these days, healing his own injuries with time.
Outside, an owl hooted. Hoo-hoo Hoo-hoo, Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you? Seth remembered the fun sentence to match to the hoots, but couldn’t remember what kind of owl it was for. Was it a real owl? Hard to tell in Fablehaven.
He did like his wings, though he missed their original colour. The rich oranges and browns on the top, and the bars and speckles on the long white feathers. All edged in gold, like a sunset. Now they were a boring metallic white. They didn’t even look real, with the soft glow they gave off. At least that was still a kind of warm white.
Imagine if it was a cold white - it would be like being trapped under the classroom neons back at school! If the neons were fluffy and came out of his back, but still! That was some real nightmare fuel.
He wondered if he could dye them, or if the dye would just slide off. They certainly kept mostly clean on their own. Though he wasn’t sure if that was just because all the dust and dirt fell off when he put them away, or if they simply wouldn’t have kept that dust and dirt for long at all. He would test it, but that would mean having them visible for a few days and the very thought of that made him anxious… Maybe another time. In like, ten years.
He finally drifted off as it started to rain, the rhythmic quiet drumming of rain on the roof just above lulling him into a deeper sleep than he’d had in a few weeks.