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The first day in the other realm, Fern doesn’t do much at all.
For a while, they perch in an old tree (old in its size, although it is different from the trees he often sees in Frenatae, and therefore he doesn’t truly know its age, but that’s alright. They’ll never have need to know since Father will surely take him back soon enough) and do nothing at all. It is rough and scratchy and unbecoming of a prince, but it’s no worse than a lifetime stolen away by illness and a childhood lost to bed rest.
It grows dark faster than they expect. In Frenatae, one is never without light. Be it lamps or torches or even gentle candlelight, there is always a guiding glow. To be without is… unnatural. He lays still (too still, as if he’s mimicking his mother as she was when they watched her draw her last breath) against scratchy wood and gazes at the sky as if it can fix everything. As if it can whisk him back home.
Where are the stars?
There is no sky without stars, as far as Fern knows. Even if there existed such a place of darkness, surely there is no place so deep in shadow that even the stars hid away.
In the quiet, there is little sound apart from their own breath. Each breath comes too fast and too loud, chasing each other and overlapping and relentless and oh, he sounds like some frightened animal run from its hunter.
A prince is not meant to play the role of the hunted.
Breath is a noble thing. It is something that runs through all of life and spreads throughout the realms. It is sturdy and strong (and when Mother had laid too still in a bed made up too soon, she had hardly breathed at all. They knew this because he had been the one at her bedside, and he had been the one to inhale sharply as Mother took her first true, deep, real breath in far too long, had been the one to watch with wide-blown eyes and bated breath, had been the one to see her chest still), it is constant and reliable. It’s stronger than they’ll ever be, he knows, and yet sometimes they let their fingers stray to unbloomed flowers and let their mind stray to something beyond himself.
Still. It is their coronation day. They are strong enough to rule (they are, they are, they are ; he knows this, he knows he will make it further than Mother, he knows he will live to breathe in and out and in and out and in and out) .
The sun creeps back into sight, slow slow slow, like the flowers outside his (always closed, lest they become ill yet again—as if they ever spent any significant amount of time not consumed by illness) windows opening to welcome new day, new opportunity, new chance to be what Mother and Father and all of Frenatae need him to be.
This is his chance, they think. This is their chance to prove himself (and they will, they will ).
When morning finally claws herself into the world, setting brilliant light upon rough grasses, Fern can’t find it within himself to leave his wooden refuge.
Should they be in Frenatae, should they be stronger (like Mother—but how could she die if she was so strong?), he could have simply flown down. They could have glided gentle to the ground, wings spread sturdy as they were meant to be.
He reaches to his back, to feel at them, before flinching away. There is nothing but ruins for him there. There is nothing to reach for. Nothing but bony abominations, ripping their way out of cursed skin, wrong in all the ways wings are right.
They shake their head: once, twice (“It clears your mind,” Mother said, “but I’ve found that simply breathing works best—“), thrice before gazing out into the strange forest he’d landed in.
It isn’t Frenatae’s wilds. No, the wilderness of their homeland is as lovely as it is dangerous, and it is proud . No Frenatian forest would be so weak-willed as to let itself be overtaken by people , of all things.
From here, Fern can see the human town, and with how short and puny their perch is, the fact is entirely unacceptable.
They gaze over the strange, squat buildings, rather dispassionate. There’s life in the town, but there’s no magic , and for all he is “stunted” and “wrong,” they are a fairy in their own right. He knows magic—well, he thinks he knows it, anyway (for if breath is what runs through all of life, magic is what carries it—and a place without magic can’t be much of a place at all).
The sun has taken her leave yet again, not yielding to night, not yet, but hiding behind storm clouds (large, angry, but so, so empty). Fern runs icy fingers against ancient bark before grasping it tight and letting himself down.
Climbing down is slow work. It’s undignified for any fairy, much less a prince, to be letting themself down with once uncallused palms beginning to bleed in their efforts, to be heavy with gravity’s shackles. He does it anyway.
When Fern stands still at the base of the great tree, searching, searching for the bustling town he had seen not long ago, they’re met with nothing but dense foliage.
Serves them right, he thinks, those humans, to be unable to be seen through such a puny forest.
It strikes him, then. They are as weak as any other human in this forest, in this town, in this realm (and isn’t that something? To be in a world so alien to his own, he can’t even say if it’s vast kingdoms or diminutive hamlets that populated it).
The thought doesn’t do them much good. It builds inside of him, slow at first, then working its way up and out, faster, faster, until it’s in his head and he can’t get it out—
They heave their every breath, hiccuping small between each (and he can’t be doing this, because breath is magic, and without breath —), blinking fast and swallowing hard.
Some part of them knows they are shaking, but he can’t bring himself to care when the trees are closing in on him, looming large and dark (not like Frenation trees, no, no ), and there’s shadows creeping closer and they’re building within his chest and get it out get it out —
And then they realize that something hurts .
And then they blink (and it feels wet, but he doesn’t want to think about it, he can’t think about it).
Their face is sticky with tears. Their body is sticky with sweat.
Their knuckles are sticky with blood.
He stares at his hand, unbelieving (even as the sting of wooden splinters promise it’s true).
Maybe, whispers some irrational version of himself, usually kept hidden by the glamour of nobility, forced to show true in the face of their own consequences—maybe, if only they’d been a better prince to their people, a better son to his parents… maybe none of this would have happened.
Maybe they wouldn’t have to be standing still under an alien tree, head bowed low, bangs falling over their eyes, cupped hands bleeding from what he’d brought unto himself.
They feel for the tree (although he can’t sense it’s life—and even at their sickest, he never been so vulnerable, so torn away from their sense of self that they couldn’t sense life ) and (trying to remember how to be gentle) allow skittish fingers to brush against dark wood, seemingly unharmed yet tinted, at parts, with blood.
They imagine its unseen suffering.
They flinch away.
Breathing should come easy, but it doesn’t, and his hands hurt. Why do they hurt?
And then they look down and oh .
He’s in a foreign realm without the most important pieces of himself. They can’t see the the magic that runs through life, nor can he imagine it, not here, not now.
They can’t breathe and their hands (“you have your father’s hands, you know,” Mother says) are red and sticky and stinging.
They sink to the ground (soft, slow), leaning back against the great tree.
There is a crown on their head, he thinks, that is not his. It shouldn’t be his.
But it could be.
There is a curse upon them, he thinks, that shouldn’t be his.
But it is.
The grass is rough against their hands, rough against the smooth mosses of Frenatae (it hurts to brush up against it, but they do it anyway).
The forest is quiet, quiet against the melodies if Frenatae’s beasts (roaming wild, strong, free).
Fern is alone.
Still, as they curl in on themself, the grasses embrace him.
Still, when they listen, there are songbirds somewhere in these woods, chirruping away in the distance.
Maybe, he thinks, he can’t see life. But they can hear it.
And it persists.