A/N: Hello everyone! I've had this story idea for a while, but I was going to wait until after Camp NaNoWriMo was over. But since I've officially given up my camp project (don't be sorry, it was doomed anyway), I've decided to start posting it now.
Run Against the Wind is kind of a fantasy AU, but kind of not. It has fantastical elements (ones that aren't canon in the KEEPER world, of course), but there's nothing in the books that says the events in this story couldn't have happened. The story follows Tam and Linh's fateful encounter with a group of zephyrs (a fantasy species) over the course of one weekend during their eleventh year—right before they started at Foxfire. Because we know barely anything about the twins' backstory before they enrolled in Foxfire, this technically could have happened. It's very unlikely that it did, though.
The story is going to be short; it'll only be nine chapters and will probably end up at around 10K words of content (not including the A/Ns). It's not in the same universe as Swan Song and sort of in the same universe as Nightfall (my fanfiction—not the real version) in that there are some connections between the two in terms of setting. The story takes place in and fleshes out the southern half of the Lost Cities, which you will know about if you read Nightfall! *finger guns* But yeah, there's a reason why I'm starting this story at around the same time as the keepers go to Choralmere in Nightfall.
I'm definitely not going to update as often as I'm currently updating Nightfall. I'm not on as much of a time constraint with this one, so I'll probably update once every couple weeks.
So here's my sort-of-fantasy-AU-but-sort-of-not and sort-of-Nightfall-spinoff-but-sort-of-not . . . I hope you enjoy it! :)
CHAPTER ONE
BABIES AND DAYDREAMERS
The Ancients say that there were once eight intelligent species on the planet. Elves, ogres, goblins, gnomes, humans, dwarves, trolls . . . and the zephyrs.
The tribes of old were ferocious. They killed each other, set fire to the forests, and tore down the flimsy straw huts that their rivals had built. The zephyrs were the most dangerous of all. They were taller than ogres and stronger than goblins, and one beat of their glowing wings could send whole villages spinning away in the wind. They say the zephyrs were the first to summon Everblaze, to master the art of breaking minds, to shatter stone with the sheer force of their will. And this way, they conquered much of the earth.
Until war broke out between the eight species. It raged for nine summers and winters. Blood rained down from the sky and turned the lakes red. By the end, each species had gone nearly extinct.
From the ruins of this world came the beginnings of civilization. The eight species reconciled. They began to work together, build together, walk upright. Together, they built palaces made of jewels instead of huts made of stone and straw. They learned to light leap and bottle storms.
But the zephyrs saw what the world would soon become, for they were cursed with the gift of prophecy. And they knew their species could not stay. The world was becoming too enlightened, too orderly for the zephyrs, who were creatures of chaos. So as the elves divided the world among the species and their lands slowly shrank in size, they grew smaller as well.
The zephyrs began to hide.
They fled to the south, past the Calmest Sea, where the forests were still wild and untainted by elvin dominance. There were elves past the sea, but they had no desire for jewels or power, and the zephyrs bred with them once they grew small enough to do so. The children born from such pairings had shockingly silver eyes, and they manifested peculiar talents that the elves of the north could only dream of possessing.
But the zephyrs continued shrinking in both number and size. Within a generation they were half the size of an elf. Another generation, and they could be mistaken for fireflies. One generation more, and they were nothing but myth to southern children who had only the barest hints of silver in their eyes.
And the zephyrs continued to hide, retreating further and further into the wilds. Waiting for chaos to return.
Tam hid just past the tree line, watching his twin play on the beach. Linh would wait on the edge of the dry sand until the waves receded, then dart forward. But before the water could brush her bare toes, she would scamper back up the beach, laughing.
He watched her, a feeling growing in his chest that his six-year-old self couldn't place. When she was laughing, Linh seemed almost normal. If he didn't know her, he would never have been able to tell that she was different.
She skipped away from the coming tide again, her long hair glistening in the setting sun. Was it just Tam's imagination, or did the sea give a tiny tremor as it neared her? Did it shiver and inch away from her sandy feet as if bowing in respect?
Mai Song's voice cut through the sound of the ocean.
"Tam, Linh! Come in—it's time for dinner!"
Linh took off toward the tree line, brushing sand from her legs. Quiet as a shadow, Tam reached forward and snatched up her shoes. He retreated further into the copse, clutching the shoes to his chest. It was payback for when she had pushed him into the shallows last week.
Tam took a step backward, then another. His feet avoided sticks and fallen leaves easily. He had always been good at disappearing. When the attention got to be too much, he could simply fade into the background. Whereas Linh exuded presence like a mirror reflects sunlight, and everyone still ignored her.
He walked backward another few meters. The raintrees were older here, and closer together. He wove through their trunks like a needle, dodging branches and seed pods as they fell.
Maybe he would hide here for the rest of the night. His father would find him in the morning and probably yell at him, but Tam could take it. He had taken it for six years. He could fade into the background.
A glimmer of light caught Tam's attention from the corner of his eye. But when he turned, it was gone. He waited, holding his breath. Was someone else hiding in the copse?
Then it came again, a glowing silver pinprick just beyond the next row of trees. It hung there in the air for a moment, pulsing like a tiny heartbeat. Then it took off through the trees.
Tam chased after it, swerving between trees and jumping over fallen logs. He dropped one of Linh's shoes on the way but couldn't afford the time to pick it up. Whenever he thought he was getting closer, the light would disappear. But it would always reappear a second or two later, then fly away in a completely different direction. Almost like it was teasing him.
Finally, he stumbled into a mossy clearing. He was breathing hard, soaked in sweat, and still carrying one of his twin's shoes. He looked around—he seemed to have lost the light creature for good.
Then he noticed the toadstools lined up in front of him. Heartbeat racing, he did a quick check and saw that he was surrounded by the little red-and-white caps.
It's a fairy ring, he realized. All the stories he had read about elves being trapped in a fairy ring and turned invisible forever flooded into the front of his mind.
The rational half of his brain told him to relax. Those were just tales. The rings had some scientific explanation. They didn't have the power to turn him invisible. But the other half, the louder half, was screaming at him to get out before it was too late.
He was about to turn tail and run when the light creature appeared less than a meter in front of him. He stifled a scream.
The creature was tiny and thin, no bigger than his forefinger. It had wings of spun silk, and it seemed to float on the wind as if it weighed nothing at all. Its whole body emanated with pure silver light. The best description Tam could give was that the creature looked like a whisper.
"Hello," he murmured, forgetting his fear.
The creature seemed to be evaluating him, sliding her gaze (for he had decided it was a her) up and down his face. Finally her eyes landed on his own. They were wise eyes, knowledgeable ones, and Tam could tell she was quite old.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The creature spoke, and although the words were foreign to Tam, he understood their meaning.
"Not yet," she whispered. "You're still too young."
"What does that mean?"
"Not yet." And she vanished.
"Wait! Where did you go?"
He heard a stick break behind him, and he whirled around. Linh was standing at the edge of the clearing, still barefoot, holding her discarded shoe.
"I k-knew you had my shoe, Tam S-song."
After the creature had left, Tam had started to feel afraid again. His twin's stammers relaxed his fear. He would recognize that voice anywhere.
"G-give it to me." She yanked the shoe out of his hands.
"I thought you were at dinner with Mother and Father."
"I walked out once I knew you weren't c-coming. Were you p-planning to spend the night?"
"I guess so. I wasn't really thinking about it."
"You just wanted to h-hide my shoe." Her tone was accusatory.
She sat down against an oak tree and yawned. "I'll stay with you. T-tonight, at least. It's a favor." She closed her eyes.
"Linh . . ."
She opened one eye. "What?"
"You're in a fairy ring."
"Fairy rings are for b-babies and daydreamers."
"I think I met a zephyr here."
"Zephyrs are for d-daydreamers, too. There's nothing in the forest, Tam. It's all fables."
As Tam settled down next to her, he began to believe he had imagined the winged creature after all.
A/N: I surprisingly did a lot of research for this, so I'm going to do a little "let's learn something new" session at the end of every chapter! I hope you find it interesting—I certainly did. (PM me if you want sources on these facts—I'm happy to provide further reading!)
The raintree (Albizia saman), more commonly known as a monkey pod tree, is a species of flowering tree. (It actually has a ton of names from around the word—I found sixty-seven on Wikipedia alone. Some of my favorites are thoongu moonji maram (தூங்குமூஞ்சி மரம்), which means "sleepy tree" in Tamil, and pukul lima, which means "five o'clock tree" in Malay.) The tree is native to South America but has been widely introduced to South/Southeast Asia and Hawaii. It can reach a height of 82 feet (25 meters), and its flowers come in a variety of colors from reddish pink to creamy golden.
Fairy rings (also known as fairy circles and elf rings *wink wink*) are mushrooms that have naturally grown in a circle. They can grow up to 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter, and are formed because the mycelium (underground roots) of a species of mushroom called Marasmius oreades grows outward in a circle. in In Celtic mythology (as well as some other Western European folklore), fairies dance in the rings. If a mortal enters a fairy ring, they might be trapped inside the ring, driven mad, turned invisible, forced to dance forever, or even hanged . . . but it all depends on who's telling the story.