Late Merry Christmas to everyone, and an early Happy New Year
I don't know how to write ANs anymore, given it's been so long since I last did one, but I hope you all had or are having a great holiday.
Yee. That's about it.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sisters Grimm.
I know, I know, the disclaimers don't mean anything. But honestly, by this point I write them more out of force of habit. It just feels weird not putting them in. Plus, it's not wrong, I don't own the Sisters Grimm.
His eyes slam open. He bolts awake, gasping for air, fumbling desperately around him for the form of his sleeping wife. Another panic attack. Another sleepless night. With shaking fingers, he trills a tune on his flute, and the pixies come as they always do, like a thousand twittering lanterns.
"Bring me a pen and paper, please."
They fly silently away. As he waits, he runs a hand through his wife's hair, reminding himself of what's real and what's not, but even her warmth and solid touch does little to help. When the pixies return, they find him still shaking and covered in sweat, the duvet pulled up to his shoulders, and a wild darting look in his eyes.
"Thank you," he says quietly.
He writes sloppily, with quick, trembling movements.
Couldn't sleep. Went for a fly. I'll be back soon.
Puck
He leaves the note on the bedside table, and pads softly to the window. Sliding it silently upwards, he darts a last fleeting glance at his bed, thinking maybe he could still try to sleep once more. Then, memories of ethereal horses come crawling back, and he jumps out the window and into the air.
With long, loping strokes, he wings his way fluidly through the sky. The clouds are scattered, few and far between — a relief, because wet wings will freeze in this weather, and become brittle and fragile like glass. Backlit by the cobalt heavens, he is surrounded by silence and the deep chill of darkness, awash and ablaze in this matrix of stormy moonlight.
Here, spectral stallions cannot hurt him. He is armoured — protected — by a breastplate of midnight frisson, and the breath of twilight.
Up. I want to go up.
I am safe here, I know, but safety isn't everything.
I want to rise.
He climbs higher, further, beyond the graceful arch of the horizon. Sharp burns of starlight emblazon themselves behind his eyelids. Up here, the air is thin and the height dizzying, promoting a feeling of lightheaded euphoria, an effervescent ecstasy. He giggles, and flitters his way up above, and sucks in more air.
The oxygen-deprived antics of this starry-eyed demigod.
Tipsy on moonshine and the fading remnants of firewater, he swings his way in lazy circles higher and higher up, carried along on a silent road trip amongst the stars.
Up ahead rolls in a thick blanket of fog, and he gleefully plunges in. It is damp and cold and uncomfortable, but he finds that he doesn't care, because it muddles the clarity of the stars, blurring their diamond brilliance into soothing oil slicks of light.
As he plays, though, a sharp pain spreads throughout his wings. He knows why. Very soon, their iridescent membranes will begin to freeze over, and from there they will inevitably crack. He beats them furiously, pushing away the pain, hoping to generate the necessary heat, but it is of no use; he must move on.
He emerges from the fog, firing out a spiralling plume of mist. He sighs, smiles sadly, and continues forward.
This man of air and crystalline feathers — angelic translucence — rises above his insomniatic demons. His church-window wings batter away their claws, and the sword from his belt leaps into his fingers, yearning to be brandished through the air.
As he flies, he finds himself imbued with Achillian confidence. He smirks, and flourishes his wooden blade. Capitulation, you monsters. Checkmate.
It's very cold out here.
But I quite like it.
The moon, in its alien candescence, beckons to the fairy.
Perhaps.
But you're so far away.
Eventually, he tires. The cloud in his crystal wings burst; it is the end of his spiritual thrombosis. It sobers him, a little, to encounter once more the mortal restraints of his body.
But still, he finds he is not saddened, and hiccups gently in delight. Let the Great Enigma remain unknown, and the gods retain their privacy, cocooned as they are in silken stardust.
He is sated, and at peace. He will go down willingly.
His descent is accompanied by silence — that Siren Song of Asclepius — which eclipses the painful light within and wraps it in opalescent shadows. The constellations, in their multitudes and magnitudes, arc their way across the stratosphere, pooling around him in stellar puddles, curving above him in fountain sprays of starlight.
He emanates warmth and joy and balance. He does not need anything else.
At last, he pads softly onto the roof. He sees his wife, with binoculars in her right hand and a note in her left, and a smile curls his lip upwards.
She's here. Of course she's here.
And moonlight strikes her gracile form in such a way that she becomes liquid magic, a milky convalescence of titanium and gentle warmth.
She presses her lips to his neck, and murmurs I love you.
He whispers I love you too, and kisses her forehead.
You ok?
Mmm.
She smiles. They go back inside, and he folds himself into her arms, and dreams of nothing.
So, thanks for reading. Hope you liked it