Author's Note: Everyone should thank Hellobubby for this. I promised them this drabble collection literal years ago (like…three, four years) and they were so good about keeping on me and not letting me forget, and I finally got it done. So here it is! Happy early new year, Hellobubby! Happy early new year, you guys. I'm sorry this has taken so long. I hope you enjoy it, though.
These are a series of drabbles/dribbles/tribbles/quabbles/flash-fics about things that happened to Nuada on his birthday, good and bad, cute and sad, romantic and not. He's over four-thousand years old, so that's a lot of birthdays. Here, I've picked about 20 to share with you guys. We'll also learn a teensy bit about his relationships with Ethine, Naya, and Shina'kin.
Note:War and Bonds were written by WhenNightmaresWalked.
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Once Upon the Bane of Midsummer
A Series of Nuada Birthday Flash-Fics
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Perfect
Ten tiny fingers.
Ten little toes.
Impossibly soft golden lashes.
A shock of star-blond hair.
An adorable little nose and a small yawning mouth.
Little hands that reached up and tried to grasp the adult-sized fingers in his field of visions.
Balor looked down at his newborn son,
cradled in his wife's arms,
and felt his heart swell in his chest.
Spoonful
The queen screams
The prince freezes, golden eyes wide
Uncertainty flashes across his face
Balor looks over, raises one eyebrow
"Stop that, Nuada."
The prince considers this for a moment.
Exchanges a silent look with his twin.
Nuala doesn't want him to stop.
Her gummy smile tells him all he needs to know.
Nuada flicks another spoonful of mashed peas at the queen.
Her cry of dismay is drowned out by Nuala's ringing laughter.
Steps
Ferocity in every line of the moon-pale face
Determination blazes in firegold eyes
Fists clenched, teeth bared
Prince Nuada lifts his chin
He will not be cowed, will not falter
He lifts one foot
Every move deliberate and slow
Sets it down again
Takes one step
And then another
A third, and a fourth, and a fifth
He walks to the queen
And only stops scowling when she scoops him up
Hugging her young son to her heart
"Very good, my love! Wonderful! Balor, did you see?"
The king smiles and ruffles his son's hair
At less than a century old,
His heir is already making great strides
Shore
He has only been twice before
At the moment of his birth, and once as a very young child
He is young yet, but growing
And the queen misses her home
So when the homesickness becomes too great
She takes her young son and daughter to see the ocean at midsummer
Smiles when they run up and down the sand
Laughs when they splash, soaking her gown
Watches from the shore as they learn to love the sea
Orange
"You!"
Nuada's head snaps up
He recognizes the danger instantly
Time to run
Dropping his wooden practice sword, he takes off
Racing down the stone halls
A shrieking girl behind him, feathers smeared with orange paint
"Get back here, you wretch!"
Oh, no. No. He will not stop for her.
"You had it coming!" He calls over his shoulder.
He has always hated Na'koma.
She has always hated him.
"You turned my feathers orange, you absolute rat!"
A stroke of genius, really.
She really should've expected him to make a killing strike.
And today of all days, he is unlikely to face too terrible a punishment
Squeak
It was, in retrospect, perhaps a bit unwise.
But he was committed now.
There could be no going back.
So Prince Nuada clung for dear life to his father's best horse
As it bucked and kicked, nearly frantic to dislodge him.
Get off me, you little pipsqueak! Donas shouted in his mind.
"No!"
He could make Donas respect him.
If he stayed in the saddle for 5 minutes,
Donas would never bite him again.
And, if you could ride the horse out into the paddock,
He would look great in front of his mother.
"Nuada!"
The familiar voice of his mother distracted him.
Oblivious to the sudden fear in silvered emerald eyes,
He waved.
"Look at me, mother!"
In that instant,
Donas bucked him off.
The young prince hurtled off the horses back
And landed
With a jarring splat and an audible snap in a mud puddle.
"Nuada! My love, what in Faerie..."
His mother rushed to him, heedless of the mud,
While grey-faced Elven princeling clutched his arm.
The queen said softly,
"Broken, like as not.
Come on, my little prince.
To the healers with you.
Of course you know this means straight to bed after supper."
"Oh, must I, Mother? Truly?"
Guiding him up the path, the queen nodded.
"Indeed, you certainly must.
It's to be the healers, a bath, supper, and then bed for you, my buck…"
Donas watched mother and child walk away while the stable hands approached warily.
The little imp had stayed on his back for a solid seven minutes.
Perhaps the stallion would make an effort to stop nipping when the boy came to close.
Or perhaps not.
The boys squeaked in such an amusing manner whenever Donas bit him.
Cypress
There he is.
His father.
He has never seen his father look so tired.
So old.
Nuada hesitates
Steps back from the phantom standing with its head hung low
Beneath the mournful boughs of the cypress tree
But a rough, gentle hand lands on his shoulder
He looks up at Wink,
the craggy features and broken tusk and golden eyes.
The troll nods.
Wink is right.
This is his father.
It will all be all right, surely.
Surely…
But when the young prince approaches his father,
When he reaches out a small hand
To touch Balor's bent shoulders,
His father does not look back at him.
There is only an old, broken man,
Eyes empty as yellow glass,
Head bent and spine bowed,
Face lined beyond its years.
A phantom, a ghost,
An echo of his father haunting the cypress trees.
Silence
How many prayers has he offered?
How many questions has he asked?
How many answers has he received?
Too many
Far too many
And none at all
Surely someone will answer him now
It is the solstice, the day of his birth
He has always been granted a boon on this day
Surely the gods will hear him today
Surely his father will speak to him today
But they don't
And he doesn't
Mourn
It has been decades
So much time has passed since the queen died
Yet somehow, her passing is not what shadows him now
Somehow it is not the queen that he mourns
It is his father
Somehow, he has lost them both
General
How could they do it?
How could they make him their leader?
He is no warrior, no soldier, no captain.
He has never set foot on a true battlefield.
Never tasted fear and blood on his tongue
While his hands shook as they gripped his sword
The small war he fought when he was a boy doesn't count
It was quick, brutal, bloody
And he lost it
Yet somehow his father sees fit to make him a commander
He is not even a man yet
Yet somehow he is supposed to lead these soldiers
When they look at him,
He knows they do not see a general.
They see only a scared young boy with a sword.
Scar
The blood still runs freely down the Elven prince's pale face,
dripping from his temples and trickling into his mouth,
but he ignores the pain
and looks into his father's eyes.
His sister,
who bore the wounds with him,
stands beside their father's throne.
Though she feels the pain as well,
she smiles at Nuada.
Now he is considered a man grown.
Now he is considered a warrior.
Now he can take up the Silverlance as his weapon and become his father's true heir.
Constellations
I teach you the stars because they hold our history
Hold our myths and legends and hopes
I also teach them to you to impress the maidens
Keep that in mind, my son
He'd thought his father only jesting about that
But as Polunochnaya slips her arms around one of his
As she lays her cool, soft cheek against his shoulder
As he maps out the paths of the stars for her
Sharing the stories of their constellations
He realizes the king is very wise in some things
He looks down at Naya
Who gazes up at him with stars dancing in her silver eyes
She is so very, very beautiful
And she tastes of frost and starlight when he kisses her
Shadows
There is more than merely kisses now
He smiles a little more each day when Naya finds him
When he tugs her into secluded alcoves
When she dares to splash him with water from the royal fountains
When he soaks in her warmth and her scent when they ride double on his black stallion
He kisses her hands, her lips, her neck
Holds her tight to his heart
And in the shadows, in the night,
He gives himself to her as he has never given himself before
She holds him captive
And he relishes the chains she commands
My shadow lover, he whispers in her ear,
And they both smile
Violets
They complement her eyes.
No wonder she loves them so.
He sees the other lads bring them
And wonders what hope he could possibly have.
She is so beautiful,
All pearl and silver and diamond.
How can he hope to impress her?
But when he comes to her that day,
Invites her to share a ride with him on Lomán's back,
Invites her to share his time in the meadow—
His father's promised gift, every year on his birthday,
A day (mostly) alone, to be in the forest,
To reconnect to the wild green—
And Nuada offers Lady Ethine the blossoms like bits of blue velvet,
She smiles for him.
His heart leaps.
His breath stutters.
When she kisses him that afternoon in the meadow,
Her hair smells of violets and sunshine.
Fields
They were green as emeralds—once
They smelled sweet with fruit—long ago
They rippled with ripe grain like gold—but no longer
It has been nearly a century since he has had the time
The luxury
Of being alone to celebrate the day of his birth
To reconnect to his kingdom,
To the land that anchors his magic like a heartbeat
The meadows are gone,
Turned to charnel house mud by boots and sweat and blood
So many of the familiar forests have burned to ashes
He looks to where the fields once spread like a verdant carpet
Crops thrusting through the earth
Flowers spreading like hope across the land
But the fey green fields cannot grow out of so much blood
There is nothing left of them—now
Birthright
He watched his father -
his captain, his king, his hero -
break the Golden Crown asunder
and set one piece in the wide leather belt that girded his royal robes.
The second piece,
Balor handed to Nuala,
and that was fitting.
His sister was wise, though her heart was too soft.
Then Nuada watched his father -
his last hope, his betrayer, his shame -
hand the third piece,
the piece that should have been Nuada's own,
to the chieftain of the Niall clan,
the leader of the humans.
At this last oathbreaking,
this last treachery,
the Elf prince turned on his heel and took his first step into exile.
Memory
Perhaps it is the betrayal of his own blood,
The hypocrisy of the crown.
Perhaps it is the reek of innocent blood
Following him into the shadows of the world.
He doesn't know why
But for a thousand nights after his first steps into exile
He is plagued in the night by memories.
Blood and dust and his mother's screams
His sister weeping and his own howls of pain
Blades slicing hot against his skin
Fists cracking his bones
And a pair of hands, somewhat smaller than the rest,
Pinching and grabbing and slapping and squeezing
Probing for weakness, for what will make him hurt
Iron bars and salt in his wounds
The sickening crack of his leg-bones snapping
Thirst burning in his throat like hot coals
Hunger gnawing at his guts like rabid wolves
And the humans
The festering, putrescent humans
Laughing, slapping, kicking him
Offering impossible bargains of treachery or slavery
He will give them nothing
But they take it anyway
Corpses strewn across bloody battlefields
Rictus grins in death, gored blades, empty eyes
Friends and loved ones and lovers
Brothers- and sisters-in-arms
All silent, all broken, all dead
And he is alone, screaming to the war goddess's ravens
Screaming until he is yanked into waking
By the gentle, loving embrace of his vassal and brother
And Prince Nuada weeps
For himself, and for the dead
Father
He cannot bear this any longer
Even the so-called "solitary fae" are not meant to be so alone
So he goes back
He will kneel before the king
Petition him to reconsider the treaty
It has been two-hundred years
It has been broken a thousand times over
Surely the king will see reason now
Surely Balor will understand
That the humans cannot be left to their own devices this way
They must be monitored, managed by the Fair Folk
Balor must see that now
He will welcome his only surviving son
His heir, his beloved boy
Surely his father will welcome him home
There will be tears, and embraces
On both sides
Nuada will apologize for grieving him
For worrying him so
All will be well
When he returns to the palace
They allow him entrance
But the king will not see him
His sister is abroad
Her ladies have gone with her
There are a few servants who love him
There are his hounds and his horses
But there is no father to welcome him home with loving arms
There is only the cold, remote shadow of the king
So Prince Nuada returns, heartsick, to his exile
Rainstorm
He has not seen green like this is so long
It makes him hurt inside
The rain drips like strings of jewels from every vibrant green leaf
The jungle drinking in the rain
The southern tropical kingdom of Iara is not Bethmoora
But it is so lush, so ripe, so green
So very alive
Its soil does not welcome his magic
Does not let him drown himself in sweet surrender in its life force
But he can feel its power pulsing beneath the soil,
In the trunks of every tree,
In the breath of every beast.
He is far from home,
Parted from his own lands by leagues and centuries
But he sits with her in the trees
With Shina'kin, her jade cat's eyes gleaming,
And drinks in the rain
Drinks in the power of the storm
Drinks in the wealth of life all around them
And in the midst of the storm,
She drinks him in,
Sipping desire from his mouth like wine
And he lets himself forget for a moment,
An hour,
A night,
That there is anything but this woman
And the rainstorm she has called
Son
He has no children of his own
He has no wife to bear them
But here, in the jungles of Iara,
In a home bound into the trees by Shina'kin's magic and skill,
After half a century learning the ways of this place,
He has found a family.
Shina'kin has been wed before,
And she has lost her love before
But she has found another, and so has he
And her son, so small and so trusting,
So reckless and so gentle,
Looks up at Nuada with an expression the prince has never seen before
The same one he once turned on his own father
No, he has no children of his own
But if Shina'kin will allow him,
He would have her for a wife
And love her son as she does
It will be her gift to him
Ashes
He knows now the day of his birthing is cursed
It must be
The truth of it sinks into his soul as he stumbles
Falls to his knees as his legs go numb
As his hands shove deep
Not into thin, dark jungle soil
But into silty, wet ashes
There is no tree-bound home in the canopy anymore
There is no reckless, trusting, gentle child like a son
There is no storm-dancing, rain-drinking lover
Nothing is left of them, of his life, his family
Except the ashes of human fires
And the ashes of his own heart
Debt
He has never known anyone like her
He has known rhinemaidens before
But they do not view the world as she does
He does not love her as he has loved before
She is his friend, nothing else
But it is enough
She had saved him once
On a cold, dark, stormy night
There is a bond between them
Here, there is friendship
A warm refuge from the world
Sunna's kindness and her daughter's laughter
Little Lorelei always welcoming him to their tavern
Here is respite
Here is safety, of a sort
And friends that are almost nearly family
And that is no small debt to repay
