Taken by the Sky
Part One: The Wilds
You can't stay silent forever, though you do try.
The loft is cramped and nearly cozy, the little space not taken by books given to a squat cot stuffed with sweet grass. Most of the books are shelved on rough hewn planks, stretching from floor to ceiling, and the rest are scattered on the ground in stacks. You leaf through a dustless tome stretched wide between your legs, fingers curling around the cover and smoothing the soft pages. It isn't paper, the texture is wrong.
Vellum .
Visions of open fields filled with grazing calves fall over your eyes like a film. Your press your hands to your eyes and release a ragged groan. It's so strange, but you should know better by now than to be curious- looking at the books only ever makes it worse.
Sometimes you think that the dream is almost done and the whispers have finally released you, but then you'll find yourself questioning or wondering, and they rise up your throat like acid, reminding you that when you're here you're never truly alone.
"Your supper is ready, beastie!" Morrigan's voice drifts through the cracks, her sarcastic after-quip a mere rumble through the floorboards.
You close the book and swing your legs off the cot. Your finger swipes over the title as you reshelve it, thumb bumping over the branded letters. ATLAS OF SOUTHERN THEDAS . It isn't written in the roman alphabet, arabic script or kanji characters. It's something wholly different, strange in a way you'd never have come across in your world- the real world, that is.
And yet you can read what's written. You try not to think about it too deeply.
"Mother will be very cross with me if she finds you dead of starvation!" Morrigan says in sing-song.
You scramble to the ladder. On the first day you were here, dawn to dusk, you'd tried to ignore Morrigan and she had not been pleased. After five minutes of waiting she'd found you curled in a corner and had mercilessly clacked the bowl to your teeth. She'd given you a little verbal lesson on blood magic and how it could be used to suck the will from its victims- and then told you how very tempted she was to use the darker arts. Naturally, the second day you were down and at the table as soon as you heard her put the pot on the hook.
Your feet lift off the rung and onto the ground. On the ground floor Morrigan stands alone, bowls of boiled beets laid out on the table by the fire. She's facing away from you, eyes sightless, with her arms crossed like she's holding something in.
You've been here four days. You haven't said a word to her.
"...Morrigan."
She turns to raise an eyebrow, a still frame suddenly animated and says. "Oh, so you do speak."
There was so much you could have said right then: Thank you for feeding me, I know it's a bother. Sorry for lying in bed all day, I'm trying to send my soul to another plane. I used to have a mild crush on you, but only when I thought you were fictional. Also I know more about you than you'd ever want me to and your mother houses the soul of an ancient, defied elf.
The door swings open and Flemeth saunters in.
Hanging on Flemeth's arm is a big splint basket, green onion stalks poking out from beneath a holey piece of cloth. She left late last night and has only just gotten back. You absently wonder where she goes. Perhaps this is normal behavior- Morrigan doesn't seem to think it worth commenting on, at least not to you, but you don't imagine yourself sticking around long enough to find out.
"Hello, mother. It seems that your extended guest has found her voice at last."
"And she wasted it on you? Fah."
Morrigan sighs and sits to eat. You join her, perched on the edge of your chair. Flemeth ignores you both, dropping her basket on the table before turning around and setting out once again for the wilds.
You don't speak again that night.
.
.
.
"Take the girl outside with you."
"Excuse you?" Morrigan already has one foot out the door, her face lit silver by starlight.
"You heard me."
"And do what, exactly?"
"The same that I did to you, all those years ago."
"And why can't you do it?"
"Shall I, then?"
Morrigan doesn't say anything for a long moment. She takes a step inside, towards the dying embers of the fire. "Well then. Come along beastie."
.
.
.
Morrigan guides your steps through the fens, more patient than you'd come to expect, and leads you to a dark water pond ringed with shivering aspens. You stare into the water, your reflection crowned by the full harvest moon, and wonder about portals to other worlds.
Morrigan wanders around the ring of the pond; she looks older in the nightlight. "What do you dream of?" She asks.
Your feet are bare and your toes are slicked with mud. The whispers get louder the closer you stand to the water, but you think you're starting to understand.
Dreams, the city, BLACK, there, the wind, the sea...
"...The sea." You say, the first real thing you've said since Flemeth.
It takes her some time to reach you- she might not have actually expected you to answer. Instead of explaining, asking more questions, or clarifying she prowls to your side and slides a hand up your neck, her fingers curling into your hair-
-and you see the possibilities in an instant. She pushes you, you stumble, and her foot presses you down, down into the muck, down where you can't breathe-
But her hand falls limp, odd but innocent, and you can't help but hear a rattle in her breath.
"Then think about water." She snaps and stalks away to the trees. She ignores you for the rest of the night, and nothing else happens. Still, a part of you realizes that something should.
.
.
.
"Back so early?"
Morrigan climbs the ladder and doesn't say a word.
After that night Morrigan is gone more often than not.
When you wake up, you swear you smell salt in the air. But then the sleep seeps out of you and the weight of the world settles onto your chest. There's no salt, but there is a little smoke. Someone is home.
You shift in your bed, peering over the frame to look between the floorboards. There's a flash of amber over steel gray, and you realize that for the first time in a long time you are alone in the house with Flemeth.
She doesn't look up when your toes touch down on the dirt, eyes intent on a half rolled scroll. Despite the fire, your skin ripples with goose pimples beneath your thin, hand-me-down shift. You step closer, closer, careful but quiet, expecting her to say something at any moment but… nothing.
"I've been here a week."
"Nine days." She says, then looks up. "And ten nights. But who's counting?"
You have, but you were asleep too long to be sure.
With trepidation, you settle yourself onto the edge of the bed (her bed, you've realized in days past) and ask, "Can you… Is there a way to go back?"
"Do you think you'd still be here if I knew?" She shakes her head, "That path isn't mine to walk."
"You don't have any idea?"
"Not one."
That- That wasn't what you wanted to hear. For a moment you wish you could turn back time so that you'd never have to know, so that you could go on with the idea that everything was temporary and- and you'd already known, hadn't you? You knew this whole time but if you'd admitted it then you'd have wondered how you knew, and...
"I'm going outside."
Flemeth nods, like wandering off into the night is only to be expected, and there's the smallest glimmer of what looks like sympathy in her eyes. 'I am not without pity.' She'd said, and you suppose if anyone would understand it would be Mythal, who crawled her way from the bygone world of yesteryear.
You don't think while you walk. It's been your deliberate state of mind for the last nine days and ten nights and it's unraveling at the seams, tangling like Ariadne's thread over boulders and bushes until, finally, you step into the dark-water pond and all that's left is you, yourself, and the whispers.
The wonderful thing about the woods is that no one can hear you scream. You can't hear anything else, either, which is so nice you yell yourself ragged. The rage goes quick, and the grief settles in quicker. You cry, crouching down in stagnant water and sobbing into the crook of your knees, wondering what you'd ever done to deserve this. Soon even that gets tiring so you lift your sodden face… and then blink in wonder at what you've done.
You're cold -how could you not be, half dressed at the crack of dawn, calf deep in pond scum- but you didn't realize that the water had frozen over.
Mana, the ice, open the fade again and see..
The whispers are annoying, but at least they're trying to be helpful. Too exhausted to think about it further you step out of the water, lay down on the dewey bank, and fall asleep.
.
.
.
Sleeping is quiet.
Your dream is simple. You're on a rocky beach, the waves washing over your feet. There is a looming cliff behind you, and another hanging weightlessly above the sea- perched on its point is city cloaked in darkness, it's black spires piercing a sunless sky.
Your name is whispered into your ear, but when you swing your head, no one is there.
Disassociating is fun, especially when you have a lot of homework due the next day!
These are really fun to write! I think everyone should write at least one self-indulgent fanfiction, it's good for the soul. I've actually forgotten to update this one alongside my A03 page, so I'll be staggering the chapters over the next few days. My A03 is the same as my fanfiction, though, if you're impatient.
Thanks for reading!