Alia arrived on Earth through the portal hidden in the woods on her land in Bon Temps. Her house had never been rebuilt after the bombing that had blown it up a few days after her leaving for Faery. An attempt on her life, had reported Cataliades. And now the area was a luxuriant clearing that displayed a scented array of green, pink, yellow, red, violet in all shapes and sizes. Thousands of flowers had covered what little had remained of her past.
Diantha, her godfather's niece, waited for her at the other side of the portal. A very different Diantha from the one Alia remembered.
"Is it you, Diantha?" the fae asked blinking in surprise.
"Itsme," the petite daemon nodded stiffly, "welcomeback."
Alia took in the looks of the unusual version of Diantha in front of her: a prissy grey suit in a slightly bright fabric, dark boots partially covered by tight trousers, incredibly black hair held in a high pony tail and a dark bag across the shoulder. It was the first indicator that time really could alter dramatically everything.
"What happened to you, Diantha?" said Alia straightening her light blue ensemble, at the same time trying to disentangle her foot from a root.
"Couldaskthesametoyoufae," the daemon winked and walked toward the clearing beyond the woods.
Alia's laugh mingled with the loud chattering of crickets. "All right. Life happened to us, I guess."
The soft glowing light of sunset drenched the landscape giving it a fairy quality, and the fae in her could not help to rejoice. A peculiar coincidence, would have thought Alia had she paid attention.
"YourbaggagellbedeliveredtoourhouseinNewOrleans," Diantha informed Alia getting on a vehicle seemingly hovering over the grass. No tyres were visible and, therefore, Alia was not sure what to think of it. The daemon continued: "IlltakeyoutoyourbrotherinShreveport."
Alia had not imagined what she would have found on Earth after eight years three months and five days in Faery, which amounted to forty one years six months and sixteen days in the human dimension. The time lag, in fact, had shifted a few times and run at different speed in the course of that time.
She had regularly visited Earth, but only for short periods of time, in protected environments and with guards to see that nothing happened outside the strict plans laid out for her lessons or official meetings. Further, her sojourns had mostly been in daemons' or fairies' territories. Therefore, she was not prepared for the technological leap forward humans had changed their world with. She felt like a child in a fantastic playground.
Though, it was not the spectacular buildings and futuristic means of transportation or the overall outlandish look of the landscape that struck her most. It was the small ways in which everyday life had changed, unnoticeably for who had had time to adjust to the transformation, astonishingly for who had jumped from four decades earlier or from a world, Faery, that worked on different principles.
Her brother Jason and his wife lived in Shreveport, in a thirty-second floor flat of a downtown condo, complete with a vertical vegetable garden and an autonomous power grid (solar and wind) to comply with the energy expenditure regulations. They had retired a few years ago and had moved to that location from their previous cottage in a suburban area. Their children, Corbett Mitchell and Sookie Adele (respectively forty and thirty seven years old), worked together as retailers of luxury flycars. The Chinese and Russian products they sold exclusively for Louisiana and Florida offered a driving course and Sookie Adele was the instructor pilot, while Corbett Mitchell run the maintenance shop.
"At the old Merlotte's," Jason was filling in his sister about the last decades of their lives. "Fifteen years after you left, Bon Temps died definitely: the last business to give up was Merlotte's. He sold the place to a Chinese company that produced small flying cars, a European patent they had just bought. Michelle and I moved to Shreveport: my career at the department had already veered to cyber crimes and Michelle retrained as accountant for a med lab."
"How is it that Corbett's and Sookie's warehouse and flying school moved to Merlotte's?" asked Alia with mild interest.
"We kept the old house there for the children and went there every weekend. Corbett has always been good at fixing machines and Sookie liked flying more than anything else. They studied and, when your lawyer offered to finance their business, they took over from the Chinese/Russian…" Jason spoke with pride and nostalgia, his voice strong as his well aged body.
"Cataliades did what?" Alia could not follow the flow of words her brother was flooding her with. It seemed he had waited too long and did not believe he would have had the chance to tell her everything.
"Didn't you know? He told us he was managing your money and wanted to invest into family. The business is still partially yours: the kids managed to buy back half of it and—"
"It's great, Jason," Alia had no memory of any of it, but surely her godfather had told her something. Simply, it was not her life or anything she could relate with. "I'm proud of them and can't wait to meet them." It seemed the right thing to say.
"Here, we were thinking about what exactly tell the kids," Michelle said after exchanging a meaningful look with her husband. "You know, you're supposed to be Jason's sister and you look… you look barely into your twenties…"
Suddenly Alia felt all the years that separated her from her brother and family. It was not only the age difference and the way they were aging while she was stuck into a younger and stronger body. It was the way they thought, the things they did not know, the limited world in which they lived.
"You… you never told them about our… origin, right?" Alia already knew their children had no spark (Cataliades and a fairy had visited them both at their birth and reported to the Brigants).
Michelle shook her head. "We thought better not to. His two-natured needs…" she waved a hand toward Jason, "…we thought it was enough, you know. When you were gone the two-natured passed a really awful time…"
"It's all right, now," added Jason to fill the silence, "no one pays attention to us anymore."
"What were you thinking to tell them?" asked Alia with a faint dread in her gut.
"Well, cousin, niece," offered Michelle, "what do you think?"
Alia could not fail to notice that, at least, her sister-in-law kept her in the family, just two or three steps removed. Both Niall and Aengus had required absolute silence on her true origin with people who knew nothing about fairies (included family) and, with those who already knew of their existence, they asked her to give vague and contradictory information about herself or other fairies.
"Yes, it's reasonable, I think," Alia agreed, noticing how little they had asked about her and of what she had done all those years. Their world was their only interest and there was no room for other weirdness than theirs.
"So, cousin or niece?" asked Jason after a while.
"Whatever you deem better," the fae said finally. "It's up to you."
Jason and Michelle exchanged another look and Michelle said: "Niece. The age difference is too marked. You're almost seventy years old, and even a cousin should be at least forty, thirty years old. And you," she turned to Alia, "don't look the part, even accounted for very expensive rejuvenating therapies."
"A niece," repeated Alia. "For the rest, what should I say?"
"We told them you had to get away from Bon Temps because your connection with vampires, and that it was not a safe place for you," Jason informed her.
"What kind of connection you mentioned?"
"Just work… and a dangerous friendship."
"Never mentioned kings, takeovers, fairies, daemons?"
"No, no. Only vampires. I just mentioned fairies in fairy tales," Michelle giggled awkwardly, then added: "Daemons? C'mon, what—"
"Just a figure of speech, nothing real," lied Alia and wondered what had she expected from them. She knew daemons and fairies, and some other special creatures, never thought to come out to lift the veil of ignorance from humans' eyes. And she had been one of those ignorant people till the age of twenty two. Would she swap place now with that young, naive and inexperienced girl? Would she rewrite her life from then on? Would she prefer the warm and secure cocoon she had back then instead of the immense, cold, dreadful but also wonderful, powerful world she inhabited now? She had already answered all those questions when she had embraced her true nature.
The fae stood up from the couch in Jason's sitting room and, for the first time, looked around. The flat was a mixture of old and new as the humans who lived in there. The baggage every one carried in life visible in the now ancient granny's cupboard or the worn blanket left on an odd bed-like fixture (which, Jason explained proudly, would hug the body and massage it in thirty different ways while administering the chosen medications). It felt at once weird and intimate watching the components of their life scattered in the room. It made Alia think of the lightness of her baggage. Chadwick would have approved. She stopped at the large window listening to her brother explaining the use of every device the house was equipped with. The city landscape was unfamiliar and human. She inhaled and exhaled, then ran briefly her mind exercises: unfolding, freeing, combing. Thousands of phosphenes appeared in her mind as she detected hundreds of minds and their thoughts. She closed immediately her mind to the outside world and turned to her brother.
"I was wondering… are flycars a good business? I mean, I haven't seen many coming here, just half a dozen or so," she asked. Then added, "A business partner would notice that, and inquire."
Jason and his wife bursted out laughing. "That's exactly what I asked twenty years ago. And you know what my son said?"
"'How many Bugatti, Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Tesla do you have to see to know they're good business?'" Michelle said mimicking her son's voice. They all laughed heartily for the first time that evening.
"Could I ever afford one?"asked Alia. "Maybe I'd settle just for a little fly with Sookie…"
"You can, Sookie. Definitely you can," answered her brother. "Your lawyer made it clear the kids could expand their business, buying a fleet and renting them. With your backing."
"Didn't they?"
"They're thinking about it," Michelle waved her hands joyfully, "maybe you can ask them…"
"Sure thing!" exclaimed Alia. "In a few days I have to go to Nola for some business, then I will be back here and… well, niece Alia will have her flight."
The fae had not time to reacquaint with her old world, or to assess properly what world really was that. In those first days everything ran past her without having a chance to evaluate, taste, compare. At the end of the day she was exhausted and confused. A feast of information clouded her senses, exciting them all at once.
Her brother, her nephews, Bon Temps, Shreveport, even a new language conjured to overwhelm her perceptions. She was distant and happy, or perplexed and pensive.
No one of those she knew in her previous life was available to help finding a direction or a way in which things could be handled.
Jason, as much as he had evolved at Michelle's side, had never been close to her and now he was even more alienated from her than before. She loved him and wanted to help and understand him, but it seemed beyond her abilities. Or so it appeared to her.
Tara Thornton, her old schoolmate and longtime best friend, had turned into an old bitter lady, three times divorced and neglected by her two children, who had moved to another state since a few decades. She still lived in Bon Temps, although the town's only activity was the flycar business and the flying school owned by Jason's children.
Sam Merlotte, whom Alia had difficulty in addressing with a qualifying term, had left for Texas some twenty five years earlier and no one seemed to know anything more about him. Not even Jason.
Finally, her witch friend Amelia Broadway, so ambivalent and overbearing, had died a year after Alia's departure. That was the only fact Michelle could relay and, to be honest, the fae was not sure she would have contacted here had she been alive and around.
The reasons she had left had not changed, it was her who had to change the way she handled them. And she had changed a lot, Alia thought, in more ways that she had fully recognised.
On the fourth day she left Jason's flat and immersed herself in the creative neighbourhood around one of the college's main buildings. Jason had suggested her to stroll there as it was a reasonably safe and enjoyable area of the town. Shops, cafés, restaurants, music venues, theatres. It all seemed quite normal to Alia's eyes. Maybe too many lights, some intrusive holograms and a tablet too vocal in her light topcoat's pocket.
The tablet was the first object Diantha had given her and the instruction she had offered had been uttered so fast and so tightly that Alia had not retained a single word. Sookie Adele, her niece, had supplied concisely. The personal monitor (or tab, tabby, and at least other three idiotic pet names) was a transparent, three-folded slate which had all the function a man of that century definitely needed to have always available to lead a decent life: phone, television, computer, med advisor, personal documents attesting one's identity and properties, keys and apparently whatever else one could think of. Folded had the comfy dimension of a small diary, open seemed an average gossip magazine. It had the annoying default setting to connect to any other mildly smart electronic system (seemingly present in every object, from a washing-machine to a door, from a car to a signpost) in the radius of one and a half metres. Therefore the happy tablet chimed every now and then confirming reception of whatever was that two ostensibly inert objects had to tell each other when passing by.
Alia entered a bar, or something that looked like one, and sat at a table near a window facing a crossroad. She ordered a drink and tried to silence her tablet, when the device rang with a different tune. She patched a very improbable earplug the way Diantha had showed and the warm voice of Cataliades filled her head while his big face occupied most of the device's unfolded surface. "Dearest, how are you?"
"Disoriented but very well, Desmond," she giggled stupidly. "Everything is so… different. You?"
"I'd have liked to be there with you, but a round of very important meetings holds me out of LA for another few days and the audience could not be postponed. Did Diantha give you the folder with all the files you need to see?"
"Yes, Desmond. Inside this tablet I found everything."
"Good. Those give you all the information you have to know for tomorrow royal audience. Have you seen them?"
"A cursory look, yes," lied Alia who had not had the right spirit to delve into them properly. Then she added mockingly, "Am I supposed to present a paper? Is there any danger?"
"Absolutely not, my child," Cataliades sweetened his tone. "I'd never send you into danger alone."
"Good, then."
"The king's secretary is a friend of mine and assured me of the best welcoming for a Brigant."
"I won't stay long, it will be a courtesy visit to introduce myself, then I'll leave. In and out in less than an hour," Alia concluded.
"See you soon, Alia," Cataliades seemed to hesitate, then added, "I'm so happy you came. It's a very good thing."
The fae grinned widely and the screen became transparent once again as the daemon cut the communication. She folded and pocketed the tablet, then reopened it again and inserted a number.
The voice-box answered briskly: "Ravenscroft. Leave a message, brief and to the point. Maybe I'll call you back."
Alia smiled and thought that someone was always the same, and it was both reassuring and inspiring. She dictated her voice message in a girlish stupid tone: "Sookie the Wanderer has come back. Will you find the time for an old friend? Call me soon, bitch!"
Still smiling she browsed through the other numbers Diantha had left at her request, and put through another phone number. Disconnected. Then she sent a brief video recording to an email showing a very peculiar address that included words like earth and guest.
Hi Karin,
this is Sookie, back in Louisiana. Hope you're fine and to hear from you soon. My contacts are attached. Love.
The fae had already noticed that she could hardly relate anymore with humans and their points of view. However, her phone calls made it clear where her heart was set to go.
She relaxed in the morphing chair and absorbed the alien ambiance of the venue. The bar had been designed to appear a cozy, old club from a twentieth century dream, but the architect had not been strong in design history. The present day technology was only badly hidden and the motley clientele added the icing to the pre-chewed cake the planner had created. Slightly, she slipped into her habits: unfolding, freeing and combing her mind. She noted that the number of vampires had more than tripled since her time (but, it could have been the larger town), as well as that of weres. A few daemons lingered at the border of her awareness, and two fairies mingled with the humans.
She gradually lost herself in the weird sensation of being free and on the verge of a new life. It felt good. Incredibly good.
"May I sit in front of you and rejoice in your company?"
Alia did not open her eyes but hinted at a smile. The mellow male voice belonged to a daemon whose thoughts were erotic without being graphic, curious but not aggressive.
"Do you know a compelling story?" Alia singled out some of his thoughts and bit her lower lips. Yes, the dae had some good stories to tell.
"Maybe. What would you prefer to hear, young lady?"
"A cloak and dagger story, with monsters and a treasure, and secrets." Alia heard a chair moving and a glass clinking on the metallic table.
A breath caressed her ear and a warm voice continued to weave its spells. "Would you like to hear the story of when daemons reigned on this planet?"
"Most definitely," she turned and opened her eyes to meet a pair of smiling black orbs. Yes, she could use some distraction.