Welp, it finally happened...I missed a deadline. Friday was weird. I probably could've finished this last night but...sleep is important and since i literally JUST finished it now...yeah... ^^'
I actually went into this with no ides what to do, but surprisingly, this was a case were rather than applying what I wanted to write to the prompt the prompt ended up inspiring me...
so here it is! I am SUPER proud of this one!
Yu-Gi-Oh June Prompts Challenge 2020
Week Four: Air/Day 26: Prayer
Like Ribbons Tied to the Branch of the Hawthorne Tree
She was not afraid to petition for her Heart's desire.
She'd heard the stories. She knew the rumors. Of the haunted forests and the things that lived there. Full of what her Grandfather had called Greenies, others called They Themselves. of the exceptional generosity and casual cruelty of the Wood Folk, the Forest Kindred, the Faeries. Of the ancient Tree that grew in the heart of the heart of the forest surrounded a ring of red-capped toadstools and of those who'd had their prayers and wishes answered and the prices they'd paid.
She knew the risks. She did not care. Caution wasn't for those who had nothing left to loose.
She'd skipped school. Told no one where she was going or what she'd planned. She knew no one would care. No one would come looking for her. With her Grandfather gone, those stories were all she had left—
—and the prayer written on the scrap of fabric that once belonged to her favorite dress. Still fluttering in her hand.
She starts the path just before dusk. Walks the slope leading up through the coppice and deeper into the forest. She ducks under boughs, skips the great roots hooped up from the forest floor, minds the ferns swishing at her legs. Deep into the woods where mushrooms grew in patches and briars among the bladed grass. Stumbles fleetly through the leafy shadows. Her feet know the way. She'd often walked these woods with her Grandfather to bring monthly gifts: apples, pressed flowers, pinned butterflies, cakes with honey frosting.
Her Grandfather still kept faith—he'd grown up here, after all—even if no one else did. Long gone were the days of celebration and whispered metaphors. No longer did the warnings and cautionary tales strike fear. Dismissed as nothing more than ghost stories and fairy tales designated to the nursery and demoted to tales to scar children into obedience. If they were spoken, it was as popular expression and nothing more and people no longer spoke them with the same passion and familiarity as their ancestors once had. Even her Grandfather confessed that though age had wised him, he, too, had not listened to the old tales in his youth, nor taken them seriously as his own parents and grandparents had, though he never spoke of what it was that so changed his belief.
She was not so foolish.
She came to the Tree, just after sunset, the Moon already fat and full and ghostly blue, the sky mostly dark and dusted with stars though the sun has not yet faded, and the leaf-light dappling the grove.
The Great Tree is half thorn, half oak. Or rather it is two trees—an strong, grand, mighty oak, and a bright, bold, voluptuous hawthorn, married as saplings and rooted so close they twisted and tangled together to become one tree. Its trunk both massive and gnarled, dwarfing all others around it. Not straight but curving like a massive wooden snake. Its branches so large and long and heavy many have grown outward and sunk their fingers into the ground, taking root and becoming their own trees. Some sporting sharp-tipped branches that can easily become thorns. Massive arms stretch and sway like the limbs of some monstrous octopus, its leafy crown a canopy that all but blocks out the sun: yellow-green frills of oak and obovate-shaped spirals of hawthorns with strange goldenod sprays of catkins hanging down amiss clusters of pink-white stars. Its great height pierces the sky allowing both silvery moonlight and fiery sunset to pour down in fountains of sparkles that break across the ground like scattered flames.
Carefully, she steps over the ring of red-capped toadstools. Sees the strips of cloth, so old and tattered and frosted with lichen: the ghosts of wishes long since passed, caught up in the boughs. Observes the lacework of monstrous roots, twisted and tangled, wrestling above and beneath the soil and sprawled like ancient hands. Spies the hollowed gaping apron lap in the that opens like a natural cauldron where the roots split and the offerings placed there: some over-wintered apples, a crusty loaf of bread, the corpse of a butterfly, a twist of ribbon tied amongst the low hanging branch.
It is here, she steps closer. It's swaying branches beckoning like arms. Here, she ties her wish around the branch. Let's herself take one last moment to really, truly prat for what she desires. Pulls the knot tight.
She does not wait long.
She appeared out of the tree, first a face visible in the bark as though looking at a picture in clouds. Then the rest of her followed, a slender gangly thing more woodland than woman. In place of hair, a wild tangle bushed out from atop her head: a busheled nest of vines and twigs and woody tendrils and green-black leaves and highlights of ripe red berries. There was a greenish tint to her dusky brown skin like wood with the bark stripped back with a spray of brown freckles speckling her cheeks and arms and shoulders. She had full pouty lips but her nose was black and triangular, her ears long and elliptical: both like a deer's. Her dress, if you could call it that, was a green gauze shift woven and sewn with flowers and leaves and frosted with moss and lichen. Two bare black branches curled like horns stop her head. In place of eyebrows brown smudges like dirt or eyeshadow emphasized the smoky irises of her eyes, the pupils at once red as ripe berries, then brown as mineral rich earth or golden as the oldest of the ancient oaks.
She transfixes her with that piercing smoky-eyed gaze. Stands in the crook between the two trees that are now one, her smile sharp and sweet, almost affectionate. Not steps, but glissades down the bark to greet her, independent of gravity or clumsiness. Her feet and arms are bare. Her hands long, her fingers spindly and extra-jointed.
She wanted to step back but find she cannot. She'd known what to expect when she came here but she was not prepared for the effect of this wood woman. Of how her mere sight took up the totality of her vision. How it brought tears and terror to her eyes and made her forget why'd she'd come here.
But the fae woman is patient, a rare trait, and strokes her cheek with her long fingers. Her touch is warm and surprisingly soft like leaves warmed by the sun. Her smile impressed. She cocks her head to the side not unlike a curious bird, sending a tangling net of vines and leaves over her shoulder with. The branches rusting like branches caught up in the breeze as she does. And when She speaks it with the spring rain and the harsh summer sun and the gentle breeze just before it grows up and becomes a wind "I come in the name of He and She, the Kings and Queens who rules this Forest." She cupped her cheek now, so warm and light and intoxicating. "Tell me your wish, child, for I bargain on their behalf and they will give you all that it is that you desire."
She swallows, feels that her heart is pounding mouse-fast, knows her body is near trembling, is unable to anything else but stare at this creature.
"You are struck," the fae woman says, a patient smile and kisses her forehead. "It shall pass. I was the same once. When I was young as you are now and my hair was still grape-dark as yours is now."
Surprised by this, she asked the fae woman. "You were once human? Like me?"
She laughs and it is a high, sweet sound like a bird singing or a shallow waterfall tricking into a stream. "Once I was though I am no longer."
That much is clear.
"How?" she asks, stunned.
The fae woman smiles again, this time playful, like a cat with a mouse she will not eat. "You did not come here to talk about me. You came for a wish." Her long fingers brush the tattered fabric dancing in the night breeze. The sky now a deep purple, the stars bright like lanterns, the moon a bright white sphere, yet the woman is clear and visible, independent of light or shadow. "You wish for…" she read it with her fingers. The magic seeping into her with a faint, firefly glow. "A companion?"
"A friend," she corrects humbly. Looks away, the spell broken by her own anguish.
It was her orphan's craving, the deepest, most precious wish of her lonely heart.
Her childhood had been one of constant motion, always moving from place to place not settling everywhere, first with her Father for his work. Than her Grandfather with his. Only when the old man retired and settled here did she finally attend a real school. But the people here had been no less welcoming than those in any other place she'd lived.
She had always been a small wisp of a thing: small of stature and lithe of frame whose gentle face and wide eyes made her a prime target for bullies and no one defended her. The girls were not ashamed to show how much they hated her: with her pale, pale skin and spray of dusky freckled and grape-dark hair who's purplely sheen and the smokiness to her irises and the vibrant color of her deep blue eyes made it impossible for her to be normal. And the boys who spoke to here made it clear what'd they wanted and hated her for not giving it. For not being honored to have been asked. But lately the bulling had grown worse, more cruel, more violent, more perverse. How long would it be until she could no longer defend herself? Even now old bruises decorate her thin flesh.
"I know it sounds a silly thing to wish for…"
"No prayer is silly," the fae woman corrected, almost maternally harsh.
She continued. "My Grandpa is dead you see, and he…he was all I have left. The people at school hate me and I don't want to go into foster care. The teachers, the police, the lawyers, none of them can truly do anything, so I thought if anyone could help me you…or rather, the forest could." And there it was the deepest yearnings of her young heart so young and vulnerable and full of life like a tiny bird ready to fly even if its wings were weighted down by sorrow. "Will you help me?" She does not stop the tears that come to her eyes. They are not unbidden.
The fae woman brushed them away with finger tips as thin and soft as wisps of grass. Her face a hard monotone though when She looks upon her, her eyes soften. "There is a reason," she says in a voice gravely with enraged disgust like her mouth is full of dirt. "Why many of my kind hate yours. Do not misunderstand, we of the wood, the water, the earth and the air have long loved humans. They are a fascinating curiousty, with their butterfly fragileness and mayfly lifespans and yet still they managed to do and see so much…at least some of them do…but see, dear, my kind are not like yours. Ours is a life of servitude, of bondage. Oh we are of naturally long-life though not as long as one may think and though there are still many of us who are indeed ancient, they are few. And though we are blessed with magic and music and a life of mindless joy if we so choose, it is a perpetual state of bliss and present. Change is so rare for us that we embrace and celebrate it wholly. But still, we are bound. We our bound to the lords and ladies in which we serve and they in turn to the kings and queens who rule them, and those courts to the High Kings and Queens and they to the land and to us, and all of us to the lands and waters of our birth, quite literally for some. Many of the wood and water folks cannot leave their trees or their springs and even if we could leave our lands where would we go? Whose to say the next Lord we serve would not be crueler than the one we left? It is a vicious cycle, but such is the way of nature: we have our magic and our power and our long lives but always we are bound, we have no choice in the manner…"
She drifted off, her voice light and airy. Then took on a more sinister tone like a viper spitting poison. "Humans not so…they are truly and unapologetically free. So much so they are spoiled with it, unbound by any laws but their own and that of He Who Created Us All. Many of my kind mislike them for that but more so because of how they misuse it. They spend their days going to school and getting jobs because it is what they are told to do. They all but enslave themselves to the their society's obligations and call it duty, cast on chains of manner and behaviors and call it honor. They deny themselves their own happiness and that of those around them to meet what others have deemed acceptable and call it responsibility, and those of richness and privilege hoard hurt it all over the others simply because everyone lets them. Many of my kind hate them because they've taken the liberty and free-will blessed upon him grind it up into ashes and thrown it back into the face of He. It is the same of those who've wronged you."
The Fae woman was so close now. Her smoky eyes and pupils dark as gooseberries, bore into hers with such passion and such love, the blades of Her spindly fingers sunk into her palms, so tightly the fae woman clutched her hands. "Never feel shamed or think it frivolous to ask for respect and acceptance even love from them. And never let anyone tell you that you are unworthy of such. And never let you forget such."
"Is that what happened to you?" She did not know why she asked it. "When you were like me?"
The fae woman's smile returned: a gentle, wispy thing like a fleeting deer then it was the smirk of a trickster fox. "You truly wish then? To know my story?"
She chose her next words carefully. "Consider it part of the bargain. I did after all ask for a friend."
Her laugh returned, that twinkling bell-like bird song laughter. "And you think to befriend me?"
"I can't if I know nothing about you." She sits down on one of the large flat rocks wrapped tight a toy in a sleeping child's arms betwixt the roots. Folds up her knees. Places her in the arch of bath hands.
Her laugh was of amusement this time as she hops up into the air and all but fluttered down onto where the branch had become its own trunk and curled like a snakes. Uses it for a seat. Her hair and gauze gown flutter with her. "Will I tell you my own story? Very well. My turn for a tale. I wish for you only to listen. It is the tale of a girl, a child and a broken heart." She spoke it with such a dreamy whisper, such a sad far-off look, like it were someone else's tale she was telling and not her own.
She takes a breath then starts to speak "Perhaps the problem with my first life was that I was completely and utterly ordinary. I did not rage and throw tantrums. My eyes did not change color when I shifted my moods. I scrubbed the floors. I listened to the man's warning. I did as the woman bid. I did not complain. There was never anything unnatural or mysterious about me. My only claim to strangeness was that I like to asked questions, and even then it was with the same sense of curious wonder for the world that all children had not none of the adults around me liked it, much. I could not even be considered off.
"There was a man I'd been taught to call Father. He tended the mill and had horses. His eyes never met my level. There was a woman I'd been taught to call Mother with pretty hair and a coarse apron and her face and hands always flushed as if ashamed. I could not imagine myself being born of her. Of being the product of her substantial flesh and whatever it was I was supposed to have gotten from my Father. It seemed more likely they'd found me in mouse-trap or I'd grown out of a cabbage in their garden, though I did not have a rabbit's ears, or perhaps cut me out of a giant radish they'd found floating down the river. Once eavesdropping I heard my mother confess quite bitterly she'd once wished for twenty years to have a child. I could not possibly what she'd had in mind. I was not some tiny thing from a flower destined to become a story, I was not some peach child with a special talent that would make them rich, I did not have any special gifts or powers or privileges that would make a prince or a king overlook my humble origins and make me his wife.
"Do not misunderstand, I was not mistreated. They were not cruel. Rather, I think, they knew how the world works—or were sure that they knew—and their place in it and merely wished to assure I knew mine, less I have fanciful dreams of grandeur and have my heart shattered by the reality that I would never be or become anything more than what I was. I did not learn until much later that life was something one must take with their own hands. As a child I weighed mine and found it was not worth much.
"I suppose I should not have been surprised when they abandoned me alone in the woods. Even then I did not complain, though had I known then what I know now, I would raged and grieved and threw tantrums until they truly did regret becoming my parents. Instead, I merely found a patch of moss and made it my bed. They came to me that night, the Lord and Lady of the Forest. They have many names and even more titles. The one I knew her as was Titania and him as Oberon…"
"Wait, like from midsummer night's dream?" she asks suddenly then covered her mouth, so engrossed in the telling of the Fae Woman's tale she'd nearly forgotten she could steal speak.
The fae woman just laughs not the least bit insulted. "Yes, who do you really think was the inspiration for the donkey-headed man in that story? It gave the Queen a good laugh, I will admit to that, at least when she told it to me. I do not know the details. I was not there. I was not yet born. But yes, she came to me, Titania the Queen of the fae all darkness and elegance and motherly affection. She loves children you know? No love spell would ever convince her to part with a child, especially one that was hers by adoption, and Oberan, who is all wild and chaos and much prefers being a consort mind you, would never insult by thinking she would. Again, the playwright was merely lucky it gave them both a good laugh. But, she came to me, and I was very lucky it was her and not wolves or one of the others of her kind, let me be perfectly clear on asked me why I was there and where my parents were. My answers was I did not know to both. She took me in right then and there, and brought me with her to both the Woods here and the place I suppose your kind now calls Fairyland, though they are not often so separate."
"What was it like?" She asks, so engrossed in the tale. "To grow up in Fairyland?"
The Fae woman thought for a moment, presses a finger to her lips. "It is hard to explain. I remember I slept a lot. Often times I would sleep under a tree on a hot day and when I awoke the leaves had changed color. There was a woman who braided my hair and gave me apples. And other children I played with both fae breed and of mortal ilk. We all had schooling where we learned the paths, and learned to work of mischief making. My new mother adored me as she did all her children, though the others, I think, did not notice me much until my ears became pointed and my eyes no longer looked like a mortals. It was a perpetual kind of existence, my childhood there: one of mindless joy and endless adventures and childish merriment. We thought not more of our trueborn parents than we had of the sun not setting and of not rising with the twilight to begin a new day. Our adult lives were no different though now we were big enough and old enough to play tricks those of us who made our homes in the wild or at a mortal heart or to join the courts those of us that like to play at kings and pages. I preferred the forest and the wildness."
She tossed back the viney wreath of her hair and kept talking. She was a good storyteller. Her cadences rising and falling like the movements of a song enhanced only by the bird-like music of her voice. "I do not know how long I stayed there, how long it was before I changed, became one of them—it is the magic of that land you see. Humans switched at birth often look less human than the ones who return to us decades later. It is the land that holds power over us all, and we folk care little for something as stupid and pointless as appearances—it could have been two decades or two hundred years, or longer. To this day I know not."
She could understand that. It sounded like her own childhood where she'd had no sense of time and had simply learned to stop counting the days when a month that felt like a year would pass and her and her Father would be off to the next town. If any good had come from her schooling it was that it had given her a schedule to follow.
"But it was nigh a century ago that it all happened. I know that for a fact because I have counted every day since then…" That low whispering returned to her voice. Her eyes once most cast off and sad. "I do not know if it was this town or another that bore me, but I chose it as my home all the same. I loved the woods and I loved the town and I loved my people, but most of all, I loved a mortal boy."
And there was a sort of jovial bliss that overcame her: the dreamy smile and starry eyes of a girl falling in love for the first time. "Oh how young I was. Though much older than the oldest of the town in my heart and in my soul I was as young as you are now, and my hair was still the soft silken strands of the night sky just after twilight and my horns little more than bumps hidden beneath my hair. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and bright-eyed and like to take walks in the woods. I became his wife, as all the stories go I suppose. I did not mind putting away gowns made of moonbeams and spider's silk for the heavy, lacy thing his mother gave me. I did not mind putting aside the wild pleasures of the woods. It would always be my home for when I wanted it back. My Faery mother even kissed my cheeks and wished me nothing but happiness and my Faery Father too, though they made him promise a geiss. I'm certain you know what those are?"
She didn't. "Like a quest?" The word sounded so.
The fae woman smiled her patient smile and shook her head. "It is a part of all Folk marriages, that their partner must swear a geiss when they make their vows. It is a taboo, you see, a thing you must or must not do. Fae marriages unless they are between Kings and Queens, Lord and Ladies and consorts are all about how to get out of them. I'm sure you know the stories…A man wins a faery bride and must promise not to make her weep or strike her unnecessarily even if such is not but a tiny shove or a woman marries a raven and must promise to always be kind to them, and eventually long after the marriage and they have children the mortal breaks their word and their faery lover and children return to faery land. It is an old tale, one that mortals love to tell. I never understood the mortal obsession with their own flaws, and yet they learn noting from them."
She didn't understand either. "Is that what happened to you?"
"Yes, and no," was the Fae woman's response. "I'd known the tales entering my marriage of woman who'd have their skins stolen or were won in a wager because a mortal man or woman had fallen in love and could not bear to be without him or her. But I'd also seen plenty who went away willingly with their mortal consorts. Who'd seen them in the woods or by the shore and fell in love and agreed to become theirs and who lived a long life with them even thought their mortal husband or wife had grown old and died longer before they and their children. I was one of the later but I became the former…"
There was a bitterness to her voice as she spoke those words. And an anger that was directed inward and not at the man she'd once loved. "My geiss, in fairness of my fae parents and because he was kind and not violent, was simply that if he struck out at me three times unnecessarily he would lose a piece of me.
"And so I became a dutiful wife and I quite enjoyed it: I made supper, I mended clothes, I went to the market, I attended church on Sundays although my kind preferred reverence in worship. I loved to play games with the children. I loved to laugh at the gossip, and for all that he was, I loved my husband. I tied to create a welcoming home but I'm afraid it was quite obvious, my strangeness. I stitched birds and fanciful flowers into the black cuffs of a sober coat, I made a pet of a blue jay and fed the foxes and local rabbits with vegetables from my own garden. I sang brawny songs as I went to the market and mixed wild herbs and odd things into my dishes. Of course, I never thought any of this was strange. I did as I was bid as easily as I had as a child and did so as mischievously and tactfully as I had been taught in the fae's schools. And though the people looked at me strangely I loved them, and though he sometimes looked bewildered at my strangeness my husband loved all these things about me, though I confess, I think, my strangeness scared him, though I did not know why.
"The worse part of the whole ordeal was that the breaking of our geiss was a misunderstanding more than anything else. The first time he…struck me, and I use that term in the loosest of meanings, we had gone to a funeral and while everyone sobered I danced and sang to the graves. He grabbed my arms and demanded of me what I was doing. I told him I was singing to the souls long past and the one who had recently died, and though he looked bewildered at me, I saw then he understood and did not scold me for doing such again. The second time it happened, I wept bitterly at a wedding party. He lifted me up and took me away asking why I was making such a scene. I told him I wept for the bride and groom for marriages is difficult and many don't last and I wept hoping that the day would not come when they wept because of each other instead. He apologized immediately to me after that. The third time was because I'd grown so tired of the frivolousness of Church that I refused to attend the Sabbath. It was the first and last time he ever raised his voice to me, but the damage had been done. There would be no forth."
Bitterness returns to the fae woman's voice. With it a self-loathing as though she wishes to go back and shake her silly, stupid self and tell her not to be so silly and stupid. "It is one of our many flaws that unlike you human creatures we do not simply talk about things. Everything is s trick, every misunderstanding a sin, every insult an assault to our pride, ever broken promise a crime that is unforgiveable. Perhaps, we few it as a weakness because it is the same as writing off a good deed with a thank you to us, but while humans may talk and forgive eachother, for their lives are too short to stay angry, we fae are not like that. Our forgiveness only vomes when our vengeance has been sated, like a starving wolf feasts on the blood of a fresh kill."
She shivered. She could not help it. Conjuring such an image. Imagining what this woman must've looked like mad with love and eyes fiery with betrayal. She'd seen the heated spats between the girls and boys at school with their friends, their lovers, their others. How intense they were one minute and how miniscule they were the next. To her it all seemed so pointless. What was the reason for such wild outbursts if they were only going to forgive each other and do it again later. Was that how She had felt? When she'd thought her husband had wronged her.
"Oh…had I known then, what I know now, I know now, my husband did not mean to breaks his geiss to this day I am convinced it did not even know that he had and I was too proud to tell him, too angry with him for not knowing. I still loved human then but I was fae enough that I wanted not his remorse but my own revenge. I did not leave him, mind you, for even in my rage I still loved him. What he lost of me was my fidelity. We are not monogamous creatures by natures, but we are when we chose to be. I now chose not to be.
"I once again fell in love, this time with Liahsidhe of one of the Unseelie courts. He was very much the opposite of my husband, though he spoke to my wilder natures in a way my husband never could. I love both men and I kept both men, whether my husband was wise to it, I know not. At the time I had not cared."
"Did he find out?" she asks too engrossed in the telling of the tale to do much else.
"He knew. Though…I think he pretended not to. And I pretended he did not know. There was quite a bit of pretending between us in the end," the fae woman sighed. "What I know to be true without doubt was that sometime later, I became with child. I did not know which one of them the child belonged. Only that she was my child. My own. From my own flesh. My own heart. It did not matter who her father was, only that I was her mother. Mortal children were the joys of their mothers after all, and among the fae mother were worshiped and whispered about in glee. Fathers were some figment thing, half-dreamt. We knew they were, we just did not see them. But she was mine. It did not matter that my husband loved her or that my lover adored her. She was mine. She was mine. She was mine."
She chants the word over and over again like she could claim it. Like she could make it true.
It hurt to here to speak like this, to keep listening, knowing now how the story would end. The question hung heavy in the air between them, sat heavy on her tongue like poison, desperate but unwilling to be spit out. She did not want to ask it. But ask it she must.
"What happened to her?" She can look at her. Cannot bear to see those smoky berry eyes shadowed in anguish. "To your daughter?"
The very air itself still and sank and groaned and wept around them. Wept with her.
"He took her." The words cracked in the night air. They were not the storm, the night, or the howl of angry beasts. They were something far worse and far more dangerous: they were the anguished cries of a heartbroken mother who had lost her child. "My husband. He took her and I do not know where. He'd robbed me of the best thing I'd ever had and the worst thing of it all was that I deserved it. Do not think less of him for I knew I had no right to feel pain when he left me, not all of us are victim to our mortal's sin and I at least and humble enough to admit to it. But when he disappeared with her…I thought…I thought…I thought…the worst of him."
Her words were a broken wisp. Tears came unbidden to her eyes to rain down her cheeks.
"I thought he'd done it to spite me, took her away to hurt me, feared he would take a new wife, give that woman children and make my daughter their servant. Though, I knew he was not that cold, not so cruel, maybe he was to his enemies but not to me, never to me. Surely not to her, but I mourned…Oh, how deeply I mourned her. My lover lied beside me, the trees offered me their cloaks of leaves, still I mourned. I mourned the day she left, and the day after that, and every day I mourned never once having realized the length a single day could be I until I started to count them, how the span of a single day could feel immeasurable until I had to live one without her. I started to know the length of a single day in the interval between her loss, and each day felt harder and harder to bear. And each day, I mourned. I mourned…I mourned and I sorrowed and I wept until all the forest wept with me…I changed my name to Yami, the darkness, for she was my light and my life and each day was not a night lit by stars, not a shadow cast by the dappled light, but a perpetual darkness absent the tiniest flicker."
She could bear it no longer. He rose from her stone seat, merely tripped over roots in her teary-eyes blindness and hugged the taller faery woman around her middle. She did nothing at first as though not knowing what it was the girl was doing, but eventually she felt hands warm as sun-lit leaves on her shoulders, pressed her cheek against the mossy gauze of her dress. Let her own weeping fall. Squeezes the fae woman tighter as she continued her story.
"The not knowing was the worst part. Even after I went through my grief, for there is no way to cast it aside or fight against it, the only way to end it is to go through it and I did. And in that moment, I realized I could find her, that she could come back to me…"
"What do you mean?" She pulls away, wipes her eyes with her sleeve. Looks up for the first time, truly into the fae woman's face: her beauty ethereal in a fierce, wild way.
"It is true that we often outlive our mortal lovers. It is the same of our children. I know, if she is with him now, eventually she will grow, she will mature. She may yet choose to return. For our children, be they our changelings or the children we have with mortals, our blood breeds true. Eventually they all find their way back to our realm, to the woods and the waters and the wild. Even those who chose to stay with their mortal parents, who prefer the mortal world, grow up and become actors and bankers and artists and politicians. I know again one day I will see her."
"Forgive me for asking but…" she hesitates, wrings her long fingers. "What did you call her?" She knew better than to ask her name. No faery every truly gave out their name. It was why the fae woman had not asked for hers.
The fae woman, Yami, as she calls herself, does not look offended and smiles, her brightest, proudest, most beautiful smile. "I gave her a special name. A name I knew no one else has or would ever have. I named her after my most favorite thing in all the world for I wanted her to know that I love her more…I called her Yugi. Because it means game."
She whirled back, eyes wide, stumbled over one of the roots in her surprise. Shocked and stunned she cannot speak, only stare at the woman who looks down at her with those same smoky irises, the same eyes at one moment red as ripe berries, the next dark and purple as black berries, dark as hers.
"Yugi…" she parrots, her voice thick and choked with tears. "That's my name."
The fae woman stares down at her, unamused. Her lips pert. Her eyes sharp. "That is a cruel trick, mortal," Her voice is as dark as the night, as low and dangerous as a growl just before the wolf strikes. "I bid you choose, your next words wisely, I only look whimsical."
Yugi speaks just before she is upon her. "Atemu."
She stops. Freezes.
"Before you called yourself, Yami, you called yourself Atemu, didn't you? Grandpa told me. That was my mother's name. Atemu."
This time when she shrieks it is with joy. When she is upon her it is to wrap her arms around her. To hold her. To never let her go. The wind joins in their shrieking, their tears, their laughter.
"It is you! My Yugi." She pulls away to look at her, Atemu, once more. To look at the girl, whose name is Yugi. The girl who is her daughter. The girl with the same smoky irises as her. The same berry dark eyes. The same spray of dusky freckles across her cheek. The same grape-dark hair she once had long ago. "This is why they called me, why they bid me to your summons. They knew! They must've seen you and seen me! Known that you were…that you are my daughter. And I am your mother! I feel it in my bones!"
"Mom…" Yugi breaks into tears again. She cannot stop. She does not want to. Her heart is so happy, so full of joy and relief and love, she fears it might burst. "How…"
"He kept you…" Atemu realized, stroking away Yugi's tears with her too long fingers. "My husband. He kept you, not to hurt me as I secretly feared, but because he loves you. He, he knew well, just how long a single day can be…he wanted as much time with you as possible. I could've had you for but a day in my realm, come back and it could've been years later for him. Mortal lives are so fragile compared to ours, so short, like a butterfly's and yet…they live so much more. It is why, even now, I love them. Why I love him still, and will always hold him close in this tender heart of mine. He wanted you for as long as possible. I cannot fault him for that, nor feel angered. I knew you would come back. I knew!"
"But…I…I don't understand," Yugi cries again. "My father died long ago, my grandpa told me…he brought me here? Why didn't he tell me?"
"Oh my sweet child," Atemu held her close again. Held her tight. Yugi relishes the embrace. "That is because the man who you thought was your Grandfather and the man who you called father were the same man."
She gasped, unable to give voice to the question.
"You are my ilk, my sweet, you are half fae, like I am. You aged differently, slower than other children. He knew this. It is why you were always moving. It was to protect you, less people become suspicious of why you do not age. And when he became too old to be your father, he became your Grandfather, so great was his wish to be with you for so long as he could,"
It made so much sense: those school months that felt like years, why they came and went to so many different places, why her sense of time and place was always skewered. Why he brought her here when he retired, knowing he didn't have many years left.
"He made sure I knew to find my way back here," She smiles through her tears, hugs her mother. "I prayed for a friend and instead, I got my mother back."
"Yes," Atemu returns her hug, looks into her daughter's eyes that are so much like hers, runs her fingers through the silky strands of her air. Whispers "Come away with me, oh human child, to the waters and the wild…"
Yugi laughs. Smiles.
"Let me introduce you to He and She who are the Lord and Lady of the Forest. To the Trees and the Greenman and the woods pixie and my Liahn-side lover."
"He will not mind me?" Yugi askes, though unsure why. Perhaps a part of her still remembers High school.
"I will never speak to him again if he does," her mother assures her. "But I do not think he will. He's has stood by me all through my mourning and all through my waiting. He knows how important you are to me."
Yugi smiles presses her cheek into the crook of her mother's neck. "Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame."
The wind and the moonlight dance and sing with them, as Yugi takes Atemu's hand. Follows her up the roots of the tree until her own feet are floating, the leaves rustling with laughed and greeting, their branches beckoning her welcome like arms, and fades with her into a new life beyond the trees.
The wind blows out of the gates of the day,
The wind blows over the lonely of heart,
And the lonely of heart is withered away;
While the faeries dance in a place apart,
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring,
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air;
For they hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair,
And even the wise are merry of tongue;
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say-
When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,
The lonely of heart is withered away."
― William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire
All poem quotes taken from W.B. Yeat's poem Stolen Child and Land of Heart's Desire-gotta love Yeats, his "non-fiction" may have been infamously inaccurate but his poetry and work are second to none!
I'm very proud of this story. It started as a random idea I had for expanding On Wings, Swift and Silent, but evolved into its own story! I knew exactly what story i wanted to tell with this one, and how i wanted to write it and tell it. I just had to sit down and do it.
Please let me know how it works! I would love to edit this one up for a short story submission!