Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
- From The Fairies by William Allingham
Holly idly prodded at her salad with her fork, taking care to not meet her tablemates' eyes as she did so. She was grateful for the ambient noise of the restaurant, as it was somewhat of a guard against true awkward silence.
When she'd told Mulch to come along, she'd been under the impression that Trouble had invited the rest of the team out. When she'd arrived at Spud's, however, she'd been greeted by the sight of her coworker seated alone at one of the booths. Currently, Holly and Mulch had managed to squish into one of the benches at the table, and Trouble at least had the decency to refrain from asking any unpleasant questions as they did so.
Mulch reached for another one of the complimentary dinner rolls, and Holly kicked him under the table, giving him a warning glance.
Trouble winced, noticing the table rattle. "It's — he can have as much of that as he likes."
Kneeing her back just as discreetly, Mulch returned Holly's gaze.
"Thanks, officer...?"
"Kelp," Trouble provided automatically, but then he paused. "Er, Holly and I aren't on shift, so Trouble is fine."
Mulch snorted, though he kept whatever thoughts he had on Trouble's name to himself. Sighing, Holly set down her fork.
"I assumed..." she began, struggling to think of how to say what she needed to say without offending her friend. "I mean, I just thought this was an after-work drinks... thing."
Rubbing the back of his neck, Trouble reddened. "No, yeah, it is."
Holly tried again. "An after-work team drinks thing."
When Trouble had extended an invitation to Spud's to her earlier in the week, she'd been tentatively hopeful. As the only woman in Recon, she'd always been marked as different from her coworkers, and the Siege had been the final nail in the coffin of her pariahdom. On some level, she had known that escaping her basement cell in Fowl Manor would not free her from the mud people — she could live for a dozen more centuries, and there would still be those who would define her by what Fowl and his minions did to her.
Ultimately, she'd made peace with this. She wasn't happy about the situation, obviously. But she'd expected it, and had therefore been able to steel herself against the thoughtless tabloid articles and social media conspiracy theories she'd been flooded with upon her return home.
What she'd not been expecting, however, was the way people seemed to be afraid of her. People reacted to her in a way that was visceral, as though she were one of those medieval human lepers. How ridiculous. As though what had happened to her were equal parts contagious and deserved.
Being kidnapped by humans — potentially being responsible for the downfall of your people — was the fear that had gripped fairy society since it had tunneled below the earth to hide from prying eyes.
What happened to her was the nightmare scenario, to put it bluntly. What happened to Holly tapped into the primal, base fears of fairy society, thus bypassing any hope of rational thought. The leper comparison was fitting, in this way. When faced with events that seem to subvert your perception of the world as being shaped by the things proceeding as they should and people reaping what they sow, the mind falters. In the case of other members of Recon, there was also the added complexity of the ideals that came with the job; if you chose your profession because you are dedicated to the task of upholding justice, then the idea that justice is not naturally part of the world, and is rather an invention of the people that inhabit it, is an impossibly hard pill to swallow.
It was as such that Holly knew that when her coworkers looked at her, they comforted themselves with the same lie: somehow, the terrible thing that happened to Holly wouldn't have happened to me.
What a terrible world it would be, Holly thought, her pride flaring, if bad things could somehow happen to good people anyway.
Mulch reached for another roll, sensing he wasn't the center of attention at the moment. Annoyed, Trouble's lips drew thin, and he placed his hands on the table.
"Can we go somewhere to talk? I was hoping we could have this conversation privately."
Holly quirked an eyebrow. "You wanted to have a private conversation in Spud's?"
Trouble's ears twitched slightly. "It's hard to make out what people are talking about in a restaurant unless you're eavesdropping! Besides, Spud's is — speaking tactically — a neutral location. It's not suspicious to go out with a coworker here."
Mulch dropped the roll he was tearing into tiny bits. "If this is some weird LEP courting ritual, I can just go."
"Mulch," Holly huffed, voice low. She straightened, waiting for Trouble to explain himself. Thankfully, whatever he'd invited here for seemed to be weighing on him heavily enough that Mulch's ribbing didn't rankle him.
"It's Foaly," Trouble finally said, looking queasy.
"Yeah?" Holly said, encouraging him to continue.
"I wasn't spying on him," Trouble said, holding up a hand in defense. "But I had to go down to his office for a follow-up from the Council on..." he made a vague gesture, and Holly wasn't sure whether she was offended or relieved that she was being left out of the paperwork related to the Fowl Siege.
"There were emails from Fowl," Trouble forced out. "Recent ones. Ones to Foaly."
Mulch eyed Holly. For a moment, Holly considered getting up and leaving — it'd been a gamble to try to reintegrate into office social life so soon, and for her hopes of returning to a sense of normalcy to be so thoroughly shattered hurt more than she'd expected.
"He's emailing Fowl?" she asked finally. Trouble blanched, and she frowned. "If that's what you mean, then at least say it."
Exhaling noisily, Trouble broke her gaze. "Yeah."
She leaned back. "Okay. So?"
Mulch shifted away from her slightly, sensing things could get physical very quickly. Trouble looked abashed.
"So?" he boggled.
Holly leaned forward, lacing her fingers together and setting her hands on the table. "Yeah. So Foaly is in contact with Fowl. Is that all the information you have?"
"I took photos?" Trouble tried, and Holly let some of the tension drain out of her body.
"Do you have them with you?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah — let me just..." he trailed off, rummaging through his pockets. Passing her his phone, Trouble motioned for her to open the folder on the desktop. It was one of the older models, and the size of the screen reminded Holly more so of an e-reader than a cellular device. Carefully, she tapped the file he'd gestured to, and the screen turned white as the carousel of images appeared. Selecting the one at the top of the screen, she watched as the photo of Foaly's email loaded.
Silently, she read it over. Expression not changing, she flicked to the next email. In this fashion, she read through the dozen or so emails Trouble had managed to covertly photograph. Finally, she flicked back through the files, pulling up a specific thread. Gesturing for Mulch to scoot closer, she enlarged the text.
Mulch looked back up at her, uncomprehending.
Trying not to jab at the screen, Holly pointed at part of one of the paragraphs. Although Mulch's eyebrows knit together, he obeyed her without complaint. As he read, his mouth formed the shape of the words in the email. When he reached the section she'd indicated, he paused, mouth hanging open slightly. Moving closer to her to read better, he put a hand over his mouth, eyes narrow.
"Is there a chance—" Holly started, and Mulch waved a hand, motioning for her to be silent. Though she'd normally be offended, she remained quiet, watching him think. On the other side of the booth, Trouble watched them both, mystified.
"It could be a coincidence," Mulch said lightly, and Holly forced herself not to interject.
"But it could be him," Mulch admitted, looking away from the screen as though the email were too loathsome to continue reading.
"Which one?" Holly pressed.
"The grocery one," Mulch decided. "I gave him a copy of my family's rune, which could be why he's asking ponyboy about dwarven symbols."
Her conversation with Artemis by the boarding school came to mind. "Did you also give him your Book? Or could he have taken your Book?"
Mulch laughed, though it lacked humor. "I haven't had my own Book in years."
Trouble coughed awkwardly, looking decidedly uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken.
Holly turned so she was facing Mulch exclusively.
She lowered her voice. "I can get us topside."
"Holly—" Trouble hissed, looking around the restaurant worriedly. She pretended she'd not heard him.
"Holly, if Fowl is the same as the grocery... person, then I need to talk to you when we get back to the apartment."
Holly nodded, turning back slightly towards Trouble. "Could you get me the emails on a thumb drive? Don't email them to me, or anything traceable like that."
She hesitated, drumming her fingers on the table in thought. "And thanks. You didn't have to—"
"Don't mention it," Trouble insisted, taking his phone back.
She smiled, putting a hand on Mulch's shoulder to gently push him out of the booth. "Great. I'll see you Monday, yeah? Lunch is on me."
Trouble returned the smile, a tad uneasy, and Holly slid out of the booth before he could say any more.
AN:
hey so this semester kicked my ass with work. on the plus side now I actually have time to write due to it being the summer... fingers crossed we get back on an update a week schedule.
also the epigraph i selected is from the poem "The Fairies"! It balances the two sides of fairies in Irish folktales - the whimsical side dedicated to the pursuit of living well amongst earthly pleasures and mischief, and the more threatening side, which is governed by a moral code fundamentally alien to humans. Take this paragraph, for example:
"They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of fig-leaves,
Watching till she wake."
There's this sense that they just wanted a playmate (little Bridget), yet didn't fully understand (or care, if we're being honest) that due to the fact time passes differently for them, by the time they returned her from their realm, so much time had passed in the human world that her loved ones were gone. I want to capture this sense that the People (and mages) may act in ways that are human, may enjoy human things and ideas, may even enjoy individual humans themselves — but at the end of the day, their appearance of human behavior is liable to be shed at any point.