Alternatively titled Family Legacies or A Touch, Of Destiny

A.N: This is gonna be a long one cause we got some world-building goin' on here y'all! Let me know what you think in the comments

Meyer remembers the stories his babcia used to tell him about the 'Old Country'. A place full of life and magic and wonder, even if there wasn't much in the way of steady, good paying work. He remembers when she would place him on her lap, wrapping him in arms too old to carry him but still with enough strength to hold his small frame tight to her wiry one, but only when she had on her soft kid-skin gloves. One of the only luxuries that had survived the journey from the land she grew up in when she set off in search of a better life.

He remembers the haunting lullabies in a language he didn't understand or even recognize from around the tenement on the nights she was the only one home to watch him. He remembers his mother crying in his father's arms after another sibling is lost before they even begin to swell his mother's stomach and his babcia muttering about curses and gifts left behind, abandoned across the seas. The smell of herbs that filled the apartment and clung to his mother's clothes more and more after each sibling lost before he had a chance to know them. He remembers his babcia talking to his parents late into the night when he was meant to be asleep, apologizing for something he didn't understand and begging them to stop fighting the plans of the fates.

He remembers the way the sun shone too bright and the birds sang too loud as they lowered the coffin into the ground. He and his father wore black arm bands and shined their shoes with black polish because they couldn't afford new black shirts. The other families from the tenement whispered condolences for his mother and the sibling they were burying with her. His grandmother wore a well-kept but old dress of black muslin and lace that seemed to float about her slim frame and made her white kid-skin gloves glare out from the folds of her billowing sleeves like sun bleached bone. She took him to get a single ice cream cone to share while his opa dragged himself and his father back to the factory for half a shift.

He remembers the feeling of the soft brown gloves she slipped over his hands as his father came home. He wished they could be black. She told him they would last longer if they were brown. He wasn't sure it worked that way but he didn't question his babcia.

There's a lot of yelling when his father and opa get home and it wakes him up. His dad does most of the yelling and doesn't stop until his babcia yells out one of the strange words from her haunting lullabies and he goes pale.

He remembers the night that he was told he was very special and not just because his family loved him very much. He was special because their family was very special. They were like his fae-touched friend from down the hall, except more, their special chose one of their family every other generation. It had chosen his babcia when she was a very little girl, it had told her mother and father she was special even before she was able to use it the same way it had tried telling his parents. The thing that made their family special was very selfish and it needed a lot of attention when he began to use it, so it wouldn't let him have any siblings to take away from how special he was. It wasn't his fault, someone in their family had made a deal or offended one of the 'gentle-folk' or won a bet against Baba Yaga and their children had been left to pay the price. Whatever the reason, their family was special and there was nothing they could do to change it. She had hoped leaving the place where its power came from would make it go away. It only seemed to make it stronger.

She told him she had made sure to have many many children for her parents to spoil. His mother had been her youngest and the only one to cross over with her and opa.

He remembers the first time his family's legacy makes itself known. She was the prettiest girl at the small school that he and the other children of immigrants attended. Her hair was yellow as corn-silk and her eyes were as blue as the cornflowers she usually had woven into her hair. Her skin was pale as fresh milk, her knees and hands were always covered in dirt and grass stains and she carried the smell of green dew, rich earth and fresh rain everywhere she went. It only makes sense when he finds out that her parents had been farmers in their home country and had hopes to move out West once they had enough money saved, that they had done a kind turn for some fae before the end of their first week in this new country even if they had little to share. The young bride had become pregnant before the month was out. Their daughter was born fae-touched under the full-corn moon.

When she was 13 years old and a day she kissed his cheek in thanks for a plate of cookies he had helped his mother make. When he was 11 years and 11 months old he saw the image of this too-pretty girl standing tall and unbreakable in a small garden surrounded by a sea of dust and death. He saw her back straight and her head of now platinum hair held high as she willed the small handful of crops to live, to thrive on the scraps of fertilizer and drops of water she was able to give them. He saw her ancient and beautiful holding a child who called her great grandmother as they watched another coffin lowered into the dry earth like a tax paid for the sake of those left behind. He watched the years fly by as she stands ageless and powerful while her family lives and dies and grows under her protection. He sees the day she kisses yet another descendant on the cheek before handing the babbling babe back to it's mother who smiles sad and sweet at her great grandmother as the woman turns towards the tall rows of corn that now surrounded the small cottage that the men were slowly bringing back to life just like the rest of the old farm. He watches as she walks in between the rows of corn and doesn't come back out again, an unbroken line of cornflowers growing along the borders of the fields and the family's land overnight.

He runs when he comes back to himself. He runs until he's back in his family's small apartment and his head is buried in the folds of cloth on his babcia's lap and her gloved hand is running through his hair while his father is asking questions in the background. He knows he's crying. Crying for the pain in his head and behind his eyes and pricking at his fingertips. Crying for the burning under his skin as he babbles out the beautiful girl's fate in a language he didn't know before this moment and only his babcia understands. He cries for the girl of new dawns and bounty doomed to a life of dust and death. He cries for a country brought to the brink of ruin and the lives lost and torn apart, only saved by the coming of more death across the seas. He cries until the images stop and his body succumbs to sleep.

The next morning when he wakes in his father's bed with the great big quilt his mother had never quite finished pulled up to his chin he lays there, pretending to be asleep a few moments more. He knows that as soon as they know he's awake he will have to put the gloves back on. He will have to put the gloves back on and his babcia will ask how he touched or was touched and tell him all of the important rules all over again. He will have to decide what to tell the pretty girl from down the hall without upsetting his gift and his family can't make the decision for him, only offer advice and tell him what they think is best. His babcia will tell him about the first time she was privy to the fate's designs and what she saw and what she chose to do as she oversees him eating a big bowl of porridge topped with dried candied fruits and nuts that you usually couldn't get out of season but babcia always seemed to be able to find.

He tells her that she will live to see her great great grandchild born. That she will love and be loved so fiercely that it defies the Fates and changes the pieces of the world she touches. He tells her that she will grow strong and beautiful and her descendants will always have a friend in their county for as long as the family owns that land that she will give to and will love her for it. She almost kisses him again with tears in her eyes. She laughs and hugs him, avoiding the small bits of exposed skin he still can't cover without dying from the August heat and mugginess. Her mother hands him a small bag of barley seeds and a light kiss to the hair on top of his head and her father thanks him with a weight and solemnity that reminds him of his babcia.

He remembers when he first saw the Druid Girl. He was nearing his 17th solstice and he was apprenticed to the carpenter who lived in his family's tenement. The beautiful girl of cornsilk and grass stains had moved out west with her parents two years ago, his father was home sick again after years of factory work ruining his lungs and tearing apart his hands, his opa was running himself into the groud trying to keep his little general store down in the square from going under, and Meyer still wore the black armband from the day they had finally put his babcia into the ground alongside his mother and the only sibling he ever met before they were taken from him. He remembers seeing her through the crowd and the way the air punched out of his lungs. She was tall and a bit broad shouldered compared to the other girls in the neighbourhood. Her hands were strong and not fine-boned like other girls' but they seemed so delicate as they took a knife to bunches of dried herbs and treated leathers and clothes. She wore the robes of a druid, he could feel her magic from across the crowded square. He remembered the day he first saw the girl he was going to marry someday.

He remembers the day he first met the Druid Girl and her sister. He was a few weeks passed his 17th solstice and the armband was gone, placed in a box under his bed alongside a much smaller one, a worn through pair of child's gloves and a pair of delicate women's kid-skin gloves the colour of bleached bone. His shoes shone with brown polish instead of black and his brown gloves were worn and butter soft where they wrapped about the small package in his hands. He remembers walking up to the girl as she put away the last of whatever small charm she was piecing together and moved to grab the next ingredients for a new one. She hadn't even glanced his way when she called for one of the other girls to come take her place. The other girl was prettier than any fae or elf-blood he had ever met. Her hair was a golden sort of brown that shone in the sun and her great big blue eyes seemed to glow in the midday light. Her skin was a tanned sort of pale that he knew only real immigrants got, their skin too light to really darken but finally toughened up against the harsh American sun, and her sharp cheekbones were softened by the small upturn of her nose the soft tilt to her full pink lips and softness of her round face. She asked him his name and what she could do for him with a tired sort of resignation to her voice. He asked her what her friend's name was and if perhaps she liked roses. The girl stared at him for a moment, her eyes wide and confused and concerned so he thrust the small wrapped package in his hands into hers and stuttered out something about being across the square and to give it to the druid girl with flaxen hair and steady hands and ran off.

He tells his babcia and mother all about his stupidity and the futility of his romantic prospects with the girl as he clips the grass around their headstones and switches out the flowers in the vases he had half-buried in the dirt.

He remembers the day the Druid Girl makes her way into the old wood-working shop. Small delicate carving in one hand and her friend's wrist in the other. He remembers the way she stormed right up to him, sitting behind the counter and going through the inventory and books once more before having his master look over his work, demanding answers. He finds out that her name is Eistir Parlin and her friend is her sister Roisin. He finds out that both of them are druids, both of them are fae-touched, and both of them are used to Roisin attracting new admirers every day of the week. He finds out that Eistir has green eyes and a light smattering of freckles across her nose and not only is the air punched out of him when he looks at her but he can't seem to get it back when she's this close. He laughs when she demands to know who set him up to it. Who told him to bring her the small carving of her favourite flower covered in gentle runes of protection and calm. Who thought it was a good idea to try and court the Parlin heir when her father had declared that she would be choosing a consort from the sons of some of the oldest clans with family in America.

Roisin likes Meyer and loves her sister more than anything else. So Roisin helps them any way she can when he finally convinces Eistir that he'd had no idea who she was, just that he had seen her and known she was special. She hides their tracks and masks their comings and goings as he courts this lovely, powerful, girl who held his heart in her hands. She helps him the day he sits Eistir down and tells her about family's legacy, tells him that she may not know what it is he needs to tell her sister if it isn't a damned marriage proposal already but assures him that there wasn't anything he could say short a confession of cold-blooded murder that would send her sister running. And even then Eistir might ask the circumstances before deciding to turn him over to the authorities.

Roisin is the sister he never had and he makes an extra visit to his mother and grandmother the day he catches himself thanking the gods she wasn't his sister by blood so she didn't join the other important women in his life. He takes Eistir with him the day before they see Roisin off for her apprenticeship in Brooklyn, the City across the Bridge. He lets her hold him when he takes off his gloves, letting her lay her callouses against his and the visions wash over him.