This story is a companion piece to the fic "The Dance of Pixies Under an Unknown and Faraway Hill," and was written as a submission to The Houses Competition, Challenge 1. The prompt was "I'm never drinking that again!," and the submission had to be first person present tense. My own personal challenge was to write no dialogue, but that was not an official part of the competition. Enjoy!

xXx

My mouth is sour with the taste of morning breath. The air I inhale smells like saltwater and damp rock and green wood and muddy earth. My throat burns like the fire I drank last night, blue and brackish, hot as it hit my tongue.

Beside me Harry stretches and purrs like a cat, and I groan in response. My head aches like an iron spike had been set into it. I am not burned by iron, but nonetheless, having it seemingly thrust through my skull is not an enjoyable experience. Harry makes a chirping noise, and slides a hand over my hip, burnt fingertips tracing the day old paint there, the streaks of colour and images of wildlife and sky.

I don't trust the goat eyed twins, Footfell and Unfettered. Evidently, I didn't distrust them enough.

I groan again and roll, rather stiffly, onto my side to face the creature I sleep with. Harry stares back, eyes like arsenic dye, lips still sticky with gold from Faerie fruit, and pixie dust clinging to the spread of his hair on our feather pillows. Like tiny diamond flecks on a shroud of black velvet.

Just looking at how wild and beautiful he is makes my head pound harder and my mouth feel even dryer than before.

I'd say good morning if I thought I could get the words out. Instead I take his hand as he offers it, just like he always does on the hardest mornings. We're knit together beneath the sheets, legs tangled and what remains of our clothes strung out between us. A string of teeth and mother of pearl beads connects us, looped around my neck and over his waist. He grins, teeth a little sharp, and croons mindless flattery to me. Tells me I look good with red eyes. Tells me I look lovely in gold. Practically sings the praises of some deed I did last night that I can't recall through the fuzzy haze of liquid fire.

When I eventually roll out of bed, it is with satisfaction at his words and great reluctance to leave them. I can't recall challenging a nixie minstrel to a battle of rhyme, but it is nice to know that I won.

My ankles send up sparks of pain as I let my weight down, toes sinking into black mud that somehow never stains. It coats the ground beneath me, warm and wet and free of pebbles. It may not stain, but it clings to my feet as I put one foot in front of the other. It squishes between my toes as I pad over to a dresser coated in tiny mirrors, filled to bursting with cloaks and coats, nightshirts and shawls, pairs of shorts and pairs of bodies. I rub my feet through it as I search for something to wear.

The colours cause my eyes to burn and water, and my headache protests immediately. I pull the string of teeth and shell from my neck and grab a subdued enough robe, wove of charcoal and spider silk. It settles soft against my skin as I pull on last night's trousers and run my fingers through my hair. It looks as wild as Harry's does nowadays, though not nearly as long. I tie it up and shove a carved stick in to hold it, anyways. I look in one of the many mirrors, and decide it's good enough.

Human modesty isn't exactly something that the Fae concern themselves with, and there's no point in looking put together when half the company you keep goes naked or wears only flowers and vines.

Harry's arm loops around my shoulder like he has more joints than he does, fluid and lazy. He tells me how I danced last night.

Footfell and Unfettered are going to die as soon as I get to them, I determine. I may be mortal, but I am still magic. I also vow to never again drink anything brewed while Wil-O-the-Whisps were present. Clearly it goes to my head. And despite Harry's apparent enjoyment of this fact, I am not so pleased. I've faced greater threats than a minstrel, but that does not mean I want to look for them again, and definitely not while drunk off of Faerie drink and magic.

I lost control. I slipped up. Such mistakes are unacceptable. Such mistakes lead to death or huddling frozen in an alleyway, humans in red above me, helpless and scared. Such mistakes lead to being powerless.

Yet even then, as Harry finally releases me and pulls on a diaphanous, off-white, billowy shirt with a thin line of ruffles up the chest alongside the buttons, and tops that with a tiny capelet of fur as black as his hair, I know it's a lie. I'll break my vow quicker than he could wriggle out of those clothes again, and I'll probably do it by tonight.

The issue was never truly the goat eyed twins, prodding me on to take a sip. That happens often enough. It was seeing Harry swallow fire and wanting that for me, though whether I wanted to drink it too or for Harry to swallow me up instead is a fuzzy forgotten detail.

The true issue is how much trust I have put in him, purely by accident.

The true issue is that I refuse to take it back.