The stars in Sidhe were not the same stars that existed in the mortal realm, according to Hakuryuu. They were dimmed, harder to identify and in entirely incorrect locations if they weren't missing from the sky altogether. Judal knew this because over the last few nights he had sat in the courtyard with one increasingly irate faerie prince who had repeated these sentiments ad nauseam.

As much as the state of the stars interested Judal, he was generally too tired by the time Hakuryuu was done peering up at the sky to ask for any clarification. He'd tried questioning his guest the first night they had spent looking to the stars, but Hakuryuu had hushed him so he could concentrate. If that hadn't encouraged Judal's silence, his increasingly foul mood during their stargazing sessions did.

It took almost four nights for Hakuryuu to find whatever he was looking for. Judal was practically nodding off on the bench where he'd made a habit of settling himself by that point, so he completely glossed over whatever explanation Hakuryuu gave him.

The next day, after he returned from class, they moved the Silver Lady down to the courtyard. Judal had to help with this because by now the Lady was no longer living in a small pot on the windowsill. It had moved from there to the kitchen bar, and from the kitchen bar to a corner, each move corresponding to a larger pot size. Hakuryuu could no longer lift it with one arm, so it was left to Judal to carry it down the stairs and out the side door with the prince's guidance.

He still almost fell down the stairs twice, but they both decided not to mention that.

Hakuryuu had cleared one of the plots, leaving it conspicuously empty compared to the ones on either side of it. The dirt inside the plot was no longer dry or cracked, and now held a strong, fresh scent to it. Judal could only guess that all the plants that had once occupied the space had been rotted down to act as fertilizer for the Silver Lady, which Hakuryuu was now beginning to transplant into the empty space. Judal stood back to observe.

"So…" he said after almost ten minutes of silence. "Exactly what did this have to do with fucked up stars again?"

As he watched, the Silver Lady's roots lifted from the pot and snaked their way towards the new plot of earth. They burrowed into the earth one at a time, painstakingly worming their way down before lifting the tree a fraction of an inch further from its pot. Hakuryuu's hand rested on the trunk, steadying his creation while channeling his will into it.

"You know, I said there was no need for you to stay up with me, Judal." Hakuryuu sighed, giving his host a look somewhere between exasperation and worry.

"But then who would you bitch to about the sky being messed up?"

"The mulberry tree."

"Excuse me, I'm way better company than the mulberry tree. He totally gossips with the morning glories."

A faint air of concern remained in Hakuryuu's expression even as he smiled.

"Be that as it may, I will do my best not to keep you up so late in the future." he pointedly ignored Judal rolling his eyes. "To answer your question though, this does not have to do with the stars as much as the moon."

Even sagging under the weight of lack of sleep, Judal's mind still managed to make rapid fire connections to obscure knowledge when it was mentioned. He tilted his head, watching the Silver Lady as it balanced precariously halfway between soil and pot.

"Magic's affected by the moon, right?" he asked curiously. "You're waiting for a specific part of the cycle?"

"That's correct. The full moon is when magic is at its peak, and considering where we are and the importance of this, it's best I do it when I am at my strongest."

Judal scrunched up his face, trying to visualize his calendar in his mind. The moon cycle was marked in the corner of certain dates, and the full moon was….

"Isn't the full moon like…" his brow furrowed. "Tonight?"

"According to your sky, perhaps." Hakuryuu scoffed.

"Oh, what, our moon is wrong now?"

"Yes, it is."

"That seems kind of unlikely." Judal said doubtfully.

"I have studied the skies longer than you have been alive Judal, I know what the moon is supposed to be behaving like."

"Are you sure it's not just different here?"

Hakuryuu turned to glower at him, taking his eyes off his task. His displeasure was uncomfortably palpable in the air and Judal had to do his best not to squirm under the feeling of it. He raised his shoulders in a shrug, hoping to brush off some of the prince's annoyance.

"I'm serious!" he defended. "This is important, so are you totally sure our moon is off? It'll be a big deal if you mess this up, right?"

For a few moments Hakuryuu continued to glare at him, but then his expression seemed to forcibly relax. Judal was just trying to help, Hakuryuu had to tell himself, even if he didn't really know what he was talking about.

"I am sure." the prince reassured, turning his eyes back to the Lady. It had moved fully to the plot, its roots now digging themselves deeper beneath the dirt. "Because of our magic, fae have a strong connection to the moon. We can feel its cycles as much as see them. Between what I feel and what I saw in the sky, I can tell that while the moon appears full in your sky it is not truly so."

"So even if I look up tonight and see a full moon, according to magic and stuff, I'm not actually seeing a full moon?"

"Something like that."

"When's the real full moon, then?"

"If I'm correct, and I believe I am, it should be in two days' time."

Judal stepped up to Hakuryuu's shoulder, crossing his arms over his chest as he settled his weight onto one leg. The Silver Lady had mostly settled by now, secured into the earth by its roots and standing proudly on its own. Hakuryuu still fed magic into its trunk, causing its pale leaves to shiver and shift.

"So in two days…" Judal murmured.

"…I will be able to replace my arm, yes."

They fell silent, both gazing at the tree in front of them. It looked out of place against its dreary brickwork backdrop, unnaturally white and far too pure for the cityscape. Without Hakuryuu's influence, it would not even be capable of existing outside of Sidhe, and it looked just as misplaced as it truly was.

Judal couldn't help looking at the tree with some air of finality. The task of growing a living organism strong enough to become a substitute limb had seemed far more complicated in the beginning than it did now. Hakuryuu could snap his fingers and grow a forest if he wanted, and even if the special care the Lady had taken, it had still only been a matter of weeks.

And now it stood there, almost fully matured. It was fascinating, and awe-inspiring, but the longer Judal stared at it the more it began to dredge up something else in him. A thought he'd been trying not to dwell on. If he stamped it down again he could ignore the sinking feeling in his gut for at least another two days, but that seemed a fruitless venture at this point.

"So…" Judal forced out, ignoring the nerves squirming uncomfortably inside his ribs. "Once you have your arm… Are you going back to Sidhe?"

It didn't take a genius to realize that wherever Hakuryuu had come from was not a wholly pleasant place to return to, but he was the duty-bound type. Judal expected a short, if solemn, answer. He didn't doubt that Hakuryuu was itching for a chance to escape the cramped apartment and the mortal realm altogether, and as much as it was going to hurt to know he wanted to leave, Judal understood.

Yet, rather than what he had been expecting, Hakuryuu turned his head quickly to look at him.

"What in the world would make you think that?" he asked, and Judal was astonished to hear bewilderment in the fae's voice. Hakuryuu blinked at him curiously, and Judal found himself fumbling for words.

"I mean—Don't you need to get back?"

Hakuryuu watched as his host shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, then rocked back on his heels. Judal's hands found their way into his pockets, elbows pulling in against his sides so he was forcing himself to be as compact as possible. He did this, whenever something made him uncomfortable, and this concerned the prince.

"There are probably people worrying about you back home, right?" Judal continued, talking more to the ground than Hakuryuu now. "You're a prince and stuff, so there's gotta be like a whole castle full of people wondering where you are."

Hakuryuu opened his mouth, but the words he wanted wouldn't come. He thought better of them a moment later and shut his mouth again, though his gaze remained on Judal.

Judal was alone. This was not a concept he was unfamiliar with, it was something impossible to ignore and had been for some time now. He had no family, and if he had any friends they were not close enough to him to mind the fact that all his free time was now spent with Hakuryuu. No one would worry if he suddenly went missing, no one would be concerned that he'd been hurt and then just vanished.

People would worry about Hakuryuu, though. Or at least in Judal's mind they probably would. Whether he was right or wrong was almost irrelevant, because what mattered was that he had considered it at all. That it had clearly been bothering him.

Or, maybe, a selfish part of Hakuryuu murmured; it was the thought of Hakuryuu leaving that concerned him.

"I cannot leave." the prince assured finally. "Not until my debt to you is fulfilled."

Judal looked up at him from behind his bangs, casting shadows over his ruby irises. There was an immediate urge to tuck his hair away from his face so nothing was obscuring their line of sight, an urge Hakuryuu had become remarkably adept at controlling in a short time.

"But there are, aren't there?" he asked. "People waiting for you back home, I mean."

Hakuryuu held Judal's gaze. He tried to find words to answer with, but each sentence his mind crafted refused to leave his tongue. Each one felt like a lie, no matter how small.

In trying to think of a way to answer his host, his mind drifted back to the place where he had come from. The palace walls, white as freshly fallen snow, draped in silks and velvets of rich indigo. The cold always biting at every inch of unclothed skin. The memory spread along his fingertips until he could almost feel it, and he drew his fingers subconsciously away from the Lady in response.

The snow and frost made him think of the day things had gone so drastically wrong. Ithnan and his pursuers circling him like starved vultures, prowling closer as they waited for him to die. The resistance he had helped to build scattered to the wind like leaves in a violent storm, and who knew how much of it had managed to survive. Iron. Sharp iron, cold as death, buried beneath his skin and spreading its venom through his veins. The agony had brought desperation, and desperation had called magic to him that tore open the very fabric of his reality.

Hakuryuu snapped back to the present and looked back to the Lady. The proud tree stood unaffected and unwavering, even as his magic pulsed warningly in the air. Judal still stood just behind him, though he hadn't said anything to draw the prince's attention back to him. As much as he wanted to offer Judal some kind of reassurance, he didn't want to see the look in his host's eyes just then.

Judal watched the prince as he lifted his hand again, drawing his fingers along the pale bark. His magic stopped vibrating in the air, relaxing back into the familiar hum that usually blanketed the courtyard. The question went unanswered, but he did not repeat it.

The next two days passed relatively quickly.

Judal tried not to dwell on negative thoughts, though they had a nasty habit of creeping their way into the back of his mind. He was distracted in class and got very little work done at home, too busy trying not to think about what Hakuryuu would do once he had his arm back. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this led to a lot of time thinking about what he would do once he had his arm back.

The two days felt like no time at all once they had passed, yet in the moment they had dragged on endlessly, the overbearing sense of anxiety hard to ignore. Judal had been restless, constantly plagued by a sense that he should be doing something, but failing to find any kind of productive activity when he actually stopped to look.

Hakuryuu wasn't much better. He talked less and slept more, which Judal could only assume was to gather his strength for the full moon. If he wasn't in the courtyard he was sitting in the window watching the sky, and it became a challenge to drag him away to eat. Neither of them said it, but the anticipation was enough to make them both fidgety.

The night of the full moon Judal gave up on all false pretenses of calm. He was too fractious to cook, so he ordered take-out and dragged Hakuryuu downstairs into the courtyard to eat it. They sat on the cooling concrete eating from styrofoam containers with cheap chopsticks, both lost in their own thoughts. The Silver Lady's leaves swayed with the breeze.

Night couldn't fall fast enough. The sun seemed to take its sweet time descending into the horizon, and each star that winked to life overhead was a little more taunting. Judal knew his eyes would be of little help but he looked upwards anyway, trying to find the moon. It was difficult to gauge when the night sky was at its peak within a city, the light and smog having obscured the heavens long ago.

"It's almost time." Hakuryuu murmured suddenly. His head was tipped back, eyes glittering with far more stars than were reflected above them.

"How can you tell?"

"I can feel it."

Judal wanted to ask how, but Hakuryuu's voice that taken on an almost airy tone that made him pause. It reminded him of someone who was still half-asleep, caught between reality and a dream somewhere. Just asleep enough to still feel the effects of a fantasy.

"You may want to go inside."

Judal started.

"What? Why?"

"The magic will be intense. I've never done something so complex in the mortal realm, I am not sure how it will affect you… It may be safer for you to not be present."

"Not a chance." he bumped his elbow into the fae's side, drawing his attention away from the sky. "You promised you'd show me, remember?"

Hakuryuu blinked his starry eyes at him, and Judal couldn't help feeling like he was staring at the sky again. He had seen snowstorms in those eyes before, raging waves and thunder, and now galaxies twisted around glacial depths. It was haunting. If he stared too long, Judal got the sense he may go mad.

( He got the sense he may want to. )

"So I did." Hakuryuu hummed, smile curling the edges of his mouth. "And I keep my promises."

He stood, extending his hand in offering. Judal's heart hammered against his ribs, all the anticipation from the days leading up to this morphing into excitement. He took Hakuryuu's hand and the prince hoisted him to his feet with considerably more ease than a one-armed man should have.

It felt like static when their hands connected, the little shocks carrying up his arm to his elbow even after Hakuryuu let him go. Judal was so focused on the way the prince was moving, more fluidly than usual, as if every step were part of a dance, that it took him several long moments to recognize the feeling of magic. The air was practically vibrating with power, buzzing intensely in his ears. The sound of it amplified with each step Hakuryuu took towards the Silver Lady, until Judal swore he could make out words in the static.

There was moonlight from overhead casting long shadows along the concrete, though if he looked up Judal had a feeling he would be unable to see the source of the light. And yet there it was, throwing the Lady into sharp relief. The silvery leaves glittered and the bark of the tree looked as pure as a fresh sheet of paper. There was a presence to the tree now, something alive, andJudal could suddenly see how someone might mistake the Lady for a woman in the midst of a storm.

Judal closed his eyes. He wasn't sure why he did it; maybe he was overwhelmed, or maybe it was instinct. The longer he stared at the Silver Lady the more it began to sway alluringly before his eyes. He'd been around it for weeks now, as it grew from shoot to sapling, but it felt different now. There was a reason it didn't grow here on its own, in the mortal realm.

With his eyes shut, there was only the hum of magic all around him. It began to tingle against his skin, fractious at first and then more insistent, like it was trying to find a crack to slip into so it could worm its way inside him. The static began to even out, the noise becoming less incoherent until it was no longer white noise but fervent whispers he couldn't quite catch.

When he opened his eyes, the Silver Lady had changed.

It was as if some invisible force had begun to twist the tree in on itself as easily as if its sturdy wood were warm sugar waiting to be spun. The Lady's glimmering leaves had fanned back against its branches, coating them in silver that began to look more and more like scales. The branches had begun to braid themselves together, each one carefully twisted into place. They twined around the tree's trunk in an intricate lacework of crossing boughs until it no longer looked anything like the proud tree from before, but an obelisk of spun silver.

Judal soon came to realize that the twisted woodwork had begun to lean downwards in a perfect arc. It extended itself just far enough over the plot where it still stood to be inviting, and Hakuryuu stepped into the moonlight.

He lifted his amputated arm until it was mere inches from what had once been the Silver Lady, and in the eerie light he appeared so pale that for a moment, Judal expected him to be translucent. In fact, the longer he looked the more convinced Judal became that he was seeing things. He blinked, but nothing changed; Hakuryuu had become blurred around the edges, almost like he was seeing him through an out of focus lens.

Judal's eyes widened. Before his eyes, a second skin seemed to peel away from Hakuryuu's arm, taking the opaque filter with it. Underneath, the skin was pale, though that word alone didn't seem to do it justice. The shape of his arm was familiar and yet jarringly different than before, like everything about it had been shifted a fraction to the side of where it should have been.

A voice not unlike Hakuryuu's murmured the word glamour in his mind, but it seemed like more than that. In all the stories Judal had devoured since Hakuryuu had come into his life the faerie people were always described the same; beautiful, but terrible. Alluring, but devastating. He wondered, in that moment, if this is what people meant by that. That they were a kind of being so radically different than a mortal that even if they didn't mean to, they cloaked their very presence.

People had lost their hearts, their souls, and their minds to the fae. This was the first time that Judal truly got a sense of why. There was something contained beneath that filter that the mortal realm had coated Hakuryuu in, something ancient and powerful that a mortal mind could not comprehend. Just a fraction of it was already rocking Judal to his core.

The magic in his ears turned from whispers into distant peals of laughter, too far away to catch tone or intent, but loud enough to jar him from his thoughts and back to the event at hand.

The Silver Lady had begun to move once more. The column of braided wood split at the top into thin tendrils that hovered for a moment before descending through the air. Their movements were not fluid, despite how it had twined itself together the Lady was still made of wood and bark and it showed in its movements. Each coil was forced to curl and twist itself through the air, groaning under the strain of trying to bend. Yet it was undeterred by the effort necessary to move, stretching itself out over the edge of the plot towards Hakuryuu's raised arm.

When the first coil met bare skin, the most remarkable thing happened. It began to grow along the curve of Hakuryuu's arm, like ivy clinging to a wall, and soon it was joined by others, and others, until it was difficult to tell where Hakuryuu's arm ended and the Lady began. The creeping vines were transfixing to watch as they twined their way around his amputated limb, almost beautiful in a surreal sense. Nearly hypnotic enough for Judal to forget what their purpose was and discount them as another alluring display of Hakuryuu's magic.

He recalled once telling Hakuryuu he didn't quite understand the tree-to-arm process he intended to undergo to replace his missing limb. Judal sucked in a sharp breath, eyes coming back into focus. A moment before it happened he understood exactly what the process would entail.

The silvery tendrils curved at the tip, pressing into the faerie's unearthly skin, and then began to grow into him.

Hakuryuu made a sound that came out too melodic to be a cry of pain, but some instinctual part of Judal recognized it as just that. He lurched slightly where he stood, forcefully shifting his weight forward before he could think better of it. Every part of him wanted to go to the prince and wrench the thing causing him pain away, even if his mind was telling him that would be unwise.

Lilac began to ooze from beneath Hakuryuu's skin; soon the silver of the wood burrowing its way into his flesh was slicked with purple blood, dripping in an agonizing staccato to the concrete below. Hakuryuu hissed between his teeth, muscles in his bicep fluttering as they tensed against the pain, but he did not flinch. He held himself steady as the Silver Lady took root inside him, even as it forced itself deeper, down to the very bone.

Judal could do little more than stand by and watch in a morbid combination of fascination and repulsion. Until this moment, he had still been laboring under the illusion that magic was the beautiful and mysterious thing of childhood fantasies. This was not beautiful. This, magic, was not sparkling dust and shimmering mist like in the movies. It was something raw, a force of nature being bent to the whim of a creature whose mind was strong enough to control it.

They could have been standing there minutes or hours and Judal wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. It was difficult for him to tell if he was even breathing, or if his heart continued to beat. The coils of silver were a bloody mess, undulating deeper and deeper into warped, raised skin until they finally seemed satisfied with how deeply they had taken root. Judal wanted that to be the end of it, but now Hakuryuu stood connected to the twisted Silver Lady.

He finally looked at the Silver Lady again, the act of dragging his eyes from the prince almost painful. While he had been focused on Hakuryuu, the Lady had begun to uproot itself. The tree, or what had once been one, seemed to be climbing its way from the earth. Its roots were silver beneath the dirt caked into each crevice and contour, and braided themselves into the column with the rest of the tree as they emerged.

What came next was difficult to describe. Later, Judal would say it looked as though the Lady had shrunk, but that wasn't entirely accurate. The groan of wood strained to its limit was deafening as the Lady seemed to drag itself towards its new roots in the prince's arm, twisting and compacting itself as it went. By mortal rules it should not have been possible for the entirety of the tree to force itself into a smaller space the way it did, but that is what happened. Even as he watched it, Judal didn't know how to rationalize it.

It stopped, club-like now, when it appeared to deem itself the appropriate size. The stillness of time seemed to dissipate then, and the next part of the process went by remarkably quickly. To Judal it felt as though he blinked a handful of times and by the time he opened his eyes the wood was different. And then, as suddenly as if it had always been there, there was a new limb.

Hakuryuu breathed out, long and low, and curled his new fingers inwards to form a fist.

"Thank you for your aid, Silver Lady," he breathed. "May you serve me well."

After that, the heavy magic in the air began to disperse until Judal could feel himself breathing again. The faint sound of traffic from distant streets drowned out the fading murmurs in his ears, and before long the moonlight had faded away entirely.

Judal was left standing in the dim courtyard, shaking his head to rid the last of the static from his mind. Hakuryuu was flexing his hand, curling and uncurling the fingers experimentally. He rotated his wrist several times, making a few small gestures to test his own reflexes. The plot where he had replanted the Lady was eerily empty now, a blank space amidst the otherwise lush courtyard.

It was surreal, the whole thing was. Judal wanted to pinch himself and smack his cheeks just to be sure he hadn't just dreamt it all up, even if he knew he hadn't. No dream could match the awe-inspiring reality he'd just endured.

"Judal? Are you alright…?"

Hakuryuu's voice sounded concerned, even if he tried not to let it show on his face. Judal wondered if he looked frightened, or dazed, or maybe a combination of the two. He'd like to say that fear wasn't what he was feeling, but in truth, he couldn't be sure anymore. Magic like that wasn't meant for mortal eyes, not really.

"I'm…" he faltered between honesty and a white lie, but the words were stuck in his throat.

Hakuryuu seemed to understand anyway.

"It was overwhelming, wasn't it?" he smiled. "Do not worry, it is that way for everyone the first time they witness it. Even me."

Judal wasn't sure what to say to that. He wanted to ask how Hakuryuu, who seemed so steady in the face of such untenable power, could understand what it was like to feel so dwarfed by it. What had his first experience with magic so old, so powerful, been like?

He found himself walking forward, slow steps carrying him across the courtyard to the prince's side. Judal's fingers twitched at his side, one hand raising slightly before pausing, unsure. Again, Hakuryuu seemed to understand him without any words.

"Please," he said gently, extending his new arm.

Judal hesitated for another fraction of a second before lifting his hand so that the wooden one was cradled in his palm. He half expected the wood to be hot, or electrocute him, or something else unpleasant, but it was only wood. Bolstered slightly by this, he traced the fingers of his right hand along Hakuryuu's palm.

The wood felt lacquered and smooth, as if hours had gone into honing and polishing it rather than mere moments. He wasn't sure how it all connected, but each finger had three joints, and there was one at his wrist as well, almost like some kind of puppet. Judal ran his finger from the heel of his palm up his middle finger, watching in awe as the digit seemed to respond to the touch.

"Can you feel that…?" he asked breathlessly, tracing his fingertips along each finger in turn.

"It is a living thing," Hakuryuu replied. "And now, it is a part of me. So, yes, I can feel somewhat."

"Somewhat?"

"It is dulled. Less true feeling and more a… murmur. My nerves can only be conveyed so much through the wood, but it will have to suffice."

"It's amazing, Hakuryuu."

Judal slid his hand along the underside of the arm, over his wrist and down his forearm until his fingers brushed against something curved. He stopped, eyes drifting to the collection of roots tethered into the prince's flesh. The blood had begun to congeal, turning a deep mulberry color.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"It aches, but that will pass. I have endured worse for less in the past."

"Should I stay home tomorrow…?"

"No, you have classes, you should attend—"

"I'm gonna stay home tomorrow."

Hakuryuu chuckled, but did not protest again.

They stood there in silence for a while longer, Judal's fingers mapping the intricate curved designs embossed on the silver wood. They were the life patterns of the tree that it had once been, but now they looked almost intentional. Hakuryuu watched him quietly, allowing the moments to drag on.

He raised his right hand suddenly, palm up. Judal understood what he intended without a word being spoken, and moved his hands so both fingers could run along his palms at the same time. He traced the same path, from the heel of Hakuryuu's palm up to the tip of his middle finger, on each hand. The left twitched, the same as before, but before he could finish his route the right's fingers curled around his.

Judal glanced up, and found the prince smiling softly at him. He relaxed both hands, curling his fingers around Hakuryuu's, flesh and wood pressing into his palms.

Notes:

For those who do not know, a glamour is a sort of magic or spell that disguises the user's appearance. Faeries are known for using glamours quite often to hide their true selves from mortals, or to disguise a place or thing they want to keep hidden, or appearing mundane. The spell Hakuryuu used to hide the changes to the courtyard from people outside the building is a glamour, for example.

In most cases a glamour is intentional, however in the case of what's described here it is not. Hakuryuu's "second skin" is the result of his natural appearance being too unnatural for the mortal world to even fathom without something covering it up. It doesn't disguise his appearance, just his true "nature".

Next chapter is going to be something a bit different, so I hope everyone is ready!