Fae, Chapter Two

Chapter Two

There was a quick flash that made me cover my eyes, and then the metal lock clinked against the concrete. I undid the shackle and then took more water to rinse my ankle off. The pale skin was relatively unmarred with the exception of a large bruise on the outside, where the joint protruded normally. I had probably pulled on the chain while unconscious during a dream cycle, but now it left me wondering if my other injury would allow me to stand. Shakily I moved to my knees, and then to my feet, leaning against the wall carefully. My wings still hid themselves, under the membrane on my back, beneath the worn dress I’d worn as disguise to travel relatively undetected. I know knew that fleeing home had been a bad idea, and only if luck was with me that my family would come for me. “Some princess, huh,” I said, and tried my weight out on my injured leg. It bared weight easily. Looking over at the dog, I noticed that it was once again watching me intently, and in another flash, I subdued it with more magic. With the sickening metal off of my skin, I was one step closer to having my full powers back. The tattoo around my ankle spoke of nobility, and I wondered if any of these humans knew that. To them, however, I supposed that the nobility would be nothing other than more fairies to sell at the exotic slave markets.

 I ran my hand through my long black hair, and wondered at my next problem: How to get out of the place I was now imprisoned in. In my head, I heard the echoes of Aloriel’s screams, and wondered if she blamed me for what had happened. As someone who had merely been assigned to me, maybe she blamed me for what had happened. Yet, over the past couple of seasons, she had become my close friend and confidant, so inside I hoped that -perhaps-  that wouldn’t be so. I had not realized that my eyes had drifted closed until my hand slid forward on the smooth concrete wall and I jerked, following the motion. Deciding to continue to gather my strength, I sat once more and ate a few more fruits, drank more water, and then slept. Aloriel was unable to use magic, and so I was the only one of the two of us truly equipped to handle the situation. Aloriel was the handmaid – I was the warrior. Though Father had tried to convince me not to, I had trained with my brothers before. I knew how to use magic offensively as well as defensively, a skill that my mother still held mastery of, despite having fallen into an early grave not long after my birth, near sixty years ago. Years were like minutes to us, however, yet for my father, the loss had dealt a blow he had yet to recover from.

Waking at the sound of something outside the door once more I looked to find someone looking into the slot. As I had folded myself over the shackle and my leg, the human did not notice that I had managed to free my leg from the bond. Though I could not hear anything more, I sensed that someone was still there, patiently waiting for something. A few minutes later, I heard the bolt being opened again, and I moved into a crouch quickly, covering the shackle with my dress very carefully. When the door opened, I sprung, only to be confronted, face to face, with Aloriel herself. “Mira,” she coughed, and I realized that she was no longer wearing the dress I had last seen her in. Instead, someone had replaced it with a large cloth shirt, but beneath the cloth, I could see the wounds caused by the animal that had chosen to attack her last night, instead of me. She fell into the room with a nauseating clumsiness that I had never seen before in anything she had ever done. She had been cared for, like I had, but it seemed like on her, the bandaging had come over the hours. “Aloriel,” I whispered, “What on Earth happened?” I picked her up, careful with her.
She had always been the smaller one of us two young fae. Being the younger, however, she was at little bit shorter, and because of her lack of training, much less muscular than I. Carrying her over to my corner, I heard a minor uproar in the hall from where she had been deposited and suspicions told me that they had seen me rush the door. So I was now in the danger of facing better and more painful bonds. “They took us last night. The dog attacked me, and they pulled it off in time to keep it from killing me.” Her voice was coarser that my own, and I noticed the bruising around her neck. “I’m so sorry, Aloriel,” I said, and setting her down on the floor, I put her head on my lap.

Though I could not heal myself, I decided that the magic I had would be better spent healing her of her wounds than spent on futile escape efforts. Around my ankle the tattoo glowed bright, and I let the magic flow from my hands into her temples, and from there I watched the sparks of energy travel around her body, to her injuries, then deeper into her body. Her eyes flickered from being half open, to completely closed as her body shut down to heal fully. Drained, I collapsed back against the wall, continuing to listen to her breathing, deepening and recovering. Knowing that she was safe was a comfort to me. As the companion I’d now had for a long length of time, though I wouldn’t mention it to anyone, she had also become the sister I’d never been gifted with. A commoner servant, as per custom, should never have been viewed as such, which is why I kept such feelings private.

No one came into the room for the rest of the day, and as the daytime turned to night, the moonlight drifted in through the dust and the window, giving our concrete world a whole new look. “Mira,” I heard Aloriel’s voice at a distance, and then my eyes opened slowly, my energy levels still low from the healing I’d managed on the girl who was now attempting to wake me. “Wake up, it’s important,” she said. I focused on her, and then woke up fully as I realized that I had been dreaming the entire image of even a remotely beautiful cell night. There was no moon tonight, it was a New Moon and the only light that came into the room was through the window, but it was orange, and produced by fiery torches lit not far from the glass and metal portal. I then looked at Aloriel, who’s face seemed abruptly relieved. “Good, you’re okay,” her warm voice, too, seemed much calmer as I surveyed her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Nothing,” she spoke simply. “I was worried that you had fallen into a slumber that you would not return from.”

I looked at her tiredly. “I’m fine. How are you feeling, though?” I asked her, looking down at where her head had been not long ago. Or, at least, what I thought had only been a short time. From the way the light had gone from bright to deep dark, I assumed that I had in fact slept for more than half the day. “I’m fine, thanks to you,” Aloriel said calmly, though gratefully as she stood, and curtsied in the overlarge shirt. “It’s fine.” My voice was exhausted, and cracked from dehydration.

Taking a handful of water, Aloriel lifted my mouth to drink it more easily. “Doing your job?” I asked sarcastically. “I told you that you were free of your duties when we left the castle, Aloriel.” I said, and sat up straight, taking more water in my hands for myself. The water spilled out, however, when Aloriel smacked them back towards the bucket. “You healed me, and you still are the princess of my kingdom. Wether you’re a runaway or not.” I looked at her with a weary expression, and then decided I was too weak to win this small battle at the moment. “Fine. Just remember your place, then.” I said, and she nodded. “If you’re going to think of me in those terms, despite our agreement.”

She sighed after a few minutes of nursing me back to a livelier form. After a few hours of boredom, I even decided that escape was going to be our only option. Looking at Aloriel she nodded, and then I sat back down again from where I’d been pacing, the freshly awoken dog watching my motions lethargically, pretending to not care about how close I got to it’s starving mouth. Her luscious and curly red hair was something to be admired, as well as her crystalline blue eyes that reminded me so much of the fountains on the castle grounds. Her dress was dull red, like bricks that have faded with the years. Mine was blue, and dark like the night sky. Perhaps that had been why she had been attacked first while it had taken my screams to alert anyone to my presence. We’d both taken the same route in the end, but it had been the colors that had given her away. “Aloriel, let’s trade dresses,” I said, and then so we did. With a simple amount of magic, I also made the two of us change the colors of our eyes and our hair, switching them as well.

“I think they’ll sell us at the market,” Aloriel said after a while, in the perfect guise of me as I once again fed on the remaining fruit in the bucket. Strength was what I was going to need to pull off the escape there. But it would be easier, in the confusion of the yelling and the human trash selling yet more creatures like us and better. Unicorns, gryphons, all of them were rare to find now because of the value they had as pelts and so called medicines made out of their ashes, bones, and hair. For all I knew, the single horned creatures I’d once known in my youth two decades ago were now gone. Dead. Extinct at human hands. “When do you think?” Aloriel asked, and I shook myself from the reverie. “I don’t think they trust that we’ll be around long. If they actually know Fae, they’ll even know that one of us isn’t a normal faerie. I can use magic, you can’t. No one else outside of the Royal family can, not since the Great War.” Aloriel nodded. “It doesn’t matter to them once we’re sold, either. Once their paid, we should leave,” her voice was quiet and contemplating. “I already have a plan,” I said, enthusiasm burning in my voice. “All we need is to be away from these concrete power-sucks, and we’ll be free.”

Aloriel sighed. “But then where will we go? What if someone else finds us?” Her voice was pleading, and I could picture what was going through her mind all too well – the knowledge that her family had long noticed her absence, or perhaps it was even the pain of last night coming again to cut through her mind as if the injuries still lingered. I had been told by my mother that mental hurt was the thing that always took the longest to recover from. It left deeper scars than any physical weapon could. They were made by fears, words, and experiences, and I now realized that the fear that Aloriel felt was nobody else’s fault then mine. I made my mind up then that when we escaped, we were going home.

Fae, Chapter One

Chapter One.
New Environments.


I haven’t seen Aloriel in over a day. If she had survived the first attack, and they hadn’t let their dog eat her alive, I wondered how she was faring in this alien environment. In my own room, I watched the dog in the corner, sleeping as it stayed chained to the wall, just like me. In this light, it almost looked more like a victim in it’s own way, than another of my jailers. “Well, it’s awake,” a male voice said, and I saw a pair of doll-like eyes peering through the portal in the solid wood door I had been thrust through only hours earlier. “Yes, I am, human,” a female voice that wasn’t mine answered, though I know I had been the one who had spoken. My throat was cracked and painful. I had hurt it, too, screaming for Aloriel.

“Well, fae,” it replied with a tone amusement, the eyes crinkling in the corners. “I’ve brought something for you.” There was the sound of a bolt being thrown back, and then I watched in caution as the door opened, and a small man carrying a bucket of water and what looked like fruit came in. His old eyes had been the ones I had seen through the door. “What do you want with me? Where is Aloriel?” I asked, trying to stand on my injured leg that a snatcher had stepped on yesterday. “Right now, I want to bandage your wounds, like I’ve been instructed,” his voice was mildly irritated, and when he set the bucket down, a second one was set outside the door, with a rag hanging over the side. The man returned to the door, retrieved the second bucket, and then allowed for the door to be closed behind him by someone who did not show themselves.

“Where is Aloriel?” I demanded again of the man as he set to work on the wounds I had received the night previous. There were deep gashes that had bled  thick dark blood from my veins, and that had now crusted over and dried. “I do not know anyone by that name, fae,” his voice was calmer now as he scrubbed away at my wounds, and something about him willed me not to push the question again.

“Where am I, then?” I asked. “Hunting town,” he replied shortly. I tensed. So if she was still alive, she was probably here somewhere. It was, however, a strong if.  So where she could be here, where? My head throbbed, and I reached a hand up to see that my head too, had a minor gash. The man took my hand away and touched the warm, wet cloth to it. The injury stung when the water hit it, but my pale skin was becoming cleaner as slowly and steadily my blood came off my injuries and onto the cloth. When he was done, he applied cloth bandaging, and then motioned towards the two buckets he’d brought in first, containing the clean water and fruit. “Eat,” he instructed, before knocking at the door, and then blinking once or twice in the eyes of the person who looked back at him through a slit in the door. “I’m done,” the man said gruffly to the person I could not see, and then he was allowed out, and I was once again alone.

I took the time after he left to look with greater detail around the small stone room I was in. The walls and floors were all concrete – something I had only been exposed to once or twice in my life before. It’s cold hard texture was still alien, however, and curling my legs within my long and tattered dress, I was glad for the earthen fabric’s warmth. There was one small window, though metallic bars covered the would-be exit well, and I entertained no hopes of escaping through the small spaces. I looked at the shackle that dug slightly into my ankle, despite the slender build of my body. I was the size of the average ten year old child, but with thinner limbs and a more willowy figure, I only weighed the equivalent of eighty-five human pounds.

Across the room, the dog had woken from the human’s presence. He looked at me, not in anger or in hunger, but in sadness. Normally, animals and Fairy Folk got along fairly well, but dogs bred under human care were raised to be violent and kill those unfamiliar to them, and to protect their masters, all when told. This one looked slightly starved, as if it had been here for a while, neglected. I took a piece of fruit, an apple, and rolled it across the floor towards him. The creature sniffed it, but didn’t take it into it’s mouth. Thinking they might have been coated in something, I took another piece of fruit and sniffed it as well. There was nothing, but it meant that the dog liked his food a little redder. “Suit yourself,” I murmured under my breath, but said nothing more. It thumped it’s tail once and then sat it’s head down on it’s paws, sighing. Biting into the peach I had picked up, I ate it quickly, then drank some of the water with my hands, glad that this bucket, at least, was cold. I took a small handful of the water and let it splash onto the back of my neck and then used another to rinse the rest of my face off. My right leg was shackled, and because of it’s tightness, the injury the night previous and the abrasions from the shackle burned in synchrony. Through the bandaging, the water chilled the abrasions and the scrapes over it, and I sighed in relief.

Finishing the peach I groaned, realizing that I was now stuck with no way out, but maybe, I then thought, magic could help. A spark jumped from one hand to the other, and I smiled. But even that small amount of magic taxed me, in this human hovel. Away from the magic of my home, I was limited in my powers. Taking another apple from the bucket, I ate it quickly, and then I looked at the shackle’s locking mechanism. It was a padlock, and the small keyhole doubtless hid a plethora of different turntables and impossible mechanisms to pick with any ordinary picks. It was a good thing that I wasn’t looking to pick it. I was looking to make it explode.

Coying To Be Strange

----This is something that I wrote for extra credit in my English 9 Class last year. It might be hard to follow, but it's set somewhere in the empty space of the afterlife, where Romeo, Juliet, Tybalt, and Mercutio all gather to discuss who's fault it is that they're all dead. Both Tybalt and Mercutio are absolutely bewildered as to why, during the lover's affair, that they of all people should have ended up dead. Read below for more.

Write a Scene

Romeo: Intresting times. Do you think they've learned?

Juliet: Perhaps, but I think they're quarrel will be over us, instead.

Tybalt: And who's fault was whos.

Mercutio: Ho! And who's fault was it, then?

(All three look at Mercutio)

Mercutio: For it was both the lady's and the gent's fault, was it not?

Romeo: What do you mean, friend?

Tybalt: True, it was your compulsive heart, wasn't it!

Juliet: Nay, this could not be all our fault!

Romeo: I do protest these accusations fully.

Mercutio: You both are fools.

Tybalt: (creeping closer to Mercutio) *whispers* Sorry again, for the square's quarrel.

Romeo: And I apologized at your grave! (Romeo points at Tybalt)

Juliet: The things lovers quarrel over.

Tybalt: Cos, keep your mouth shut in the matter.

Juliet: I will not!

Romeo: We're all the more foolish for quarelling. We're all dead, nothing
will change for it.

Mercutio: And who's fault is it that both of  US (*gestures to Tybalt and
himself* ) are dead, then? I don't remember such a lover's bond!

Tybalt: I point, I say, he does yet have.

Juliet: Tybalt, you're coying to be strange.

Romeo: And roses are still roses.

Mercutio: And so dead we'll stay!

(All three fade away)

Fae, Prologue

Prologue.

“Aloriel, step carefully,” I whispered into the darkness as I too minded my steps through the forest as we made our way through it. It wouldn’t be dawn for several hours – and at this rate, we would be far from our home castle by that time. “Mira?” There was a muffled growl from somewhere nearby, and cautiously I reached out a hand to see if I could feel Aloriel nearby. I only felt empty air as I took in an adrenaline fueled breath. “Aloriel?” I said, louder. I needed to find her. A wild dog would kill our unarmed duo in a flash. “Aloriel?” I called at the top of my lungs when in a couple quick seconds I still had not heard her.

“Mira!” Her scream came from yards away, and I ran towards it, before I heard the blood-churning tearing, and her sickening scream. Before I could get any further, a hands grabbed my arm, and then my head was thrust downward.

Fairy snatchers.