Discovering Fae
Understanding

After I rested for a moment, Rollie returned with both swords in his hand, insisting we continue. The lead to a long-winded argument about not hurting me while trying to hurt me. It was briefly suggested we use emotional pain, but I nixed that stupid idea with a zap of electricity right at Naz’s chest. He was lucky Rollie stepped in the way and absorbed it, otherwise he would have at least been a little fried.

While everyone ate dinner and chatted, I walked into one of the fields, letting my hands run over the tops of the wheat until I reached a maybe ten-foot square section that was trimmed back and separated from the rest of the field by a low, stacked rock wall. Inside were eight large, flat stones nestled into the earth with runes carved into them.

I crouched and ran my fingers over the markings on one before looking at its neighbor, a frown pulling on my face.

“Graves usually mean there’s a body left to bury,” Rollie said, startling me a little. “Memorials. That one is for Haddie.”

“What are these runes?” I asked.

“Her beginning,” he came over and ran his fingers over the first line, then the second and third. “Her life. And her death.”

“Can that really be summed up in a few runes, though?” I asked, looking at the others.

“No. I don’t think an entire library can sum that up,” he followed my gaze. “Three Nulls.”

“And the other four?” I asked.

“Not everyone is fortunate to have a Soul Bond, Fae,” he smiled sadly at me. “I was married, once, before I knew how long I could live. Before I understood what it meant to have life that stretched far longer than nearly any other species.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“We had a good life together. A son, who married and brought his wife home. A granddaughter,” he said, getting a distant look in his eyes. “I’m not sure how it happened, but I came back from the far field with my son and the house was a pile of ash. We didn’t even see smoke, and nothing was hot to the touch. Arden was... broken, after that. One day he just left. I haven’t seen him in nine hundred years now.”

“But there’s a chance he’s still alive, right?”

“Did you know that we can have children with humans with less stress than with other fae?” he asked, looking at me. “Fae blood is powerful, but the youth of humanity is powerful in its weakness. The odds of fae having a fae child with a human are very, very low. Patrina was human.”

“I thought there were no humans in the Sidhe,” I looked at him shocked.

“They were... hidden away from society,” he made a face. “Human servants were very common back then. It was a game for the fae, to sneak to earth and ensnare a human with our glamour. There were rules, obviously, if you wanted to keep the human, but changelings were very good at skirting the rules.”

“You stole her?” I glared at him.

“If there was any stealing, Fae, it was done by Trina. She stole my breath away with one glance, and then my heart very soon after,” he chuckled. “She was born in the Sidhe. Back then, humans were slaves and the fae that owned them were, for the most part, cruel. I saw her late one night in a marketplace near Blood Keep, where most vampires live.”

“Her owner was a vampire?”

“No, her owner was a demon who was killed for treason against the vampire Lord. Trina, along with all of his other ‘belongings’ were put up for sale in an auction,” he grinned widely. “It took every coin I had, but I bought her. I was bringing her to my family home, which, by then, was all but ruined, but she was fiery, just like her hair.”

“She fought you every step of the way, didn’t she?” I laughed. “On earth, it’s pretty common for red heads to be fierce.”

“She wasn’t fierce so much as annoyingly sarcastic,” he snorted. “It was one extreme or another, no in-between. You ask for a stick of wood to shift the coals in the fire, she threw a log at you. We finally broke. Right here, actually. Yelling and screaming at each other until she blurted out that she thought I was handsome.”

“What is it with men being vain?” I rolled my eyes. “I swear, some of you are worse than women.”

“She said the exact thing, nearly,” he laughed loudly, rocking backwards onto his butt. “It’s a good thing she never met Haddie. Gods, that woman preened enough to make a peacock sick.”

“You loved a human. Is that why you don’t live in the Demon Lands?” I asked.

“There are plenty of humans in the Demon Lands. But, yes, that’s why I didn’t live in the Demon Lands then. Now, I just have no desire to be there,” he nodded, looking over at the stones.

“And your son, Arden? He was human, too,” I added.

“His wife was a Morphi. A mouse. Very rare,” he nodded. “She was a lot like you. She wanted simplicity. Being a mouse Morphi wouldn’t get her that. Instead, she was pretty much imprisoned in a gilded cage by her own family until she was old enough to have children. Then, they would pretty much turn her into a prostitute in the hopes she would get pregnant with another mouse Morphi.”

“Gross. What kind of family does that?”

“A very poor one,” Rollie shrugged. “Poverty makes people do some disgusting things in order to survive.”

“Arden saved her, then?” I asked.

“Nah. My Ardy was too timid for a daring rescue,” Rollie smiled, very much the proud father. “She escaped before they could do anything. One morning, Arden goes to check the grain silo and found a scared, soaked and half frozen mouse and brings her inside. He had a soft heart, that boy. Couldn’t harm another being to save his life.”

“What about your granddaughter?” I asked.

“She was too young to have Awakened. She was only six,” he smiled again. “But she had bright red hair, just like Trina, and the soft brown eyes of her mother. But that little girl was almost exactly like Haddie was, before all of the drama happened and twisted her up so badly.”

“I’m jealous of you, Rollie,” I sighed after a second. “I would give anything- everything- to have only a few decades of this.”

“I am jealous of you, actually,” he admitted. “You have a Soul Bond. He may have a blink of a life span, compared to us, but he’ll share your years. He’ll age as you do. You’ll never have to watch time wearing away on the one you love. What I wouldn’t give in order to have had that with Trina.”

“It sucks that the Caller is the one that needs the support,” I said quietly and looked towards the house where I knew Mal was sitting outside, watching the tips of our wings out here. “Everyone deserves to be loved for who they are like this.”

“That boy would love you like that regardless of some stupid Call,” he laughed. “Just like I loved Trina or how Arden adored Evette.”

“It feels like I cheated, sometimes,” I shook my head. “I’d never take it back. I loved Mal before I knew we were Bonded.”

“Wait,” he held up his hand. “Please, explain this.”

I told him about how I made my Call, falling into a pool, how I was being hunted down and didn’t know by who, and with my Awakening, how we went on the run. My capture and torture at the hand of Rex, my Awakening, the loss of Nando and the physical recovery I went through, but the emotional instability we all felt that never seemed to heal, only fester. I told him about how we were trying to replace Zane and how I hoped my status of ‘freakishly odd’ would help me bring him back, how things had gone way off track now and, when I was finished, he put his hand on my shoulder and sighed heavily.

“There is so much to unpack in that, I’m not sure where to start,” he said, standing up and lighting a fire in the palm of his hand, now that it had started to get dark. “Let me show you something. It always helped Eve when her mind got too busy, in the beginning.”

I followed Rollie back towards the house and into the barn where he transferred the flame to an oil lamp.

“You said you’ve met a Chimera, but did you know that they have a dominant aspect?” he said, hanging the lamp on a hook on a post and bending down to pull open a hatch in the floor. “One of their parts shows up stronger than the rest.”

“No,” I answered as he lifted the lamp again and walked down the wooden stairs.

“Eve was a Chimera, I think. Her Morphi side was the part that manifested the most, but I think she hid or suppressed the earth fairy part,” he said as I followed him. “I asked, once, but she denied it quite harshly. But, then again, Chimera were seen to be unstable and dangerous and were killed immediately, back then. This always helped her feel better.”

I looked around when he hung the lamp up on another hook on one of the beams above us. It was a small-ish space. Aside from the wood above us, the whole thing was made of dirt. The smell of the soil was so strong, I could nearly feel it in the air. Oddly, though, there was nothing damp or dank about it at all. Just clean, rich soil.

“I might not be as powerful as I used to be, but I always had a better than average handle on water magic,” Rollie explained, picking up a wooden chair and dusting away the cobwebs while he made sure it was sound to sit on. “I had intended to use this space as a root cellar, but Eve found it too comforting for me to take from her. After losing my family, I would come in here, too. Being surrounded by earth, the most stable of elements, helps bring balance when it feels like the whole world is upside down.”

“It does seem... cozy?” I tilted my head.

“You are very strong in fire and air,” he sat the chair down. “Neither of which are calm to begin with, but with spirit added into the mix, I’m not entirely shocked that you’re so confused.”

“Thanks,” I said flatly, rolling my eyes.

“That’s not bad, Fae,” he said, steering me by my shoulders to sit down. “Confusion often leads to understanding, just like conflict often leads to peace. Tell me, what do you know about spirit?”

“It’s a pain in the ass,” I deadpanned.

He laughed, far too amused at the situation.

“The soul is the source of your life. It’s the part that makes your brain work, your heart beat, the organs function,” he said. “That’s why your Bond with Mal is called a Soul Bond; two people with souls, the subtlest of nuances that make life, that perfectly complement one another. That connection transcends life and death. So, what makes Spirit Bonds so different?”

“Hell if I know,” I shrugged.

“Because spirit is not the soul. Everyone is born with one, but it grows with the person. It makes up who you are, in detail; it’s your personality,” he said. “Spirit Bonds fade as the spirit, the personality, of the Caller changes. You felt it, today. You tapped into that part of yourself, got to experience what it felt like. Now, you need to work on getting to know how it acts. I have a feeling that, once your spirit calms, everything else will become far less daunting.”

“So, what? I’m just going to sit in a room of dirt?” I asked skeptically.”

“If only it were that easy, I would have tossed you in here when I knocked you out of the sky,” he snorted. “Self-awareness. You lack it so badly, it’s like you’re a black hole.”

“Ouch,” I crossed my arms.

“It’s simply an observation. After all of the mess you’ve been through this year, I can understand how you got to be so lost. Therapy is effective, but it takes time. Time that we don’t have. So, meditation.”

“For real?” I looked at him flatly. “That’s the grand solution? I’ve tried this, Rollie. It didn’t work.”

“That was before your Awakening. Try it again, this time, reach for the thing you felt before,” he said. “I’ll let Mal know what you’re doing so he doesn’t panic too badly.”

He walked up the stairs and I sighed, looking up at the beams. I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping down here. Maybe Mal would come get me once I passed out. Hopefully, he would bring back-up, since I now weighed significantly more than before I had these heavy as crap wings on my back.

I slid off the chair and let my wings rest out to my sides, taking up most of the space around me with their size and multitude of feathers. I had to admit, they were pretty stunning. The feathers were black, but in the sun, they had hints and undertones of blues and reds that made them appear to have a depth to the color that you could never see with plain black. Under the large feathers sat the soft down feathers that helped keep grit from reaching the skin and keep the temperature regulated. Soft, fluffy, and adorable to look at.

I crossed my legs and dug my fingers into the dirt in front of me, lifting some up and letting it fall through the gaps slowly.

“Nando, you would love to get your hands on this stuff,” I said softly then sighed. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I guess I never did, but now things have gotten so far out of hand, I wonder if maybe you had the right idea to leave the mess before it got this bad. And the worst part is that I can’t get rid of any of it. Not truly. I can’t just exist and be happy with my speck of an existence, unseen and forgotten about. I never was going to get ‘normal’. I know that now, but I could adjust before. I could make of it what I could, but this is just... It’s too much weight that I never was able to carry.”

I closed my eyes and tried to smooth out the bumps and kinks that my mind has had since... Gods, it felt like forever. I couldn’t even blame it on the Call, anymore. Not really. I’ve felt so... lost and confused for a very long time. I don’t even know when it started.

Maybe there was some merit to this approach. Gods only knew therapy had been ruined for me. Besides, if anyone would know what I was feeling right now, it would be Rollie, right? I mean, he might be old as a fossil now, but he wasn’t much older than me when this all happened for him. He, at least, knew what he had in front of him as far as the Awakening went, but maybe he was just what I needed.

Eventually, I started seeing suggestions of colors behind my eyes and flashes of memories too quick to recognize. After some amount of time that I was unable to measure, I felt the wispy brush of threads and opened my eyes to see...

The only way to describe it in simple words would be ‘this is what chaos and confusion look like’. Some places looked like places I had been on Earth. The house and city where I had met everyone that were now the most important people in my life, even parts of Nana’s house and the strip club, but they were all mushed together randomly with things I had seen so far in the Sidhe. The kitchen of the strip club was fused with the bathroom of the house and the garden of my parents’ castle in a haphazard way, making it look like some kind of abstract artwork that should be in an overpriced museum somewhere.

Over all of that, however, was this cloying darkness that made my heart race in fear as I scrambled away from it.

“Where the hell am I now?” I muttered to myself.