in pursuit of knowledge

by orphan_account

Summary:

"I'll appoint you a staff, if you want. A room in the palace, even. All I ask is that you please continue your work and spread your findings. People are still ruled by fear that comes simply from not understanding, and I believe your work could remedy that. Things still have a way to go."

And fear that comes from having seen those bird-winged ones lift ironclad soldiers into the air and throw them around effortlessly, you think, but you don't say this because she's looking at you with the widest eyes you've ever seen on a person and besides, it sounds like an almost impossibly sweet deal. You'd be an idiot to turn this down.

Chapter 1

The war had ended as quickly as it began, peace marked by a great and magical bridge spanning the watery gap between the kingdom and the Moors, with only one rule to those who sought to venture to the other side: do so with kind intentions, and kind intentions alone. In these first few days following the marriage of the young new king and queen, travelers were few and far between. Sure, officially speaking, there was to be peace and prosperity and puppy love, but a flowery wedding hadn't wiped anybody's memory of the battle that preceded it, enchanting though it was. Save for a few, humans stayed where they thought they'd be safe. Save for a few, fey stayed where they thought that they belonged.

You count yourself among humanity's curious few, something you owe strictly to your research. The study of magical creatures had previously been looked down upon as an almost barbaric pursuit, but now that there's this convenient little truce in place, you have free reign of the Moors where previously you had only ever skirted the edges, studying flora by the light of the moon before rowing yourself back in the little dinghy that you kept hidden for your illicit trips. But now? It's official. It's allowed.

You're shaking from the excitement. Nauseous and lightheaded with it, even.

Or maybe you're deathly allergic to this plant.

The plant in question is a massive flower, easily larger than your head and rich purple shot through with meat-red veins. A cluster of stamen bristles in the center and the whole thing exudes a sweet odor that you're now understanding the drawbacks to huffing in.

( Makes one feel like they're dying? ) you scratch down optimistically, reeling back and blinking your eyes rapidly. It makes you feel better than declaring this thing, ( Plant That Kills You ), though only emotionally. Physically, you swear that your stomach is trying to climb out of your mouth. You catch yourself on the bark of a nearby tree, hearing a shrill twittering all around. You're about to tentatively write about how it's making you hear things, too, when a gentle brush against your hand stops you. Small things that flutter like insects begin to swarm you, little faces pressing into your own and strange, shining eyes glittering curiously. You swallow hard.

"Hi, there. Um...I'm—I think I really screwed up." You're not sure why you're confessing this to them. Maybe you're just hoping they'll take note of your lousy last words for posterity.

They're beautiful, you realize faintly, flesh and flower that they seem to be, but you're too nauseous to ask if they'd hold still so you could draw them. Impossibly small hands press against your clammy cheeks and you think that it'd be pretty poetic, dying in the company of these little sprites, so poetic that it might even overshadow how absolutely embarrassing it is that you've been reduced to a death rattle on your first official outing to the Moors.

What feels like hundreds of those same delicate little hands begins to pull your sleeve. You're not so far undone that you've lost your curiosity, so you force your feet to obey their urging and you're grateful that they seem more than willing to help you when you stumble, moving in a gentle swarm around you. It's like walking on clouds. Walking on clouds with a hangover and the shakes.

Peace and prosperity and puppy love and poisonous flowers.

Your cloud drifts through towering trees and blossoming bushes and with each new thing you pass you ache with frustration and longing. You should stop. You should examine that. Or that, or those, or...

You barely notice the sound of voices over the hum of your own personal swarm. They're in your hair, your clothes. You imagine you must look ridiculous. The faint voices grow louder, human and inhuman alike. You peer through the thousands of small bodies leading you along, and you see light and flowers and a gathering of some sort. It parts, Moorfolk scampering and leaning out of your way and you slur your apologies. You're sweaty in spite of your shivering, and that sweet smell feels like it's been burned into your nostrils.

"Oh, my word!" Someone exclaims in a flutelike voice. Your cloud of saviors is letting you go, now, and you tumble onto the soft and mossy ground like a sack of potatoes. You don't even try to fight your exhaustion, to see who is lifting you up from the ground. Through the haze of illness, you're mortified, and shame can't catch you when you're unconscious.

 

When you come to, you're somewhere warm and lit by by the rich light of a setting sun. You feel clean, lighter—you feel the best you have in ages, really. You prop yourself up on the thickly woven mat that you've been set on to see that your hospice is the shelter of a willow tree's long, concealing tresses. You're still out in the Moors. While you're awake and refreshed, you decide that now is as good a time as any to update your notes on that mysterious purple flower (which you hope has no official name so that you can dub it the Bastard Flower), only when you go to reach for your satchel, it isn't on or near you.

Ah. So whoever's been so kind to you has a price, after all.

"That's fine, that's okay." You mutter, trying to keep down your rising ire. It's fine! That was only a vessel containing a chunk of your valued research and also most of your coin and also a good amount of tools. Totally okay that it was snatched off of you. You're not about to throw a tantrum and ruin the romantic twilight.

You let out a teensy, tiny, itty bitty wail of anguish and fury, though.

"Oh! They must be awake!" Comes a voice from beyond the curtain of leaves, followed by a rustling before a figure parts the willow branches and you forget how to breathe. It's the queen herself, the new one, all rosy and beautiful, beaming down at you with a sort of excitement that feels strange, like she's the one meeting royalty. She's prettier up close. You look down reflexively, only to spy your leather-bound notebook clutched in her grip. Queen Aurora's been reading your work, and she looks excited about it. Curioser and curioser.

You really hope you're not just experiencing delusions as some next stage in the side effects of that no good, wretched flower.

"Are you alright? Why did you scream?" She asks, and your breath comes back to you in a sharp gasp when she kneels down to look at you closely. Her skirts pool like gossamer and milk around her. She's still holding your notebook.

"Just, um. Testing my voice." You reply lamely, feeling heat rush to your face. She frowns and reaches out a hand as if to touch your forehead, and you instinctively lean back.

"Are you alright? Soarin said you'd be better after some rest, but if you still aren't feeling well—"

"May I have my notebook back?" You blurt without really meaning to. She looks startled, and you trip over your words some before continuing, "I need to finish my entry while it's still in my mind, is all. Do you have my satchel? I'll need something to write with."

She blinks and then lights up all over again. "Of course! Just a moment," and like that, Queen Aurora leaves the willow branches swinging in her wake and you realize with a rush of awkwardness that you, you rude beast, didn't even call her your majesty. She's back before you have enough time to totally lose the composure that you're so desperately clinging to. You notice that there's a crowd of smaller Moorfolk clustering just at the edge of what you can see, thanks to this willow. They look interested in your waking, or maybe they're interested that Queen Aurora's so apparently taken with you, and you wish they'd come closer so you could study them better. You get the sense that this may be the lot left over after you interrupted whatever gathering had been in session earlier with your dramatic entrance.

The satchel's familiar, comforting weight is set into your lap and you let a whooshing breath of relief.

"Actually, there was something I meant to ask...but first, what's your name?" You tell her distractedly and she nods, though you don't see it. You're too busy writing down the rest of your experience with the Bastard Flower. "I wanted to ask, is this all your research? All these notes?"

"Mhm." You're busy writing. Lost consciousness...

"You've been studying Moorfolk, then?"

"So far just the plants, but I'm hopeful." The creatures themselves had kept their distance until peace was declared. You wonder if you'll be able to thank your pixie-swarm-saviors.

Queen Aurora has this fond, conspiratorial look on her face that you finally see when you finish your entry. You cock an eyebrow.

"I think that's wonderful! If humans knew more about the Moorfolk, I'm sure that would help so many of them find peace with the alliance." Peace, prosperity. She tucked a lock of golden hair behind one ear. Puppy love. You stuff your notebook into your satchel.

"This is really more of a hobby for me. A hobby that's sometimes ludicrously dangerous. Thank you for not letting me die. Um, your majesty." You tell her.

"Would you like an official position?" She asks you, finally reveaing the true reason behind her eager expression.

You both stare at each other for a long moment, you wondering if you heard her right and she no doubt anxious to hear your response.

"An official...?"

"I'll appoint you a staff, if you want. A room in the palace, even. All I ask is that you please continue your work and spread your findings. People are still ruled by fear that comes simply from not understanding, and I believe your work could remedy that. Our people still have a way to go."

And fear that comes from having seen those bird-winged ones lift ironclad soldiers into the air and throw them around effortlessly, you think, but you don't say this because she's looking at you with the widest eyes you've ever seen on a person and besides, it sounds like an almost impossibly sweet deal. You'd be an idiot to turn this down.

"Yes, I'd love that."

Chapter 2

Notes:

yallre so fucking SWEET i DIE

You settle into your position with relative ease, considering how your only known qualifications are that you've been doing this for a while and you clearly have no issue taking a hit for your work. You — maybe a little impolitely — wonder if inviting sickly strangers to come work at the royal palace is going to be commonplace under this new rule, and then you decide that that's probably not any worse than the attempted regicide, secret arms manufacturing, tacky hair accessories, and general awfulness of the last queen. Besides, you're getting paid to get sick off of magical flower fumes, now. It doesn't get better than this.

You decline the offered room at first, cringing at the idea of being bothered by palace staff, and then you see where she hopes to put you and all your worries regarding privacy evaporate. This workshop is a secluded basement of sorts, massive and intimidating. The lady-in-waiting whisking you around hands you the business of the last man who worked down there on a silver platter. Lickspittle the Nobleman and scientifically-inclined pixie served under Queen Ingrith as a traitor to his kind before having a change of heart, and has now gone off into the Moors to reconnect with his kind and seek penance for his wrongdoings.

That's really nice for him, you suppose, but he could've run a broom through his dungeon of a workplace before going out and bettering himself. The dustiness isn't helped by the major remodeling underway at what had once been a secret entrance accessible from the queen's quarters. You're sad to see it go, really. You resist the urge to ask just why you're not allowed to have a cool secret entrance.

Walking through with your tour guide, you realize how truly cavernous it is. The iron weaponry forged here has since been done away with as well as the tools used in the process, leaving a useless cave. You wonder if you'll be able to talk someone into carving a few windows into the tomb, or if you'd get into too much trouble doing it yourself.

"Awfully dim down here." You comment, doing your best to spark conversation. She wheels around with a grim look, nodding very seriously.

"Oh, it's terrible, isn't it? I don't think anybody should be down here at all, not after what happened." She frets. You shift from foot-to-foot, recognizing something like pity in her stare and suddenly feeling a need to defend your new workshop and the queen's decision to gift it to you.

"I mean, it's not the worst. It just needs some sprucing up, is all." You reason. "I'm lucky to have it."

She beams at you approvingly, putting her hands on her hips. "Well, that's the spirit, I suppose!"

 

Some sprucing up has turned out to be an all day ordeal that you've soldiered through mostly on your own, chasing away the dirt and dust and traveling from the palace to your home and back again to move yourself in. It isn't that no help is offered, you just shoo anyone away. They're your things, so you'll move them yourself, damnit.

Footsteps interrupt your attempts to shake a fat spider out of the broom bristles.

"How are you settling in?" It's this clean-shaven, older man in a tidy uniform. You really hope you'll never be expected to remember all the names that must accompany these faces. He has his chest puffed out and his hands clasped behind his back and a sunshine expression. All this niceness was starting to wear you out.

"Uh, fine. I brought all my things over. Just need to clean the place up, now." The spider finally drops with an impressive pat and you let it scurry away to spin a new web in a new corner. It gives you something to look forward to.

"We could send some of the maids down, if you like? They've done nothing but sit around gossiping all day, anyway." He tells you in a derisive voice, punctuating his offer with an eyeroll. You squint at him surprised, not sure if you'd rather swat him with the broom for his rudeness and kiss him for being the first person in this whole process to show a little bit of down-to-earth meanness.

"Oh, let them gossip. I'm nearly done here, anyway." You're not, but you don't want to share what little peace and quiet you have with a gaggle of strangers.

He gives you a strange smile. "It's about you, you know."

You purse your lips, dragging the broom through the film of dust on the ground. He looks smug, like there's more to it, and you decide to bite before he bursts from the pressure of whatever it is he really wants to say. "Really?"

"It's nothing terrible. They just found it odd that, out of all the great and powerful minds that would excel in this position, Queen Aurora chose a nobody who she found in the woods." He explained. Getting to talk doesn't do anything to help his smugness; it's practically tangible. And yet, there's something under it, something sharp. Like he expects something from you.

What he gets from you is a shrug. "I had no idea the competition was so fierce. My heart goes out to them."

He's frustrated now. You're bored of this and you just want to sweep in peace. Neither of you are getting what you want.

"That's it?"

"What do you want me to say, that I killed every other qualified researcher and staged a chance meeting so she'd pick me?" You ask, exasperated. He perks up a little.

"Did you?"

"No." Is that what this is? Is this man just ham-fistedly trying to get you to admit to some sort of conspiracy? You want to hold his face gently and yell about how you're just as befuddled by your bizarre stroke of luck as him or anybody, but you have sweeping to finish and you hope that clamming up will encourage him to take his business back upstairs. He seems to sense this, or else he, too, has gotten bored, because he's taken a step away.

"Rupert Grimmond, palace Chief of Staff." He introduces himself with a smart little bow before leaving you in silence. Wow, excellent. You sure hope that whatever's going on with the Alpha Butler there hasn't infected anybody else. Suddenly, all the sugary niceness feels infinitely preferable.

 

You don't see much of Grimmond after your initial meeting, although you know that he's been sending people into the underground workshop to clean and move things around when you're not there, which strikes you as a particularly practiced kind of passive aggression. You don't say anything about it. Your first few days pass as smoothly as they could be expected to. Your new workplace still resembles a gaping subterranean hellscape — you don't have nearly enough things to fill what had once been the adjoining forge, although the smaller room where you're told Lickspittle spent most of his time working has been made to feel as cozy as you can get it — , but it's familiar, now, and it's yours.

The only thing you need to do, now, is stick to your end of the bargain, and that drive is what finds you standing at the kingdom-end of the enchanted bridge once more, waiting for your help to hurry up.

You've been assigned three guards and a freckle-faced boy who doesn't talk much, but you manage to pull that he's a footman out of him after enough needling. Or, footboy. They appear to have all been volun-told, and aren't much of a staff at all, but you decide that there's nothing wrong with these transient helpers aside from how slowly they're moving. You get it. One of your guards has a fading black eye, another is nursing a broken nose. Everyone wants peace, now, or at least knows that they're supposed to, but...well.

Once bitten, twice shy.

You clear your throat, squaring your shoulders and trying to exude as much confidence as you can. Exploring the Moors is no sweat, it's this whole directing other people thing that'll take you some getting used to.

"I'm looking for a swarm of sprites. They're very small, thimble-sized, and a sort of greenish color. Please be mindful of where you step and what you touch, and if you encounter any giant purple flowers, don't go near them." You instruct in a tight voice, rocking on your heels.

"Is that all we should be wary of?" The footboy pipes up in a tremulous voice. "Purple flowers?"

You blink at him and chew on the inside of your cheek. "That isn't all, no. Just...exercise caution, alright?" You say, because you don't know what else to warn him of, but you're not about to lie and suggest that the only threat in the Moors is the Bastard Flower. "And please be respectful."

You stare them down sternly, letting that last request hang in the air. The last thing you or any human anywhere needs is some sort of miscommunication with the Moorfolk. Once you're confident that your helpers get the message, you lead them across the bridge. It's a beautiful thing, really, better than anything a human architect could have constructed. The branches are thick and sturdy and artfully interwoven so as to prevent any twisted ankles or drastically uneven footing when crossing. The river is a deep, near-black green underneath you all, snaking lazily out to sea.

Nobody speaks once you're all across, and that's fine by you. You're far more interested in meeting with your little cloud of saviors, if at all possible. You retrace your steps, making sure the group heeds your warning and gives the Bastard Flower a wide berth. You stop them so you can add to the sketch of it you had been working on before it got to you, adding in the broad, waxy leaves that fanned out beneath the blossom itself. You left a note to self — figure out how to dig up roots safely. You already hypothesized that the smell might not have the same sickening effects if the flower was cut, but you'd need to ask around before tampering with it. Certain plants, you know, are considered sacred here. You don't want to get yourself in trouble.

Plants, though, are far from your mind as you press onward, drifting into the lush greenery as if in a dream. The forest feels less populated, less teeming now, and you attribute it to your entourage. One lone human is enough for most fey to stomach, but five of them trampling through the undergrowth? You all look like trouble, you realize with a flash of irritation.

You are't going to get anything you want if you have to babysit them.

You stop in your tracks, trying to think. "Actually," you begin, turning on your heel and absently fidgeting with your hands, hoping you can pull this off. "I wanted to collect a sample from...the bridge. To study." Your staff looks back at you quietly at first and you can tell that they can tell that something must be up, but they don't seem to care enough to argue with you. "So, you all can go back and, ah, do that."

"What, all four of us need to go and collect trimmings?" The guard with the black eye finally speaks up, crossing his arms.

You try to pull off the most innocent expression that you're capable of. "Anyone who doesn't want to go can help me dig up that poisonous flower, instead? I believe the sprites are attracted to it."

Your lie is enough to scare them off, and they trudge back to the bridge with a pair of shears you offered from your stuffed satchel. Free at last, you can't help the ear-to-ear grin that crawls fiendishly over your face. Finally. Now you can do some proper searching. You take off in the opposite direction, trying to tread lightly in spite of your excitement. You wonder — should you call out? Would they hear you? Were they even in the area? Would they even really care? You round a corner, squeezing past a flowering bush that overhangs the narrow walking path you're taking.

Your uncertainty goes up in a cloud of smoke. Or, maybe a cloud of small, greenish bodies would be more accurate, a swarm that rises from the bush as your leg grazes it. You stop to watch them, marveling in their coordination, wondering what sort of hivemind or magical understanding governed their motion. The swarm surges forward with a sound like bells, and suddenly you have sprites in your hair and in your clothing and pulling on your satchel. They remember you! You could cry from the joy that overwhelms you.

"Hi again! It's me and I'm not dying this time." You greet them, careful with how you move so as to not disturb them while they explored your shabby clothing. It was a different outfit this time, but no more elegant than what you usually wore. You don't look like a royally appointed explorer. You look homeless, and you plan to keep it that way if it means that you don't have to stress over getting grass stains out of a uniform that costs more than your mortal soul. "I wanted to thank you for helping me. I also wanted to ask if it's okay that I write about you? You see, I'm researcher, and I'd like to get to know more about you so that I could tell other humans, and then maybe they won't be so...well." You clear your throat and open your bag to fish for your journal. "I'm sure you all know how they can be. But, a lot of them want to learn, so..."

There's a cluster of the little things that hangs around your face, evidently listening and providing nonverbal feedback while the rest are apparently more interested in your bag. A daring few sneak into it, landing on the variety of tools and jars within. You pull one small glass container out and hold it up for them to look at. "Did you want to look at my things? By all means, I—" The swarm suddenly separates from you at a speed you hadn't known they could reach, spiraling frantically out of reach. "Wha—ghck!"

The magic of the moment is lost in a whirl of pain and motion. A split second before you're having your face pressed into the dirt, the sun is blotted out by a massive something, and then a weight slams into your back hard enough to knock you off your feet. Something breaks in your bag and maybe in your chest, too, because that weight doesn't let up and your body aches. It's on top of you, keeping you down, and you swear you feel something like a hand clutching at your hair hard enough to make your scalp sting. You wonder what manner of beast has decided to murder you today, and whether the other four would be able to get here in time or if they've already been massacred like you, no doubt, are about to be.

There's dirt up your nose and you're forced to close your eyes against the scrape-and-rub of the forest floor when a low growl rattles above you. Yes, I know, you're a terrifying beast and I'm lunch, just get it over with, you think, wriggling in protest against your assailant. The growl is repeated and the weight atop you shifts and it—

It sniffs you. At least, you think it sniffs you, but before you can really analyze the noise, whatever monster has you at it's mercy proves that it also has a voice.

"Are you going to try and defend yourself, poacher?"

Notes:

>:3c

Chapter 3

Your heart beats on your bruised ribs like a caged animal as a silence falls between you two after it — he? — speaks. The quiet stretches itself, pulled thin like taffy. You can hardly breathe, let alone speak in your defense! What does he expect from you?

Fighting the hand holding the back of your head, you turn your face so it's your cheek being ground into the dirt and not your nose. "'M not poaching!" You spit through grimy lips, only to earn a disbelieving guffaw from overhead. You brace your palms flat against the ground, shoving at the earth in a futile attempt to unflatten yourself.

"You'd spend your last moments a liar?"

You're fuming. If he would just let you up and listen to you, then there wouldn't be a problem. You strain to search for your swarm, but you can't make out any trace of them. You realize with a cold weight in your stomach that it's starting to look like the only way you're getting out of this alive is if someone else intervenes, and you hate it. "No, I—jus' geddoff me!" you screech, thrashing to the best of your ability. If you're really going to die here, you're going to make your murder as unpleasant of a task for your assailant as you possibly can.

It's fortunate, what happens next. Humiliating, but undeniably fortunate. Your shrieking must have been loud enough to alert the other four, because soon enough they come gallantly to your rescue. You want to throttle this stranger for putting you in a position where you, yet again, need to be saved by somebody else. You want to throttle him, and kick yourself, and then go into hiding for a few years to sleep off your embarrassment.

"Unhand them!" The broken-nosed knight demands. The uniforms must be what deters him, because you doubt that the guard's cracking voice is what does it. The minute you're no longer pinned down, you roll onto your back to gasp greedily for air and get a better look at the man whose face you dearly want to bludgeon.

Oh. Suddenly the immense weight of him makes sense, if not for his imposing stature then definitely due to the massive, feathered wings which are now furled at his back. He's one of the new ones, the bird-winged ones that had made themselves known during the battle, sharing the same curving horns and sharp features as the wicked-and-then-not-wicked-and-then-wicked-again-and-now-probably-okay Maleficent. Dark fey.

"State your business here, now."
He demands while you're busy scrambling to your feet and tenderly probing your battered torso. It hurts, but nothing feels like it's been broken for certain.

"Research." You and two of the guards all chime in unison. You let them take it from there while you greedily enjoy being able to breathe freely again.

"We have this," One of the guards offers a roll of paper. "It states our purpose here. This person is a researcher recently appointed by her highness, the Queen."

He takes the paper, gentle with his talons but no less furious in his movements. You don't know much about Queen Aurora besides that she's very sweet and you sort of adore her, but you sure wish she'd been able to spread word of your job and business in the Moors a little better. Then again, you're not dressed in any sort of identifying uniform and you were more or less on your own — you guess that this fey man might have been almost justified in his reaction.

Barely.

He hands the paper back. "How am I to know you're not lying?"

"And just why would we lie?" You interject hotly, glaring at him. "Our lands are at peace, now, or didn't you hear? Do you really think Ulstead would go back on it's word so easily—"

"I know humans are as deceitful as they are cruel, and—"

"In broad daylight, at that!" You start to really shout the moment he speaks over you, puffing up with all your rage. You even go out of your way to close the space between the two of you, hoping beyond all hope that you'll intimidate him into taking a step back. You have no such luck, of course. He stands still, looming over you like Death itself, sneering. You scowl back.

Someone clears their throat and you both nearly break your necks to turn your respective glares toward the source. It's the broken-nosed guard. He raises his hands passively. "I think we can all agree that this was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and one that we can all leave behind us like sensible adults and continue on with our days."

You bite back a sour retort. He wasn't the one who was attacked! And you wouldn't have been, either, if you hadn't tried to ditch the others at the bridge, chimes a quiet, reasonable part of you. You step away from the fey man with your lips pressed into a tense line, and the two of you do a good job of looking pointedly at anything but each other. A gentle breeze winds through the forest, as if the Moors are trying their best to soothe you both. You stubbornly hold onto your frustration anyway, because how dare he.

The fey man doesn't appear to have been swayed by your guard's rationality. He balls his hands at his sides. "If you really mean no harm, then you won't mind an escort." He says, glaring your party down — but not you, though. You're both still pretending not to see each other.

"I don't see why we couldn't agree to that." The guard is looking at you, though, with this expression you'd expect to find on an exasperated school teacher. You shift, hiding your pout with a fake yawn. "Researcher?"

"...Fine. Sure. If he's so convinced we're up to something we shouldn't be, then he's more than welcome to learn the truth." You respond tersely.

 

That's how the rest of your day goes, with you and your helpers being shadowed by that strange man. He stays high, generating sharp gusts with those massive wings behind your group as he moves from tree to tree. It occurs to you that nobody's asked him his name, but you'll be damned if you're the one who'll do it. You never do find your swarm of sprites again, but you do encounter a pair of toad-skinned creatures wallowing in a muddy bank. They're just as bizarre to look at as anything else around bere, but they seem harmless and you're aready itching to get a closer look.

You turn to the others. "Stay here for a second. I'll go first and I'll signal for you if it's alright."

The footboy, who had been somehow quieter ever since your group earned a babysitter, blanched nervously. "Are those dangerous?"

"I don't think so, but they might think that you are."

"Wh-why don't you just ask the—"

You're marching down the slope leading to that creek before he can finish, running from that question because you know it'll just put you in a worse mood. Why don't you just ask the fey man? Objectively, it's a wise decision. He can probably tell you a whole awful lot about this place, even though their particular kind had only returned to the Moors just recently. Moreover, it would've been a hell of a wise decision for your party to be accompanied by an emissary from the Moors to begin with, for exactly these reasons. Maybe you'll pour that idea into somebody's ear once you're done here today.

You wonder if the winged man knows what the Bastard Flower is really called.

The problem is, you really hate him (or maybe you're just annoyed and a little bit embarrassed and your wounded pride feels more and more like a lifelong grudge the longer you're around him), and you're pretty confident that the feeling's mutual. So, wonderful asset that he may be, the big dumb vulture is dead to you.

Your boots, which have seen all manner of terrain on their well-traveled lives, squelch into the thick mud, alerting the amphibious creatures. They scramble a safe distance away, clinging to a mossy stone in the shallow water and watching you closely. You crouch down to make yoursef seem smaller.

"Hi, there. I'm not here to hurt you, but you can stay right there if it's where you feel safest." You explain, pulling your satchel off and placing it behind you on drier ground. You balance your notebook on your knees, opening it to two untouched pages and smiling at the way they lean forward a bit to try and get a better look without fully letting go of that stone. "I'm a researcher. For Queen Aurora. You know her, I bet."

They do. They've let go of the stone and are now crouched with their warty little bodies mostly submerged in the creek, but they're still watching you.

"She wants me to learn about Moorfolk, like you. Would you both mind if I drew you?"

The one which you assume to be the braver of the pair rises up eagerly does...something. It takes you a moment to realize that it's posing for you, so you start to sketch it. Right as you do, the other one decides that it wants in on this, too, and strikes a different pose for you. They look ridiculous.

It's wonderful.

This goes on a little longer than you mean for it to. You never do call for the others, and fill more pages than really necessary with goofy drawings of your eager little subjects. You let them hold your pencil and read other pages and you takes careful notes on them, letting them nodding or shaking their heads dictate the quality of what you write and the boldness of your guesses. You don't pay much mind to the increasing frequency of their glances over your shoulder, figuring that might just be keeping an eye on the rest of your party.

A squelch similar to the one you'd made coming down here spooks you out of your sentence — they seem to enjoy sunbathing just like any coldblooded thing — and you look up and over your shoulder. It's the fey man, standing awfully close, so you look back at your work, ready to start ignoring him with all the pettiness you have in you. His arrival's made your two creek-friends shy again, though. You frown.

"Could you leave? There's four other necks to breathe down."

He doesn't respond. You stare into the muddy ground. You don't want to start a fight. You don't want to start a fight. You don't want to start a fight—

"You're hardly doing anything. What sort of research is this?"

You shoot up to your feet and spin around. Sensing a dangerous situation, the frog-skinned creatures vanish where the creek runs deepest.

"Did stalking us get so boring that you've decided to be an ass again?" You snap. His wings fan out and you're vaguely reminded of a defensive posture you've seen in hawks. You resist the urge to immediately note the behavior.

"Watch your mouth. There may be a truce now, but—"

"But what? Are you going to reignite the war because you don't think I'm doing my job right?" You bristle. He opens his mouth to retaliate, but you're both stopped by the voice of reason that is the broken-nosed guard. Faintly, you think that this man probably deserves some sort of medal for wading into the midst of all this animosity.

"Researcher." He interrupts. "It's getting late. We should head back for the day." And you realize he's right. The sky looks like it's beginning to rust, and the soft orange glimmers like tongues of fire on the surface of the creek. Part of you wants to argue that there's nothing wrong with continuing your stay into the night, but you have a feeling that he's just using this as an excuse to get you and they fey man back on opposite sides of the enchanted bridge where neither of you can bite the other's head off. You relent.

"Fine. Are we all ready to leave?" You ask, turning away from the source of your frustration. An affirmative murmur rises from the group and you stomp ahead of them to lead everybody back to Ulstead. The fey man rises into the air behind you and you pray to whichever god out there cares to listen that you'll never have to see him again.

Notes:

gods said prayer machine broke

Chapter 4

You wake up sore in the back and chest, wracked with an ache that feels deeper than flesh and bone. It's hard to tell the time down here in your cave, but you had been fortunate to find that the metal door leading outside from the smaller room you now slept in had an ornate metal slot that can be kept open to both allow in the world's most underwhelming breeze, and more importantly, give you an idea of whether the sun is up. Cold early morning light illuminates what it can from the gap in the door, so you pull yourself to your feet in spite of your pain and you set yourself to work getting ready.

You feel bad, now, for never batting an eye at tales of people pressed to death under the weight of hundreds of stones to atone for some crime or other, finding sudden sympthy for them when the act of leaning down to lace up your boots has you seeing stars. You're positive, though, that nothing's broken. You had checked and double checked before bed.

You hope that fey man's somewhere getting his feathers plucked.

It's right as you're done fixing your hair in a way that it won't bother you throughout the day ahead that you hear your name called in a familiar voice through the shadows of your hideout and you poke your head out into the once-forge to see what it's about.

Queen Aurora, with a gaggle of ladies-in-waiting and a few fairies that you can see looping around in her wake, walks toward you like a dream in satin holding something in her hand for you.

"Yes?" You respond, and then clear your throat. "Ma'am—, uh, Mrs.— Highness?" You don't know why addressing royalty has to be such a pill, but it is. While you're busy growing red in the face over your fumbling, she stops and her equally radiant assistants stop with her and you feel like you've been cornered by a bouquet of flowers. She holds her gift out to you.

"I heard there was trouble the other day. I can arrange for a uniform fitting, if you'd like, just so you're more recognizable," You absently make a face and she laughs, "but this will suffice for now."

It's a badge, but it's unlike any badge you've ever seen. It's wooden, for one thing, though that doesn't keep it from looking every bit as official as something forged from metal. It has the royal seal carved artfully into the surface and painted white to stand out from the dark wood. So far as badges go it's unorthodox, but you pin it to your humble shirt eagerly, unable to fight a smile.

"You're welcome, you wear it well. There was one another thing..."

She gets a more serious look on her face and your stomach churns nervously.

"Borra will be accompanying you again today. The decision was made earlier this morning." You blink at her. You have no clue who she's talking about. You, you genius, you, never thought to ask your unenthusiastic help what their names were. Was it the meek footboy? That sensible guard with the busted nose? Queen Aurora continues, seemingly oblivious to your confusion. "Though you ought to have a say in your staff, and you certainly will later on, it was decided that you should, without question, be accompanied by someone of the Moors. Seeing as you two have already...met—"

Your eyebrows shoot up as the realization hits you. "Oh, no." You blurt. She stops, giving you a tight-lipped, disappointed look that has you feeling genuine shame.

"He's already agreed to this. He came to me and spoke about what happened the other day, saying that he only wanted to make sure that what was happening was officially mandated. When I asked if he would mind accompanying you on future outings, he obliged."

You narrow your eyes. "He said yes just like that? You didn't hold a blade to his throat?"

She looks bashful for a second. "Well, my Godmother was in attendance, so..."

So really he was pressured into it, just like you're starting to feel pressured, and the ironclad Maleficent doesn't even need to be present this time. The queen notices your sulking and purses her lips, like she's trying to think of a way to cheer you up.

"The badges were Borra's idea, you know. He said that somebody in your position should be easier to recognize."

"He knocked me over," You respond, and it comes out whinier than you intend, earning a laugh from Aurora and company.

"Your highness, the meeting," A small voice whispers, urging her along. Aurora clears her throat and nods.

"One final thing, and I really have to go. There's to be a meeting soon — I'll have someone send you a note with the date and time — regarding Ulstead's alliance with the Moors and how we all plan on moving forward alongside our human allies. I need you to be there, to explain your work and...help. Several ambassadors will be there, and you're something of an ambassador, yourself.
I need you to be a part of this." She explains in a low voice, watching you closely. There's no amused glimmer in her soft blue eyes now; she's all business, all queen. You dip your head slowly. What else can you do? Say no?

"Of course. Thank you." You reply numbly, thinking back to your conversation with Grimmond. Out of all the great and powerful minds that would excel in this position, Queen Aurora chose a nobody who she found in the woods. And now she's inviting that nobody to be an asset in a pivotal political conference. You're no diplomat and you're certainly not nobility. I am not the right person for this.

The workshop feels smaller than it's ever felt before when the queen finally excuses herself, leaving you alone with your badge and your racing thoughts. Your head is reeling and you have half a mind to lay your aching body back down in bed and sleep the rest of the day away. You're certainly no longer looking forward to traversing the Moors, not if you have to do it under the watchful eye of a man who'd threatened to kill you the other day.

You wait for what feels like hours, standing frozen in place before your conscience gets the better of you. You can do this. It won't kill you. He won't kill you.

Maybe.

 

You find Borra at the bridge, and it's just the two of you, now. You exercised your right to choose your own staff by not choosing anybody, seeing what a hassle they'd been last time — aside from the quite literally saving your life part — , so you suppose you'll have the unique pleasure of feeling the full force of this man's ill-tempered glare for the entirety of your trip. He has a badge like your own fastened to the strap of his...what even is that, a harness?

You must be making a face as you cross over to meet him, because he comments, "Stop sulking like a child."

"So is it true that Maleficent scared you into this?" You ask. This is the wrong thing to do, apparently, because his sharp gaze darkens immediately and you can see the muscles in his jaw clench.

"Don't." He all but snarls. "The last thing that I want to do is waste my time with a would-be explorer, but as it stands, alliance or not, I don't trust any human to carry out this task honestly."

You scowl at that. "What are you implying?"

"I know the extent that humans will go to, what your kind considers research. Captured and beaten fey, torn apart to sate your morbid curiosity, tortured until death to fill a page in a manual." He continues, staring you down. You balk with a sharp, horrified sound.

"I don't know what kind of animal you think I am, but that's not what I do!" You protest, drawing yourself up to full height defensively.

"No, it isn't. Not now and not ever. I'll see to that personally if I have to." Borra tells you in a cold voice, stepping aside so that you can see the great, magical wilderness beyond. "You'd better go, now, before you run out of sunlight."

You step past him stiffly, glaring at the ground, and he follows you quietly into the green.

 

Your subject for today is the Tree-Men, and you decide this based on careful and studious forethought, not because you trip over a concealed foxhole and fall right into the wooden arms of one (you're fairly certain that Borra got a laugh out of this, but he could've just been coughing or making one of those odd growl-y vocalizations that you're still working up the courage to ask him about). You bitterly update your mental tally of times you need rescuing out in the Moors to three before you find yourself absolutely enthralled by the lush giant.

The creature speaks, but you can't understand it, though you swear that the low, grinding noises keep almost aligning in a way that makes some sort of sense to you. You take your questioning slow.

"How old are you? Can you...upwards of a decade? Way upwards? How about a century — close? Century and a half? Yes? Almost?" Your game charades is slow but determined, and your drawings are varied. Eventually you reach out, running your fingers up the Tree-Man's arm and resting your hand on a pad of moss.

"Can you feel this? You can? Alright...how about the moss? Would it hurt if it was peeled off? Can you feel that part at all?" You ask, frowning. It responds with a vague gesture and a series of low groans. "Uh...come again?"

"He said it's no more painful than trimming a nail." You jump when Borra chimes in. "But he would prefer it if nobody went tearing his moss off."

"Oh, I see." You note this down and then look back up with a deep frown. "You understood the whole time? Are you here to help me or not?" You press, not bothering to mask your frustration.

Borra leans against the trunk of a perfectly normal tree and he looks perfectly unphased and you hate him for it. "You didn't ask me to."

You bite back the worst of the insults you've picked up over the years, focusing, instead, on the way that the Tree-Man is absently plucking at the sleeve of your shirt and growling something. "I'm asking you now. What's he saying?"

"Whether it would hurt you if you took that off." He intones.

You sputter your way through explaining that no, it wouldn't, but you preferred to keep it on, thank you very much, and from then on you make sure to keep yourself in the position of the interrogator until the Tree-Man excuses himself when what appears to be a group of similar beasts calls for him from across the grove that you all find yourself in. You finish with your notes and then round on Borra, who is still leaning in his place.

"How do you understand them?" You ask, movong to flip to an empty pge only to find that you've gone through the entire journal.

"Anyone can learn to understand, they just need to listen. Even humans, though it takes longer." Borra explains, standing up straight and stretching both his arms and his wings. You follow the movement of his wings, privately marveling at the size of them and trying to identify whether his underwing markings match those of any raptor you know of off the top of your head.

"How's that?" You ask quickly once the show's over, stifling your wing curiosity.

"They're creatures of magic, and that's reflected in the way they speak. One might not be able to perform magic, but they can still feel the effects of it, especially if they're given time to become familiar with it. Listening to it even now, it feels like it could almost make sense, right?"

You're writing this down frantically into an untouched corner of the page holding your tree notes. "So it's just a matter of exposure, then? I could understand them if they spoke to me enough? How many different, erm, not-languages are there, do you know? Could you give me a rough estimate?" You look up, practically buzzing with anticipation, only to find him grinning at you. Seeing that sort of expression on him after growing so used to his scowling is something of a shock to the senses. You mean to make a lighthearted joke of the situation, but what you say is: "What's wrong with your face?"

"You're not some royal scholar. You're not even close." He responds unhelpfully. You roll your shoulders.

"Never said that I was. Do you need me to repeat my questions?" You ask, standing and wincing. You still ache, but you don't want to discuss that with him, so you pass it off as a strange yawn. Either Borra buys it or he, too, doesn't care to discuss it. "It'll have to wait, anyway, I'm done with this journal."

"So?"

"So," You continue, "I need to go back for more."

He looks blisteringly unimpressed with you, folding his arms over his broad chest. He doesn't need to say it; you know what he's getting at.

"My bag isn't big enough to hold all it has now and spare journals. You can come with, I'll show you just how torture-free the ol' workshop is." You move past him and it's no time at all until you're both passing back over the bridge, palace-bound.

 

You can't blame Borra for the noise of disgust he makes at the state of your quarters, but you sure wish he wouldn't.

"Something the matter?" You inquire dryly, leading him through the dark.

"It's a cave." He says, as if this explains everything. You don't dig after that. You're too busy setting your filled journal on a shelf of others and turning away to find wherever the empty ones were hiding. Borra stops by your completed notes, quietly counting the rows.

"This is it? This is all you have?" He asks. You recoil at his tone. It's a substantial collection of books, considering that you've been in this on your own ever since you began.

"Yes? Is that a problem?" You reply in an icy tone, ready to snap at him again.

"You're trying to spread knowledge of the Moors to hundreds of thousands of humans and all you have to show for it is a handful of books about mushrooms." You snap your gaze over to where he's pulled one of the first journals free. "Is this how you'll do it? Invite them into your little cavern and treat them to your scribbled notes?" Borra continues, looking up from a page to glower at you accusingly.

"It's all going to go into a proper book, eventually, probably more than one, I— is there something wrong with mushrooms?" You're trying not to let this get to you, but it feels like there's a cold stone stuck in your chest now that you're forced to see your finished work through someone else's eyes.

You want to scream.

"I meant what I said. You're no royal scholar. You're a hobbyist, no better than a child catching bugs. How are you supposed to do anything with this?" He shoves your journal back into place. "How do you know that this will be enough?"

He isn't quite yelling, you notice. He's loud, but he isn't yelling. You're grateful for it, somewhere under all your bitter frustration. And, somewhere deeper than that, you can't help but to keep thinking that he might have a point. How do you know that it'll be enough? How are you supposed to help soothe the tension between humanity and the Moors by reciting facts about magical mushrooms?

"Then...then help." You fumble, digging through your cluttered belongings until you find where Grimmond must have had the maids move your empty journals. You all but throw one at him, face burning with an uncomfortable mix of emotion — embarrassment, frustration. "If you're so worried that humanity isn't doing enough, that I'm not doing enough, then help me. Write what you know and learn what you don't, then write about that, too. Draw what you see — it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be accurate and labeled."

"You really want my help?" He asks, voice edged with incredulity instead of irritation, now, as he thumbs through the blank journal.

"I—" You screw your eyes shut and let out a heavy breath, clenching your fists and begrudgingly smothering your pride. "I need your help. I can't do this alone, there's no way—" your voice catches. You clear your throat, trying to keep yourself together while the memory of your talk this morning surges back. I'm not the right person for this job. I shouldn't be here. "This is...a bigger endeavor than I initially thought it'd be." You explain, choosing your words carefully so as to not upset yourself further. You're not about to treat this man to a fullblown breakdown. "And I am trying, I promise. I want to help."

The silence that settled between the two of you in that dark room feels like a thick syrup coming down around your ears, slowing time and suffocating you.

"There's nothing wrong with mushrooms." Borra cuts through the oppressive quiet with possibly the most awkard affirmation he could've chosen in that moment and you could almost laugh but you're too busy feeling embarrassed and sorry for yourself. "And I'll help you." It almost feels like he hesitates, and then, "for the sake of my people. I'm not going to let one human have so much say in how the world learns of us."

That makes sense, you think. It makes sense for him to want that. And beyond that, it made sense from the beginning, how suspicious he'd been of you. All things considered, you absolutwly could not blame him for his mistrust. But confessing to all of that felt too tender, too personal for this moment, and you're not really sure how you'd go about it, anyway. You clear your throat and swallow thickly. "Thank you."

Another long pause follows before he manages a quick, "You're welcome."

Chapter 5

Notes:

trope-y things

Borra fills the journal faster than you anticipated, and fast enough to leave you stunned. On the night that he leaves you, which ends with you inevitably working out the rest of your rising crisis mood by yelling into a pillow and then punching the pillow and then putting yourself to bed before you spiral any deeper into pillow-abuse — you're in no sort of mood to go back out — you're convinced that he'll grow bored of it, and of you, and go right back to being a proper thorn in your side in no time.

But he doesn't. Not right away, at least.

The next time you see him, he shows you what he's done and you resist the urge to look around under the tables and chairs for some kind of hidden audience because surely, you think, he must be pranking you. Surely he didn't really sit down all last night and fill the first dozen pages of his journal, front and back, in complete earnest. A condensed history of the dark fey, detailed explanation on the nature of their wings, and pages for the tundra dark fey, the forest, the desert, the jungle...

There's even a drawing. It's rough — seems as though be draws just the same as he does anything else — but it's done with deliberate detail and neatly labeled at the bottom. Udo, of the Tundra.

You wonder, wryly, why in the hell he didn't just go the extra mile and write his own book, and you almost ask to make fun but he's giving you this hard, expectant stare.

"Huh?"

"Is this alright?"

Oh, you could really slap him. Is this alright, honestly! It's better than alright. It's phenomenal and he's a life-saver. You'd rather twist both of your ankles than tell him this, though, so you leave it at, "Yes."

There's almost a thank you but it gets stuck in your throat and for whatever reason, you're ashamed of that. If he misses it, he doesn't say anything.

That shame lingers with you all the rest of that particular day, which is spent with Borra mostly out of eyesight (for you and your cadre, at least; you get the back-of-neck prickles that suggest he can see you all just fine, wherever he’s flown off to) and with all the rest of the party roped into something of an impromptu game of tag with a flock of pixies, each bearing more resemblance to a wildflower than the last.

In your defense, it had begun about as professionally as you could manage: a careful introduction, an explanation of your mission (which was met, this time, with a gratifying chorus of ‘We know!’s), and permission to sketch and question, but the more time that you were given to start nitpicking the fine details, the more transparently bored your company (Moorfolk and humans alike) became, until somebody suggested that you ought to make a game out of it all. That led to where you are, now, carefully cupping one golden-winged pixie in your palms. Initially you had been scared out of your mind about accidentally hurting one of them, but as they had excitedly pointed out, being little didn’t always translate into being fragile. You hadn’t believed it until the point was made quite clear by one pixie ramming into a nearby tree and bouncing off harmlessly, fluttering a messy circle in the air to reorient before rocketing off to join their friends. You never got an answer as to whether that whole display was intentional or not, and you decided not to press the matter.

“Gotcha. Okay. Do you look like a flower, or is it the other way around?” You ask, releasing her and juggling your journal until you have it open to the latest page. She spins in the air, looking to all the world like a wind-tossed heliopsis blossom until she settles upright again and you can make out a delicate, thoughtful face.

“Um…I’m not sure! What does the question mean?” She replies earnestly. You bite the inside of your cheek, thinking it over for a second.

“I guess it means, what came first? Fairies or flowers?”

“Oh, that’s easy! We were both here all along!” She laughs, zipping off to be with a group of pixies who’ve all made a separate game out of avoiding the timid footboy, in particular, who is trying his very best and having…no luck at all, really, but you won’t hold it against him.

You’re nose-down in your notes when the wind shifts abruptly around you, and someone lands heavily on the grass behind you. You don’t have to look to know who it is and, in fact, you make a point of not looking. Finishing this next line is more important.

“Are the king and queen really sending you here to play games?” Borra sounds every bit as severe as usual. You wonder if he can even help himself.

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” You’re biting down hard and wrestling with the inane desire to explain yourself as if you’re some child who’s been caught misbehaving. Your brooding chaperone eases into your peripheral vision, arms folded across his chest as he watches your usual helpers sprint after the evading pixies. His silence lasts long enough for you to lose the battle against yourself.

“It’s…they were getting bored, and I still had questions, so I agreed to their idea. To play a game, I mean. And my…staff are still a little apprehensive about,” you wave a hand broadly, “all of this so I figured, maybe if they had some time to unwind, um. And, you know, make friends, because this isn’t going to work if nobody’s friends with each other—”

“What isn’t going to work?” Borra doesn’t sound the least bit interested in your rambling excuse and you wish you could just disappear, or find a way to disapear-ify him. Why in the world do you feel the need to justify anything to him? You grit your teeth, closing your journal and tucking it away.

“All of this. The Moors aren’t some dead museum that we can shuffle through, taking notes on all the exhibits. There’s people here. We can’t just ignore that.”

“People that might not want your friendship.” Borra points this out with a hard look pointed at you sideways. You want to play dumb, to point out how much fun your little helpers are having with those rascal pixies, but you know what he’s getting at.

“Well. I’m not going to fall to my knees and beg for mercy and camaraderie from every creature we encounter,” you start sharply, taking a step away from him. “But if they’re willing to try, then so am I.”

“They’ll have to try awfully hard, with you.” He notes darkly. You can feel a barbed retort rearing at the back of your tongue and you really don’t want this to end in a screaming match but he’s being so…so…!

“I’m not doing this with you, Borra.” You’ll pat yourself on the back for your restraint later, when your hands aren’t balled into fists. “Have you written anything new?”

There; the ball is in his court. If he really wants an argument, it’s on him to keep pressing.

“Yes.”

That’s somehow even less helpful than you thought it could be, but at least neither of you are being catty with each other.

“Could I see?”

There’s this strange look to him now that you just can’t quite place. You’re no master of body language but he almost looks...uncomfortable? Or maybe he’s just disgusted at how you’ve crept a little closer than you were, before, with the hopes that he’d hand over his findings. You really are curious.

“It’s about those pixies. That’s all.”

“Great. But can I read it, though?” Why is he being so cagey? You blink hard, trying to figure out if you missed some social cue or overlooked some kind of hint as to why he’s suddenly clamming up on you. You’ve already read his stuff once before, and you doubt that he’s suddenly developed a sensitivity to your opinion in the time between then and now.

After another mind-boggling bout of silence, Borra flips open the little journal and presses it slowly into your hands, watching you like he expects you to start tearing the pages out. You, obviously, do nothing of the sort.

He’s being weird, why is he being weird?

You skim the pages. Some of it matches directly with your own observations, which pleases you, and some of you hadn’t even noticed, which pleases you even more, oddly enough. Using your thumb, you start flicking through to see what else he’s come up with, only for a large, clawed hand to come down just as you’ve reached a page covered in nothing but drawings. It didn’t seem to relate with the notes on the page before it and it was probably just a bunch of idle junk-doodles (you refuse to find that as endearing as it is, because it’s Borra), but he’s tugging the journal back with such urgency that you’d swear you had just stumbled across some highly guarded fey secret.

“Easy! You could’ve just asked for it back.” You snap from the surprise of it. Borra’s wings ruffle in response.

“You were done.” His response is tight, measured, and he still looks agitated. You’re not sure what his deal is. Is he embarrassed about the drawings? You’re hardly one to pass judgement. The energy right now is unbearably strange so you stretch quickly and then amble back to where your staff have wound down and now sit on the grass, idly chatting with the many high voices of the pixies. There’s no more back-and-forth interrogation, now. They’re just…talking. Something about that makes you so giddy that you almost don’t want to interrupt, but the sky is starting to blush with sunset, and you want everyone in bed at a reasonable hour.

Your golden pixie friend from before flits in front of you, gleaming eyes wide. “Were you holding still for your friend, there?”

You blink back. “What?”

“Your friend, the dark fey! He was having such a hard time getting you right, maybe because you kept chasing me.”

You think back to the sketched shapes on the page, all hurried and frustrated outlines. Had there been something familiar in the shape of the heads, the curve of the torsos? Was that why he was acting so strange?

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I um. He got what he needed.” You lie because, frankly, what the fuck. What the fuck. You sit in your confusion for as long as it takes for your staff to cluster around, content with the day but obviously ready to head back. You look over your shoulder where Borra regards you all like the enemy, as usual. Certainly not like he has plans to start drawing any of you. It dawns on you, in that moment. Duh. He’s probably just been practicing with whatever’s convenient, and of course he wouldn’t want you to find it and jump to conclusions. You can only imagine what he’d say about you making the situation about yourself. He hasn’t said squat and you already feel stupid about it. He’s just trying to get better at this task, since you clearly don’t meet his expectations.

Whatever. You’re glad for his sullen ass. Really. You hope that scribbling angry figure drawings of you chasing pixies around a field has somehow helped him. You also hope he chokes, but that's neither here nor there.

“Alright, gang, this was lovely, but I think we should get ready to head back.”

 

Things continue with a strange kind of ease. Your team of helpers sticks around and you like to think that some of your boundless optimism is rubbing off onto them. Sometimes it's just the footboy — you learn his name's Martin and you have to repeat it in your head for upwards of an hour to get it to stick — , sometimes one or more of those guards whose faces heal quickly enough for you to realize you need to come up with better nicknames than 'broken-nose' or 'black-eye' or 'not obviously injured', and sometimes it's somebody new altogether, but you and Borra are the only two constants, and the days where you find yourselves both alone together grow in frequency.

It's one such day when you decide to broach a subject that's been on your mind for a while. The sky overhead is thick with foreboding grey clouds and the air is cool and still, setting a grim atmosphere for your line of questioning, but once you start talking you don't let yourself back out of it.

"Borra?" You chime, trying to sound as casual as possible. Until now the two of you have been traveling in silence, adding to the confused, work-in-progress of a map that you both agreed to try and make despite neither of you being particularly great cartographers. While it may not be in your best interest to spring into sensitive topics with a man you're certain cannot stand you, you just can't help yourself. You're curious.

He replies only with a faint grunt to indicate his attention and you wet your lips, brow furrowing,

"What do you think of all of this? The alliance, I mean." There's a pause. "You don't act like you believe in any of it."

Borra's quiet for so long that you're almost convinced that he's decided to ignore you, but right as you're about to start feeling bitter about that he makes this low, grinding noise of irritation that you would've mistaken for distant thunder were it not for the sneer on his face. "I spent...years, preparing for a battle against your kind. I readied myself for that war for longer than I can say, only to be told that an afternoon of fighting and a human wedding had solved everything."

"Well," you try to rationalize, skirting around another foxhole. Not this time! "It's only a start, but it's still a good one, right?"

"Is it? Ulstead's agreed to lay down their arms, but what about the rest of humanity? What about every other kingdom with their iron weapons and their violent fear?" He looks at you, copper eyes turned dark by the stormy lighting. "The dark fey were driven into a cave once before. What's to prevent that from happening again? Kind words? Promises?"

"So...So what do you want, then? Do you want your war?" You press a little. You take care not to sound like you're accusing him of anything or belittling his outlook. It wouldn't be worth another argument, and this is an anger that he deserves to have, besides.

Borra glared at the sky, working his jaw. "I want to know the odds."

You blink. You're both stopped now, neglecting the map. You can feel a few faint droplets of rain patter onto your scalp, but you ignore it. "The odds of what?"

"I watched Maleficent sacrifice herself for your queen. I watched your king lower his blade when he could've killed me. But for every human that is good, for every one who wants peace between our worlds and means it, there's an untold hoard who will always want us tangled in an iron net. I can't know the fate of my people, but I want to. I want to know the odds that we'll never be kept from the sky again. The odds of humanity keeping a promise."

Peace and prosperity and puppy love and promises, you think absently. It's good to know that you're not the only person with doubts. You take a breath. "I'm supposed to be attending this...conference soon. We'll be talking about this sort of thing. Humans and fey, I mean, and...moving forward. That sort of thing. I don't think it's the kind of thing that I can bring a plus-one to, but if there's anything you want me to say, I still have to think about, uh. Talking points." You offer, wiping your brow. The rain is starting to come in earnest, delayed only by the thick canopy that you both move under.

"That Ulstead's allies are not my allies, and if any one of them try to subjugate us, I will have my war." Borra turns away from you like he's searching for something, treating you to a nice view of his rainslicked wings. You're really going to forget how to act around these things one day. Don't pet the grown man. Do not pet the grown man.

"Fair, but I think that might be a little too heavy." You pull up the thick hood of your outermost jacket.

"Please and thank you?" He turns back just in time to catch you laughing in spite of yoursef, covering your mouth. You're silenced by an angry crack of thunder overhead that's follower by a flash of lightning bright enough to chase away the shadows that loom over the two of you, if only for a moment. Borra goes back to looking like he's searching for something, and you gingerly roll the map up and protect it from the rain in your satchel.

"There's something you need to see." Borra tells you this like it's some great and universal fact, and part of you is annoyed that you might be kept out in the rain, but more importantly, you're curious.

"Is that according to your great and infallible wisdom, or what?" You ask, unable to resist a bit of sarcasm. It either goes over his head or he's really too serious about this to care about your snark.

Borra reaches out to you almost like he's going to grab you and tug you along, but he thinks better of it. "It'll be quick. The rain won't get any worse than this."

You don't argue because now you're dying to see what it is he thinks you need to see, so you follow after him willingly, shying away from another crop of sickly purple flowers that you make out through the shade and wet.

"Hey, Bastard Flowers." You warn, covering your mouth and nose. He looks at them as you both pass, and then at you over his shoulder.

"Malodorins."

"Beg your pardon?" You ask, squinting at the broad silhouette of his wongs as he leads you deeper into heaven-knows-where. You should really be adding this to the Bad and Crummy Map.

"Your Bastard Flowers. I heard them called Malodorins. Why do you call them that, anyway?" He asks, coming to a stop and waiting for you to catcg up to him.

"One nearly killed me." You explain, wiping your face and holding your satchel close. The rain is, in fact, getting worse. You glare daggers at Borra while he looks around like he's lost. If he is lost, you resolve to make fun of him for at least a month.

"Were you going to refer to my kind as Bastard Fey, then?" He asks absently, picking a direction and moving again. You follow, again. "Considering..."

"Oh, no, I was going to give you your own personal exposé. Jumps on top of strangers. Drags people around through rainstorms. Mean." You list off, raising your voice to counter the patter of raindrops showering down through the treetops.

"Nothing's keeping me from doing the same for you. Misnames plants they don't like. Draws too many mushrooms. Mean." You can hear his annoying grin, though you can't see it with him leading the way, and all.

"You said there was nothing wrong with the mushrooms." You feign hurt as he slows down again.

"I lied." Looking around him, you find that he's led you to the mouth of some kind of cave. Hanging lichen and ivy all but conceals the entrance, but the wind pushes it aside just enough to reveal the telltale glimmer of something glowing within.

"Okay, bastard." You reply, frowning and stepping forward. "What is this? I already have a cave, in case you forgot. This isn't news to me, buddy."

Borra gives you this exasperated look that you can barely make out before shouldering his way into the cave and you, having to pick between standing in the now-torrential downpour and entering an unknown destination with a strange man, pick the more interesting option and pursue Borra into the cave. You hope that the vines you shove aside with a damp hand aren't poisonous.

The inside of the cave is quiet, and it's cold, and it's beautiful. You realize what it was he wanted to show you, but you're too stunned to say anything in that moment. Brilliant, glowing fungi sprout from every crevice of the cave, setting everything awash with an otherworldly light. You lean close to the nearest mushroom-studded wall of the cave, inspecting every cap, counting gills. There's so many of them that it feels like you're basking in the glow of a blue sun.

"I—" Your voice cracks. You clear your throat. "I'm really confused about your stance on mushrooms, now."

Borra, who has to stoop himself low and keep his wings tucked tight against him, didn't look away from the cave entrance to answer you. "I thought you might want them for your work space. Nobody ever wrote a book in the dark."

You blink. Right. "Right," you say, shifting foot-to-foot. "And there was no way that this could wait for a less rainy day, either." You add, crossing your arms. A roll of thunder punctuates your snark.

"It was in the area today. I didn't know we'd be rained in." Borra responds, finally glancing your way. Your sour expression worsens, mouth gaping in outrage.

"Rained in? We're not that far out." You scoff, readying yourself to leave. "I'm not camping out in a wet cave all night if I don't have to." You already miss your humble bed.

Borra stands straighter so quickly that he nearly whacks his dark horns on the ceiling. The light from the mushrooms casts the sharp angles of his rough face in a dramatic light as he takes a step toward you, shaking his head. "No. The rain might seep through your bag and ruin something."

You open your mouth to retaliate, only to sigh hard and plop down onto the mossy floor of the cave, wishing that your stare could burn a palpable hole through him while you wrap your arms around yourself. "I don't want to sound unappreciative, but you really are a bastard. If I get sick, I'm waging war on you." You threaten. You really wish that you could start a fire in here, but everything is a touch too damp.

Borra sits against the opposite wall, watching you with an unreadable expression. He opens his mouth as if to say something, so you perk up—

And then he closes it. You lose interest until he opens his mouth again, as if he's finally figured his words out—

And then he closes his mouth.

"Are you okay? Are you breathing fine? You look like a fish." You note, leaning forward to watch him. If it happens a third time, maybe that means something lucky.

"You can get some rest. I'll wake you when the rain lets up." He says finally. You shift in place, pulling your hood down.

"Good idea, Borra, I'm dying to be watched while I sleep." You reply, running a hand through your hair. He grumbles something venomous-sounding under his breath. "Come again?"

"Don't you ever stop that? The sarcasm?" The weather and your circumstances are putting you both in a snippy mood.

You deserve some kind of medal for the way your eyes roll at that. "Okay. I'll try that again. No thank you, sir, I'm not comfortable sleeping here." You hiss through your teeth. He falls completely silent again, considering you in the half-light.

"Thank you for showing me this." You break your silence with a sentence that...hurts, somehow. You don't quite know why that is. It's much easier to be spiteful and proud and sarcastic but there's just no way to convey something he deserves to hear while holding onto that. Not really, you think. This is nice of him, and he didn't have to do it. Which means you should say something. Even if it stings your ego the way that it does. But, since you've peeled that bandage off, the words come just a bit easier after that. "And thank you for talking to me. And I'm sorry that I snapped at you."

Borra looks at you like you've grown a second head or something, and you look pointedy at the ground, feeling all...squeamish.

"It's no problem." His response is slow, almost tentative. You don't know where to go from here. It's actually sort of embarrassing, you realize, how poorly equipped you are for a normal and non-hostile conversation with this man, so you take a deep breath in and clear your throat.

"Still pretty awful of you to trap me in here during a storm. Dark, evil, and twisted, even." You throw your head back in mock-dismay. "If this rain never lets up we'll starve to death in here."

"Oh, I'd eat you before that happened." He's so matter-of-fact about it that all you can do for a split-second is stare, owlish, because....would he eat a human? It strikes you as a deeply insensitive and inappropriate thing to ask, but,

"I was joking." Borra cuts you off with a dry follow-up before you can even begin your question and you nod furiously, feeling silly about it all until you notice the way his shoulders quake with muffled laughter and his teeth glint in the blue glow, revealed by a smug and deeply amused grin.

Ah. He's getting a real kick out of fucking with you.

You roll your eyes hard enough that he can surely see it in the dim lighting, and you tuck your bag closer to yourself. Now that the banter has died down, you're both left in a long silence that's disrupted only by the occasional crack of far-off thunder. You lean your head back against the wall, and you watch him. He watches back.

You're both still silent.

Chapter 6

Your uncomfortable staring contest ends when you take it upon yoursef to note down all that you'll need to be able to properly cultivate the mushrooms later on — the process would be a tad bit more involved than grabbing fungi off the walls there and then and taking them home — until the rain thins out enough for you to get away with urging Borra to get to his feet and help you on the walk back by shielding you with one of those great big wings. All for the sake of protecting the bag, of course. You have to do some serious social and spatial calculations to try and gauge how close you should be to his body to be able to comfortably accommodate the reach of his wing while also not making things weirder than they've already gotten.

"I'm not going to bite you." He must notice the extreme caution that you're exercising.

"I might bite you." You inform him hotly, trying to ward off a shiver. There's warmth emanating from him, but you sternly tell yourself that you would rather eat glass than cuddle up to him on this walk home. Borra finds your threat amusing enough to chuckle over it and you huff loudly, daring to throw an elbow out into his side. It's a very soft blow, certainly softer than you're truly capable of, but he responds with an indignant sound somewhere between a yelp and a growl and bumps your back with the wing he's been covering you with. You, tired and cold and beyond caring at this point, counter with a mocking, "Grrr."

The walk continues with no shortage of half-hearted bullying from the both of you until you're on the Ulstead-side of the woven bridge.

"Alright, I—" You're broken off by your own yawn, "I think I can take it from here. Thanks." You don't want to be responsible for dragging him through the streets of the kingdom at goodness-knows-what-hour, especially when the weather's calmed down enough that you bet it'd be safe for him to fly now. It's been hours since lightning last struck.

He doesn't keep his wing out for you, but he walks with you for a few more paces before finally letting you take the rest of the journey on your own. "Keep that bag dry!"

"I've got it, bastard." You gripe at him over your shoulder.

Your dim quarters are as mildly depressing as ever, but they're dry and warmer than outside and your bed feels like heaven once you collapse into it, kicking around in the covers until you're thoroughly cocooned. Your dreams are unremarkable, save for how they all glow a faint blue around the edges.

 

You wake up congested and sore in the throat and you swear to wring Borra's neck for this. Judging by your door-light, it's later in the day than you usually rise—sick and behind schedule. You think about the many ways in which you're going to kick Borra's ass for this all through your wake-up routine and then you finish it off by sneezing out a vile glob of mucus.

You're not going out today. Not like this.

For the first few hours after waking, you steep in your misery, draping yourself across the bunched up covers on your bed and praying for a speedy recovery or a quick death—whichever happens to be most convenient for the world to grant you.

Unfortunately, your wallowing is interrupted by a face you'd give anything not to see right now. Rupert Grimmond, in all his snootiness, has invaded your inner sanctum with a bit of paper pinched in one prim, white-gloved hand. He regards you in your pathetic state with something like contempt, stopping a few paces from where you're settled. You sniffle and salute him lazily.

"These are the details of the upcoming meeting. You're to have your measurements taken later today," He sets the paper down on the nearest flat surface, which happens to be on a small table next to the preserved trimmings collected from the enchanted bridge. "For the uniform you'll be expected to wear."

"Thank you." You rasp.

Grimmond looks at you for a moment longer, watery blue eyes narrowed skeptically. "You were awfully late coming back last night." He says it in a voice that's meant to be nonchalant, but you can feel the intent of the comment underneath, like a pebble lodged in a hiking boot. He's probing for something.

You sit up and shrug your shoulders, rubbing one eye with the backs of your knuckles. "Yeah, I got rained into a cave. Had to wait it out."

"Were you stuck with that brute all night?" He raises a thick eyebrow, as if this is some kind of scandal.

"Who, Borra?" You frown. Hearing Grimmond call him a brute hits you unexpectedly hard and sits oddly in your stomach. You really...don't like it. "He's not that bad."

"He's the one who initiated the attack on the day of the wedding, didn't you know?" Grimmond looks at you like you're stupid and you look right back at him hoping that if you stare hard enough then he'll be able to tell that you're thinking about poking his mean little eyes out.

"That's not all that happened that day, and he and the rest stood down in the end. Aren't we all past this?" Granted, you had heard about it all second-hand. During the fighting itself, you, like many others, had found a quiet place and hid there until the wedding bells tolled. Even then, though, you never showed up to the festivities; you were too busy stealing bread from your neighbors as payback for keeping you up at night with their arguing.

You've always been a master at prioritizing.

"Yes, I suppose we are." He says in a voice that makes it obvious that he, personally, isn't past a damn thing. You wonder what such a shrewd little man is doing with any ounce of power in the castle at a time like this, but Grimmond bows his way out before you can decide to insult him out loud. "Do remember to be present for your uniform measurements, I'd hate to have you representing Ulstead in your usual attire."

"Dick." You reply in a low, nasally mutter once he's out of earshot, finally standing up and crossing the room to pick up that paper he had dropped off. It has a date and time for the conference, being held in this castle. You're grateful that you won't have to travel in your state, and then you're furious at Borra all over again for getting you sick. The bastard.

But not a brute, you think, pursing your lips. You set the note back down. Scribbled hastily into the bottom corner beneath the careful calligraphy is your name and what assume to be the time that you're to have your measurements taken. Not a brute.

 

Almost as if you're toying with the idea of never getting around to having your measurements for the express reason that you'll be annoying Grimmond, you leave your room and try your hardest to lose track of time. You meander around the castle, occasionally sneezing, coughing, and hacking dramatically into a handkerchief, especially around complete strangers so that they politely avoid eye contact, scurry away, and aren't around to watch you rub your paws all over the artwork and the statues, looking totally awestruck. You've lived in the castle for a while, now, but it's been in the same way that mice do: in the dark, and only poking your head out when you're hungry.

The way you traipse around like a child at the park is probably evidence that you shouldn't be allowed into nice establishments without proper supervision, but who's going to stop you, now?

You eventually tire of the glittering indoors and treat yourself to a walk outside. The sky is a flat and empty blue, as if all the clouds had bled out into last night's storm. You stroll along aimlessly until discarded hay crunches under your worn boots and you find yourself in the stables, standing in a wide aisle that cuts between rows of stalls of well-kept horses. You blink. This is good. You've been meaning to get around to securing yourself a mount for your outings. You could only go so far on foot each day without needlessly wearing yourself out. Sometimes you wonder what kind of payment Borra would need to convince him to carry you around through the air.

You stop in front of one of the horses. It looks at you and you look at it and you sneeze into your handkerchief and the horse doesn't do anything of note, but what does happen is you hear a sound like something's being killed further into the stables. Naturally, you approach the noise, looking at each beast you pass. Horse, horse, horse, pretty horse, backwards horse...

Goat?

There, in the last stable — which is remarkably cleaner than the other ones — is a white goat, and coincidentally the source of the racket. The thing is practically shrieking like a banshee. You had no clue goats could even make that noise. The thing butts its horns into a divot in the wall where it's evidently made a habit of doing this, and the light catches on the ornate, expensive looking collar that it wears.

"Weird." You mumble, sneezing again. This hay isn't doing you any favors.

"'Scuse me," A soft rises up behind you, nearly smothered by the goat's hellish wailing, and you turn and step out of the way in time to see shy little Martin forking feed into the goat's trough. You watch for a moment, wondering if this is really as bizarre as it feels or if your sickness is just throwing you off.

"What's, uh...what's with the goat?" You croak. Martin looks at you wide-eyed.

"This is the queen. Th-The old one, I mean."

Your eyes bug out. "Are you serious? That's—? I thought that was a joke!" Another one of the second-hand things you had heard was that Maleficent had turned the queen into a goat. You had overhead some mother telling this to her daughter, so naturally you thought that it was just a nice thing to say instead of, somebody murdered the shit out of the queen, honey.

You hadn't thought that she was actually a goat.

"It is, in a way." Another voice, with the tone of someone smiling happily, cuts in. The goat-queen, who had previously been chowing down on her goat-queen-lunch, starts to bleat and wail shrilly again, this time with a fervent desperation. You look.

You must really be having your chain yanked on this day.

King John, dressed humbly but otherwise unmistakable, stands with his hands clasped in front of him, looking past you and into the goat's stall almost wistfully. You wonder how he feels about his goat being a wife. Wait, that's not right...You rub your temples.

"Shouldn't she be tried for...crimes? Several crimes?" You ask, hesitant. You're not really sure how you should address the man. The last news you had heard of him was that, though the curse was lifted, it had left him far too weak to continue to rule in any capacity. However, he doesn't look particularly weak now, standing before you. King(?) John gazes at you with a glimmer in his eye that could almost be called mischievous.

"I think she's aready paying for everything that she's done and more right now." By now, the goat-queen has given up on her frenzy and flopped dejectedly into the furthest corner of her enclosure. You look at him, and then her, and then Martin, who looks like he thinks that if he stands very still and stares at the ground, nobody will see him.

Then you ask, "Aren't you supposed to be extremely sick? I mean, right down to the death rattle? Clinging to your final breaths? Totally incapacitated?"

No, yeah, that is absolutely mischief in this old man's look. He raises his fist to his mouth and coughs dramatically, not unlike how you had been just moments ago. He clutches his chest theatrically, grabbing a nearby post to support himself. You'd be worried if it weren't for his big, jovial grin.

"For all intents and purposes, I am." He answers enigmatically.

You're floored. The former queen is a goat and the former king is...weird? "Am I allowed to ask what your deal is, or do I know too much already?"

King John, or, The John Formerly Known As King, straightens up and a serious expression settles on his rugged features. "Of course you're allowed to ask. You're the researcher, aren't you? Asking questions is why they like you." You don't have much time to feel proud that someone's told him about you before he continues, "I've dreamed of peace for Ulstead ever since I was my son's age, and with the union between him and Aurora, I believe we'll finally see it. I want them to be the face of that. At least, to our allies." He gives you this warm and fatherly look and it's so touching that you almost think it's healed you before you ruin the effect for yourself by hacking up phlegm. John doesn't miss a beat. "I know that they're not the only ones working to better our relationship with the Moors, but they've already become a symbol of it by virtue of their marriage. Alas, as things are, I don't need myself to become an debate topic. She may have cursed me into an unbreakable slumber, but Ingrith was still my wife of many years. In a sense, I do feel responsible for what happened, if only in part. Anyone with cruel enough intentions could argue that I was, if they so wished."

You're both staring in her direction now. Martin has, very, very quietly, removed homself from the situation. John looks sad, distant. "It's better that I'm no longer part of it at all. So, I'm sick. Fading fast."

You're silent because this situation went from hilariously nonsensical to melancholy far too quickly for your liking, and you need a moment to recover. Mostly, you're just impressed that the palace staff has enough compassion to be willing to keep this kind of secret. Loyalty to a former ruler, I guess. He seems to sense your shock, because he brings a firm and comforting hand down onto your shoulder.

"It's not all bad. My wife is a goat and I'm on my deathbed and my son and his wife are changing the world for the better. Life could be worse." He laughs and it's infectious. You giggle along with him until you sneeze again.

"Alright. Um...I hope the afterlife's treating you well. I have to go and get measured, now." Suddenly it doesn't seem like a such a chore at all. You cast one final glance at the bejeweled white goat and the un-king, shake your head, and depart back to the palace.

I guess I wouldn't have learned how strange life really is around here if I had cooped myself up all day, you think on your way back.

 

The measuring process is so quick and painless and uneventful that you're left feeling bored again all too quickly. You undress to your underthings, a stout old women tightens a measuring tape around you a few times, and she comments idly on the shape of your face in a way that you think is complimentary, but you're too tired to really register it. You redress sloppily and collapse back into bed until heavy footsteps wake you again and you reach out with the hand already dangling off of your bed to grab for one of your boots, ready to just start chucking things at anybody who wants any more of your time today.

The shape that shoulders into your room from the once-forge outside has wide wings and curving horns. Borra ducks in unceremoniously.

"Go away, I'm dying and it's your fault." You grumble, mercifully dropping the boot.

He glowers, scanning you from his distance. "Have you been in bed all day?"

"No, actually, I went out and had the weirdest conversation and then I got measured and—hey, is my face shape good or did I mishear the woman?" You ramble. Your sinuses and scratchy throat are doing awful things to your voice, and in hindsight exaggerating your cough so much earlier probably wasn't great for your soreness, either, but there's no undoing it now. That's what you get.

"You're sick?" He asks slowly, like he's having trouble wrapping his head around it. You don't blame him; one night in a wet cave has you hacking up fist-sized globs of yuck? That is bizarre.

"I am a little under the weather, yes. Are you not? Because that's not fair. You weren't even wearing a shirt in that rain. You're never wearing shirts...why don't you wear shirts?" You squint at him as he moves forward, crouching by the bed and leaning close to you. You inch away to reclaim your personal space.

"I have large horns and larger wings, that's why I don't wear shirts." He mutters absently, looking you over with a pensive frown. His lip is curled just slightly, as if in disgust, and you figure that's justified. You must be pretty gross to look at right now.

You scoff. "Bullshit. That man you drew was fully clothed."

"That's different. Udo's from the tundra." He stands up eventually, and you relax, not noticing how you had tensed up until just now.

"Which tundra? The world is a big place." You mumble into your pillow, pulling it toward you sluggishly. You're just being a contrarian, now, because it's the easiest way to talk to him. Borra ignores your needling as if he knows you're just trying to recreationally goad him. Maybe he does.

"I'll be back later."

"I'm thrilled." You groan, shifting until you're as comfortable as you're going to get. Sleep isn't far from your grasp, and you find it waiting for you before he returns.

 

At some point, somebody partly wakes you and, through your grumpy sleep-haze, coaxes you into drinking something from a flask that you hate so much it hurts—or perhaps it hurts so much that you hate it. You gag blearily and slur through your more colorful curses, but they're patient until you're finished and you're allowed to set your head back down when the flask is empty. A hand lingers on your head, warm and firm and pushing through your hair once, twice. You don't think about it.

Sleep comes to you soon once more.

Chapter 7

When you wake again, you're alone with the miracle that you can use both of your nostrils again. Your throat is still a little sore, your head is a little light, and the drink from last night has left a pungent, herbal film all over your tongue and the backs of your teeth, but you're otherwise fit for work, so, work you do.

The days until your meeting tick down, each as inconspicuous as the last. You obtain your mushroom samples and set to work propogating them in your dim room. You give Martin his own journal right as you and Borra finish filling more of your own as a way to try and encourage him to pitch in more and to usher your overall progress along. You frequent the stables, partly to mount up for deeper forays into the Moors and partly to indulge in the occasional odd conversation with the King-Who-Should-Be-Dying. On five separate occasions you almost ask Borra about the night of your illness, but a seed of doubt and embarrassment buried deep in your chest stops you each time. Instead, you pointedly tell him that,

"Hey, bastard, if you're going to barge into my room while I'm sleeping, the least you can do is show me where to go if I ever want to return the favor."

His keeps this information from you and only responds with a half-amused look. Of course he does, what were you expecting? For Borra to invite you back to his...nest? To chat over drinks? And maybe drink a little too much each, and maybe let whatever happens then, happen, and maybe—hold on. Cut that out.

That's been an issue, lately, these funny little thoughts. You catch yourself paying a little too much attention to parts of him you hadn't before, like his shoulders and his hands and, well, you've aways thought nice things about his wings, and you suppose his horns have always been impressive, too, but you're not ready to answer for the sudden interest you've taken in his predator-sharp teeth. You're especially not ready to think about why watching him smile makes you dizzy. You blame it on the rarity of the expression. You're just too accustomed to Borra looking like he's seconds away from killing somebody, is all, it's startling to see him smile. That's it.

To keep your mind off of him and on your work, you finally get started on an official manuscript, volume one of your collective findings, the fruit of all this hectic note-taking labor. You can't have these awful, troublesome thoughts if you don't give them room to squeeze in.

The meeting nears as the season grows cooler and the skies darken earlier. You take advantage of the former forge to stoke a fire that'll keep you warm in the night, and you sleep better for it. You try on your uniform once it's delivered exactly one time before the event you'll need it for—it's nothing gaudy, simple and deep grey cloth and shiny buttons and a flattering cut, but it's still a handsome thing on you. You admire yourself in it until you're bored, and then you go back to the manuscript. It's time-consuming, wrist-cramping work, but every finished page makes your heart soar.

It's on the night before the conference that you turn to one of Borra's journals for reference on the next chapter of the finished product, pouring over his research with careful analysis and writing with a steady hand. His are all more words than pictures, but every entry is concise and easy to transfer into the larger text of the manuscript. You write until keeping your eyes open becomes an uphill battle, and then you put yourself to sleep.

 

 

Your dream is warm, and you're being kissed.

Everything is careful, deliberate, loving—you could cry for how gentle he's being with you. You feel rough hands cradling your hips and you rock upwards into the weight of him as he settles between your legs. Your own hands trace his shoulders with care before reaching further, fingertips grazing against soft feathers. His mouth trails down the column of your throat achingly slow, and the faint press of his teeth there has you gasping for him.

 

"Borra, please—"

 

You lurch out of your dream with a startled yelp, sitting upright in bed and pointedly ignoring the heat still lingering low in your abdomen while you focus on calming down and getting a grip on reality. There are no hands, no kisses, no teeth, and your bed is empty save for yourself, as it should be.

Damn it. Damn him.

It doesn't mean anything, you tell yourself stubbornly, burying your face in your hands and trying not to scream. You're just bored, and, yes, maybe a little lonely, and your head is spinning ridiculous, unrealistic fantasies around random people to make up for it, and that is all.

Dreams like this, you reason, are uncontrollable and normal and besides, it could've been about anyone. The queen. One of the guards. A complete stranger. Grimmond. The mind works in mysterious ways. It doesn't mean anything at all that yours just so happened to pick Borra.

Your sudden interest in his shoulders is purely scientific. You just can't help but wonder about the development of the muscles there, or in his back where his wings connect, and that's all that this is about. Futhermore, you only think about his hands because you're curious about the way his nails grow in so sharp, and about whether he'd ever trim them, and what he might do with his hands then, and...

And it is perfectly normal to be curious about these things, and it doesn't mean anything, and you're fine. This is fine.

You burn with frustration and something else entirely as you clean up and get ready for the day. You pour yourself into that smart slate uniform, admire the glinting buttons lit by your now-thriving mushrooms (it had nearly shocked you to death the ease you had in cultivating them, but it seemed that the magic was perfectly content doing most of the work). You've beat the sun to rising. You probably could've gotten away with a few more winks of sleep, but the thought of risking a continuation of that dream...

It's not that it disgusts you, it's that you wish it did. It'd be easier if it did. Were he any other man, were he a human man, you'd...well, you'd still be your same stubborn self about it, but at least you'd have firmer footing, so to speak. You'd know that there's absolutely no harm or risk in your attraction. Besides, you wonder, does he even think of you in that way? Does he have dreams? Does he wake up aching, and if he does, then does he ever reach down and—

"Stop it before you hurt yourself," You scold your reflection, watching it turn cherry red in spite of the bluish light cast in your quarters.

You manage to make it up into the halls of the palace without any more lewd thoughts, and then you officially shift gears into productivity-mode.

It's definitely early morning, right before the sun has quite met the sky, right when everything is lit with a dove grey light that lazily shines through the wide windows of the palace. You're indescribably relieved that you won't be seeing Borra today on account of the meeting.

You find Martin skittering through the halls after Grimmond, moving with his head down. You pay no mind to His Awfulness as you pull aside the footboy and press a wooden badge into his hands. "You'll be going out today, alright? I have that meeting to go to, so I won't make it."

Martin gawps at you for a moment and Grimmond finally realizes that all is not well in his world and seeks to undo the wrong of your interference by prowling over like a well-dressed wolf. "Excuse me."

The sheer iron will that it takes for you to bite your tongue and keep from quipping, You're excused!, in response, leaves you all but drained. You smile at Grimmond patiently. It doesn't meet your eyes. "Yes, Grimmond?"

"I don't need you whisking my assistant away just yet. He has other responsibilities."

You chew at your bottom lip, weighing the pros and cons of an impromptu custody battle for Martin, who, faced with this tense moment, has turned himself into a nervous boy-statue with his dark eyes trained on the ground.

"I don't see why you can't do them on your own. Or with somebody else. Martin's been helping me on a near-daily basis, already." You press, half-cautious.

"He's busy now." Grimmond shuts you down flatly.

Your nostrils flare and you resist the urge to just start swinging. "He's to be my substitute while I'm attending that meeting. Or did you want me to mention this while I'm there?" Hell, you'll be that petty. You think Grimmond knows it, too, because he relents. Not verbally, of course, just by smoothing his salt-and-pepper hair back and storming off in a huff as if he's just remembered something important he needs to do.

You grin at Martin, looking to all the world like a cat setting a dead mouse at their owner's feet. "Okay, well, have fun today. I know I will." You actually do not know this. In fact, you're starting to clench up from the anxiety found in knowing that you'll soon be put on...some kind of spot. You have a better idea of what you want to say, if and when you need to talk, and you figure you'll just have to improvise when you run out of material. And so in conclusion, I have a very angry friend who will pull your heads off if you don't act right.

No, maybe you shouldn't mention him. Or think about him, or think about mentioning him. You take a steadying breath, forcing your mind to gravitate elsewhere. Mushrooms...

You'll manage, you know you will.

 

The great hall is decorated, in your opinion, as if another wedding was anticipated. Floral arrangements practically spill from each available crevice, everything in full bloom in spite of the gradual change in seasons. This is a tactic, you think. Imagine your crops thriving like this. Imagine never going hungry. Imagine peace. It's a good tactic, you think. You have a chair designated to you with a little marker that has your name written the fanciest you've ever seen it. There's no food, but there are delicate glasses of water at each place. You file in early and you take your seat after smiling and waving at the queen herself, looking like she crawled out of the floral finery just moments ago with her hair done up nise and her dress hanging off of her like willow tresses. You nod at the king awkwardly. He's nice, you guess, you just haven't decided to adore him the way that you do Aurora. That 'beloved by everyone' clause in her curse may be lifted, but she's still just the sweetest thing in any room you've been in.

Well, I've never been in the same room as her and Borra at one time... You discreetly pinch the back of your wrist under the table. You don't need your thoughts to be veering there so early on in this process.

"Are you nervous?" Aurora calls out to you in her wonderful voice, shaking you from those horribly distracting thoughts.

"A little, but, normal nervous. Healthy nervous." You reply, hoping that you're right about the queasiness sitting like an anchor in your gut being normal. The queen's smile is radiant. She goes back to discussing something under her breath with her husband and you go back to staring blankly at the polished surface of the table.

You're almost completely lost within yourself when the large doors are opened and some voice that seem distant to you, as thoroughly distracted as you are, announces the arrival of a 'Maleficent'—

Maleficent?

You feel like you've been stabbed, or slapped, or electrocuted, or all of the above because yes, you heard correctly, and the maternal savior and infernal sorceress and beloved protector and feared witch herself is a stone's throw from where you're seated, with a dark-haired man following in her wake and a dark dress adorned with bird skulls practically dripping from her shoulders down to the floor.

You stare, because you don't know what else to do, because she's beautiful and you're curious and this is already shaping up to be a stranger and more wonderful day than you could ever have previously guessed. Maleficent greets Aurora with a warmth that it'd be hard to guess that she had in her, even to somebody who already knew of their relationship. The man with Maleficent pulls Aurora into a giddy hug while the sorceress is busy engaging in a strange stare-off with King Phillip, who looks equal measures uncomfortable and enthusiastic.

You feel like you're intruding just by being here, a voyeur to something not ever meant for you, so you respectfully avert your eyes and count the droplets of condensation that've begun to accumulate on your glass.

"Is this your researcher?" A sharp and commanding voice cuts through your patient focus, sending a shiver down your spine. You peek up. Maleficent is holding you in a dissecting stare. You want to both evaporate on the spot and rise to meet what feels like an unspoken challenge, so you impulsively pick the easier of the two options and stand up from your chair. Her deep red lips twitch upward in in one corner and you nod shakily.

"Yes, that's—"

You speak for yourself, introducing yourself by name with a short bow.

"...Just the one?" Maleficent asks in a tone that you suppose is meant to be conversational, but it's her, and she's terrifying and wonderful and—

"I'm—I have help. Um, palace staff, and a...and my...and, Borra?" If memory serves, she was the one who had appointed him to babysitting duty, so to speak. She cocks an eyebrow, looking regal and amused as she takes a seat in a chair that the man with her pulls out before he seats himself beside her. She thanks him quietly and you catch a name—Diaval—before Maleficent turns to you again. Her manicured hands are folded atop one another.

"So, he's made himself useful after all." It takes you a moment to recognize that she means it as a joke. You wonder if it's hard for her not to communicate everything so intensely or if your preconceptions of the woman are just skewing your judgement. You laugh tentatively, softly, and when that doesn't cause anything bad to happen, you swallow your relief and nod.

"Oh, yeah, he's a big help. I've gotten started on the manuscript — um, for our work — and just the other night I was poring over one of his journals and it was a lifesaver because I didn't realize before that he'd caught something about the root nymphs that I hadn't noted down in my own journal, so when it came time to do their section I didn't have to—" You catch yourself prattling into an otherwise silent room and suddenly your face is warm with a rush of self-consciousness. "Anyway, I...yes, he's...it's good. We're doing good."

Maleficent is either unphased by your blathering or kind enough not to act like she is. She flashes you this slow, fanged smile and dips her head. You notice that the Diaval man is watching her closely, and you wonder if there was something they'd agreed to or possibly rehearsed before coming here, given how intent his look is. The idea is silly enough to set you at ease.

"I'm glad to hear it." Maleficent speaks right as the bulk of the rest of the conference starts to file in. A litany of different representatives find their seats until the table is a-flutter with new faces and differently colored uniforms. You're flanked on either side by people who, thankfully, don't turn to you for idle conversation, so you can go back to peering into your sweating water glass and thinking about nothing in particular. It could've been anywhere from mere minutes to entire hours until Queen Aurora rose like the dawn sun from her place and the meeting was officially set into motion.

She starts by speaking of her own experience in the Moors. Her childhood, both the idyllic and ugly parts of it, the influence of her Godmother and the creatures of the Moors. She speaks of the recent war, the tension that led to it and the celebration which ended it, casting a loving glance toward her husband. Queen Aurora ends on a note that emphasizes the importance of peace between humans and fairies, and then allows for the dialogue to pass to Maleficent, who picks up by, in turn, carefully speaking her piece from the point of view of someone born in the Moors, experiencing human interference. You can tell that it's hard for her, in spite of how flawless she seems all the while. She doesn't stumble, nor does she falter, but her voice takes on a weight that you can feel dropping heavily in your chest, even though she, too, manages to end on something of a positive note. You catch on to the trend, here: all of Ulstead's representatives are meant to be selling this big concept of peace. King Phillip gets a turn and so, too, does Diaval.

And then all eyes are on you, and you realize it's your turn, and you're last. You need to finish strong. You stand up, discovering that the butterflies in your stomach all have stingers and talons.

"I've...recently been appointed as an official researcher on behalf of the crown. My job is to record my findings in the Moors, immortalize the nature of the Moorfolk on paper, and, um. Spread that knowledge to humanity, so that we may better understand who we share our world with." That introduction is the easy part. You've had that down for weeks, now. You take a breath and continue. "Before this, I studied the fringes of the Moors on my own. Mostly just the plants, but even those are nothing short of precious. The hardest and most dangerous part was only ever keeping water out of the dinghy I used to get across."

You get a faint laugh out of that one and it's enough to really bolster your confidence. You swallow. "Right now, I'm putting the first volume in what I hope to be a collection of texts that explore and explain the nature of the Moors. The plants, the people, the magic. I'm doing this with the assistance of a fey man who I—" This is where you falter, because your mind rushes to finish that sentence in a variety of different ways, many of which wouldn't be appropriate for this conference. "Who I owe a lot to. The peace that Ulstead has declared with the Moors has been hard-won, but every day since the battle has been better because of it. As our allies, it would behoove you to follow suit." Or else. You have to smother a laugh as you sit, remembering Borra's threat. Your head is buzzing as you sit and try to recover from the rush of giving a small speech to a crowd of strangers.

After all the speakers from Ulstead have all but spoken the ears right off of their guests, the conference becomes disappointingly dry. There's very little arguing—something you attribute to the presence of Maleficent in the room. You have no doubt in your mind that the stories of her have reached every rumor mill far and wide. In a sense, you note with a lopsided grin, this is a cruelly skewed meeting. It's an agreement to peace with the land's most prolific one-woman-army sitting at the table. Suddenly, you regret not finding a way to sneak Borra in anyway just to rub it all in a little more, and then you have to go and pinch yourself for thinking about him again, and then you pinch yourself some more for how much you've spoken about him today already. The back of your wrist and hand is a brilliant red from all your fussing. Serves me right.

 

The meeting concludes with all in attendance more or less on the same page, and anybody with any doubts too unnerved to voice them. Each person stands and excuses themself after gushing pleasantries and kissing up to the king and queen so hard that you wouldn't be shocked if someone got on their knees and started in on some good old-fashioned groveling. Eventually, the visitors spill out of the great hall in much the same fashion as they arrived until you're all back down to only the Ulstead crew. You rise from your seat, stretching your legs.

"You spoke well, researcher." You're eager to go, but not so eager that you'll pass up on praise from the Maleficent. You light up.

"I meant it. That made it easy. I...I'll be, seeing you all?" You hesitate, not sure just how in the hell you're supposed to go about leaving this situation now. You bow, since it seems to be the appropriate thing to do. "Good day, everyone."

You've made it through the meeting unscathed and more or less unbothered by any more scandalous thoughts, and now it's time to go sit in your room and think about not thinking about a certain somebody. You push your chair in, swallowing hard and wishing you could feel a bit more relief than you currently do for pulling this off.

A chorus of voices sees you off as you depart, but your pesky internal monologue is already drowning them out.

Chapter 8

The immediate consequence of the conference's apparent success is a party that's cobbled together right in the nick of time, before all those foreign emissaries get the chance to trek back to their respective homes. You're still stuck on the vague hilarity of how there was never any real risk of fighting with Maleficent in the room as the discussion took place. The most confrontational it that had gotten was a man in a rich blue outfit asking for somebody to confirm the possibility of a fairy alliance improving farmer's crops, to which the answer essentially boiled down to, "Yes that's possible, just don't be an ass. Please don't be an ass. We might kill you if you're an ass."

Alright—that last part was in your head, really, but you imagine it was in plenty of other people's heads, too. Their caution wasn't exactly subtle. Those seated closest to Maleficent had suffered the honor with the same stiff wariness of nervous prey animals. That unspoken war had been won without ever needing declaration in the first place.

You're busy hiding when the celebration is announced, and you take the suddenness of it as another sign that Ulstead was predicted to come out on top from the start, or why else would piping hot dishes be pouring out from the kitchens at such a rate? At any rate, you're set to hunker down and wait this all out, as is your custom when it comes to parties (it's a shame that there's no bread for you to steal this time around). You're not in your room specifically because Borra knows to find you there if he ever goes searching, and—well, you don't expect him to go looking for you, you certainly aren't somewhat hoping that he might, but on the off chance that he does, you won't be found, because you're hiding in what looks like some sort of tacky trophy room. There's plaques and taxidermy models and suits of dated ornamental armor that look painstakingly kept and polished to really show off the gaudiness of it all.

Your master plan is to stay up here for until the festivities die down and you're able to sneak back into your blue-lit dungeon-room unnoticed. You don't know the exact odds of Borra showing up to a celebration at the castle, but even though you'd put money on them being paper-thin, you don't want to risk anything. Being the mature and responsible adult that you are, you've elected to handle your feelings by doing the rational thing: stuffing them into a tiny jar, burying it somewhere deep, and avoiding the subject of your emotional entanglement like a plague.

You reread an ornately etched placard about the triumphs of a royal hero in some bygone war for the ninth time. Your stay up here is already going great.

Maybe...maybe in a past life, you really were a horrible person. Maybe you were some bloodthirsty warlord, or crazed spree killer, or a tax collector. Because that has to be the only reason why life is punishing you like this, right? That has to be why the cards are stacked against you how they are. That has to be why a ditzy young woman, her face framed by dark curls and recognizable to you as the woman who had showed you around on your first day, has practically spilled into your sanctuary with a sigh of relief.

"There you are!" She fans herself, looking flustered.

"Are you sure?" You ask. It's your (admittedly bad) last ditch effort. You are desperate.

"Am I—? Oh, you're hilarious," She laughs awfully hard. You're pretty sure you're not that hilarious. "You should be down with the rest, celebrating!"

She says should, but you get the impression that she's been sent to look for you, and that this is, therefore, less of a happy little suggestion and more of a summons.

You test how much resistance you can put up. "Oh, I think I'm fine here..."

"The others are expecting you." There is it. You are expected. You feel like a stuck animal and you don't even have the option to free yourself from this by chewing off a limb.

Well, it's fine, you tell yourself, sheepishly following the woman out of your hiding place. Borra's not going to show up to something like this.

 

You're right until you're not.

There's more people gathered and rejoicing than you've ever seen in one place before and the sheer volume of them all has your knees knocking together. It's a lot. You get it, you do. This is a diplomatic triumph, a big deal, so it's natural for the celebration to reflect the gravity of the success, but that doesn't make it any easier for you to relax when you're practically dragged by the hand into the fray.

You lose the ditzy woman because she lets you go to get swept away into the masses, but you find the drinks soon after. The studious part of you observes that maybe drinking a whole bunch at a time like this isn't the greatest idea, but all your nervousness and irritation winds around the last vestiges of your prudence and chokes it out of you. You snatch a gleaming flute of champagne off of a tray being carried around by a stone-faced butler and you down it like a parched sailor. You take a breath and assign yourself two missions: manage any conversation you get stuck in like a champion, and keep the booze coming.

You pull it off. Sort of.

Are you perhaps painting yourself in a negative light with how frequently you're found white-knuckling a full glass? Sure, maybe, but you like to think that you make up for it with your sudden bottomless charm and wit. And mushroom facts.

"Fairy rings occur naturally, too," you tell some baron whose name you don't care about. "In certain species of mushroom, the mycelium branches outward from one central point that eventually will die, and the mushrooms grow all along perimeter of it. It's just how they are. That's what makes them especially difficult to study if you're not well-versed in these things; you can never be too sure whether it's a phenomenon of nature or a magical occurrence." You babble happily, flushed in the face and punctuating your sentences with quick sips. "If you know the sorts of mushrooms where it's most likely that this will happen, though, then it's easier to spot the magical rings. Now, that's not to say that an especially adept trickster couldn't imbue a naturally occurring ring with their magic, so it's best to just leave inspection to the professionals..."

You're unstoppable at this point, and what's better is that you've forgotten what you were so worried about. Borra? Why would you be worried about him? That big brooding lug wouldn't come to a bustling human gathering like this if he was paid to. Granted, there's no shortage of dark fey and other magical denizens who do show up—you spy a women with with wings so great and colorful that your heart aches to see her and you're overcome with the desire to go and talk to her, but the baron's brought a friend who desperately wants to know if there's any easy ways to identify safe mushroom rings and besides, she's half the massive great hall away and you're lightheaded and losing coordination fast, so the trek would cost you an arm and a leg and all of your dignity, probably.

"Oh, sure, but the techniques are no walk in the park to master..." You lie to get them both off your back, knocking back your umpteenth charming little flute of champagne and casting an unfocused stare out into the throng of jubilant guests again. You can count more pairs of wings than you have fingers, but none appear to be your Borra's...

Borra's, you hazily correct your molasses-thick internal mutter as the shifting crowd seems to carry your company away like the tide and you find yourself stranded in the tide of strange faces and sumptuous clothing yet again, clutching your empty glass like the lifeline that isn't while you try to mavigate the labyrinth of body and sound that stands between you and your next refill. Just Borra's. He isn't mine. Not even if...

Oh, who are you kidding? You're not an idiot, you know what crushes are. Borra is a handsome man with an admirable outlook on life and an inspiring work ethic and a handsome smile and pretty wings and he's strong in body and mind and he's been so good and helpful and you hope that he's doing alright, wherever he is, and....

And you are fucking annihilated, you realize, clipping the expensive crimson shoulder of some dressed up ponce from another kingdom that's busy twirling around some lady who you've never seen before. You're drunk and you're in love and you're amidst so, so many strange faces. You want to lay down and cry and laugh and pine until you're sober but that's not an option so you try and navigate the polished and crowded tile to the best of your ability, but you're listing to one side and the ground is coming up fast and—

And you're caught. You're held by the shoulders in a firm grasp, you can feel sharp nails pressing into your stormcloud finery. You gasp, reaching out to press a tight grip into your savior so that you're not in any danger of careening around any more, only you recognize those bronze eyes and you're struck with the strangest cocktail of panic and sheer adoration. You guess you were wrong about him coming here.

"Borra!" You gasp, leaning into him in a way that you never would if you were sober. "Oh, Borra, I missed you so much, and I met Maleficent earlier, and I—I need more...my glass is empty," You explain in a forlorn tone, lifting your glass up to his face and setting it against the hard jut of his cheekbone with a little laugh. He looks the opposite of how you feel. He's not being any fun.

"I think you're done for the night." Your mouth gapes open. He's being so unfair, and unfun, and un-...

"Borraaa," You whine, fingers finding the strange little trinket dangling from the right side of his armor and pulling at it urgently. You wonder why he's wearing it here of all places...maybe he has no shirts at all. You're suddenly distraught. "Borra? Do you need a shirt? I'll give you a shirt if you need it..." It'd be tragic if he never, ever had a comfortable shirt, and you want him to be comfortable. He's always so intense, and angry, and maybe even a little sad...a nice shirt won't fix all that forever, but you think that it's probably a good starting point.

He ignores you. Maybe he's too shy to admit to needing a proper shirt, or maybe it's just that he's too busy guiding you through the crowd to talk much. You sigh softly, pressing your cheek into his arm. "Borra? Your skin's really rough...is that why you don't wear a lot of armor? That makes so much sense now," You bring a hand up to a deep crack across his pectoral muscle. It looks more like a rift in parched earth rather than a battle wound. You trace your fingertips around the edge of it, ignoring the urge to try and kiss it better. "Do these hurt? You have so many..." You mumble. "They look like they hurt."

"No, they don't hurt. Great skies, you're a mess." He grumbles. You're both free of the bulk of the partying, windong down a hall. You recognize it, recognize that it'll lead you to your quarters soon. He's taking you to bed. You know it's just because you're too drunk to be around people any longer, but you wish...you wish...

"Borra?" You ask in a whisper as he guides you down the steps to the repurposed forge.

"What is it?" He sounds weary and annoyed and it hurts you in some way, to think that you're annoying him, but you can't stop yourself from speaking.

"I...I'm really sorry. I'm sorry about what we did to you and I'm sorry you couldn't have your war to fix it and I'm sorry that I'm so drunk and that I was ever so horrible to you and I'm sorry that your skin is all cracked, and I—" You don't know why you're tearing up, but you are. You sniffle uselessly. "I want you to be happy. And okay. And I don't want you to have to fight, even though I think you'd win any fight ever. And I—" I love you, is what you mean. I love you, is what should come next. But he's herding you into bed and you keep getting stuck on your own words and you're actually crying, now, crying in earnest. You hate this.

You love him.

You settle into bed. Borra drags the covers up to your chin and you sneak one of your hands out to rest on his own. "Why are your nails so sharp?" You mumble, holding his hand where he can see it.

"You need to sleep," He tells you quietly. He's right, you know this, but you just...you want to keep looking at him. You let go of his hand unwillingly and you watch him. He's blue in the light of your fungus-lit room.

"Thank you for the mushrooms. And for not killing me. And for being you." You murmur, closing your eyes because your own fatigue is starting to catch up to you. "And...helping me when I was sick. That was...that was you, right?" Your words are starting to come out so garbled that he deserves some sort of linguistic trophy for deciphering them at all.

"Yes, that was me."

You knew it. You sigh into your pillow. Everything feels slow, and thick, and perfect only because he's here. The part of you that knows that this will be a pain in the ass to explain when you're sober is completely dormant when you finally mutter a soft and tearful, "Love you." into your bedding before you shut down completely.

You don't dream that night.

Chapter 9

Mortification hurts you more than your headache ever will and, in fact, you're certain that the headache will be easier to treat. A good bath and breakfast and a generous amount of water will square you away in that regard, but you don't know how you're ever supposed to get over the humiliation of it all. You had spent all day worrying over avoiding Borra only to run into him (drunk), require assistance getting back to your room (messy), and then...and then...!

You shift in bed, hiding your face in your hands and screaming all of your frustration into your palms.

"Are you...okay?"

Ah. Whatever cruel cosmic ruler out there dictating your life hasn't yet abandoned their sick sense of humor.

You peek out from the covers to see him slouched in a turned-around chair, forearms propped on the back of it. He looks like he's just woken up, too, wiping the side of his face and his forearm—did he drool on himself?

You swallow hard and you wish you could fool him into thinking you've disappeared just by sitting very still, but you're both making eye contact that's heavy with the understanding that you two need to have an adult conversation before anything else happens. You sit up, clearing your throat.

"Physically? Yes." You begin, staring down at the thin mattress. "Emotionally, though, oh boy, I think I'm gonna need a while to comes to terms with the big ol' creep who presumably stared at me in my sleep—"

"So that's really how you feel?" He cuts you off with a knowing look and you wince. The look he's giving you now makes it perfectly clear that there'll be no way out of this via sarcastic deflection, this time. You pick at the sheets.

"You know it isn't." You mutter sullenly. "And, I'm sorry. I'm not—I won't let this make anything worse than it, um. Than it might have, already. Promise. I'm sorry you've had to babysit me so much and I'm sorry that I've made it weird, and, thank you for your eternal patience 'cause I'm really not sure I deserve it at this point." Your mouth feels dry, but this must be said. He didn't ever even ask to be here in the first place, much less to be saddled with the knowledge of your silly infatuation.

Borra doesn't say anything and you wish that you could just see into his head and know what he's thinking. He opens his mouth eventually and you practically clench up for fear that he's about to unload on you in a way that'll do some irreparable damage to your self-esteem, but,

"Did you mean it?"

You consider the question carefullly, tonguing the backs of your teeth. "I...yes? I'm not completely, uselessly enamored," Maybe, "but you're...you..." Oh, fuck it. You've dug this hole up to your ears, there's no reason not to shoot for rock bottom, now. "You are an incredible person and I admire you a whole lot and I think that I—, fuck, I know that I've been very bad at showing it, but it's the truth." You're sulking, now. You can hardly help yourself. You bring your knees to your chest when he stands up and you resist the urge to squeeze your eyes shut, but right as the bulk of your horrible mood has started to feel like a suffocating weight, a quick hand darts out and...squeezes your nose shut.

You're suddenly too shocked to remember your own distress. "Whaddahell?" You ask, nasally.

"Hm? What was that?" Borra asks in a light tone, leaning in close and offering his hear as if to hear you better. You'd be flustered by the proximity if you weren't so thoroughly thrown by whatever the hell this is.

"Borra, what—" You try again.

"Huh?" He's frowning, but it's this concentrated look. "Try again, I almost caught that."

You reach up to paw at his wrist, biting down a laugh. You are trying to wallow in your all-consuming misery and sense of utter dejection, here, but the way your voice sounds combined with Borra's attempts to keep a pleased smile off his face at the sight of you trying—and failing—to keep from cracking up is just sending you further into a giggle fit over this entire bizarre scenario.

He lets you go to see you recover. "Are you still going to cry?"

You scoff. "Is that it? You thought I was on the verge of tears? Is this what you do to people to keep them from crying?"

Borra eases onto the bed next to you with a small shrug. "Not usually, not me. I just thought you might want the help, if you were."

"I'm not in deep enough to cry over you." You snort. "Hey, are you really going to ignore how I just laid my soul bare for you? Do I get any kind of feedback at all for that?" You ask, keeping your hands tucked sternly in your lap and your eyes off of his wings. Don't do it.

"You're a mess." He responds. "And I want you to close your eyes."

Your eyebrows shoot up and you do not, in fact, close your eyes. "Am I allowed to ask why?"

Borra purses his lips and huffs. "Please?"

"That's not an answer." You counter, squinting. You're about to really give him a hard time, but a calloused hand is promptly clapped over your eyes and you tense up. You trust him, but you're not so foolish that you'll ignore the proximity of those talons near your peepers. "Okay, easy. I'm blind now, you happy?" You mutter.

You don't receive a verbal response, only a puff of hot breath against your neck that has the fine hairs on the back of it standing up. You can feel the rugged surface of one of his horns press into your cheek and just as you're about to warn him not to impale you, you feel his face settle right at the slope where your neck meets your shoulder and he just...sits there, pressed against you. Your pulse hammers away as you opt to carefully lean yourself into the cracked skin and jagged edges of him in return. It's only almost a hug but you could cry over him then and there. Maybe you are, in fact, in that deep.

"This is...nice, but I'm still confused." Sure, you can make a pretty damned educated guess but that feels presumptuous and you wish you could just get a clear answer, instead. There's a small, selfish, and greedy part of you spearheading this desire that you don't want to admit to.

"When I give you your answer, I want to do it right." His murmuring into the side of your neck makes you jump. "So you'll have to wait."

"Are you kidding me? Am I allowed to guess? Here, I'll guess: you've got a big dumb crush too and you're nervous that you can't even let me look at you and I bet—"

He bites you. It's sudden, and not hard enough to break the skin but certainly hard enough to shut you up.

"You will wait. You will see." He mumbles into you. You're all out of bratty comments because the nip has you feeling some type of way that makes all sorts of productive talking impossible. That's not to say that you don't give it your best shot. Borra pulls his face and hand and heat from you while you're still busy stammering and you can't bring yourself to make eye contact, but you can feel his smugness like a third body in the room.

"Good morning, by the way." Borra lifts himself off of the bed and he's gone before you can scrape yourself together for a retort. You topple over and hide your face in the pillow with an exasperated groan, sneaking a hand up to press your fingertips into the spot where the feeling of his sharp teeth still lingers.

Chapter 10

He really means it, you realize. About this waiting thing.

You don't see Borra for a few days after that morning, and all your nervousness and doubts have a bona fide field day with this.

What if this is the answer? Wouldn't that be a hilarious joke? What if he's left and he's never coming back and that's your answer?

Your mood swings rapidly from anxious to pining to anxious to mad to pining and it's starting to bleed into your attitude. You nearly snap at Martin, which you would have never forgiven yourself for, and you do snap at Grimmond. He's been particularly unbearable lately, even for him. You suspect he must have seen you when you had your drunken self escorted from earlier's festivities and is now honing in on you like the snooty wolf he so resembles.

"Aren't you supposed to be out in those woods with your winged friend, researching? Or, whatever it is you two do." He snipes at you one day when you have the misfortune of encountering him on the way to hunt for Aurora. This isn't what angers you, although it is annoying.

"We're taking a break." Truth be told, you've all done what you need to for this first document, at least. The responsibility to wrap it all up sits on your shoulders now.

Grimmond gives you this look like he's thinking of the quickest way to ruin your mood and then he does just that in saying, "Ah. And here I had thought you'd finally grown bored of the brute. Or vice versa."

You don't mean to swing at him, really, but you wind up clobbering him anyway. It's over with one good blow that sends him careening into an aloof-looking statue and you skittering down the hall moodily. When you finally find the queen, you practically demand an audience just as she's finalizing some other meeting. It pains you to bring yourself to her attention spitting and snarling, and to potentially interrupt something of great importance, but if you're supposed to be working in the business of positive change then you'd like to hit 'em where it counts, so to speak.

Preferably without any more actual hitting, because your knuckles are sore where they glanced off of the stale hardtack angles of Grimmond's sour mug.

"Sorry to interrupt, your maj—high—, look," You drag a chair out opposite of her and pour yourself into it. "I've got a complaint to make."

She, to her credit, sits patiently all throughout your spiel. You're told that Grimmond will be dealt with however we see fit and you're not told anything else, which you assume is code for huh, not sure how we're going to tackle that issue at all, seeing how problem-solving in this place appears to range from turning people into farm animals indefinitely to simply administering the ol' smack on the wrist.

"You know," You tell her on your way out. "His assistant is pretty good. Martin? Way less inclined to make derogatory remarks, for instance. Better for business, so to speak."

Meek Martin owes you his life, you think. And his career. Unfortunately, even trying to get Grimmond fired or jailed or killed—maybe it's too much to dream but you dream regardless—does little to keep you happy in the long run.

When all else fails you resort to taking care of yourself in your bed, at night when you're so bored and filled with abject longing that, while sticking your hand down your pants does little to relieve your longterm fretting, it sure does satisfy you long enough to get some sleep afterwards. Besides that, now every time you're in it you can't help but recall the last time you'd seen Borra, the teeth and the closeness and what he might have—could have done, if you asked. Begged. Whichever.

You're not proud that you've been reduced to pouting your days away and rubbing yourself raw when the sun drops down below the horizon, but aside from this, life marches on. The Not-King John tries to lift your spirits by offering to let you flick carrot slices at his goat wife, which you decline only because the immensely macabre humor of the offer itself cheers you up just fine. The queen-goat wails like a banshee at that.

 

You turn to the Moors at last when you go out looking for mushrooms. Yes, mushrooms. That's it, that is all that you're hoping to find out here. Never mind why you keep looking at the sky or perking up over any noise that even half resembles the flutter of wings. You're only interested in spotting some picturesque fly agaric caps.

You consult your map. It's still a no good, laughably inaccurate, very bad map, but it gives you a rough estimate of what's around and you can indulge in this heart-wrenching rush of fondness and ache when you see where Borra jokingly noted any concealed holes or tricky roots in an effort to keep you from tripping over anything else. It's sort of useless now that you're saddled up on a horse, but it makes you feel better until you feel much, much worse, because it goes and reminds you how utterly left in the dark you are.

You pass the cave of glowing fungi. Some time ago, you had thought to come back in order to retrieve more of them to keep your room-lighting going strong, but the first batch you've nurtured haven't yet reached the end of their natural life cycles, which you've been trying very hard not to talk anybody's ear off about, although you're sure something must have come out when you were drunk. It's been weeks and those suckers are still around, is all, caps unflipped and glow undiminished and that's amazing.

Unfortunately the cave is also just another lonely place made lonelier by the memories tucked inside so you encourage your horse past it and pretend like you're not regretting your decision to come out here, in the first place. I should've just continued writing. Or spoken to Martin about getting him a promotion. Or—

You almost don't notice the person but for the crunch of leaves under his feet when he lands, though once you're looking right at him it becomes hard to pay much attention to anything else. Stark white against the autumnal Moors and tall even without the help of his curving horns and...familiar, somehow.

"Hi." You stare him down warily. You have seen those braids somewhere, you're sure of it.

"Hi." He mirrors your demeanor, only with a knowing smile that makes you think he's in on some kind of joke with himself. You squint.

"Did you need something? Or want, I guess, but I'll have to stop you if your request is too weird." Sir, where is your face from? Tell me.

"Just wanted to finally meet whoever it is that has Borra filing his claws down and buffing his horns." Udo! That's it! You recognize him from the drawing. You slide off of your steed with an inquisitive air about you. You want to see his wings and get a better look at his eyes and you don't want to let your mind wander off thinking of why Borra could possibly be filing his nails down.

There must be plenty of very good and very wholesome reasons.

"Where's he getting all gussied up? I haven't seen him in a while. You're Udo, right?" You ask as casually as you dare to. Udo's eyes, you find, are like chips of blue ice.

"I am. I hope his drawing of me didn't mislead you. He mentioned you'd ask questions, but, sorry. If I told you, we'd both never hear the end of it." He really looks apologetic, too, so you don't pry. You chew on the inside of your cheek and then pretend to dust your shoulders off.

"Am I everything you ever dreamed of?" You grin. He seems friendly, and you could use a friend, so you go for it.

"I never dreamed that he'd end up pursuing a human, but far be it from me to criticize. This is a step in the right direction for all of us." Udo observes, taking a seat on a fallen log and resting his elbows on his knees. His fingers interlace and you notice how his own nails grow in pale like the rest of him. You stand across from him, absently petting your horse's neck.

"It's a direction, at least. I don't want this to be political." You confess, wrinkling your nose. "I know it's unavoidable but it makes it all feel...disingenuous, somehow. Performative?"

He looks contemplative, even resting his chin in his hand. "Is it? Are you performing?"

"No!" You're a little louder than you mean to be and you flush pink over your mistake. "No, I mean—I'm still trying to process this all as real. I couldn't be acting if I was paid to."

Udo shrugs. "Then you'll manage. The both of you."

You kick at the ground. "Is there some sort of...thing I'm not aware of? Why is he hiding?" You had backtracked over every piece of fey information that he'd written out, but any sort of courtship processes had been skillfully left out.

"There is indeed a thing, but I have a feeling most of this is his nerves. Or he's playing a game with you, but I'd rather not think about things that really aren't my business." Udo's face scrunches up and you snort. "At any rate, I can assure you that what's to come is completely harmless and normal. You can stop looking like you're about to die."

"But you're not going to tell me what it is, exactly?" You try to take his advice and curse yourself for being so obvious and then him for being so observant and then Borra—most of all Borra—for being out of earshot and thus preventing you from calling him a bastard.

"No, I've decided that it would be funnier not to." He has playful assholery down pat in a way that you wouldn't expect from someone so beautiful and serene looking, you realize with a small laugh.

"Can I ask more questions so long as they're about you?" Your horse snuffles at your arm as if it can tell that you had the opportunity to be in possession of carrot bits earlier and you passed it up. You make a mental note to spoil all the good animals in the stables who aren't war criminals at your earliest convenience.

Udo preens himself jokingly. You think, anyway. "Oh...I'm sure I could find some way to bear it."

Your interrogation of him is damn near ruthless but you come out of it knowing that he's some sort of teacher-slash-caregiver, and a former member of the militia that Borra had brought to raise hell the day of the wedding. So he works with kids and has contemplated murder at least once in his life.

You decide he's alright.

"I can't stay for very long, I'll need to chaperone my clutch again once Ini's done with them." He murmurs the last part almost thoughtfully to himself and stands robes falling like quiet snow around him. You watch, resisting the urge to reach out and feel the material.

"It was a pleasure meeting you. And finding out that I haven't been totally abandoned." You mount back up onto your horse who backs up a generous distance when Udo opens his wings. You're reminded of a snowy owl.

He gives you one last soft smile that borders on the expression of someone trying their hardest not to laugh. "I can assure you that he'a been thinking of you. You'll be fine. You should hear from him again soon."

Udo's ascent into flight is as spectacular as the rest of him, but you can't help but feel antsy. How soon is soon?

Notes:

happy halloween!!! i'd die for y'all

Chapter 11

The narrow cobblestone streets of Ulstead are thick with the aroma of mulled wine and cider and songs about the harvest nowadays and you still haven't heard from Borra but you're starting not to care so much. It isn't that you've lost interest in him, rather, several other people have taken a sudden interest in you, and whatever that could possibly mean, you like to think it's indicative of good things (even if these meetings tend to be a little abrupt and strange).

Just the other day, a woman had climbed out of a tree to speak with you while you were investigating strange tracks in the mud, introducing herself as Ini and then you— before you could speak—as,

"You're the one Borra's making such a fuss over, yeah?" There's this sharp, distrustful gleam in her eye and you try not to take it to heart. You're not owed any degree of immediate respect or appreciation from anybody, not for your work or otherwise. The little wooden badge pinned to your front means nothing in the eyes of people who've only known just how cruel humans can be. You swallow and you shrug.

"Unless he's gone and found himself another study buddy." You try for a joke and then offer your name. She watches you like how a fox might watch a hunter and you try to keep your direct eye contact to a minimum because all of her intensity is starting to make you worry. You feel so scrutinized that you're suddenly nervous about silly things, like the way you're standing or what you're doing with your hands or—

"You got sick, right? Did you drink what I gave him or could you even handle it?" She asks. Your face scrunches up at the hazy memory of chugging what felt like hateful, poisonous slime.

"I drank it. It, um...I mean, it worked wonders." You reply, trying for a grateful smile to distract yourself from the memory of the noxious flavor. "Could you tell me more about it?"

"Of course it worked, I made it." She's prideful, and you can respect that. You know all too well what it is to be so proud of your work. "Why do you want to know about it? I'm not giving you a recipe."

"Wanting to know things is...what I do? And that's fine, I'm not going to pry it out of you, but," You fiddle with the bottom of your shirt and fumble with the olive branch you're offering her. "I'd still love to hear you talk about it."

She eyes you up and down some more, but in the end the temptation to ramble about something she's invested in to a willing ear is too great. You grin faintly. Oh, you know this feeling, alright. "It's a common herbal tonic. The plant is easy enough to grow for us, but preparing it takes days. Because of how useful it is, it's best to brew it in big batches and bottle it all up. We're fortunate that it keeps as well as it does. Can't say the same for the some other magical remedies."

Your eyes bug out. "I drank a magic potion?" How neat.

Ini doesn't look nearly as excited as you feel. "Is that really so strange?"

"For humans, yes." Hence the countless tales of people trading life and limb in secrecy for a bit of magic to cure a loved one. From what you've observed, humanity just doesn't trust magic—not until they're desperate. "Could you tell me about any others? No recipe-sharing still, I promise."

Ini talks nearly your whole morning away and you wouldn't have had it any other way. When she leaves, you can tell that she still doesn't appear to know quite what to make of you, and you're sure that you're still not her favorite person ever, but you're smiling all the same.

Others come and go, generally with the same line of questioning—you're the one Borra knows?—and you take each opportunity to learn a little bit more, greedy every time a winged stranger creeps out of the brush to try and figure you out. A man with spiraling horns explains the cracked skin in some dark fey—most of desert descent tend to look rougher as they age—, a person with wings like the woman you had admired at the party lets you get a rough estimate of their wingspan after confirming that it differs from biome to biome, and a girl who couldn't have been older than fifteen regales you with a few charming stories from the cavern she grew up in, and then she shows off her flying.

You are thoroughtly met and greeted, but each talk has a similar theme: whenever you ask, none of them tell you exactly what's going on. They politely excuse themselves when they're done. You're thrilled, but you're still in the dark.

It's almost starting to become funny to you.

Today, you stay in Ulstead. You're not dodging your new friends, just enjoying some old ones for a time. You're seated near an old woman serving steaming cider from her open kitchen window, free of charge. Apparently, this is just something she does each year. Upon being asked, she treats you to a cheery grin that's down a few teeth and explains that, since her husband is dead and her children are all out making something of themselves, it feels good to prepare a treat for somebody.

You thank her and diligently avoid crying into your cider.

Pops of yellow and orange deciduous tucked beneath those evergreens far across the winding river that you can see from your perch draw your eyes away from the bustle of people coming to be doted on by Old Granny Few-Teeth for only a moment before Martin brings you back.

You're spending time with Martin. He's the one who knew about the old woman.

"You really shouldn't have h-hit him."

The topic between the two of you has been Grimmond. Martin is, you have discovered, a pacifist to a fault. You're not too surprised, but you manage to scrape together some disappointment.

"He shouldn't have been standing in the way of my fist. We all make mistakes." You don't feel bad in the least. You also know that this isn't really an appropriate answer, so you pause for a sip of your cider before continuing, "Grimmond is an asshole about things that, if you're still an asshole about them now, you probably deserve to get thrown around a little bit."

Martin stares into his own mug, possibly waiting for it to cool or just avoiding your stare. You take that as a sign that you should keep at your explanation.

"He is also the main man in charge of greeting palace guests and visitors, and if he's going to be hostile about anybody who isn't a human in good standing coming within a five-mile-radius of the fancy tea sets then he doesn't deserve that job." You've already explained as much to Aurora, who apologized three times over for not realizing it sooner, citing some unnamed distractions that had kept her preoccupied. She left it vague, but when you both stood once you'd finished your venting you couldn't not notice the pronounced bulge in her tummy. You didn't say anything at the time about it and you don't mention this to Martin, either. It's not your place.

But you are unbelievably happy for her. More than you had expected being, in fact. One of your favorite people is about to have a little one running around, and that's been all the more incentive for you to finish that first volume. You think a big ol' book of facts and analysis and cultural exploration would make a fantastic christening gift.

"He...Will he lo—, um. Lose the position?" Martin finally tests the cider and looks pleased that it isn't searing his tastebuds off.

You blink and then shrug. "Hopefully. If it were my decision he wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the castle, but...I don't know. We'll just have to see, won't we?" Martin looks so positively morose that you gently nudge him with your shoulder. "Hey. You'll be asked to step up to fill his position, most likely, right?"

"M-Maybe. They could just as, uh, a-as easily pick somebody else." He explained.

"Boo. Well, you have my vote. If you want it." You take another sip and Martin frowns.

"It's not put to a vo-vote..." He begins, and you laugh.

"I'm being figurative." You take another sip. The cider's thick with a blend of heady mulling spices. Bits of cloves get caught on your tongue as you swallow and you pinch them between your molars idly, letting those colorful trees and their dying leaves distract you again.

A cold wind blows.

 

You squint through the dark of your room, and you write. You pause to stand up and stretch, and then you sit, and you squint through the dark of your room, and you write. It's still slow progress, but the finished pages sit in a fat, gratifying stack now, and you know it won't take long to get through to the end.

Your mushrooms are still going strong, miraculously enough, and the light is supplemented by the fire you're keeping fed with the chopped wood brought down to you by a pair of disgruntled looking men a few weeks earlier. Outside, wind has grown teeth and it doesn't hesitate to try and bite through any inch of exposed skin, but you've still got that metal slot in your door kept open still, letting the dusk light meet the gloom of your sanctuary so that you can track the time as you work. In spite of all of that light that you've allowed in, the darkness feels like a lead weight bearing down on you.

You need another break while the sun's still hanging over the horizon.

After shouldering on a thick coat and tightly knotting your laces, you stomp out into the brisk golden chill of sunset. The palace is expectedly calm, and the streets of Ulstead are similarly so. You find yourself inching closer to the outskirts of town, closer to the waiting bridge, resigned to another meandering walk out in the moors, when the air around you comes to life with small bodies that pull at your hair and hide in your clothes in a familiar fashion.

"Hey!" You gasp, going stock-still so as not to harm any of the lush swarm. Only, now, you notice that tones of russet and orange have crept into their skins, with a dry crimping at the parts of them that most resembled flower petals. They change with the seasons. "I've missed you, you know. I'm sure you're been very busy—ah, am I going somewhere...?"

It seems you are. You're being steered much like you were all that time ago, only you're in a much clearer state of mind now, thank goodness, though it doesn't make your journey any less strange. They prod and pull with all their might, and the combined effort has you nearly tripping over your own shoes as you're taken into the cold and wild woods. The sun leaves you with little more than a few ruddy traces of its light as you're steered down a strange trail lined with fallen leaves that crunch deliciously under your step. A sound like bells and delicate glass baubles rattling surrounds you as the sprites chitter and godsip and nudge you along. You only wish you could make out what they were saying. It's gotten easier than it was in the past, with Borra's explanation of magical language holding true, but they still speak awfully fast. Gathering? Officiate?

Oh. You couldn't decipher their rapid fire dialogue if your life depended on it. That thought has your brow furrowing against an icy breeze because wow, you sure hope that it doesn't, in fact, depend on it.

You're distracted from that thought by a loud holler that breaks the seal of grim silence that the forest had been otherwise stuck in. There's suddenly chanting and singing and the stomping of feet up ahead and you swear that the commotion has the fallen leaves bouncing up off of the path that stretches before you. Light that must originate from a bonfire sends long, dancing shadows your way as you're led along. The atmosphere would be haunting were it not for the sheer joy in the voices up ahead, the sharp peals of laughter and the whooping cries of celebration

Evergreen bristles seem to point you along like drooping fingers lit dimly by the distant flame, wagging and curling in the occasional gust that comes puffing past each dark trunk.

"Hey, hey, I'm gonna trip," You warn, disentangling your ankle from the grip of a gnarled root in just the nick of time. They really aren't letting up and at this point it's starting to worry you. You trust them, you really do, and you've never run into any true and harrowing danger out here but what if—what if—

You don't have time to expand on your anxieties because the sprites are letting you go and you're half-staggering gracelessly into whatever kind of brouhaha's been waiting at the end of your journey. Your nose stings from the bitter cold but the heat rolling off of that crackling pyre finds you and sinks gently into your clothes. Around the blaze are moorfolk of all kinds, huddled together to talk or spinning around one another in dance or simply rejoicing over...something. There's no shortage of dark fey here, and in the flickering light you think that you might be able to recognize a few of the faces in attendance.

A feeling of bone-deep unease hits you harder than the clamor or the heat of the fire or the strangeness of this all. Should you be here? You were practically tossed into the fray, so you know you at least have an excuse for showing up, but you can't help but feel horribly out of place, and that worry creeps up the back of your neck like some small and venomous thing. Your swarm has dissipated like the smoke from the bonfire. You are stranded.

You back away slowly. This all looks very nice, and fun, and intriguing, but you've got work to do and you can use that excuse, can't you? That you're a hardworking researcher and you've got things to do and trivia to immortalize and—

And somebody is clapping a broad hand down onto your shoulder, effectively rooting you in place. You snap your head to look at the offender, feeling like a feral cat in the way that you grit your teeth and bow up. You're met with the most shit-eating tawny stare and the most horrible handsome face and he has the audacity to smile at you like that after practically dropping off of the face of the earth, you cannot believe, "Borra!"

"There you are. I thought I'd have to come and kidnap you from your dungeon."

"What's going on? Why'd you..." You pause. Now that you're looking at him better, you notice it—something like a bruise, or a scrape, just there in one bottom corner of his mouth, accompanied by a faint scab as if his lip had been busted. You lift a hand very carefully to his cheek, just so you can tilt his head to see it better. "What's wrong with your face?"

Borra catches your hand wordlessly and holds it in place so that he can lean his face into it, nuzzling your palm instead of answering you. You're torn between the fond flutter set off in your chest and a twinge of annoyance that he's dodging your question. "Borra, your face?"

He turns his head and places one quick kiss into the center of your palm. "A small disagreement."

Those quick kisses continue to the heel of your palm, the inside of your wrist. Suddenly, it's no fault of the crackling bonfire that your face is warm. Suddenly, you're aware that you're noticed here. Glances ranging from curious to knowing are tossed your way like rice at a wedding. You clear your throat and reluctantly pull your hand away. "You're awfully touchy tonight."

"Should I stop?" Borra asks, watching you as you clasp your hands.

"You should tell me what's going on. And..and why I had to wait ages for it, and what your disagreement was over, and..." You frown, trying not to work yourself up any more. "And I missed you, you know."

Borra looks at you with something like fondness as you go on, and he reaches an arm around your shoulders when you're done. For the second time that night, you're being led somewhere. "I told you I'd be giving you an answer, and I told you I'd do it right." You're led through an inquisitive and chattering throng. "I needed time to arrange it." Tongues of flame bathe them all in such a soft, warm light that it's as if a second sunset has come to the moors. "The disagreement...it doesn't matter, now. I won and that's the end of it." The more you look with your wonder-wide eyes, you're able to see that similar clearings and similar fires stretch back beyond this point, dotting the deep woods with beacons of color and song and merriment. Borra's wings block your view, soft chestnut feathers obscuring your vision just as you both begin stepping up a slope of some kind.

You try to peak under his wing to see if you're still being watched, or just to get a better idea of where he's led you, when gentle and calloused touch slips under the curve of your jaw, drawing you back in until your world has shrunken into the space and heat between the two of you.

"Do you still mean what you said?" He asks, and though you know that there's still a gathering around you, you swear his voice is all you can hear. It helps, you suppose, that he's got those big lovely wings on his side. You wonder if he's just trying to keep you from getting distracted.

"What, about loving you?" You ask. You privately think that it's mad unreasonable for you to start feeling shy again after all of your blatant mooning over this man but here you go finding it hard to meet his intense gaze, anyway. The pad of his thumb presses lightly into your cheek when your eyes start to wander away.

"About loving me. Do you mean that? Knowing what it would mean for is to be together?" His tone is grave and low and a chill runs down your spine.

"Quit talking like you're a condemned man, Borra. I meant every word I said when I said them, and I would mean it all tonight, and if you asked me to repeat myself years from now, I think I'd mean it then, too. Which is...pretty hopeless, I think, but—I don't mind, is the thing. Not if it's for you. I love you." You manage it, even staring into his eyes, even vulnerable in your closeness, even with your heart trying to break free from your ribs with its feverish beat.

He closes the miniscule gap between the two of you by pressing his hard forehead to your own and pulling you into him with both arms. His fangs, strange and sharp, are bared to you in a grin and if that smile isn't enough to make you forget about the cold night and the fire, and celebration, and noise, then the kiss certainly is.

Borra kisses you so hard that you're nearly worried that you might end up with a busted lip matching his own, but you kiss him back with the same ferocity anyways. One of his hands finds purchase in your hair, blunted nails grazing your scalp while the other rests low on your back—probably scandalously low, considering you're both still on public no matter how safe of an enclosure he's built with his wings around you, but you can't find it in yourself to care. Your kiss borders on some violent act and it's almost a little gross in the inordinate, messy desperation of it all but you can feel in the way that his own pulse hammers when you rest a hand on his chest and in the way that he holds you like you might vanish otherwise and in the way that he breaks away to let you breathe and litters light kisses all over your nose and your cheeks and your forehead while you do so that this is Borra's confession to you, and it says, I adore you. It says, I'll keep you safe. It says, thank you.

He says, "I love you, too."

There's cheering, but you don't pay it any mind. He's drawn back his wings to reveal the two of you, but you don't care to watch how you're both congratulated. You put your arms around him and you keep them there long enough to hear him laugh about it, to feel him press a kiss into the top of your head before urging you to move. You let go of that one wonderful moment unwillingly, but the way he keeps you close after that promises that there'll be more just like it to come.

Chapter 12

Borra keeps you close after that, and you're all too happy to oblige him. In some dry corner of your mind, you're bullying the both of you for this...togetherness, this borderline embarrassing sort of amorosity that has you leaning into his hand when he brushes it through your hair and him flashing you ferociously smug looks any time you betray just how much you're enjoying yourself. Sap, you chastise yourself, sitting fireside with him and watching all the rest continue with their own games and songs and storytelling.

There's this unease, though—a chill in the periphery. You can see some who stand at such a distance that the light of the great fires has to struggle to illuminate their disapproving looks. It drives a splinter of self-consciousness into you, but not regret. You knew this wouldn't be easy. Not all of it, anyway.

"So," You squint at him, speaking over the crackle of the fire that you're both seated by. "You didn't really explain. What was all that about, exactly? What is...this?" You ask, sneaking your hand into his and squeezing it because you can, and you're thrilled that you can, and the novelty of touching him has yet to wane.

"What is this," Borra repeats, absently squeezing your hand back and giving you this amused look. "Should I kiss you again? Would that explain it?"

You squeeze his hand again and this, for better or for worse, becomes a subtle battle between the two of you. "That's a very tempting offer, but you could also, y'know...use your words."

"Eugh."

"No, really. It's not like we're married now, are we? This all seems so ceremonial, and..." You trail off. Borra relents in your game of hand-squeezing, admitting defeat by pressing his lips to the ridge of your knuckles.

"I wouldn't walk you into a marriage ceremony without telling you." He promises wryly, nudging you with his elbow.

You nod, content with that and lulled by the combined warmth of the fire and his solid presence beside you into a cozy silence. As the night wears on, you're visited by a few familiar faces who joke and congratulate and chit-chat with such friendliness that you almost forget all about the distant judgement of those who lurked out past the fire's light. When you look, now, you can't find them. Maybe they retired early, some time long before the bonfires shrank into nests of glowing embers and soft ash. Maybe they're still there in the dark, watching.

You work your jaw, anxious for a moment before you're distracted by Borra insistently helping you up to your feet. There's less song and dance now, less people. It's the two of you alone in a warm, dark night.

"Guess I'd better get back to my dungeon." You murmur, eyeing him sidelong because the real question, here, is one that's lodged too firmly in your chest for you to shake it out into the quiet between you two, but you still hope that—

You...

You hope. You're too stubborn to admit to yourself what for, even though your heart stutters in your chest.

"You're not going back tonight." Borra says quickly (damn near snarls it, really), and it does your erratic pulse no favors. He remembers himself quick with a shaky intake of breath. "I mean," You know what he means. "Only if you..." You do. You really do.

You placate his frustrated sort of awkwardness with a small kiss, right over the healing scab on his lip. "What else did you want to show me?" You ask in a low voice, as casual as you dare. You can hardly see his eyes in the dim glow, now, but you can feel them just as you can feel his hand returning to your own, fingers slotting tight between your own, just as you can feel his soft huff.

"Careful," Borra cautions, stooping suddenly. You bite back a yelp, feeling his arms encircle your legs, and then suddenly your feet are no longer on the ground.

"Borra!" You gasp, met only by a deep chuckle while he adjusts you in his grasp. You have an idea of what's to come next, and that's what prompts you to cling to him for dear life moments before he lifts off the ground with a powerful beat of his wings. "Don't drop me, don't drop me, don't drop me—"

"You don't trust me?" He taunts playfully, right near your ear so that you can hear him over the whistle of the wind rushing past the both of you. You bury your face in his weathered rerebrace, silencing your prayers by biting down on your tongue. You wouldn't have been able to tell where he's taking you even if you looked, because your world has become a blur of nighttime air and ink-brush treetops crawling beneath you, wherever you're headed.

He needs to coax you into standing again when you're back on solid ground, and you open your eyes to warm lights and soft colors.

You squint.

Holding tight to his arm while you find your own footing again, you take in the small area he's whisked you away to: it's a room of sorts, high off the ground it looks like, with curved walls that appear woven tightly from thin lengths of wood. There is what must be a bed right there across from you—off the ground of the small room, plush with woven fabrics and soft-looking furs. The light comes from carefully placed lanterns worked into the woven walls of the structure.

The more you look, the closer you get to properly recognizing the place, until a better word comes to mind. A nest. A lovely, comfortable nest. You reach out to drag your fingertips across the smooth glass case of the nearest lantern, and it's just nearly too hot to touch.

"You did all of this?"'You ask softly, sensing him shift behind you, carrying the weight of his hands down your sides until they come to rest on your hips. "It's beautiful."

"Mhmm," Borra responds, setting his chin against your shoulder. His thumbs rub careful circles into you through the layers of your clothing and for a moment you're struck with the mean urge to play clueless, but the building desire in your stomach refuses to let you play your game. You sigh quietly, leaning your head back to kiss him again, landing small pecks on his chin and along the sharp angle of his jaw.

Borra practically scoops you up, carrying you, again, back further into the nest until you both bump into the sumptuous bed and he takes it upon himself to drag you down atop him, all sharp-fanged grin and wandering hands.

You're anchored to his lap right as those wicked teeth descend on the soft skin of your throat. Each nip and bite is followed by a slow, careful lick like he's tasting you. The attention raises goosebumps all along your arms and sends a shiver down your spine, and pulls a weak gasp from you when he finds a particularly tender spot right over your pulse.

"You're really going to send me back covered in bitemarks?" You joke breathlessly as his hands inch under your shirt and up your sides. You flinch, trying your hardest not to squirm at the feeling. "Th–they'll think I was mauled by something."

Borra growls into your shoulder and his fingers press into your skin, practically kneading you. "You tell them it was me who put them there," He presses a quick kiss against your temple that feels comparatively chaste in light of what his mouth's been up to lately, "and then tell them what else I did to you."

"And what else will you have done to me, besides use me as a chew toy?" You're trying to maintain a cool tone for the casual flirtiness of it all, but your breath is coming in quick puffs and your voice is trembling and it's just so, so hard to try and stay collected when he's here beneath you, and here around you, and here loving you—

Borra's hands stop their exploration to settle firm over the tops of your thighs, holding you in place so that he can grind upwards until you're all out of snark and nearly all out of breath, too, forced to gasp for it while he bucks against you. You grab onto his shoulders, choking out a shocked whimper and rocking back against him hopelessly. There's a heavy and delicious heat that sinks low in your belly and pulses between your legs with each hard thrust and you faintly wonder how in the hell you're going to cope if you're already so far gone and you're not even undressed yet.

At that thought, you still yourself. "Wait,"

He stops in an instant, pulling away with a faint look of anxiety, as if he's worried he did something wrong. Your heart clenches for him.

"I'm...I need to undress, is all," You explain breathlessly, untangling yourself from him. Borra relaxes again.

You plop yourself beside him, marveling at the soft pelts heaped onto his bed before hastily kicking your boots off and wrestling with your clothes. You've got your pants around your ankles and then shucked off completely when another pair of eager hands joins you, pulling at your shirt a little too roughly. You beat him to the punch, deftly flinging off the rest of your clothing. As appealing as the idea of letting Borra tear your clothes off in a fit of passion is, they're all you have to wear out here.

Maybe some other time.

When you finally turn to clamber back into his waiting lap you falter because he, apparently, took the quick intermission as an opportunity to strip himself down as well. First you ogle his entirely exposed shoulders, feeling like some old lech getting excited over a lady's bare ankles the way you savor the eyeful of him stripped of those leather covers, and then your stare drops down much lower and your breath catches in your throat. You think it's more than unfair how all of him is so beautiful, cruel how the sight of him, only half-hard, has your heart crawling into your throat and liquid need pooling low in your body.

You reach for him slowly, nervous, starting with the insides of his thighs where his skin is so much softer than the rest of his body, pliant under your touch. Part of you wants to be good about this, perfect for him, but the overwhelming majority of your nerves are strung tight and shivering with anxiety when you take him in one hand and then falter.

"How sh—, uhm." You swallow dryly. "How should I...?" You look to Borra for an answer. You don't want to prod at him nervously or tug him around until you figure it out on your own; you want him to show you.

And show you he does.

Borra closes a hot hand over your own, moving your grip along his shaft and sighing at the feeling of it, the feeling of you, as he shows you just how he wants to be touched. He murmurs into your ear with a voice that starts to break the longer you touch him, instructing you where to grip him the firmest, how fast you should pump your hand, the right amount of attention to pay to his tip all until he can hardly speak, until all that he manages is low, animal noises from deep in the pit of his chest while you stroke the pulsing length of his cock until he sits himself up, palming at the insides of your thighs and feeling along your own opening with two fingers. It's such a careful touch that it has no business making you wriggle the way that it does, but alas...

Borra sinks two fingers slowly past your entrance while you work him in your hands and you inhale sharply at the intrusion. You're soft, and wet, and warm around him while he carefully opens you, curling his fingers lazily until you're grinding your hips into his touch in spite of yourself, eyes half-lidded. Your own ministrations slow to a near halt until a surge of molten greed hits you, rearing in your mind like some frantic beast that has you swatting his sticky hand away so that you can lean close and position yourself over his lap again. Borra falls back onto his back, wings splayed out beneath him, soft and wonderful. You line him up, thighs trembling, and you let him press into your heat slowly, bringing him where you need him the most.

Borra's breath hitches and you can hear it, this snagged and desperate stutter deep in his throat as you bear down on his cock. You go slowly, bracing your palms on his stony chest as you take him until you're full, until you're seated on his thighs and panting. His grip on your waist tightens but he doesn't move you and he doesn't move beneath you—not until you rise up a few slick inches before sinking back down. The throbbing heat of his length pushes a whimper out of you when you start to ride him in earnest, rocking down into him where he meets you soon enough with shallow upwards thrusts. You can feel a tension throughout his whole body beneath you, like he's trying his damnedest to be careful while you adjust to his size and the heavy, delicious drag of his cock inside of you.

"Mmh," You screw your face up into this look of concentration, focused on finding the rhythm that spins the coil in your abdomen tighter. Borra has no complaints, content, for the moment, just to see you flushed all over and grinding on his cock like something out of a dream. He slips a rough hand between the two of you to tease you where you're swollen and needy for him and you couldn't have bitten back the moan he pulls from you if your life depended on it. Borra spoils you with his touch, encouraging the hot ache inside of you with the careful way he kneads you until you're too shaky to carry on properly, relying on his upward strokes to satisfy yoursef.

"Borra—" You plead, though you're not sure what for. More of that? More of him? He answers with a hard thrust angled in a way that has stars practically bursting behind your eyelids and a rush of cold-hot pleasure crawling over your goosebumps.

"Go on, that's it. They all saw, now let them hear it—let them hear you," He groans mindlessly in response, hellbent on seeing you writhe above him while he pumps into you. Slick and sinful noises come from where you're both joined, and between the wet sound of flesh on flesh and the sighs and moans shared between the two of you, you faintly find yourself hoping that this little love-nest is somewhere well out of earshot. "Let me," he hisses, pressing his fingers into you hard enough to bruise and arching upward hard enough to knock a high yelp out of you, "Fuck—, please, can I...? Please,"

You're not really sure what you're agreeing to, exactly, but his neediness has your head spinning. You think you'd agree to anything if he asked you like that.

The words are hardly past your lips before little room tilts and whirls past, and there's a blur of warm light and feathers before you find yourself pressed on your back with Borra over you, kissing down the bitemarks stamped into your skin and suddenly fucking you into his bedding with feral desperation that knocks the wind out of you. You squirm and you cry out and it's noise more plaintive and ruined than you've ever heard yourself make before, some ragged whine that might've been his name, or begging, or praise, or simply fuck, fuck, fuck—!

That coil deep inside of you sits like a thick knot, tight like Borra's grasp on you, tight like your helpless grip on the pelts beneath you while he ruts into you, snaking a hand down to where you're joined to continue his efforts from earlier, to really see you beg for him once he starts to work you in time with his relentless thrusts. You're caged by his body and his wings and the mounting, all-consuming feeling of so much, too much, "Borra!"

You come around him whining and shuddering in a way that's only exacerbated when he doesn't stop, he just fucks you through it until his own hips start to jerk in an uneven tempo and his nails, though blunted, press faint crescent-moons into your skin with the force of his own need. You're overwhelmed. Every noise he forces out of you feels and sounds so raw and distant and you're still so lost in your own afterglow that you hardly register when he finishes, spilling over your inner thighs with a muffled bark that sounds like it might be your name. Borra pants against your collarbone, apologetically massaging you where you're sure to be bruised tomorrow. He shifts off to one side, sealing a soft kiss over your mouth, and then another, and one more, like he's reluctant to leave your lips alone for too long. For a time, you're content to bask in that moment with him, feeling your pulse slow and listening to his breathing become even again.

You're pulled to the present just in time to crack your eyes open and watch as he drags his fingertips along your inner thighs, smearing his seed there. You wrinkle your nose, a little grossed out but ultimately intrigued by how focused he looks, like this needs to happen. You wonder if it's a fey thing or if Borra's just weird.

"Post-coital fingerpainting. That is supremely romantic of you." You remark teasingly, spreading your legs obligingly.

"It's..." He trails off, possibly realizing that this looks absolutely wild without the proper societal context. "It's like the biting."

"Ah. Y'know—" You stretch out, all languid and calm before you sit yourself up on your elbows, cocking your head thoughtfully. "All this biting and smearing and, marking, and I haven't done a single thing to you yet. Am I slacking?" You wonder aloud. Borra frowns thoughtfully, like he hadn't considered that. You make uo your mind before he has the chance to speak

"Get over here, I'm going to bite you." You decide, scooting to sit up on your knees and tugging him close. You lean in like he's done so many times before and you press your lips to his neck, leaving soft, open-mouthed kisses and lightly scraping your teeth against the rough flesh there until you're able to work up the courage to apply a bit more pressure. Your first real bite lands against the somewhat more pliant skin right beneath one of his pointed ears.

Borra gasps and it's louder than you were anticipating so you pull back nervously but the look on his face is...it's just...

He's beautiful, you've known this. Even when you hated his guts, you knew that you were hating the probably-pretty guts of a definitely-pretty man, but the expression he has after you've just barely bitten him is so heart-wrenchingly gorgeous that you almost forget to breathe. It's so stupid, you think, that one person can make you feel this way just by looking so wide-eyed and starstruck and wanton but you bury your face back into the crook of his shoulder to repeat the nip with a smug laugh anyway.

"Careful, or I'll have to fuck you all over again." His husky warning does very little to dissuade you, but you eventually find yourself settling back down. Borra situates himself over you, nearly on top of you, with his face buried in your chest. You note that you'll have to be careful getting up later on or else you might risk whacking your face on his horns, but it's too cute of a moment for you to bring yourself to point this out to him. You move to sling your arms around him, and your hands hover tentatively over his wings. You hesitate for only a second before chastising yourself for it.

You pet him.

At first it's with these gentle, barely-there touches, just to explore how he feels before you smooth the flat of your palms against his wings and find a satisfying rhythm, tenderly stroking over each massive feather. Borra tightens his hold on you with a small noise of appreciation and something tender hiccups in your chest, right by your heart. You let your eyes shut fully and you softly pet him until you're too tired to continue. The lanterns dim as if of their own accord, and once more it's the two of you alone in a warm, dark night.

Chapter 13

Late morning light finds you buried in Borra's embrace, and as willing as you are to soak in the romance of the moment, and as cool as the autumn morning outside no doubt is, you're in danger of overheating and one of your arms has fallen asleep from ending up crushed awkwardly between your bodies. Which isn't to say you wouldn't gladly suffer cut circulation to any part of your body, any day of the week for his sake, if he asked, only—

Alright. Alright. Clearly you're still a little tired and a more than a little goofy from recent events. You make a mental note to mock yourself for it later and focus your attention on getting Borra up. The point, here, is that you'd like to get up and there's no subtle way of doing it. With his head tucked up close to yours, face squished against your shoulder, all it takes is a turn of your head to press a thorough kiss flat against the tip of his ear.

"Hey, I'd like to get up." One kiss in, and he shows no signs of moving. You land a second smooch on him, same spot. "Hey."

You make a point to start squirming; you will have your freedom. You still suddenly when the man above you finally shifts, but it turns out that he's only interested in adjusting his position just slightly, and tightening his grasp on you. You'd think he was still mostly asleep if not for the brief glimpse you get of the side of his face, where you see a flash of fang bared in a smug grin. You sigh noisily, fighting back a grin of your own. At least the new movement allowed you to free your poor arm so that it could be eaten up by the sensation of pins and needles. Baby steps.

You turn your head again and press your mouth against Borra's scratchy temple to blow a very long and obnoxiously loud raspberry, cheeks straining with the effort. You're really putting your heart and soul into that thing. Just positively letting it rip against the side of his noggin.

This works. You hear him utter something like a laugh, but a laugh from someone too tired to do much more than loudly exhale his amusement, and then he rolls aside to release you.

You rise up as if by a spring, glancing past the edge of the mess of pelts and soft throws to scour the floor for where your clothing went. Later, when you're able, you'll need to bathe out the smoke scent and scrub away the evidence of all that was painstakingly smeared onto you last night because, while the idea behind all of it was relatively flattering and interesting to take note of, there's a time and a place to go wandering around greased up between the legs with your lover's come.

(You're really not sure what time or place that is, exactly, but you might figure it out eventually.)

You hear him move again once you're finally out of bed and getting dressed. His massive wings blot out light from one of the small windows and they shift softly, folding behind him while he watches you.

You stop under the burn of his stare, and you watch him back.

"...Is my shirt on backwards?" You ask blankly.

"It's fine." He tells you gently, crossing his legs beneath himself. You swear that something about this morning has softened him, and as enticing as you find his usual hard angles and raw edges to be, there's something absolutely gorgeous about Borra at rest. Among many other things, a moment of peace is something he sorely deserves, and you feel fortunate to be able to share it with him. "How's the book?"

"The book's almost finished. I think by the end of the week, I'll be able to really call it done, and we can move on to, um...rereading, corrections, that sort of thing." You've never actually done anything like this in your whole life but somebody should probably proofread it, right? Admittedly, you're not looking forward to that, because it might mean rewriting. "And hopefully copies will come soon after, because I think I'll grow sick of waiting, and I want the queen to have one for her child."

"Is she having one?" Borra asks in a tone that makes it clear that he isn't really intrigued by the subject, but something like this is still relatively interesting. It's worth asking about if you didn't already know, anyway. Oh, fuck, you hadn't really meant to spill the queen's royal beans like that, but...well, you figure some kind of official announcement is due any day now, unless she just plans to not say anything about it while strolling into rooms swollen belly first. People must be talking about it, besides. People other than you, that is. You press your finger over your lips to indicate that this might, maybe, be considered sensitive information, and you nod your head slowly. Borra grins faintly, as if your attempt to be all serious is somehow funny to him. How dare…

"She and the king are two young people, wildly in storybook love with each other. It was only a matter of time." You really can't resist shooting him a lopsided grin in return, if he's going to sit there smiling at you. You then realize how stupid this might look and quickly make your face do something else, clearing your throat. "Poor thing's gonna be carrying a lot of expectations on their back. I'd like to help. I mean, a royal baby's going to have no shortage of help in life, but...still." You falter. You've already exposed plenty of embarrassing love-feelings so far, but accepting the vulnerability of the act isn't getting any easier as quickly as you'd like. You feel like a chump. Still, that fact that Borra deserves to hear what you have to say next trumps your discomfort. You want him to know that he's appreciated more than you want to pretend not to have depth. He already knows how deep you are anyway, so who the hell are you kidding?

You're pretty upset that you won't be able to tell him that joke without fumbling through the extensive necessary context and effectively killing the humor in it. Oh, well.

"Hey, um. I'm sure you know, already, but this wouldn't be happening at all if you hadn't agreed to help me. I wouldn't even be close. So. Thank you." You ease yourself back into the bedding with him, catching one of his hands so that you can pepper a number of kisses against his rough, scarred knuckles. There aren't enough words of thanks, praise, or acts of adoration in the world for you to truly convey how grateful you are for his time and his help and his love and just him but you figure you'll have plenty of time to show him a glimpse.

And anyway—you owe thanks to far more people than just him, but it's not like you can go out and kiss all of them.

Borra’s quiet for a moment, looking pensively past you. There’s this dumb, fleeting instance where you’re afraid that he might not respond at all but of course, of course he does, pulling the hand that you’ve been kissing free to rest it carefully against the side of your neck.

“Thank you for letting me help. And for being infuriating, and inquisitive,” his hand travels, smooth and warm to the back of your neck, “and mine.”

“Oh, is that the way it is?” You just can’t help teasing him because you love him, you do — but the whole thing just seems a little ridiculous. “Am I yours, all yours? Owned and possessed? Are you my big, strong handler?”

Like you've just set off a trap, Borra hooks a quick arm around your waist, dragging you into him. There's this strained oomph that gets squeezed out when you collide with his chest and the two of you fall back, again, onto the soft nest of a bed. You shake with surprised laughter and it’s a relief that he does the same.

“For as long as you let me have you, you can say the same,” he bargains sweetly, holding you to him. “That I am all yours. Just to be fair.”

You snort, shifting to get comfortable. “Well, so long as it’s fair, then I’d be pretty stupid to turn down an offer like that.” Jokes aside, you’re thrilled and almost lightheaded with your adoration and you’re just too damn happy to be embarrassed about the sappiness.

“So you can be reasonable.” Borra hums, earning a scoff of feigned hurt from you that he proceeds to apologize for by pressing a slow and unbothered kiss to your jaw.

"Ah—I'm going to have to leave here eventually. Might need your help getting back." You mention, still happily nuzzled against him, receiving his affection. You’re so very good at looking like you’re ready to leave and go places.

"Only after I'm done with you." Borra whispers against your skin, but his grip loosens substantially and he follows those words up with a faint, resigned noise. It's clear he's mostly just wishing aloud. His possessiveness is thrilling in a small and dangerous kind of way, but you appreciate that it isn't all-consuming

"Pretty soon you'll have me for as long as you like, and then longer, 'til you're sick of me and we have to start hating each other again." You promise with a laugh.

"What'll we do, then?" You hear him breathe it light and sarcastic, and his hand dips low, cupping between your legs with a gentle familiarity. You grin because you can't help yourself, kissing at the heat of his neck while his fingers seek and spread and slide against you, hot and wanting, but slow; unhurried. Everything Borra does to you now is done as if he has all the time in the world to have you and you’re happy to go along with it. Later, you'll need to leave, to go be busy and helpful again. Later, later, later. Right now, though, there are two big hands spreading warm and everywhere, and you're all too willing to give.

You both share a delicious, leisurely morning together, then, touching and teasing and enjoying.

 

It ends, of course, because you can't spend your whole life spun in a nest of pelts and feathers, kissing and being kissed. Sort of a shit fact of life, but you cope.

In the days following your night with Borra you are hopelessly and incessantly busy. Part of it is your renewed drive to complete your work (it turns out that the process of binding a book is not, in fact, something you should just try winging, and so you resign yourself to asking for help from the palace library), but part of it turns out to be the announcement of Queen Aurora's pregnancy and the subsequent preparations, which you keep finding yourself swept into. There's a lot of buzz around the birth and the christening and you were almost angry at how involved you had to be in all this until you realized that nearly everyone in, near, or around the palace was getting roped into it all, as well. You found yourself consulted by brisk, chipper strangers for the planned floral arrangements ("Isn't this all...months away?" "The sooner we decide this, the sooner we can figure out the more important things! Now, those lovely purple flowers, are you sure they're that dangerous?"), seating arrangements ("I think Aurora would know better than me who not to put people by...or maybe Maleficent?" "The Queen is already so busy, and Maleficent is...well, anyway, just take a look at what we have now; would it work?"), and not to mention the gossip that managed to sneak into the castle regarding your relationship. Fortunately, you happened not to be the one and only human who had grown to know the Moors intimately. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to matter.

It's as you're assuring a flustered-looking maid that, no, you won't be laying any eggs (you think) that you're both interrupted and saved by the very last person you ever thought that you could count on for a rescue.

Martin stands in the doorway to your underground lair, which is now resplendent with lanterns and glowing mushrooms, and he very politely clears his throat. The maid who had crept in to interrogate you looks sheepishly over her shoulder and excuses herself without another word, leaving you perplexed but grateful.

"Thanks? Wow, you are dressed up. What's the occasion? Am I expected to be there?" You ask, eyeing him from head to toe. Really, he's just wearing a uniform you've seen on palace staff time and time again, but it's clean and starched and oh so official looking compared to his usual, borderline-threadbare footman garb. Maybe you had just grown too used to seeing him look a little rough and dirty from all the times you had dragged him out hiking into the magical wilderness, but this is a definite step up.

Martin, bless his heart, puffed his narrow chest out a little. "Um. Grimmond...resigned."

"Great! Saves me the trouble of arranging his untimely demiiii—, hang on." You lean forward, shifting the parcel that you're holding under one arm. You're sure that your smile is positively wolfish. "Rupert's gone. You're all dressed up. Martin. Are you...?"

He nods meekly. "Th-There's usually...well it wouldn't have b-been me, but her highness said she...um. She said I would be a good fit."

So maybe you had talked Aurora's ear off about Martin being a good pick in the event of Grimmond getting ousted and maybe it had paid off sooner than you thought it might but that hardly matters because in an instant you're reeling the poor bastard in for a rib-crunching hug that he accepts like a champ.

"Uh—," you let go when he squeaks like that. He's gesturing to what you're holding. "Is that a book?"

"Martin," you hold it up for him. It's freshly bound, though the process took you longer than you thought it might, and you nearly bit the librarian who helped you do it's head off twice from the frustration of it all. There's a royal seal stamped into the handsome leather front of it, and meticulous lettering along the spine. Compendium of the Moors. "This is our book. Volume one, anyway. Come on, I'm gonna go show Queen Aurora. Let's hope she's not busy 'cause I'm not waiting."

You hook your arm around his and if he has any complaints, they're only about the speed at which you insist on scampering off to go show the final product to the queen.

Soon you'll all have a few more things to celebrate.

Notes:

ahah so. So. i went and hibernated on this for an eternity but i'm ready to get back into it & hopefully bring it (as well as the udo piece) to a close b/c nothin's more unbearable than an unfinished project. with that said, i went through and edited past chapters, added a few things, kicked some stuff around. the end is in sight but i wanted to polish it a little since it's been so long.

i really hope that anybody still keeping tabs on this has kept safe & healthy, and i'm wishing you all an extraordinary new year<3

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of in pursuit of knowledge