Chapter Text
olly olly oxen free (bury my heart apart from me)
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You've lost your Name and outlived your fate. But with this stone heart of yours, you'll follow your commander anywhere he'll lead.
Even if, curiously, that now leads you both to playing classmates with mortal schoolchildren. Well. At least it's not another couple decades playing house with unschooled children of varying mortality. Though you like to think that your Diasomnia wards turned out alright, for being raised by a couple of relics.
"Caretaker! Lilia-sama requests your presence!"
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Preface:
Disclaimer for all that follows: this was majority written between January 2022-2023. Thus this is before JP even had book 6 or book 7. It is very, very outdated in canon-compliance for worldbuilding and for characterization as a result.
Feel free to consider this an alternate universe where the TWST fae are really way more inhuman in existence, psychology, society… and Lilia is basically a different person in the war era sorry!!
Hopefully it’s still an enjoyable read that way!
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Outline/Notes:
Concept: Fae soldier OC (“Thorne”) under lilia’s previous command who follows him to NRC out of loyalty, ultra serious no sense of humor but ultimately kind (and unintentionally silly inside) type… but playing with what cultural norms are different from fae and humans, etc. Gets along better with mer than with beastmen. Silver and Sebek respect/get along with them, seeing as superior and also as sort of ?? Lilia’s friend ?? OC does not consider themselves friends / equals, but humors that Lilia seems to insist they are (since they’ve both outlived their military ranking relationship). Lilia also seems to be randomly sad at them sometimes? Which they’re confused about even after centuries. Queerplatonic tags but no romantic relationships tag.
Story Notes:
- war, peace, conflict, purpose— how to live with yourself and what you have or haven’t done, remembering even when everyone else forgets, retribution and atonement
- lilia: "aren't you glad we're living in an era of peace now / the wars are over?" yes. yes you are
The story always changes. The story never changes.
Your story is not about you. Your story is only about you.
- something abt the patchwork of fae history, unraveling past, present, and future. history’s repercussions, twisted wonderland’s ‘wrong history’ and magic/fae interference.
- ppl have lost sight. thinking difference is fae and human. it's really inorganic and organic
Worldbuilding Notes:
- you are always inhuman/fae? vs a lost human converted over time. vs originally a fae construct who gained sentience? → stone fae largely seen as mass-produced ‘foot soldiers’ for wargames or else otherwise tools
- “fae were kingmakers, peacebreakers, dreamwakers and lifetakers. an untrustworthy lot, for all that they couldn't lie”
- portals in woods: tree knots, stone circles, branches curved too perfectly over a still stream.
- fae feasting culture, dangerous festivities, masquerades where you can leave with a new Name and face than you entered (or you can never leave if you’re really unlucky)
- briar valley: one castle is up on the hill. one castle (or the same castle??) is under the hill, directly underneath, flipped upside down--everything is
- still very fond of this idea
- "if you're ever lost, you should turn your jacket inside out to avoid being pixie-led (led astray by the fair folk)."
- reference to christmas town and halloween town; jack skellington as an old fae
- wrote this april 2022 lol
- fae fashion: shimmers of soft color are brushed over their cheek, like the imaginings of butterfly scales scaled up in the most fantastically aesthetic way possible
- fae fashion: earcuffs specifically thought to be popularized more so than any other culture largely due to 1. human tribute, humans being fascinated w the distinctive pointed ears of fae as a surefire way to tell them apart sometimes when otherwise very unsure and fearful/admiring of fae beauty and wanting to express that 2. not having particularly sensitive need for having unrestrained ears like beastmen or mer
- malleus being referred to as prince of the fae; and his grandmother, the queen; but correction/awareness that that’s only true for the valley of thorns; she does a pretty good job of ruling over the factions within the valley, but there are certainly pockets of different face abroad who resent being lumped in / considered under her rule, and while she has so far let that go, there's always been a certain tension with those native and outsiders; the new dominant tension, perhaps, after the war switched ‘humans vs inhumans’ into second priority.
- fae fundamentally need imagination / belief to exist. they r not very good at generating it themselves
- magic used as an extension/consequence of interacting w the world, rather than as tool/weapon. you are the tool. you are the weapon.
- briar valley sense of superiority to outer fae (expressed by biased narrator sebek, though non-fae silver does not disagree)
- the thorn fairy warring with a neighboring enclave (“court”) of fairies, with human proxies (a wargame taken both seriously and not) —> blessing humans as minions/pawns
- wherever you are, fae prey on humans. or better to be said, at the root of every predator is a need for the prey to exist to sustain them
- the beauty and the beast riff on household fae (cursed humans).
- inspiration: a grave being swallowed by a tree over a long period of time
- fairy gala translator bells
- fae oc: rosebun hair fae ; “8 wings, and none of them worth a huff of pixie dust”
- fae oc: really long and thin elfin ears pinched out like antenna / butterfly wing drops
- fae fashion: “Oh, butterfly sleeves are out of season now! Everyone’s gone over the moon for moth cinches now, or even an old-fashioned dove wing!”
- a Lot of fae fashion/design inspo pics still saved in my planning notes
Relationship Notes:
- lilia’s journey to find humanity and you finding it with him
- he’s soft for you with just a little bit of hinted at guilt
- castle stone + thorns wall + shield themes. short curly hair. dislikes frogs; claims ‘they never have anything pleasant to say.’ (reference to original sleeping beauty tales, it’s a frog who tells the king and queen they’re going to have a child.)
- mentor/role model relationship to sebek but thinks he needs to slow down sometimes or get along better with silver (oblivious to hypocrisy when telling to lilia). casually mentions disturbing past experiences with hazing / fae trickery jealousy as normal things to expect and tolerate/defend against.
- used to be a bit wary of silver’s unattached existence so close to the royal line, but always tolerated for lilia’s sake and has since fully accepted silver as another tie to honor.
- actually helped lilia and malleus raise silver; not any better at understanding humans but better at estimating and understanding limits and being careful with power. doesn’t have any problems with sebek’s parents because sees father as being attached to mother and thus both existing as valley of thorns subjects. admires the devotion
- refuses to spar in public; finds it mildly ((embarrassing)) unnecessary to give away a tactical advantage; though lilia complimenting is of course always worth it. sebek also dislikes being watched/evaluated by teachers
- you’re never surprised by lilia’s appearances, somehow (silver & sebek very impressed); OR you’re surprised but never seem to react and only lilia can tell? or takes it as a challenge to make you react?
- lilia and you both wishing on the planets aligning —> the stars straight line every couple centuries
- i don’t remember if i wrote this because of book 6 or not
- ppl tend to assume you and sebek are related, which you find rather rude. when asked if you are, you express that fae genealogy is rather complicated, and can be summed up as… define related. “are the stone and the sky so parted?”
- lilia commenting that leona’s situation was a ‘wartime king with no war’. would be great commander in strife and very strong defensive and attack power
- comparing leona ‘the war prince born out of a war’ to malleus who is similar. a peace prince who cannot know the value of reprieve from something he’s never experienced? something abt being so young for his subjects but so old for his surroundings, never fitting in?
- the metaphor of lilia not liking to look for things once they go missing — something abt death and loss and time and memory
- lilia prefers cloudy days
- lilia’s ruminations on the lion king of the savannah; being a visiting dignitary to other lands and observing the great 7
- this is before book 7 revealed his travels were to save malleus
- lilia since entering school has told Thorne they should maybe need more independence from him and insists they keep a certain distance, which they comply with only muted dismay. avoiding face to face… but maybe gave a way for written communication? gently persuading them to not write like status reports and more so go about their day. can’t get over how short and inexplicable mortal lives and motivations seem.
- spinning wheel; dreams/sleep motif (for previous incarnation/existence?)
- lilia born at ‘the beginning’. chooses beginning of calendar therefore
- lilia still likes traveling alone, but you bring his missing items for him. growing berries for his eyes?
- lilia likes surprises, sweets, messing around, new experiences, games, music/singing; cooking is probably still bad, but you taste the intentions and not the taste anyway, so you enjoy it. lilia going thru hair dye eras (og black)
- possible downsides: sloppy, careless (too strong), tactless (due to position of age/power), unreliable sense of time, a provoked maliciousness
sebek is more your soft spot and silver more lilia’s. you know sebek respects lilia more, but you’re fine with that because you do too.
for all that silver would seemingly need more support as a human in the valley, he’s lilia’s adopted son— he has a place and a backing and knows it. sebek has lilia’s backing as a student too, but he’s not his heir. (not that silver is either; lilia doesn't intend on promising false things, and an heirship implied some expectations of stepping down, and you knew as well as him as yours was a duty that lasted past the grave.) or adopted son. so just… feels more out of place.
for all his forthright brashness and undoubtable courage, something had always struck you abt sebek being… a more sensitive soul. resilient sure, but that meant he recovered quickly, not that he didn’t hurt.
half fae and half human… perhaps you could empathize with him more so than silver, too, abt the feeling of not belonging just a half step out of formation, almost invisibly so except it disrupts the entire rhythm of things, and yet seemingly belonging so much you have no reason to complain or seek help because you aren’t troubled and you cannot be troubled — because to need help seems a weakness, and weakness seems unforgivable in a land that values strength and unspoken rules and behind their tricksy spoken words.
so sebek in a way is yours, and silver is lilia’s, and all of you malleus’, and that's how it should be.
- does not speculate on sebek’s home life, as you are unqualified to speak of that sort of family and home of blood rather than choice, but offers to have sebek stay in nearby clearing to train and for you to watch him when otherwise he’d be training alone long after lessons
- silver needs more sleep as a human, and you all indulge him this, though it frustrates sebek to be seeing only the same results when he feels to work harder— but not seeing that silver also works all the harder to catch up, and has to simply cram all that brilliance into a more intense, shorter lifespan. really, how they egg each other on so…
- mentor figure tag
- “stoneheart” “dear one”; lilia preferred not to use your Name; lilia the only one left alive who knew your Name, except maybe the queen, but she had never taken much interest in you and you knew almost nothing of her (lilia deliberately keeping separate; queen often teasing lilia abt his affections on his soldier)
- diasomnia use titles like caretaker, captain, mentor, watcher, scout
- implied you traded away or somehow lost/sacrificed your original Name and your heart to stay or be reborn by lilia’s side??
- you only know you lost the right to your Name, and while you had a name of convenience, it was never one that fit. (slowly realizing, growing into it actually >> becoming the new person, in full flesh. lilia loves you still, as you are immensely loveable to him in every Name/form)
- pulled into lilia’s pace of being ‘scary henchmen’ to lilia’s halloween disguises
- its always… fun. no, more so… you always feel included, with lilia.
- making that into a training thing / haunted forest experience for silver & sebek
You asked him, once, if he had made you. (Spotting a trend? With a mind like yours, you didn’t really need to ask anything more than once. Which was good, because the ones around you who you could ask typically didn’t like answering more than once.)
He had said no. That he could not have ever made someone like you.
Fae could not lie, but somehow, it felt like one.
- you would stay at nrc as long as malleus would— no, as long as lilia would, really. not sure what connections/pull they have over crowley to get such special admittance statuses, as you are clearly not student age nor in need of instruction (and often don't attend classes that don't interest you), but lilia says something mysterious about the queen being familiar with crowley; would be rather amusing talk in court for him to turn down such a small favor from her request, considering how he got his start, though he supposed this was crowley’s own court, in a way… the queen was pleased to hear about him, anyway
- this is before book 7 reveal about lilia’s admittance letter
- when questioned why the queen had given grandchild over to lilia, lilia says the obvious is about trust and security. but then thoughtfully, quietly adds, maybe it’s a little about fear, too. You wouldn't think it of a fae, but they can feel such mortal things, too. the fae are long lived and mighty,,, but that only makes true youth and control all the more breakable. when you love someone deeply… sometimes you don't want to take risks about ruining them with it.
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Story Snippets:
Sometimes, you like to look back on how you got here.
It's been long enough that all the thorny complications of whatever memory of feeling you might have had have rotted gently away. It leaves you free to feel— simply, if somewhat vaguely, now without the condensed solidity of a direction to stab in. You can just miss things now, without guilt. Without regret. Just the sense of an absence, and how it would be preferable to have it filled.
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Your first thought is heavy.
It’s not about heaviness, necessarily. More so the shape of it, in its wordless outline of emotion seeking to encapsulate your present experience… carries a weight as yet inconceivable to you.
Your existence is crafted in mourning for something your unbirth was not equipped to process, and you will not gain the complexity necessary to understand even that for much longer. That — the complexity, and maybe just a little of a hint for a nudge at the understanding — comes from weathering that arduous ordeal of ‘living’ in this strange, foreign world to you. That — the weathering, and all implied — comes from the path you find in your second thought to be what your unbirth was equipped to process.
Your second thought is to protect.
(Your third is of a bloody gaze softened to embers, for you.)
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You think he must not be a very good commander, if he feels this sadness for each soldier, until you realize you never see him look at anyone else that way.
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True fae are manifested from magic, with purpose instinctively engraved in mind and spirit and soul, made whole. Everything else is… eh, optional. Well, negotiable. Magic loves a good pattern, but it despises being trapped, and expectation is easily stifling once it spawns entitlement.
Alien as fae morality has been accused of being before, it’s really not too difficult to wrap your head around once you approach it like that— like origin, like creation. Fae like their rules, and they like their games that are all about getting around those rules, and they can be as benevolent or as cruel as it pleases them, in their own mercurial fashion… but it’s not about justice, nor common sense, nor ever as straightforward as you’d like. Unless what you’d like just so happens to please them.
There are other ways to spawn new fae. There are more ways than one to kill one, after all, and that had been… a problem, in the earliest of age-old memory, before they had figured out new ways to compensate the scale.
Some ways are Ways. Some ways just are. Some ways are more stable than others. Some more powerful, some more accessible. Some more known.
You are just one of some that end up more than simply a sum of its parts. You are not sure which one and which some, and sometimes you feel more parts than sum, but you think it probably doesn’t matter.
Whether you were harnessed from ritual or made from wish or turned from a life left behind, you are who you are now.
You are told, quite early on, it doesn’t matter. You are told, quite early on, you are what you are now.
(But you also think, and by now you have thought what you think naively to be many thoughts indeed, that most fae do not need to wrap their head around what comes most naturally to them.
And while you are still naive enough to not think further on this, you have experienced enough to know to think all this… quietly.)
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The thing about fae and children is that… there are and there aren’t. You’re born to protect. You are not, to all expectations, involved in the areas concerning the former. You are a soldier.
There is, everyone sings, a war.
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Loyalty was built into the bones of others. Yours has grown on you. Like ivy through stone.
It occurs to you distantly, once, what generally happened when you ripped ivy away from its growth.
But why wonder about impossibilities.
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Training seems like liminal spacetime.
(lilia favor? notice? plant seeds of reference for refusing to spar in public vs being weak to lilia compliments)
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Time blurs.
Fades, drifts, mists in and out of focus.
You're fighting.
It's a battle, it's an ambush, it's a duel, it's a skirmish, it's nothing at all. It's everything.
You wake up fighting and you don't sleep, but you stand guard sometimes, in rare moments of something quieter and heavier hanging in the air, and watch the dark night as your army sleeps behind you.
You don't have luxury of wondering without conclusion, but if you're always prepared, nonetheless, for when what watches you right back will make its move.
It never does.
You keep fighting.
You keep guarding.
You keep, presumably, protecting.
You're good at all of those things, or at least not bad enough to have been stopped. There's something like gratitude about it, though you can't say who from or where to. Just that it is. Just as you are.
You know you were created for conflict, and for a long time that never was at all, you knew that you were going to be unmade by it. Things like you live or die by ‘relevance’, after all. The naming of your purpose, the paving of your destiny. The shape of your soul, some say.
Then the fighting stops.
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(Before that, there is a battle. There was always another battle, and can you be faulted, therefore, for thinking there would always be another battle?
This battle seems like any other. It’s not something you take especial note of in the moment— only when looking back.
(flashback to their last battle together. though they did not know it was their last battle together at the time, of course.
lilia, blood drenched, but pearly white teeth and rosebud painted lips immaculate, pursed in an uncharacteristically drawn flat line, gazing out distantly at the aftermath of the carnage. not the usual bared bright glee bloodlust or battle temper.
and just answering when they asked what was wrong…
he was tired.
i’m tired vs aren’t you tired vs aren't you bored… bored vs tired.
you interpret as tired but wonder later if it might have just been boredom or vice versa?
“Ah,” the captain says, staring up at the cloudless skies. The waterfolk have stopped their stormbrewing for the night, a rare respite, or perhaps they, too, could sense a waning disinterest in warmongering. “…I want a garden.”
His voice is peculiarly flat, though not soft. A voice like his, made for commanding legions and crying out victory, is not meant to be soft.
It is also not supposed to be weary, like this. Like time could leave a trace on even a spirit like his.
You’re used to him saying things like this, now. It’s been increasing, lately.
You’re even used to understanding he would genuinely invite your input— would keep talking until you talked back.
“You would train those thorns to defend a castle well,” you agree, thinking of the only garden you know.
He laughs, though it’s more of a sigh. He’s been doing that more, lately. “No, no, not like that. The Queen would mock me endlessly if I took up her hobby, anyway. A garden like one of those human ones, I mean— with a fence that will not defend anything, and flowers just to eat. And to look pretty, I believe.”
You’re listening intently.
“…Can you imagine it?” he says to the air in front of him.
At his side, you think of it.
“…We would destroy all the flowers,” you conclude. It’s a very simple conclusion, knowing what you both are.
You do not understand the look he’s giving you now, brighter than the stars above.
“—That’s acceptable. As long as— we enjoy ourselves. We can always grow new ones,” the captain says, inexplicably cheered, and begins saying many other things about human gardens that you are fairly sure by now are not correct.
You just keep listening. His voice is more pleasing like this, rambling on idle japery.
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The war of wars ends, and is torn from the song of history, too abrupt to be neat, but too completely for it to heal anything but cleanly. The fae can and must find something else now to occupy their immortal minds and idle hearts, yours included.
You do not feel included. You feel rather left bereft, actually. You expect to be left behind. A relic. It sounds peaceful, even, maybe. Nonexistence. Some part of you aches to return to that bliss.
Then a legend more familiar to you than your own heart and yet stranger to you than your own mind holds out a hand. To you.
Asks you to, if you so please, entrust your life a little longer to his command, if you are so determined to throw it away, regardless.
You don't know if that's a kindness or a cruelty he's offering. There may as well be no distinction for a true-bleeding dreamer like him.
You know you're going to take it, though. There was never another choice.
A good soldier follows their captain.
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For the first time you can remember, you retreat. For the first time you can remember, you go to a home.
The Valley of Thorns, long may its fae-queen rule, closes ranks around its own.
And peace buys you a breath, before Lilia brings back a babe.
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The ivy has crept in, been beaten back with a mutual mercilessness, and re-invaded thrice over between your entry to this cottage and the babe’s.
You still didn’t sleep. And between Lilia and you, the weather around was only ever what you wanted it to be.
But you had crossed the threshold and made this dwelling your own.
By the time it occurred to you that you could entirely subsist off sun, dew, and the magic that the valley breathed in, you were already too entrenched to move without reason. Anchored to the status quo, as always.
The move had just been in one of those rare in-between moments when you were pushed around by a new possibility — most often, it seems, proposed by the whirlwind that was your captain.
Peace being as new to you as having a roof and four walls was, it hadn’t occurred to you to question whether one naturally precipitated the other.
And it had made Lilia… curious, to leave the battlefield. To leave the castle.
Lilia was not someone oft unhappy or easily bored. But towards the end of that yawning stretch of bloodied time, he had begun to regard battle with a certain routine, and you knew — from hearing him complain — that it grated on him.
He was not, nor had anyone ever accused him of being — though that didn’t stop him from sighing with woeful persecution in recounting, sometimes — a creature of predictability.
To satisfy that curiosity of Lilia, you would tend a hundred forest clearings with roofs like these.
Fortunate, he only required this one to suit his fancy when it caught it, and you were content to watch it and the hearthfire and the ivy creeping up the garden wall on the occasions he left for greener fields and greedier gossips, which was, to be accurate, most of the time.
This never bothered you. You had never expected to bind Lilia to you, nor him you, though you wouldn’t particularly mind if this was the place you would be bound to.
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Yes. You had a garden now. The medicinal herbs were Lilia’s — for all that he drank red, his thumbs seemed disinclined to turn out anything but green. Nothing living was quite yours yet, except weeds.
You were steadfast, however, that some fortune would finally yield by the fourth turn of the ivy’s labor. You planted the traditional mushrooms, of course, and the rapunzel. Roses were beyond you yet, and enough grew wild in the valley that you didn’t lack for thorns.
The ivy was neither of yours, but you’d somewhat laid claim to its dishonorable death, at least.
Under the moonlight, knees grassy from investigating dandelions on thin ice with the border patrol, you raise your head to see Lilia off into the woods and back again, like clockwork in a particularly haunted cuckoo clock that no treasure hunter would keep but every would covet.
He is hard at work and harder, as ever, at mischief. You are hard at work and harder, as ever, at diligence.
It works out. You share the dawns, when he’s there.
When the berries are ripe, you pass them between each other, trading between hands for breaking and mouths for devouring, with a lightness lingering on skin stayed simply for feeling the sunlight warm.
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At some point, the queen had stopped considering human children to snatch and had, apparently, tried her hand at creating her own. The babe was heavy with her majesty’s magic.
You looked at each other, he excited, you blank because the other option was very much unexcited.
Apparently, Lilia at least remembered seeing human childraising a couple of time before, but the last he’d visited the mortals’ world was before the queen had banned faerie blessings upon favored children (to prevent the temptation of laying claim).
How hard could it be?
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Very hard.
(the well and the frogs who never have anything nice to say)
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[retcon once we found out it was grandmother and not mother who ruled kingdom: succeed well enough apparently on this mission; some time later, lilia appears again with a dragon egg calls it queen’s grandson and when you question it he merrily winks about the miracle of life]
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Unfortunately… [?]
It’s difficult to say who is more disappointed.
Lilia, who thought of it; you, who believed in it; or the babe, who observed all of it and now regards you both with a gaze that promises to remember this when it’s all grown up and no longer endangered by being a child.
Or, of course, the foundling, who promptly begins screaming again. An effective communication tactic, at least, if not a very nuanced one.
[this was written before understanding the malleus and silver respective timelines]
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When the last leaves fall and the hoarfrost crawls, the snow queen comes to call…
Seasons in the Valley of Thorns are, more or less, up to the queen’s will. Her sway over her domain, reflected in every natural breath and beat of it, waxed and waned with her give to its magic.
It was a symbiosis, when it wasn’t a danger of assimilation.
Thankfully, the queen’s trajectory as of late seems to have embraced a step back in ruling so intimately, in favor of a deeper dive into ruling of a different intimacy. The mundane realities, by comparison. Human immigration and integration was the hot topic at court, for as little you knew of such courtly matters.
(looking pensive by window considering some change in mood)
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flower meanings of garden? staring blankly when questioned.
“Perhaps they each have a meaning decided by others. I don’t quite care to learn more. They already have a meaning to me. Something I’ve cared for has grown to care for me back. That’s all I need to know.”
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[oh boy this is snippet from way earlier idea that got folded into this: of a once-human lilia fic exploring origin of ‘vampire’ fae. not even a soldier relationship here:
as futile of a statement did it seem, playing bodyguard for the blood ancestor himself.
lilia vanrouge… he claimed it was his first and only true Name, though he certainly wasn’t one to shy away from adopting others to fit with personas through time.
the last of his kind, and dubiously the first and only, as well.
when you asked him about it, he implied so anyway, with a cheeky grin that flashed such innocuously deadly pearly fangs.
his high amusement did not seem to fade— you asking questions often seemed to evoke that of him, even if his flights of fancy only sometimes translated into reasonably understandable answers.
when you asked about his confidence there would never be any more of his kind after him… there was absolutely no reason for you to suspect he meant to say something else to you, at first, before proclaiming with his usual comfortable crypticness, “I am my own maker.”
there was absolutely no reason for you to feel— like that’s wrong.
lilia was a good enough liar in the way only fae could be, and you a poor enough believer, for you to never suspect anything he means to hide, anyway.
implication he knew you before? were you involved in creation?]
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This is a ghost story, and you are haunting it. This is a love story, and there is love.
This is a fairy tale. Because some lives demand to be told.
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There’s a joke among older fairies that goes something like this: Yes, yes, the Eternal War that never happened, we’ve all seen it.
See, it’s a joke, because it’s true, and also not very funny at all, but tradition to say now and pretend to laugh at. (It’s one of the most relatable examples of fae humor copying humans.)
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They flutter about like vicious little hummingbirds, supping on the coy blooms of secrets, unable to stop lest their thirst be the worst of them. Brightly bejeweled with nothing of value.
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Fresh baked hazelnut biscuits with sweet cream, brewed honey and fullbodied milk, sipped out of cupped acorn caps and lips dabbed daintily with sugared flower petals. Salads of lovely wild greens, peppered with gleaming slices of brightly colored fruits, at least half of them poisonous to humans.
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Rising with the dawn, you wet your lips and sip on dew from the morning glories. Lilia is not and will never be an early bird, but you’re enough of one for you both. Truly amusing are the moments when you pass each other coming to and leaving from your respite areas, one bright-eyed and the other yawning with the faintest droop to the hair curls: these are the little breaths of a private routine you guard most preciously to your chest.
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Oh, it’s a wicked sort of practice, to be capturing the light from the stars and simmer strange things by the full moon in fall, but one can’t argue with the results.
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Lay your weapons down for me, it says, and trust my heart will follow.
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There is a long, significant pause, as they look steadily at you and you look back, dizzy still, faintly lost but mostly just desperate for distraction. “…Yes,” they soothe, something distant in their tone. “Of course. As long as you keep no secrets from me, neither shall I.” And from then on, they had an odd habit of turning up to proffer such tidbits to you, always watching your eyes quite closely.
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He is, of course, good enough to erase his presence entirely, even from your honed vigilance. You’re not quite sure what it means, lately, that you’ve been feeling his gaze on you more and more.
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More on Fae Worldbuilding/Background and Malleus:
credit to allgoodsaiyansdeservetails for a delightful conversation on ddb vs bdb (their amazing ‘at the bottom of the deep blue sea’ fic and in general their twst worldbuilding universe) fae compare and contrast that encouraged me to write a lot of these ideas down! even though i’m now excising a lot of this from ‘ddb’ canon due to canon divergence rip.
on fae, generally:
fae are numerous and most have more fun vibing (and violencing) together than apart. they like to be witnessed and adored and hated! what’s the point of being really very clever w rules if nobody knows how clever you have been or what the rules are?
there’s different hierarchical ‘tiers/levels’ of fae (which are inextricably tied to magic power and status, etc.). and also different origins, which does not always correlate with a level.
you can change your level, not your origin.
different levels example would be the fire fae in the school vs lilia or malleus; sometimes different layperson terminology is used to roughly refer to each level as its own thing (like fairies vs high fairy vs fae vs spirits etc.), but there’s not a great way to study or definitively define that.
different origins example would be ones that come from nature (living) like forests, vs ones that come from nature (elemental) like weather, vs ones that come from nature (concepts) like dragon (!!) vs ones that come from nature (other fae) or etc.
on fae sociology:
there are roughly two divisions of fae to non-fae: ‘wild fae’ living outside the valley and ‘(valley) fae’ which is the assumed diplomatic body talked abt, since wild fae often only seem interested in negotiating locally, and are less interested in stable organization too.
to fae, that line between valley and wild is still drawn as a matter of commitment and loyalties, but there are many, many more divisions, which constantly shift and sometimes contradict depending on how you look at it (if they contradict, you clearly aren’t looking right).
on fae history and diplomacy:
malleus’ grandma, the last fae queen (a level), is still very much alive and ruling, albeit much much mellowed and mostly entertained nowadays by court. pretty much retired and ready to fade into nature (fae version of ‘death’), except she’s still governing because she’d be too bored w/o it + malleus isn’t ready to assume rule yet.
she’s never staged a world war; but the fairy wars (continuous but smaller-scale efforts that often broke apart and reformed whimsically, at some point against everyone, just not at the same time, but also between themselves, sometimes at the same time) went on for a long, long time before, until war stopped being a game, time stopped being so mutable (interesting outside developments in world actually sticking around), and some important figures started taking either death more seriously or just more interesting alternatives.
it's been relative peacetime for a couple millennia now, excluding individuals’ or smaller rings’ activities here and there; there are not any complete written records existing of the fairy wars. (understandable; not even the fae rly remember a complete record, partly out of disinterest and partly bc of the sheer amount of spatiotemporal fuckery going on w fairy spaces.)
but people still remember not to trust the fae, and how to generally treat with them.
on malleus and his role in fae society and the world:
malleus’ princely duties would be learning more about other species and the modern world to figure out how to manage the wild vs valley fae divide, integrate fae more generally into the future of the world since as a species and culture they’ve stayed pretty stagnant and apart (though individuals are exceptions etc.), figure out how his entire governance style is gonna be if he wants to be different from his grandma (since that historical governance power is about the same), give his grandma peace/pride, etc.
malleus’ terrifying magical aura but its kinda just some unspecified combo of fae bullshit, his bullshit magical talent/strength/capacity, and his specific role/origin. i think he's put in the effort before to try and hide aura before to fix his isolation but his perception of his self and relation to the world and others is fundamentally so different that its not very effective when he hides it.
(alternatively, makes it even more offputting because you can’t sense he's there but you cannot miss that impending doom of him being there .)
so he's also somewhat given up on seriously pursuing that for now, because he is at least aware his own personality is still a barrier even beyond the aura— but he's not very good at putting in the effort to try and change that either.
(canon malleus impression has really given me the sense of someone who isn’t that actively trying to change to meet his problems?? at least until attaching to yuu.)
- i wrote this way before his dorm ssr card story came out lol, but that’s a good example of what i mean; i think fanon tends to cast him as this lonely misunderstood skrunkly, which is entirely fair, but i think people tend to miss that canonically he is responsible for a lot of those misunderstandings.
so, 1. there’s this pressure from existing too close, 2. fae shapeshifting is sort of like quantum states with one being consciously observed by preference rather than any distortion, and 3. fae bullshit. although 3(b?)., other fae don't really feel uncanny around him, they just feel his power as being above them, and those fae who haven't already sworn any oaths to briar valley don't really feel any inherent respect because of that power (and some within the valley may not either but still afford him respect because of his position/relation to queen).
on fae shapeshifting:
quantum state shapeshifting sounds more complicated and fancy than it actually is, maybe; its just that fae can inhabit multiple forms, at once, sort of, contained within but also sideways to the world, and you just usually can only observe one form at time, since the act of being observed sort of confines them to whichever form they want to be perceived in at the moment. existence is weird! truth is weirder!!
on fae existence:
there’s a difficult-to-define but distinct difference between ‘being unlimited by worldly wants’ and ‘my being is worldly wants (cannot depart from that) (hence limited by that very connection?)’. ‘everything i do is acceptable to world consciousness because i am part of world consciousness so if i did something then it’s already something wanted to be done by world consciousnes.’
on fae and humanity:
fae as being so fundamentally connected and yet disconnected / reflected ’differently’ from humanity and that including their spectrum of emotions. fear and love and self-preservation and sacrifice and just, conflicting truths are so deeply at the core of humanity.
relevant themes for fae in connection to humanity are: attachments/bonds being two-way weaknesses but also strengths. transformative property of simply experiencing the world and others through yourself. growth in a way you didn’t necessarily think you could grow, and not necessarily in a way you wanted to grow.
on intense emotions and fae maturity/development:
terror for fae is something you learn through life experience. just like you need to learn enough about death or life to fear either being given or taken away. because of their existence cycles, most fae start out as very much blank slates with little more than instinct to embrace/perpetuate their origin/concept/role — a very simple truth and understanding of it.
they have all the intelligence but none of the wisdom and only sometimes the context of true adult maturity.
fae grunt soldiers got it particularly hard (or, depending on who you ask, easy) during the faerie wars; they were ‘recycled’ all too easily and willingly without ever knowing otherwise. there is no primal fear, and that’s so deeply alienating to non-fae who interact with them, perhaps.
dread is for creatures who live in the future; fae need to learn to live in anything other than the present.
now this learning is quite easy up to a certain point, and that point is reaching self actualization and actually striving to figure out how to be a person for themself, once you’ve reached the basic level of wanting to be one and realizing you aren't, really.
so very young fae are very impressionable and learn very fast, young-ish fae know what fear is but don’t understand why they’d ever want to feel it (but find it an interesting reaction to provoke and learn abt from others), older fae realize they can feel fear or maybe have felt it all along and been unable to recognize it, and ancient fae feel very close to how humans do (albeit still in a uniquely fae way) but are also strong enough to not usually have any cause to feel it.
so ‘terror’ as a momentary impulsive/instinctive thing would probably crop up most around younger to more mature fae.
ignorance is bliss for the immature.
anger probably comes before fear in most fae’s development, but not always.
love, or some sense of security/attachment, is, i think, always necessary to develop first, so fear has something to compare to. they're not fighting for their lives until they value their lives specifically enough, until then they are fighting to win and because it’s not instinct to lose.
but if they return to nature / die that’s just, well, natural.
- note that ‘return to nature’ was coined before we got ‘return to the stars’ in book 7 lol, happy coincidence to align
valley of thorns royalty probably have that terror aura or something similar to their presence, but it’s just impressive to neutrals and almost a comfort to allies and, of course, intimidating to enemies. but nobody really wants to make enemies with the draconias.
they just try to make themselves not the grandma's business and not in the grandson's way, probably.
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Afternote:
If I was to rewrite this with all the book 7 lore and context we now know, the themes would partly stay the same, but all the worldbuilding would be definitely different in mood and intention.
We can still explore power and status differences, and fae society worldbuilding, and thinking your life’s value is only worth how well you fulfill an intended purpose, but… well, canon!Lilia would be a much ‘closer’ and relatable figure to Thorne in the formative war era, and several of their themes and arcs would kind of overlap.
Canon!Lilia overcoming societal prejudices about his low-born origins, young adult age, tensions with the council/governing bodies, intensely devoted relationship with Malleanor and Raverne, sacrificial love and incurable magic sickness— that’s all certainly quite different from this now very very ooc olly!Captain.
I don’t even want to call him olly!Lilia haha, olly!Captain is so different in his ancient fae whimsical mood and the idea of this very inhumanly moral’d commander who knows his position and existence are inherently valued by their society and the world more than any of his soldiers, yet he doesn’t treat them as disposable even though that’s what everyone including them would say they are…
And his journey of going from a good leader by fae standards to becoming a good leader by mortal ones (and thus a deeply strange but still reluctantly respected one by fae) out of his own change of heart from senseless war’s consequences that don’t touch him but ruin so many others he’s learned to care about.
And the growth of this conscience that’s alien to most of his kind… and the themes of how to really live life in a present and fulfilling way with finding your own purpose and happiness, when too many immortals fall into a trap of never-changing stagnation…
Anyway, I’m still rather fond of this concept of olly!Captain, but let’s just call him an OC at this point, even though before book 7 I thought it possible enough as any other for an explanation to how an honored old fae war general becomes such a parental yet youthful figure lol.
To get back to the point, I think I could still write this story with Thorne being a stone fae soldier under Lilia’s command, but at this point almost every word of that relationship’s implications have changed.
- Stone fae would be different now that we understand what the Valley of Thorns’ culture and people are like (at least in wartime).
- Soldiering would be different now that we understand what the war against the Kingdom of Swords looked like (with humans being able to hurt and kill and pressure fae like, well, humans).
- Lilia is obviously different.
- And so will his command now, even putting him aside, because of those political doubts and undermining and this double-edged honor of being in that upstart’s guard.
But the main point of this afternote is: it’s very important to me that you know that in the hypothetical canon-compliant rewrite of olly olly oxen free, Thorne parallels Lilia’s love for Malleanor and Raverne, so their relationship, however it ends up, is haunted by two extra shared ghosts. <3
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