Deep into that darkness peering

“Dude can walk but doesn’t wanna,” Nickel said, dangling halfway over the railing. “I can’t pick him up on my own, and beside that, he keeps telling me he’ll kick my ass if try. I’m not scary enough. I’ve got candy-ass tattoos. I’m bullshit, we’re all bullshit, this whole city is bullshit. Please.”

Nickel put his hands together in supplication, Princess Leia-style. “Go be scary enough.”

Raven’s smile widened the more Nickle spoke. By the time he was done, the shadow was actually grinning -- this was definitely right up his alley. He headed toward Nickel and the bathroom. “You are bullshit,” he teased, “We’ll get you a less candy-ass tattoo when you’re older. You don’t have to play senator’s son forever.” 

Who: @ravenfairfield When: After 3AM, September 15, 2018 Where: The Rookery

Nickel flipped a coin. Tails. Okay, he could live with that. He tucked the quarter back under the couch cushion, with all of its quarter buddies, and crossed the floor.

“Hey, Raven,” Nick said, leaning over the stair railing, hooking his fingers under the handrail. His feet fidgeted, the soles of his Converse sticking and unsticking from the floor and making small popping noises as they did. There was no towel tucked into his back pocket, or thrown over his shoulder; he’d had one, just five minutes ago, but it had died a recent and unglamorous death. “There’s a problem in the bathroom that needs to relocate to the street.” 

Raven didn’t technically work at the Rookery, but he spent a fair amount of time at the speakeasy and was more than willing to act as a bouncer when necessary. It wasn’t that the place had a particularly rowdy clientele or that the regular staff couldn’t handle things, he was just particularly good at being menacing. And it was, on occasion, hilarious. 

“A problem in the bathroom?” Raven echoed. He might volunteer his skills as a bouncer but he did not volunteer as a janitor. Most trouble in a bar bathroom was of the vomit variety, though there were the few times when people decided it was a good hook up spot. Clearly folks who didn’t understand hygiene or bacterial growth. “What kind of problem?” 

“The real problem would not be forcing you up there, Raven.” Ember snorted in a very unladylike manner, swallowing her laughter with another sip of mead. “The problem would be forcing anyone to marry you.” It was needless to say that Ember had caught Adare’s eye with a smile at the sight of the Unseelie queen’s beloved marrying someone else. Having experienced the queen up close throughout the years in meetings with Adare, Ember was not particularly fond of her. Had it been a Seelie in the situation, she would have been much more sympathetic. Perhaps another would have been torn being half-Unseelie but that had never been her court. She felt as much loyalty to them as Rowan did to the Seelie - none at all. 

“Besides, everyone know we’re married to our jobs. It’d just be a waste.” She gestured with her cup toward Gale and Gorta. “Best to leave the romance to them.” Ember paused. Did Gorta realize she’d made an enemy? Even if Lacha shrugged everything off, Gale’s title as ‘the queen’s lover’ would follow the new happy couple everywhere. Gorta had big shoes to fill. “Or to just wait until the eventual beheading or tithing of the bride if Lacha’s feeling particularly vindictive one day.” 

Raven glanced over at Ember. The woman was considered the Seelie counterpart to Rowan, but he had no doubt that if it came down to the two of them, Ember wouldn’t last five minutes against his partner. He didn’t argue her point - there weren’t a lot of women lining up to lock him down, but he did just fine, thank you very much. 

“Your bitterness is showing, Ember. Biological clock ticking? Do you Seelie even have those anymore, I know you’re a dying breed. Thank fuck for that,” he replied, his voice mild. A hint of steel entered his tone as he continued, eyes going icy as he both corrected her casual use of Lacha’s name and dug at Adare’s past mistakes. “The Queen has more control than your king, that’s more his style. Nothing like a quick death to solve a problem, right?” 

Raven had watched the hand-fastings with mild interest, his eyes darting from Gale and Gorta to Camellia and the Queen. It was an interesting turn of events, to be sure, but perhaps it’d work out for the best. Gorta wasn’t half bad, he supposed. Camellia probably wished that the court had shoved her parents together but that was a romantic notion that would not have worked out well for anyone -- no one forced Lacha into anything and he was glad that his court had known better than to try. 

The ceremonies ended and he made is way to the drinks, helping himself. “Thank fuck no one tried to force me up there. It’d be the shortest marriage ever, that knot would be cut and buried before the kiss was even over.” 

“Yeah, the pair of us are pretty shit at keeping a woman, aren’t we,” Ro said softly, with a start that sounded as cutting as usual and then the end of it more somber with her own personal memories. Ever since my baby went away, it’s been the blackest day… the song moved through Rowan’s head all too easily. Now that she’s gone, I can’t feel nothing… Suddenly, Rowan felt very old. The kind of old that held a heaviness of body and a stagnancy of being.  She wasn’t old enough to feel this way, not like the other fey who had seen so many more winters in their years, but ancient, like something that knew how to feel once, but time swallowed all of the emotions up, all of the nuance, on the long parade from birth to forever.

“Do you ever feel old?” she asked him, taking the whiskey back for another swig. The pair of them, drinking their troubles deeper into oblivion, the only skill set they had. The only one readily available for people like them. At the very least, they had each other, and that small thread was something to cling to, however small. He might not understand the whole of her troubles, but he understood the price paid for what they were paid for. How they never really stopped paying for it and all the money in the world didn’t rectify it. Ro knew why she did it; she lacked the whole of a choice. “Why do you stay a Shadow?” she asked.

She knew why he became one. What she currently couldn’t fathom was why he stayed. Or maybe he’d made a peace with this all that she still had such tension with. “Never fixed properly.” That was an interesting thought, enough so to echo it. She wracked her brain; they’d assumed the decline of life span and magic and such was natural evolution, something the Seelie staved off by rarely interbreeding, but what if something had been broken long before either Adare or Lacha had claimed the throne? What if it was something in Celia and Titania’s rule, when things seemed to shift? Maybe there was a clue there.

“Shit, I suppose it is.” Rowan dropped the train of thought; her head hurt. Her heart hurt. Her body hurt. She wasn’t going to solve the Court’s issues on the bed drowning herself in whiskey. There was part of her, the part of her that still belonged to Caora, that still wanted the memory of her lover to be proud of her, to see her using more than her strength, the way she’d wanted when Ro was grooming for Consort. But that wasn’t her life any more. She was an Archfey and she could give advice when asked, but beyond that—not technically her problem. 

She had enough problems.

He glanced down at her, not answering what he assumed was a rhetorical question. If Rowan wanted to keep a woman, she could...she’d done it before. It wasn’t exactly her fault that the relationship ended. Part of him was surprised by how deeply loyal his partner still was to their queen after how all of that played out, but they didn’t really talk about it. It was as taboo a topic as his family. They both knew what had happened, it didn’t need to be discussed further. 

Do you ever feel old? Why do you stay a shadow? They were very different questions but had similar answers. He’d grown up too fast, lost too much too young. He didn’t know how to do anything else. “Yeah...I feel old. But blowing shit up helps me recapture my youth,” he teased. It wasn’t the real reason he stayed a shadow, but it was a perk. “What else am I gonna do? I’ve got a specific skill set and I’m good at it. Not as good as you, maybe, but I don’t see anyone else lining up to take our places. Even if I wanted to retire, which I don’t, I wouldn’t leave the court vulnerable. I’ve got your back, Ro. Always. Just like I know you have mine. I’m gonna trade that in for...what?” 

He sighed, wondering if Rowan was considering retirement now that the magic seemed to have abandoned them. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the job alone, but he didn’t really want to. He’d never really admit it to anyone, even the woman beside him, but he didn’t want to lose the connection they had. It wasn’t his job to fix the magic, he had no idea how to do it, but suddenly it felt as though he had to find a way to do just that if he wanted to keep his life the way he liked it. 

“It’s been over a month,” Nickel said. He held up a hand, aware that he sounded petulant. It would have been nice to hear from an official channel that eventually your magic will return, rather than texting furiously until someone with experience revealed it. “Right, right. No. I get the need for like … ‘we have our best minds working on the problem’ sort of approach. That’s cool.” 

He shrugged. Super fucking old or brand new. Deeply comforting to hear that the feyry existence also included things that stumped regular old school fey. Truly.  Was there something wrong with the court? Was that how the much-fabled ‘imbalance’ manifested … ? He couldn’t even begin to fathom what the appropriate research would look like. Malachite, waving his arms around, asking questions of heretofore unmentioned nature spirits? The Queen, poring over a dusty tome?

“Thanks,” Nickel said. “For the show, too. That was fucking awesome.”

Raven just stared at him. What the hell was a month to beings like them that lived for centuries? These things took time, it wasn’t like they had a magic crystal ball full of answers and solutions. Nickel, spoiled and young, had no idea how to handle a situation that would cost both time and effort. And, yes, unfortunately lives. Maybe in his next century, should he live that long, he’d have a better understanding of the nature of the fey-magic relationship. Raven relaxed slightly when the kid seemed to understand, at least a little, why the Queen was taking her time with this. 

Raven didn’t know. Not that she thought he would; not in a cruel way, just in a—does anyone know any more, sort of way. Magic was supposed to be the one thing that made sense; sure, it had rules, it had—whims—for lack of a better word. It punished them when they fucked up and rewarded them when they did well. But to just—disappear? That was new. And as far as the histories Rowan was familiar with, it had little to no precedent. “Why is this happening now? What did we do to piss off the magic so much? You’d think shit was worse under Celia.”

Raven actually managed to get Rowan to crack a smile as he went on waxing philosophical about the nature of magic. “So you’re saying we have to seduce the magic back, Rave?” she asked, not bothering to hold back a chuckle in between scorn and amusement. But it was something she was, at the very least, open to. “Hanging the metaphor, what do you propose we do? If we don’t know why she left, how do we figure out how to get her back? I feel like this is some therapy shit only we can’t ask the platonic idea of our Court.” The magic chocolates and flowers and shit only worked if you knew if she liked dark or milk chocolate, roses or lilies or violets.

She did give him the win of her smile and took another drink of the whiskey before passing the bottle back to him; she relaxed into his presence on the bed and tried to forget the piece of this crisis that was intimately, ruinously personal.

He snorted softly. “Danu, Ro...You know wooing a woman isn’t exactly my strong suit. How the fuck should I know how to win back a metaphorical one?” 

Raven took the whiskey back and took a long drink. He had a feeling the trouble with the magic wasn’t going to be fixed easily. It felt like it had gotten bad over night, but these things rarely happened that quickly. It was an infection that had been festering for a long time and had finally gotten bad enough to start shutting down vital organs. 

“Shit was bad before, you’re right. But I’m not sure it ever got fixed properly. Not that I know how the fuck to fix it, I’m not exactly Mr. Sensitive over here. We know what’s been done in the past, what’s worked and what hasn’t. So, using that knowledge we just have to come up with something I guess. I don’t know, Ro, this shit is above my paygrade.” 

“Alright. Here’s a question I have,” Nickel said, trying to wrangle an octopus of bright red valid for one tickets into a neat coil. It would take a minute; he doubted that he had a minute. Raven didn’t read to him like he would deal with build up. “Is the boss gonna tell us what’s going on with the rocks or the grass or any of it?” 

Some fey kinda just dropped feyry words as they pleased, assuming that human ears would conveniently close around them. Nickel knew better. If someone could listen, they would. He almost never called Lacha the Queen outside of the Rookery if he could get away with it.

“When she thinks we need to know, she’ll share.” 

Raven appreciated that Nickel kept the language he used subtle, there were some who were far too open with the terms they threw around in mixed company and it often fell to people like Raven to clean up their messes. At least the changelings knew how to hide in plain sight. His question wasn’t a bad one, but it reminded Raven how young the kid was. 

Barter Trade: For your muse’s contact photo and ringtone in my muse’s phone.

     Ringtone: Kill Bill Sirens     Photo:

Holy Well: For a gif moodboard or an aesthetic of our muses.

[Rowan & Raven Moodboard] Like a shadow, I am and I am not 

Defeat Blight: For a wishlist of plot ideas for our muses.

Raven doesn’t really get Lark -- her brain just works differently than his and there are definitely times when he wishes she’d just say what she means rather than dancing around it. Why use 20 words when 5 will do? It would be interesting for them to have to work together on something? For him to get a feel for why she is the way she is. 

It’s a dangerous time for fey and Lark has a tendency to make herself vulnerable by taking elixirs that dull her senses. If she were to get into trouble somehow (wandering into a bad part of town? Overzealous stalker type fan? IDK) he could step in to help.

Sacrificial Bull: For an inner monologue my muse has about yours.

“Yes,” Nickel said, in the same moment the attendant, waking up from a stunned stupor, said, “And we have a new high score!”

A crowd of humans obediently applauded. Some of them were enthusiastic, openly staring; other were more sullen, what Nickel imagined were the sore losers. “Oh, dude, you get a prize–” Nickel pointed out, as the attendant printed out a reel of tickets to be exchanged elsewhere, later.

The clamoring died down, and people moved along. The hawker was now going on to encourage others–every single one of them riddled with skepticism–to try and top that performance.

Nickel’s real reason returned to him as they were ushered away. “Right, so–Camellia mentioned you might know something about those rocks.” 

Raven or my mother, she had said. Raven was not as hard a no.

Raven looked at the tickets he was handed for a moment then passed them over to Nickel. He did not want or need some carnival prize for ringing a bell. What a bizarre thing to give a prize for. Humans were weird.