#serys

They camp beside a swift-running stream on its way to becoming a river and begin making preparations to winter without seeking the shelter of a town. Iesin hunts the fall-fat animals, and Talvos spends his days chopping and stacking wood and tending to a small plot of rapid-growing tubers and herbs to help see them through the days of snow and cold and few green things.

The small fae, to Iesin’s surprise and mild disgust, takes to the stream. Iesin pays them no heed the first day, until they return in the evening with three large fish, expertly fileted. The smell hits him first, and Iesin is up in a tree before Talvos finishes looking up at the clang of his knife dropping to the ground. He manages to keep his hiss to a low grumble and not the full-fledged demand to get away he would rather use. But Talvos only makes pleased noises over the nasty stinky not-meat, while in their mangled jumble of chirp and gesture and broken words, Serys explains that the meat is for today and the heads should be boiled for stock.

Stock.

Talvos makes perfectly good stock with the hare and deer and pheasants and sheep that Iesin brings him. He doesn’t need smelly stinky water creatures, Iesin feeds his mate perfectly well.

“Iesin?” Talvos calls up, smiling like he’s not a traitor. “Are you hungry? Look what Serys brought, it’s fish. I pulled up a few potatoes, they’ll be delicious with the thyme that’s coming in.”

Iesin bares his teeth. “Want clean air and no fish smell, me.”

“Well,” and he can hear it in his mate’s voice, the laughter barely hidden, tumbling under his voice like water-smoothed rocks make a stream ripple, “if we eat the fish, I suppose we won’t smell it any more. Right, Serys?”

The annoying little fae chirps right along with him, only too happy to agree with Iesin’s mate. Iesin squeezes the tree branch in his talons until bark crackles and falls like brown snow on their wings. They won't win him over with their innocent fledgling charm. He won't try their stinky fish or smile at their eager attempts to provide. Not right away, anyway. He has some pride.

They’re back at the stream the next day. Iesin follows them this time, perching several trees away to watch. Serys wades in as though they’ve never feared the soggy weight of water pulling them under under under, crouching over a low bank to shade it further with half-unfolded wings. Iesin watches them sit with all a hunter’s patience, still under the morning sun until suddenly their hand darts and a fish splashes fruitlessly in their taloned grip.

Iesin clicks approval in the back of his throat. They are a good hunter.

The little fae eats, cleaning flesh from delicate bones with the ease of long familiarity, then moves into a sun-dappled, shallower part of the stream and begins to splash. Iesin’s feathers lift in consternation, but he… remembers this. Away under the deeper waters he fears, he remembers playing in the icy streams that tumble down from the mountain peaks, chilled by snow and frigid air. He remembers the splashing joy of flinging water droplets high, the freshly clean feeling of a good bath. When did he let such delights be taken from him?

Grief pokes its needling talons into the soft meat of his heart. He has allowed too much of himself to wither, caged behind his own fears as human torture and iron once caged him.

Some sunsets later, Talvos finds Iesin, settling in beside him with a soft exhalation for the knee that doesn't like to bend any more. Iesin scooches close enough to knock his shoulder against his mates'. His wings shuffle softly against the ground behind him, relaxing against Talvos as well.

"I've been thinking," Talvos says after a handful of moments.

Iesin coos low acknowledgment, keeping his eyes on the hide he's scraping.

"Serys is a fae. And you need… you said once that you needed other fae to help heal your connection to the mysteries."

The scraper slows in Iesin's hands. "What speaking of, you?"

"I'm not sure. I'm asking, I suppose. Do you think Serys could help you?"

Carefully, Iesin removes his talons one by one from the hide. A row of neat holes puncture up and down the path of his clenched fists. His throat aches.

"Thought of mysteries, you."

"I think of what you lost every day, beloved."

"Like better to think of what gained, me," Iesin retorts, but his usual tartness falls flat.

"Could this be a gain as well?"

Iesin clicks rather than put words to the churning mess of feelings making soup behind his ribs. He picks up the scraper deliberately and focuses on making his hands move.

Talvos waits.

"Chose this, me," Iesin scrapes each sound across his teeth like the hair from the hide in his hands. "Chose you."

"You have me. All of me, for as long as I have to give. But what if you could have both?"

Iesin wants to shake him. He wants to leap on his mate, pin him to the earth, and make him understand that Iesin chose not-court, not-home, not-mysteries. That he had to, that going home was not – could not be – an option.

But today Serys had splashed happily in the stream and Iesin had watched them and asked himself why he had continued to choose fear for years after he should have been free.

Why shouldn't he ask himself the same thing of returning home?

He thinks on it. Talvos, wise to his mate, lets him hold the thoughts he planted without disturbing the earth of Iesin’s avoidance of the subject. He eats the fish Serys hunts and Talvos cooks. It is not bad. He watches Serys splash in the stream. They catch him once and invite him to join them, forgetful in the moment of their habit of lifting fingers to their scarred mouth to hide the crinkles when they smile, and for the resiliency of their hope Iesin makes himself descend to the water’s edge. He does not go in that day, but perches on a low rock and trails his fingers and toes in the clear, ice-bright shallows, and lets Serys’ throaty chirruping laughter soothe the wild frightened thing caged in his ribs.

The days grow shorter but remain clear. The light acquires a brittle edge, limning each denuded branch against receding blue. Gone are the dusky, deep skies of summer. Iesin stitches hides for their beds and watches his beloved’s hands carefully, lest he leave them out of the mittens his soft, talonless fingers require for too long. Talvos smiles and assures him that he needs nothing, but Iesin sees the stiffness the cold brings to his joints.

He thinks of long warm nights spent in the high caves, of fires built carefully and tended well, of piled nests circling the walls until wherever one looked softness and warmth waited to hold back the snap and the frost. Their small tent seems a meager refuge in comparison, a scratched-out burrow for a lonely wild thing cast adrift from all it knows.

He has not provided all that he could for his mate. He has not made for them a soft home where Talvos can ease his pains in comfort and plenty. They both left captivity to look for something better, but Iesin has allowed fright to guide them for too long. They will not be free as long as he allows its frantic bird to dictate his path by its unthinking beat against his ribs.

On a morning that is bright but not warm, Iesin goes in search of the little fae. Today, Serys is little more than a thatch of choppy dark hair above tented, disheveled wings basking in the dappling sun, but their golden eyes pin on Iesin with familiar sharp accuracy when he approaches and sits, relaxing his wings to rest half-splayed across the ground behind him as he twitches his mouth in an attempt at a smile.

"Need to talk, us," he says.

Serys lifts the uppermost joints of their wings slightly, then lets them fall.

"Is of mysteries," Iesin continues. His pulse flutters in the side of his neck, tense and wary. "Am." He lifts a hand slightly in a choppy, broken motion. "Caill cin."

A soft, woeful chirp, airy and hoarse, greets the words. Serys' instinctive twitch forwards meets Iesin's equally instinctive flinch, and they both settle back, separated by air and sun and the weight of Iesin's admission.

"At court, mine," Iesin's voice drops to a barren whisper as he continues. "Was ielythsolais, me."

"Ssin," Serys matches his volume, stricken. "Fix?"

"Cannot, me. Not alone."

Comprehension dawns, and with it fear. Serys shakes their head, pulling their wings closer about them. "Cai'ci'," they mumble, touching fingers to their lips.

"Not you," Iesin hastens to assure them. "Can still sense, me. Are not caill cin, you."

Serys’ face crumples in relief. Their wings relax from their protective cocoon, and they smile at Iesin, closed lips tugging at the new skin forming over iron burns. They unfurl one hand, holding it open between them, and chirp softly, a tongueless sound less damaged by iron's touch. Iesin shifts closer, steeling himself for the contact that will be required for what he hopes to achieve. Their palm meets his own, cool dry fingers and long talons gentle across his skin. He shivers as they brush the edges of the scarring on his wrist, but forces himself to leave their hands entwined.

"Open self to mysteries," Iesin instructs softly. "Call stars."

Serys' brow furrows. They close their eyes. Iesin waits, blind to whether or not they are successful. Around him, the ebb and flow of the mysteries should follow the chuckle of the stream and coil playfully along flicks of breeze that stir his feathers. He should hear the vast song of star to star to star far above, farther than any fae will ever fly. The star’s gift to their children, to grant them knowledge of what lies beyond their capacity to reach, to not leave them caged by the vast black beyond the moons, but to open all the heavens to their listening ears, is lost to him.

His heart aches for it. Scoured by dross and pain and the death of stars themselves, his soul is a raw, open wound that has not - cannot - heal. Not on its own.

“Ssolai’,” Serys whispers. “Here.” Their eyes remain closed, and a slight frown lingers around the corners of their mouth.

“Good,” Iesin encourages. “Open self. Keep open. Think of llyeul. To me, from you. Is for mysteries to cross.”

As he speaks, he opens the wounded nub of his soul to the touch it can no longer fully bear. Bright presence shimmers at the edge of his perception, blunted and unreachable when it should be sharper than light scattered through glass.

It burns.

The breeze silvers the tears which run down his face at the pain that continuing to offer his tainted connection to the mysteries brings. Iesin holds fast.

“Think of bridge,” he repeats. “Open self to mysteries, to me. Ask stars to heal.”

“Can,” Iesin insists. His voice strains with the effort of staying level. “Ni ifaensolaisne. Roni edhe ifae, solaisris.”

“No assk, me,” Serys tries to protest. “No’ iely’solais.”

//Are starchild, you. Will hear fledgling, our stars.//

Sharp eyebrows lower over Serys' fiercely scrunched lids. Their free hand hovers at their chest, tangling fingers in the loose fabric of their shirt. In Iesin's hand, their fingers spasm around his palm.

"Hur'ss," they whisper.

Iesin flinches. They are young and unseasoned in the mysteries. He should not fault them for not having the training he did.

"Can stop, you." He twitches his hand away and folds the wounded portion of his soul back into its protective cocoon. The clearing's potential fades back to the dull layers of perception humans access.

Serys whispers an apology, but Iesin waves it away, using the motion to stall until he can swallow the bitterness coating his tongue. He should have known that he would not be able to avoid seeking a circle of elders.

"No fault, yours. Is more than should have asked, me." He offers another small smile. "Will fish, you? For evening meal, ours?"

Serys nods and springs up, shoulder feathers fluffing as they chirp bright acknowledgment and bound towards the water with an eagerness Iesin cannot muster. He sits for a time, trying and failing to let the sun’s meager warmth blunt the edges of disappointment and fear, then rises to search out his beloved.

He finds him not far away, pulling up the last of their small patch of root vegetables. Talvos sits back on his heels as Iesin approaches, wiping a streak of dirt off his cheek with the back of one hand.

“Have thought about it, me,” Iesin drops to a seat beside him, as abrupt in announcing his topic as his presence.

Talvos waits. In the silver-thin lines tracing at the corners of his eyes, Iesin reads the story of years passed quicker than he ever imagined. He drops his gaze to the dirt-rimed nail beds that will never grow the talons any other fae would expect to see in a mate. To enfold his mate’s hand in his own is an act of exquisite care, a partnership between trust and restraint which has not failed them yet.

It’s to his beloved’s hand Iesin addresses himself, cradled between both of his own. “Would like to take you home, me. To bring home as mate, mine, and stay. Want to make nest for you, me. No more wandering, us.”

“I think,” Talvos says, after a moment which feels longer than a star’s lifetime to Iesin, “that I would like that.”

Iesin peeks at him. Talvos’ face is crumpled into a smile as tears slip free, silent and quick as dew off new pine needles. He half-laughs at Iesin’s consternated expression, dashing his palm across his cheeks.

“I’ve been waiting for you to be ready to go home for a long time,” he explains. His voice catches on the edge of something too large for words inside his throat. “And I suppose I was never quite sure whether you’d ask me to come with you.”

Iesin blinks. “Silly, stupid human.” He climbs into Talvos’ lap and wraps his wings around both of them, hiding the world away. “Would not go anywhere without you, me. No things could make me.”

“Nothing,” Talvos starts to correct, before Iesin claims his mouth for the far more important task of a kiss.

—

Fae translations:

caill cin: severed soul; a term used to refer to fae cut off from the mysteries.

ielythsolais: one who sings to stars; fae who have a deeper than average connection to the mysteries and who have dedicated their lives to the stars. That Iesin can still sense the stars at all after what he went through is due to his training as an ielythsolais, but the scope of his loss is commensurately greater in return. Serys’ average sensitivity to the stars was, ironically, a partial protection against sustaining greater loss of connection during their own captivity.

llyeul: bridge, specifically the type of rope bridge built by the fae within their mountains; Iesin uses this example because the llyeul are built for those fae who cannot fly from one point to another due to age (very young or very old), disability, simply carrying something too heavy to fly with, etc. He wants to give the example of an assistive device to enable one who could not otherwise reach the mysteries to do so.

solaisris: stars(ours); our stars

Bonus: ifaensolais, starchild or literally fledgling-star, is the fae’s word for themselves. Humans took fae from this word and used it for their term for the ifaensolais.

They’re back at the stream the next day. Iesin follows them this time, perching several trees away to watch. Serys wades in as though they’ve never feared the soggy weight of water pulling them under under under, crouching over a low bank to shade it further with half-unfolded wings. Iesin watches them sit with all a hunter’s patience, still under the morning sun until suddenly their hand darts and a fish splashes fruitlessly in their taloned grip. 

Iesin clicks approval in the back of his throat. They are a good hunter. 

The little fae eats, cleaning flesh from delicate bones with the ease of long familiarity, then moves into a sun-dappled, shallower part of the stream and begins to splash. Iesin’s feathers lift in consternation, but he… remembers this. Away under the deeper waters he fears, he remembers playing in the icy streams that tumble down from the mountain peaks, chilled by snow and frigid air. He remembers the splashing joy of flinging water droplets high, the freshly clean feeling of a good bath. When did he let such delights be taken from him? 

Grief pokes its needling talons into the soft meat of his heart. He has allowed too much of himself to wither, caged behind his own fears as human torture and iron once caged him. He is not free as long as he allows the frantic bird of fear to dictate his path by its unthinking beat against his ribs. 

Some sunsets later, Talvos finds Iesin, settling in beside him with a soft exhalation for the knee that doesn't like to bend any more. Iesin scooches close enough to knock his shoulder against his mates'. His wings shuffle softly against the ground behind him, relaxing against Talvos as well. 

"I've been thinking," Talvos says after a handful of moments. 

Iesin coos low acknowledgment, keeping his eyes on the hide he's scraping. 

"Serys is a fae. And you need… you said once that you needed other fae to help heal your connection to the mysteries." 

The scraper slows in Iesin's hands. "What speaking of, you?" 

"I'm not sure. I'm asking, I suppose. Do you think Serys could help you?" 

Carefully, Iesin removes his talons one by one from the hide. A row of neat holes puncture up and down the path of his clenched fists. His throat aches. 

"Thought of mysteries, you." 

"I think of what you lost every day, beloved." 

"Like better to think of what gained, me," Iesin retorts, but his usual tartness falls flat. 

"Could this be a gain as well?" 

Iesin clicks rather than put words to the churning mess of feelings making soup behind his ribs. He picks up the scraper deliberately and focuses on making his hands move. 

Talvos waits.

"Chose this, me," Iesin scrapes each sound across his teeth like the hair from the hide in his hands. "Chose you." 

"You have me. All of me, for as long as I have to give. But what if you could have both?" 

Iesin wants to shake him. He wants to leap on his mate, pin him to the earth, and make him understand that Iesin chose not-court, not-home, not-mysteries. That he had to, that going home was not – could not be – an option. 

But Serys splashed happily in the stream and Iesin watched them and asked himself why he had continued to choose fear for years after he should have been free. 

Why shouldn't he ask himself the same thing of returning home? 

He thinks on it for a sunset and a sunrise, then goes in search of the little fae. Today, the late-summer breeze is whisper-warm, and the sunlight dappled beside the stream a pale gold.  Serys is little more than a thatch of choppy dark hair above tented, disheveled wings, but their golden eyes pin on Iesin with familiar sharp accuracy. He sits, relaxing his wings to rest half-splayed across the ground behind him, and twitches his mouth in an attempt at a smile. 

"Need to talk, us," he says. 

Serys lifts the uppermost joints of their wings slightly, then lets them fall. 

"Is of mysteries," Iesin continues. His pulse flutters in the side of his neck, tense and wary. "Am." He lifts a hand slightly in a choppy, broken motion. "Caill cin." 

A soft, woeful chirp, airy and hoarse, greets the words. Serys' instinctive twitch forwards meets Iesin's equally instinctive flinch, and they both settle back, separated by air and sun and the weight of Iesin's admission. 

"At court, mine," Iesin's voice drops to a barren whisper as he continues. "Was ielythsolais, me." 

"Ssin," Serys matches his volume, stricken. "Fix?"

"Cannot, me. Not alone." 

Comprehension dawns, and with it fear. Serys shakes their head, pulling their wings closer about them. "Cai'ci'," they mumble, touching fingers to their lips.

"Not you," Iesin hastens to assure them. "Can still sense, me. Are not caill cin, you."

Serys’ face crumples in relief. Their wings relax from their protective cocoon, and they smile at Iesin, closed lips tugging at the new skin forming over iron burns. They unfurl one hand, holding it open between them, and chirp softly, a tongueless sound less damaged by iron's touch. Iesin shifts closer, steeling himself for the contact that will be required for what he hopes to achieve. Their palm meets his own, cool dry fingers and long talons gentle across his skin. He shivers as they brush the edges of the scarring on his wrist, but forces himself to leave their hands entwined. 

"Open self to mysteries," Iesin instructs softly. "Call stars." 

Serys' brow furrows. They close their eyes. Iesin waits, blind to whether or not they are successful. Around him, the ebb and flow of the mysteries should follow the chuckle of the stream and coil playfully along flicks of breeze that stir his feathers. He should hear the vast song of star to star to star far above, farther than any fae will ever fly. The star’s gift to their children, to grant them knowledge of what lies beyond their capacity to reach, to not leave them caged by the vast black beyond the moons, but to open all the heavens to their listening ears, is lost to him. 

His heart aches for it. Scoured by dross and pain and the death of stars themselves, his soul is a raw, open wound that has not - cannot - heal. Not on its own.

“Ssolai’,” Serys whispers. “Here.” Their eyes remain closed, and a slight frown lingers around the corners of their mouth. 

“Good,” Iesin encourages. “Open self. Keep open. Think of lleuyl. To me, from you. Is for mysteries to cross.” 

As he speaks, he opens the wounded nub of his soul to the touch it can no longer fully bear. Bright presence shimmers at the edge of his perception, blunted and unreachable when it should be sharper than light scattered through glass. 

It burns. 

The breeze silvers the tears which run down his face at the pain that continuing to offer his tainted connection to the mysteries brings. Iesin holds fast. 

“Think of bridge,” he repeats. “Open self to mysteries, to me. Ask stars to heal.” 

“No assk, me,” Serys tries to protest. “No’ iely’solais.” 

“Can,” Iesin insists. His voice strains with the effort of staying level. “Are fae, you. Starchild. Will hear child, solaisris.” 

Sharp eyebrows lower over Serys' fiercely scrunched eyelids. Their free hand hovers at their chest, tangling fingers in the loose fabric of their shirt. In Iesin's hand, their fingers spasm around his palm. 

"Hur'ss," they whisper. 

Iesin flinches. They are young and unseasoned in the mysteries. He should not fault them for not having the training he did. 

"Can stop, you." he twitches his hand away and folds the wounded portion of his soul back into its protective cocoon. The clearing's potential fades back to the dull layers of perception humans access. 

Serys whispers an apology, but Iesin waves it away, using the motion to stall until he can swallow the bitterness coating his tongue. 

"No fault, yours. Is more than should have asked, me." He offers another small smile. "Will fish, you? For evening meal, ours?" 

Serys nods and springs up, shoulder feathers fluffing as they chirp bright acknowledgment and bound towards the water with an eagerness Iesin cannot muster. He curls and uncurls his hand absently, feeling for the deeper connection to muscle and bone that should be -- is not -- present. The world is dull and quiet once more. But to have tried, he thinks, will please his mate. And that has always been enough.