#thornsweet

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　𓏲𝄢　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

In the unspoken war of dehumanization, Frances didn’t anticipate the non-human breaking first.

It had been about a month since the two of them had settled into their fragile routine. Every day, in the late hours of morning, she would show up at the cottage like clockwork. Her arms would be laden with a basket of leftover goods from the morning’s baking and the weight of her mother’s disapproving stare as she slipped out and left her to mind the bakery again. Every day, the White Lady—‘Eirys,’ she called herself, like the flowers with which she shared an aspect of strange beauty—would meet her at the door without Frances announcing herself.

She would be led inside, welcomed into a space furnished so normally yet decorated with such alien paraphernalia that her heart fluttered at the thought of bumping against the wrong shelf and setting off a chain reaction beyond fathom. The basket would end up in the corner of the cottage holding the kitchen, and the two of them would end up at the round and rough-hewn table a few feet over that served as sole demarcation of ‘dining and study area’.

The White Lady would skim through tomes and scrolls at record speed, fiddling with arcane artifacts with such carelessness that Frances’ abdominal muscles were nearly back to their knightly prime purely from clenching with anxiety. She would move through texts at a much slower speed and take notes of what she thought was relevant, citing sources as best she could. It was hard to know what was relevant—even now, the White Lady hadn’t let her in on what exactly her schemes were, and Frances hadn’t asked.

(Truly, she hadn’t expected her actions to lead to this. She had only meant to take a look at the White Lady’s work to scan for nefarious plots, and had expected to be barred from it with a shout, or a shove, or a spell. But none of that happened, and Frances kept reading, intrigued by the subject matter, and she started to write things down honestly to just wrap her own head around it, but its not like they were going to do her any good, and now… Now she supposed she was a research assistant. Paid in knowledge, complimentary lunch, and the opportunity to keep an eye on… whatever was happening here. She only knew it had to do with finding… something. And she wasn’t sure how much more than that she wanted to know.)

They were just starting to reach the point of a routine morning where the White Lady would remember that humans had needs involving food and drink when Frances realized the woman was no longer sitting across from her as she had been a moment ago. At that same time a thoughtful, “Hmm,” came right by her ear, and it took all of her willpower to not startle violently.

The White Lady was standing right over her shoulder, peering down at her chicken-scratch for notes. Standing so close that Frances could smell her—sweet and dark, the nectar of a poisonous blossom.

“Why, Frances, I believe you’ve found something,” the woman murmured, and that time she did jolt in her seat.

Frances.

She’d said her name—Frances hadn’t thought she’d known it. In their clockwork dance, they tended to find little reason to refer to eachother. It wasn’t like there was anyone else around to get confused with. And sure, she’d introduced herself that first day, but…

Whatever moment Frances was having over this, the White Lady wasn’t in on it—she had taken her notes along to the kitchen, humming and murmuring to herself as she absentmindedly pulled out the makings of lunch.

Frances watched her. She had her notes, for one. And for the other… well. She said she wanted to keep an eye on things.

Eirys hadn’t heard her name on another’s lips in… well. Quite a long time.

It was the cost of her Connection, an innate ability that fit her neatly into a role every place she visited. Sometimes she was the hero, sometimes the villain, the soldier, the dragon. Every place she went, she was a title. And even in the places she stayed long enough to share her name, it fell silently from the lips of others, a cruel reminder of her otherness.

The sleepy plane of Thornsweet where she’d set up camp had seemed different, sure. For one, not one of her abilities were barred from her, the way they were on other planes. (It was a weird feeling, for instance, to know you should survive a fall from any height, except for when you couldn’t). And it didn’t seem like she’d had a ‘role’ here, if how long it had taken for someone to go out of their way to interact with her was any indication: that was typically a matter of weeks, not months—nevermind just under a decade. But that lack of interaction was also lack of reassurance, and even now Eirys wondered if Frances was only here because she was supposed to be—

“Eirys.”

Eirys froze, nearly dropping the kettle she’d been setting up to brew, actually dropping Frances’ page of notes. She snatched it from the air before it could meander its way into illegibility by water, praying she wouldn’t poke holes anywhere important as her clawed fingers found purchase. She turned to where Frances still sat at the table, ears perked.

“Um. Thanks,” Frances was muttering. Her cheeks had gone rose-colored, and her initially-firm eye-contact had shattered in favor of the table before her. “For, well—”

“Say it again,” Eirys breathed. Her heart thrummed in her ears, heat singing from horns to hooves to the tip of her tail.

Frances’ expression went deadpan. “Is this about your god-complex? If you want me to thank you again—”

Eirys shook her head, hard enough for wisps of vapor to break off in an arc around her. “Not that. My name.” She was whispering, like Frances would say it again and she wouldn’t hear it over her own stupid voice.

The other woman’s frown, rarely absent, did soften slightly, as if she could sense that this meant more than she understood. “Eirys,” she said again, and suddenly it didn’t matter if the surly ex-knight was frowning or not, because Eirys had no hope of seeing her past the tears welling hot in her eyes.

Eirys.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　𓏲𝄢　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Frances stalked up to the window, grip tightening on her sword, legs aching. She hadn’t pulled stunts like these since early in her ca—first career. The later years of her knighthood, decorated as she came to be, were spent at guard posts and parades. Go figure that the more competent you proved yourself to be, the less of a chance you were given to prove it.

There was some credit to all of the rumors, seeing that the cottage was in much better shape than the last time Frances had seen it as a little girl. The shattered and grimy windows were replaced and spotless, a few fixed with stained glass in the shapes of weeds and dancing beasts. The snarls of wild berry bushes had been trimmed down as well. And, of course, there was movement in the cottage.

Her breath caught and her movement stilled as she watched, waited. The view was limited—this was one of the clear-paned windows, and the lack of light it got was apparently reason enough to allow for a bookshelf to be placed before it. But through tomes and scrolls and paperbacks, Frances could just make out the upper body of a woman, turned almost fully away.

She had half an eye to notice that the interior of the cottage had been cleaned up and furnished as well, but the woman sitting at a bench before a worktable snared her gaze like a rabbit in a trap. Long pale hair curled over her shoulders, reaching past the point Frances could make out from here, iridescent in the light of one of the stained glass windows. She could just make out the curve of a smooth pale cheek past some sort of hair ornament that covered up her ears, and the very edges of long white lashes before the shelves covered up the top of her head. The woman was in something loose and filmy—house clothes no one was meant to see. Frances blushed, shamed.

Okay. She’d gone about this the wrong way. Maybe she should go for a more direct approach instead. Knock on the front door—pray that the woman put a robe on or she’d never be able to maintain eye contact. Ask her if she’d heard anything herself about a White Lady, for surely pale colored hair alone couldn’t make her she. Warn her to be careful.

And, fine, maybe if the mood felt right, invite her for a few drinks. Frances had invited far lesser women to join her for a night for weaker reasons. And though she regretted having to pull out her light armor for nothing in the brutal summer heat, at least it flattered her.

So, Frances snuck back away to approach the cottage properly. She could see now that the porch had been furnished with rocking chairs and potted plants. The door had a knocker of a vaguely disturbing grinning face, but most knockers were disturbing. She knocked.

She waited with trepidation. No call came from inside the cottage, but Frances could hear the sound of her approaching, more percussive than bare feet. Maybe she wore heels with her filmy night dresses—and Frances was going to stop thinking about that before she got ahead of herself.

The door opened, and Frances quickly experienced emotional whiplash. Fading embarrassment at her wandering thoughts (man, she needed to get laid). Relief that the woman had in fact found a robe to put on, short as it was. And then dawning horror at her grave mistake.

Piercing through a set of short, curly bangs were a set of spiraling horns, pale gold and sturdy. That hair ornament Frances had thought she’d seen was one of a pair of long, furred ears, like a farm animal’s ear except that it faded into a dark violet at each tip. What Frances couldn’t see past the bookshelf further down was the beginning of a long, tapered tail, tufted at the end with more curling white hair. And there were no heels befitting her earlier imaginings, for there was no way to don heels over those cloven hooves, furred over with more violet fur that lightened all the way up her satyr’s legs.

And when she finally made her way back to the woman’s face, because it turned out eye contact would be hard to keep after all, she found the finishing details to seal the deal. A sheep like nose, pink nostriled and white furred, no mistake. Lambent yellow eyes, like a hawk’s, strangely slitted like a four-pointed star. And when the woman grinned, watching Frances analyze her, it revealed sharper teeth than she’d been expecting, other features be damned.

“Oh, delightful!” the woman cried, leaning against the doorway. One clawed hand, that Frances had mistaken for long nails and amber polish, came up to rest at her hip. “You came back. I was a little worried, honestly.”

Frances swallowed. “Came back?”

The woman threw her head back as she laughed, causing her hair to shift. Her tail flicked behind her, and Frances saw then that not only was the iridescence just there, windows or not, it seemed to come off in wisps at the ends as she moved, like a cloud evaporating. “Well you were here only moments earlier, no? I didn’t see you, of course, I didn’t want to give it away. But I was so hoping you’d come to say hello. I get so few visitors these days.”

Frances fucked up. She really fucked up. For there was no chance this was not the White Lady of the Woods, terror of Thornsweet. Depositor of bugs in cradles, planter of poisonous plants where children played, snatcher of windowsill pastries.

This was no damsel. This was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

She should demand the reason for her terrorizing. She should chase her out.

Eirys eyed the woman across from her. The end of her tail flicked back and forth in what was definitely just mild annoyance, and not poorly-masked interest.

The baker’s daughter-turned knight-turned baker of Clearwater sat across from her at the dining table, flipping through her share of the tomes Eirys had brought back from her last Flicker. Her dark brown hair was pushed haphazardly from her eyes with a red bandana, choppy layers waving around her ears and temples. A pair of wire spectacles were perched on the bridge of a straight nose, the dark eyes behind them flicking to-and-fro as pages of dense and archaic text were scanned with a scholar’s ease. She rested her chin against the fist of her free hand, fingers caloused yet graceful even at rest, muscles of her arm effortlessly flexed from the position against the sleeves of her shirt, skin a light nut-brown. She looked both entirely comfortable with the peace and quiet, and in the same moment ready to leap into action at the faintest suggestion.

In her own way, Frances had lived a respectable number of lives for a mortal. Maybe that was why Eirys couldn’t help herself from feeling… connected to her.

Her tail was still flicking. Wisps of prismatic vapor broke off as each arc reversed, glimmering and curling in the air even as they thinned out into nothing. Her grip tightened on her own tome, claws digging into the fragile paper. She took a deep breath, willing herself into serenity. Frances looked up.

“What is it?”

Eirys rolled her eyes, long ears flicking back. “Can’t a woman breathe in peace?” she asked, scoffing.

Frances kept on pinning her with an even, expectant stare. And Eirys did not squirm beneath it, because she was an immortal celestial entity, and immortal celestial entities did not squirm beneath the stares of mortals.

It was just downright demeaning.

“I think I just need a break. A change of pace,” Eirys supplied, stretching. “Do you want some tea? A scone?”

Frances gave Eirys her version of a grin—eyes softened, the faintest whisper of a smile hidden behind rosy lips. “I’d like that. Thank you.” And without further preamble her nose was back in her book.

Eirys got up from the table, cloven hooves making a satisfying clop, clop against the wooden floor as she made her way to her kitchenette. She glanced at Frances once more as she set the water to boil, then out the window of her cottage, looking upon tangles of sunlit berry bushes and wildflowers.

Change of pace had been an interesting turn of phrase to use. Eirys felt like her life had been nothing but a ‘change of pace’ for the last century. Her life had certainly taken a change of pace when she found her connection to Aster’s starstone severed, stranding her from the elf and the goddess without even knowing she should have said goodbye. It took a change of pace again about thirty years ago when she realized that she needed to take a less active approach to finding her way back home, trading the life of a scrappy adventurer for one of a hermit scholar. And it took a change of pace once more, when she broke her rule about meddling with the plane’s occupants—when she’d finally found a plane where her role was minor enough to leave her unbothered—to pull pranks on a pretty woman.

In her defense on the last point, she’d never expected anything to come of the pranks. Sure, the confrontation where Frances demanded that Eirys stop, quote, “stealing the pies off of her Gods-damned windowsill like a fairytale vagrant” was justified, but Eirys thought things would just get quiet again after that. The former knight successfully scaring off the cryptid in the woods (for a time), marking her safe to ignore as a whole once more.

But then Frances came back to the cottage again, a few days later, basket of goods in hand. A ‘show of good faith’ she’d called it, whatever that meant. Then Frances started hanging around as Eirys researched, lacking the heart to re-don her scary mask to get her to go away. And one day Frances picked up one of Eirys’ books, pulled a pair of glasses from a pocket in her shirt, and the rest was history.

Eirys wasn’t even sure if Frances knew what Eirys was researching for. She had to have an idea, sure, from the topics of the material Eirys had at her disposal. But not once did Frances pry into why Eirys was such a fanatic for different schools of scrying, teleportation spells, tracking charms, portals. She merely took her notes, underlining what she thought would be points of interest, and left them to Eirys when she left for the night. Eirys wondered what her assumptions were about the point of it all.

Her thinking was cut off by the whistle of the kettle—charmed by a woman she knew seventy years back to whistle the melody of a lullaby she liked. Soon she found herself back at the table, self-warming tea cups aromatic with herbs, scones drizzled with icing set on a platter between the two of them. (Frances had supplied the scones, of course. She brought some pastry or another with her everytime she came to Eirys’ cottage.)

Frances Clearwater had been born in Thornsweet during the second half of Eirys’ doomed pilgrimage, and had grown up in the time it took for her to return. She lived her fair share of lives for the time promised her—she suppressed her interest in music to help her parents run their bakery, then begrudgingly passed on her knowledge to her baby brother when her parents decided they wanted him to inherit the business instead. Fran ran off to become a knight at fifteen out of a mixed desire to choose a life for herself and to get the hell away from her parents and the music they robbed of her.

She served the king of Thornsweet for ten years before a piece of paper once again robbed her of her autonomy: her little brother had run off to live his own life as she had, and her parents were too old to keep things afloat themselves. It was time for her to come home and take over the business, and wasn’t it a good thing they put in all that effort to teach her everything before Fergus was born after all?

Now Frances was 26, trapped once more in her hometown, her time divided between keeping the sleepy bakery afloat and caring for her aging parents. She was surprised to hear rumors on her return that the creepy old cottage she and Fergus had been scolded for playing near time and time again wasn’t abandoned after all, and that the White Lady had returned. Curiosity may kill the cat when Frances decides she needs to see this for herself—but she had no way of knowing the satisfaction, and worse things, this fateful meeting would bring.

Frances is your typical eldest daughter—she is all too good at giving more of herself than she had to give. It makes her a good big sister (and sometimes third parent) to Fergus, a stellar knight, a good baker. All the while her passion for music remains in the background, untapped. She’s known for her quiet and sturdy nature, a firm believer in actions speaking louder than words.

Capricorn Sun, Aquarius Moon, Cancer Ascendant

green flags: loyal, determined, hardworking. acts of service is her love language. she always means what she says, and never says what she doesn’t mean.