39 – Dreams

Falen snapped upright in bed, eyes bulging, and hands clawing at the blanket.

The images were vivid in her mind as her chest heaved, wing feathers trembling.

She threw off the blanket, and pulled on her outer clothes, fumbling with her belt and she kicked open the door, scuffing the lintel and causing the other occupant of the room to stir.

“Falen? Go back to bed.” A voice mumbled at her, but she was already leaving, sliding a window up and jumping out, pushing off the side of the building for a quick start.

High above the town, the night air whipped past her, her wings beating out a frantic pace, fuelled by the images from her dream.

Her shoulders ached by the time she reached the deep forest, forsaking stealth for speed as she winged past the patrol routes, and dove down, easily finding her old house in amongst the trees.

She landed on the balconey, and the fear rose up in her when she opened the curtain. There was no light in the room.

“Mother?”

“You came.” The voice was tired, barely a whisper, but it was triumphant.

Falen padded over to the bed, sitting down on the edge. “Nothing would keep me away.”

“I knew you had the gift.” Her mother raised a shaking hand, and cupped her daughter’s cheek. “Take my things, they are yours now. Don’t let them take them from you.”

“I promise mother. I will keep them safe.”

Falen could just about see the smile on her mother’s face, and the whisper that came through it, “Dream well, my daughter.”

Falen held her mother’s hand on her cheek long after the eyes had closed and the skin had cooled.

The vibrations through the wood told her off Fae approaching. She folded her mother’s hand over her chest and smoothed her wing feathers down. In the pale light of the dawn she could see a bag sitting by the bed. Her mother had been prepared for this. She picked up the bag, and settled it between her wings.

On the balcony she looked back on last time at her mother, as the door opened and members of the guard that she recognised came in. As they spotted her, she turned back and took off, leaving the shouts echoing in empty air.

It was only when she was in the air that she wiped her face with the back of her hand, the tears running back over her face in the wind. She didn’t know whether to bless or curse the dreams that she had inherited from her mother. Bless them for allowing her to say goodbye. Or curse them for being the very thing that took her from her mother’s side in the first place.

87. Envious

Falen stood on the balcony, looking down at the garden. She could see them down there. The mother and her daughter.

It wasn’t fair.

Why could she have time with her mother? Spend time with the person that had bought her into this world, why Falen couldn’t.

Here she was, half the geographical world away, and so much further than that away in spirit.
She wanted to be beside her mother. Wanted to be with her as she slipped away from this world. Falen knew that her mother didn’t have long left in this world. And it was tearing her apart to be here.
She looked down at the couple in the garden, just wondering around and looking at the flowers. Green envy clouded her vision, and she gripped the balcony harder.

And then all the tension left. Just drained out of her. She sunk to the floor and le the balcony support her weight.

It was out of her hands. Simple as that.

She had done what she had done, and these were the consequences for it. Falen just wished she knew what lay at the end of this path. Her mother had the power to see the future, but she had not inherited it. How she envied her mother now, able to know what would happen if one did this, or one did that.

How she envied the girl down there, who could spend time and touch her mother. Falen just wanted to go home, to her mother. Just to see her, one last time.

71. Dance

“Falen…um…well…Do you want to dance with me?” Kyle held his breath in as he asked the Fae.

Falen looked at him, and then over to the square where other people were dacing round the fire.

“Kyle?”

“Yes?” He let a short gasp of breath, he stomach twisting in anticipation.

“What is..dance? I am unfamiliar with the word.”

The breath he had been holding in came out in one big explosion, he shakily ran a hand through his hair. He managed to stop himself from laughing.

“You’ve never danced?”

Falen fixed her golden eyes on him. “I said the word was unfamiliar.” She pointed at the people round the fire. “Is it related to that?”

“Yeah, uh, it’s when. Hmm, how to describe it? I guess it when people move in time with music and each other? It’s a social activity.”

Falen looked at the fire and blinked a few times. “No, I will not join you. I shall watch instead.”

Kyle was disappointed. “Oh, alright then. Well, if you change your mind…”

Falen sat down on a log and watched the dancers. Kyle turned away and looked up at the sky. Well, that had been awkward.

59. Gift

59. Gift (30/10/11)

Falen was teaching Kyle the Fae language again. It was late, and they were sitting by the campfire as it burned lower, almost to embers by now.

“And these are the symbols for the elements, Fire, Water, Air, Wood, Metal, Earth, and Essence.”

“Essence?”

“What you would term life, the thing that enforces everything that lives. We go beyond what you would call the traditional four elements.”

Kyle turned back to etchings in the sand, looking back over them, trying to memorise them. He looked back over the Falen, and noticed the firelight caught some bangles around her ankles, making them glow a burnished golden. He noticed some of the symbols one them the he had just been taught.

“Those bangles you wear, they say essence.”

Falen looked down at them. “They were gifts, from my mother. They’re meant to bestow a blessing on the wearer, for long life and good fortune. An ancient magic.” She looked back to the fire. “I treasure them, since they’re likely to be the only gifts I can ever have from my mother now that I’ve been banished.”

Kyle was silent for a little while. “They’re really pretty.”

“Thankyou.”

48. Fate

48. Fate (7/1/11)

“Do you believe in fate?”

Karsan looked over at Falen. And then back at the night sky. The two of them were perched on top of a stone that jutted out of a cliff face. No one could reach the place without wings, making it the most private place on the earth currently.

“I like to think that I make my own choices, and everything comes out of those.”

Falen sighed. “I’d like to think that to. But sometimes coincidence falls just too neatly for me to think that it’s just a coincidence.”

“Honestly? I don’t think we’ll ever know whether we are fated to do something or not. Probably better than way.”

“Really?”

“Well, if people thought that the decisions they made were pre-ordained, don’t you think that they would do everything in their power to make the opposite decision just to show that they could.”

“Humans are an odd species like that.”

Karsan looked over at her. “Don’t you think you’d do it as well?”

Falen looked away from him back up to the stars. “I don’t know. I couldn’t say what I’d do until I was in that situation.”

He smiled. “Do you really think it matters whether it’s you or fate deciding?”

“Not really. Sometimes I just wonder.”