Chapter 10.5 - Sheharazade

A "Once Upon a Time" Word-Prompt Collection

(takes place in the middle of chapter 10)

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Time

Three months is not long to an Elf.
It's an eyeblink.
For one who has lived for more than four millennia,
it is as nothing.

Yet three months is enough time for him to begin to doubt.
For him to begin to wonder.

Three months is an eternity to some humans -
humans,
with their impatience
and their lives like candleflames that flicker to burning
before being snuffed out forever.

The moon waxes and wanes thrice.
Time passes.

The mortal woman should have betrayed her blood by this time.
Yet three months is just long enough to make Nuada think,
make Nuada slowly slowly slowly
start to wonder if
maybe
just maybe
he can trust a little.

Faire

He'd followed her that summer day,
watching her with her friends as they engaged in the various pretenses and play-acting that such faires boasted.

He had no eyes for the other women.
Only for Dylan
as she listened to the old music with a smile on her face,
or moved through the steps of the olden dances with a fey-like grace.

And for just a moment he saw her in Bethmoora,
a lady of the court,
striding through a fae faire on his arm.

Then the image was gone,
banished to the realm of foolish whimsy where it belonged.

Badge

It shocks him,
once the adrenaline of the fight with the leanashe wears off.
Shocks him to see
the myriad of thick and thin slashing scars
making a wreck of an otherwise ordinary human face.

He knows mortals have ways of removing such disfigurements -
why hasn't she?
Why bear such scars if she doesn't have to?

He asks her another night,
and she smiles more than a little sadly.

"To remind me," she says.
"Because I can't lie and say it never happened.
Because it happened, and I survived...
thanks to you."

Feet

In his sanctuary she knelt before him,
a common-born mortal wretch before a prince of fae blood.
This was as it should be.

But now...
she sits at his feet when she reads to him,
perched on her little footstool,
and it makes him uneasy in a way he cannot even hope to explain.

Apple

It is the first gift he has ever freely given her -
the means to make a roasted apple and cheese sandwich.

To this day,
it is one of her favorite foods.

Laughter

Nuada has never heard Dylan laugh quite like this before -
carefree,
happy.
Has never heard anyone but a child laugh so.

It somehow makes her less human.
Makes her sound almost fey.

The Elven warrior wonders if he might not be going mad when he realizes
he rather likes the sound of it.

Hiccup

In all his four-thousand-odd years,
he has never seen a human look so ridiculous
(or amusing)
as Dylan holding her breath,
crossing her eyes,
and sticking out her tongue in an attempt to cure a fit of hiccups.

Meals

It's not the food, though the food is good -
apple and cheese sandwiches,
grape salad,
breakfast turnovers,
mandarin chicken and rice.

It's the quiet,
the companionship.
The communion.

It is the simple fact that Nuada Silverlance,
bane of mankind,
is willing to share a simple meal with a mortal woman.

Servant

Nuada expects her to treat the brownie as a slave,
now that she knows of him.
A drudge,
at the very least.

But after several weeks he realizes that Dylan considers the wee one to be more than a servant.
He is a friend.
Perhaps even family.

God

They don't just read.
They often talk, and of many things.

Through those talks they each learn something:
he believes that the Star Kindler has abandoned him and abandoned his people;
she knows that Heavenly Father is always there,
and it is when you feel abandoned that you need Him the most.

Invitation

Because he is royal,
he does not need one.
He can enter any human dwelling anywhere,
anytime.

Because he is Nuada,
she always lets him in,
with bright eyes and a happy smile.

Walls

These stone walls are cold from the winter air,
but they hold the gentle warmth of a home.

These walls,
strange as it is,
have slowly come to mean comfort.
Have come to mean welcome where he least expected it.

He should be disgusted with himself,
that he feels this way.
That he is allowing himself to feel this way.

Instead,
he keeps coming back.

Quiet

"The world is quiet here," she says one day.
Nuada glances away from the fire to see Dylan smiling.
"We're outside of time.
Outside of the world.
It's peaceful."

And oddly, Nuada realizes, she is absolutely right.

Plushie

"Oh, crud, he killed it," Dylan mumbled,
staring at the mounds of stuffing on the floor.

Bat rolled around in his fluffy toy's fluffy eviscerated guts and purred.
The disemboweled cloth mousie was clutched tightly in his claws.

Almost

He can't believe he is thinking such a thing,
but with every passing week -

with every word of the strange human tale,
with every shared evening meal,
with every conversation that peels back another layer of this bizarre and unfathomable mortal woman -

Nuada finds himself almost beginning to like her.

Fatigue

There are gathering shadows in his eyes.
The darkness around those eyes,
around his mouth,
seems to grow deeper each time she sees him.

Sometimes he arrives looking so tired
she wants to tell him to go lie down in her room and rest.
But she knows he won't.

Instead,
those rare occasions when he dozes off in the chair,
she pauses in her reading and lets him sleep.

Storyteller

As a prince,
he has listened to
the greatest faerie bards,
minstrels
and troubadours.

But there is something about the way
she reads her tales to him -
something that makes each word resonate with him,
so that though the words are mortal,
they paint almost magical pictures in his mind.

How

He does not understand her,
though he learns more about her each night that he comes to her cottage.

How can she be so calm,
so tranquil in the face of what she has endured?

How can she be so kind to his people?

How can she be so gentle,
when all the world's evils should have made her hard and cruel?

How can she be so fey-like,
when she is so human?

He doesn't know the answers,
but as the days go by,
he realizes he is growing accustomed to not knowing.

Fizzy

It is so rare for him to smile.
When he does
(usually at something in the story,
but ever so rarely he gives a crooked little half-smile for her, too)
it fills her stomach with an odd tingling fluttering warmth that always makes her smile back at him.

Edge

The tale is over.
He has no reason to return.
This is a foolish venture -
to go back to a mortal dwelling without cause or justification.
What is the point?

Yet he finds himself poised on the leyline that marks the border of the Park,
separating it from the foul City.

If he steps across it, it means little.
He is a fae prince; he can walk where he wills.
He can tread the paths of the Park if he so chooses.
And if his feet bring him to the little cottage amidst the green,
it means nothing.

Nuada stares at the little white-washed garden gate nestled amidst the stone walls of Dylan's garden.
The edge of her domain,
just as the leyline marked the edge of the Park.

He draws a breath.
It feels almost as if he is about to step off a cliff and plummet into a bottomless chasm.
Far off and away on the horizon
he senses an odd dread growing darker by the minute.

But the Silver Lance has never run from something because of fear.
So he steps off the cliff's edge and across the threshold of that garden gate,
and goes back to the mortal cottage once more.

Island

There is something isolating and alone in this little cottage,
though not lonely.

In the raging sea of the world
the darkness and the cruelty and the heartache
attempt to swamp those who attempt to swim in its storm-tossed waters.

But inside that mortal home,
despite the humanity of its owner,
it is like finding the one safe place that cannot be subsumed by the waves.
The one warm, comfortable, safe place
amidst the black ocean of the world.

Daybreak

Sometimes he stays until dawn,
lulled by simple conversation and tales of sleeping princesses and barbarian kings.

Lured by the promise of companionship that demands nothing,
asks nothing,
expects nothing.
There is something so enticing about that.

Even though she is human,
there is something about her that makes it so easy to sit back and listen to her read to him
until the creeping sunlight taps at the windowpanes,
reminding them both that they have responsibilities elsewhere.

Trust

It builds between them,
bit by bit.

The foundation is laid with three months in a healing sanctuary beneath the earth.
The cornerstone is a debt of honor.

As the days pass from summer to autumn,
the stonework of these soon-to-be unshakeable walls is built one piece at a time -

the words of a tale,
the sweetness of summer apples,
a moment of carefree laughter,
brief shared glances and even briefer smiles.

Slowly but surely,
they are learning to trust one another.

Bronze

Fury turns his eyes molten and hot,
a warning to anyone foolish enough to provoke him.

But somehow she cannot find it in herself to be afraid of him when his eyes burn with anger;
not anymore.
She knows he would never harm her.

Odd

How odd,
that he feels welcome in the little cottage amidst the green wood.

Odd,
that as the days go by,
he finds his heart is just a little bit lighter.

So very odd,
that he should find himself looking forward to seeing her again.

Gossip

Have you heard?
Is it true?

Where does the Silverlance go every night at dusk?
To the Park.

Why would he go there?
To see someone.

Who?
A woman.
A mortal woman.

Who is she?
No one knows.
Informant, ally, friend, lover, whore, sweetheart, plaything.

Sharp Elven ears catch every word.
Rage begins to fester.

So,
the Defender of Bethmoora,
the proud and mighty Silverlance,
has betrayed his people.
The line of the Tuatha de has finally failed.

Outcast

It should revolt him,
that he seeks solitude from his own kind
and yet seeks companionship with a human.

She is nothing
but an empty, heartless creature without a soul,
without morals,
without any hope of becoming more than what she is.

Yet for some unfathomable reason,
at Dylan's cottage
he feels more welcome than he has felt anywhere in a long, long time.

Toast

"So you actually know how to make toast without magic or a toaster?" Dylan asked.

Nuada didn't preen under the admiration in her voice,
but it was a hard battle.

"You are so amazing," she added,
as he handed her a piece of lightly toasted bread.
She fleetingly daubed it with a bit of butter before adding fresh apple preserves.
"I don't know anyone who can make toast over a fire.
You are so amazing right now, Your Highness."

"Only amazing?"

"Well, let me take a bite first," she said,
and proceeded to do so.
Her smile was as satisfied as a cat with a bowl of cream.
"Okay, you're fantastic. Happy?"

Oddly, he was.

Spoon

"What are you doing?"
Nuada demanded.

"What does it look like?"
Dylan replied.

In truth,
it looked as if she were
carefully balancing a piece of silverware
on the tip of her crooked nose,
but surely not.

Different

It is like a stone lodged in his throat to admit it,
even after all this time.

Eight moons he has known her now.
Eight moons and still she continues to surprise him.
Still she shucks the curse of her mortal blood.

Why is this one so very different?

Confusion

Sometimes
Nuada wants to grab her by the shoulders and
demand to know where she came from,
because she may be in the world,
but she is not of the world…
she can't be.

Scarred

It makes no sense
that he should find any kind of beauty in the wreck of that mortal face.

It makes no sense
that he should find compassion
or mercy
or understanding
in those haunted blue eyes.

She is merely a human.

A good storyteller, yes;
a skilled healer, yes.
But that should have been all.

Yet in that slashingly disfigured face and sad eyes
he finds,
impossibly,
someone as scarred as he is.

Moon

He reminds her of the moon.

Constant as its presence in the sky;
can't always see it,
but it is always there.

Mercurial as its phases:
waxing and waning,
dark and new,
bright and full.

He is so like the moon - silver and untouchable in the night.

Sunrise

How long had it been,
he wondered,
since he'd stayed up all night simply to watch the sunrise?

As the light limned the trees and kissed his skin with its warmth,
Nuada knew he would always remember this moment with Dylan at his side.

Tomb

The subway tunnels close in on her as she races through them,
searching for safety,
lost in the stone labyrinth all around her.

She rushes through,
running,
heart pounding,
the baby in her arms wailing pitifully that it doesn't like this place that stinks of concrete and steel,
doesn't like this woman smeared with iron-laced blood,
doesn't like the cold and the jostling and the monster chasing them deeper and deeper into the crypt-like New York Underground.

Dylan shushes the baby and keeps running.
Somewhere beyond this ghoul-infested, ghost-haunted place is a haven guarded by a warrior prince.

She just has to find it.

Separation

They stand scant inches apart,
the moonlight shining down on them both.
Her eyes are wide and worried as they study his face.

He wants to tell her that everything will be all right -
he cannot stand the sight and stench of a woman's fear.
Especially not this woman,
for some strange reason.

Nuada wants to tell her not to worry about Eamonn.
Not to fear for him, either.
He can see she fears Eamonn and fears for Nuada himself.

But any assurance he might give would be a lie.
This mortal deserves better than falsehood.

Instead,
Nuada offers her a short bow -
one he would normally reserve for a woman of the court.
She has tried to protect him yet again this night.

Then,
after one searching look
(are those tears in her eyes?)
he turns and disappears into the darkness,
knowing that he will most likely never see Dylan again.

Trickery

A ploy.
A pregnant woman butchered,
her fae love killed,
an innocent child orphaned...
all to trap him.
To incriminate him.

Nuada had known
his people could be fey, false, tricky.
Could be vindictive.
He'd known that.

But he hadn't thought any faerie capable of this.

Run

He should have run from her when he had the chance,
she thinks to herself,
pacing in front of her fireplace.

It has been more than a month since she has seen him;
since he has come to hear a story from her.
He should've escaped the curse her life can become for the people she cares about when he had the chance.

Instead,
she ran to him,
ran to the safety and strength of him when she was afraid of the butchering madman in the dark,
and now Nuada is gone,
and she doesn't know where,
or whether she will ever see him again.

Maybe

He moves through the kata with savage grace and barely-restrained violence.
He wants to fight an opponent for true;
wants to feel his blood humming with adrenaline and battle-fury
as he works through the rage and the dread and the hurt.

His father... and Eamonn... and trickery... and deceit.
It sends his anger boiling in his blood,
screaming for release.

Instead of giving it free reign,
he conjures up something else -
the sound of Dylan reading him Spindle's End.
Her smile that always welcomed him to her cottage.

He will never have that again;
his father will make sure of that.
But perhaps...
just perhaps...
the fact that he had it at all is worth what will come from it.