Silver knew that feeling all too well by now. He pushed himself to stand, feeling her zip past his cheek, the brief note of her laughter as she carved through the air.
It wasn’t just the plants, the very light in the cavern seemed to shift, shimmers and threads of light in every color twisting in the air, and then parted like curtains over a doorway.
Then she was gone.
Nettle flitted through the portal without a second of hesitation, diving straight into the center, leaving a trail of sparkles in the air behind her.
Silver almost called out after her, taking a few steps towards it, before his sense of self preservation took over. The crumbling ledge continued on in iridescent shimmer, but he wasn’t sure it would hold his weight. He stood at the edge and craned his neck towards the portal.
Silver had to blink several times before he realized what he was seeing.
Hundreds of fey were peeking out of lush living plants, grown into elegant shelters. It seemed partway between a forest and a castle. All kinds of mushrooms sprouted up between the fallen rocks, circling the doorway, blurring the line of where it started. It was odd, the way he felt he was in two places at once, watching their features overlap.
A number of the fey gasped as they saw her, dozens taking to the air to greet her, a swirl of glittering sparkles surrounding her, each calling out to her, “Lady Nettlewisp is back!”
Lady Nettlewisp.
She hasn’t said she was a noble Lady of the Morning Mist Court.
Of course she was. He hadn’t been able to picture it before, but this place was clearly suited entirely to her, she had a whole life and connections here. Everyone knew her name. He didn’t know all that being a Fey noble entailed, but he imagined it didn’t involve sleeping around campfires or looking for work in seedy pubs.
And now that her little detour was over, she was right back where she belonged.
She was so beautiful, especially with that wide, effervescent smile. She glowed. A bitter happiness bloomed in his chest. He was glad she found what she was looking for, truly.
A few dozen of the fey nearest the door stared at him, wide eyed and in shock that he was there at all, looking in.
“Silver!” Nettle called out, wreathed in a neverending cascade of glittering sparks. She was looking at him with that wide, beaming smile.
“That’s my dear friend, Silver,” she explained to the hundreds of fey surrounding her, and before he knew it, a quite literal handful of them were gathered around one of his boots, tugging him a step into the mushroom circle.
Several of them flitted up to his eye level, offering him acorn caps willed with mulled wine, others pushed little baskets woven out of pine needles, filled to the brim with berries, into his palm. A couple of them might have crawled into his pockets, by the feel of his cloak rustling.
She looked at him with bright, excited eyes.
He tried not to let his next words cut into her triumph of having her magic back, to not let the way his heart had sunk when he’d realized this was their parting moment. She had a life to get back to, and it was right here.
“Back to your Court, then?”
“I… well, yes,” she said, and a little round of cheers went off, running through the towering trees, echoing through the mystical woods.
“Good. I’m… happy for you,” he nodded, and tried not to grimace as the tiniest round of applause went off around his feet. This was no way to have this conversation, but he didn’t think he could ask her for a moment alone. There were so many eyes on the pair of them. Too many.
Nettle was silent for a long time, long enough that the little sounds of applause had faded entirely.
Silver cleared his throat and rummaged in his pocket, scooping up and tossing out the pair of fey that had invaded his personal space a little too closely. “Well, I have a long walk back.”
“Surely, you’ll stay for a while? We’ll have a feast to celebrate, I owe you that much,” she said quickly, and even though she tried to keep her smile in place, he could see she looked confused.
Silver shook his head, and leaned down to scoop a few more coins up off the ground. “No, no. Consider the job paid for.”
Before she could protest, before she could persuade him to drink the fey wine, to step fully through the portal and spend adozen nights feasting and experiencing firsthand the famed fey debauchery, he turned and left.
He felt like his heart might fall out of his mouth if he tried to voice any of the ways she was falling for him, bit by bit. Already he had to let what had been building between them go.
Each step back through the gauntlet, he insisted to himself she wasn’t his type. He preferred a more rugged girl, rubbed dirt in her wounds, sort. He didn’t care too much for shiny things, anyway.
The hike back from the depths of the Chasm was quiet and uneventful. He made it to the Hammered N’Aled Tavern a little after nightfall. It was the last evening of the winter festival in the village, candles burned down to little melted stubbs on every available surface, a handful of snow sculptures that didn’t look like much of anything outside.
