Muri can’t help the wince that follows the statement. She knows all too well the cost that often comes of granting such a request.
“I do know,” Muri says, taking a step forward. “And I would not have either of you burdened by the guilt of such a thing.”
A sadness passes behind the icy blue of her eyes, her gaze settling on a tree at the edge of the forest. It’s a tall oak, and long ago had been a sturdy and thriving thing. It had been nursed by the fea as a seedling upon the fertile soil of Terr.
Hundreds of years it grew in this forest, casting its branches out to offer the protection of its shade. Its trunk is twisted, as if it spent its lifetime dancing as it spun, reaching for the sun beyond the thick canopy overhead. But its leaves are too golden in the midsummer heat, and many are cast to the ground from the gentle breeze that stirs them. A hollow in its trunk, where no doubt countless squirrels raised their broods and hid their hoards for winter, now cracked and fissured. Less a home than it was before.
“Is something wrong?” Nurai asks, her brow drawn with concern.
“No. Nothing,” Muri says, with a small shake of her head.
Muri clasps her friend’s hand as she pleads, “Threats are not the answer, Nurai. Don’t our own histories tell us enough about the atrocities committed in the name of peace by both human and feyn?”
“You are right,” she agrees with a gentle squeeze of her friend’s hand.
Muri sighs, the relief she feels clear upon her face when she says, “We will find another way.”
They walk about the bustling market for some time, each considering all that the other has said.
“It might help you to know,” Muri says as she runs her hand down the length of an artfully painted silk panel, hanging among many in the stall of a young feyn, “that Arda, Nix, and Vos have already tried to convince yourbrother and failed.”
With a deep sigh and the shake of her head, Nurai replies, “I’m honestly not surprised they would try. When the humans took the life of your mother, I thought we lost you all to that grief. Stars know that most of the human lives taken by the feyn have been in vengeance of such things.”
Muri nods, unable to hide her sorrow upon recalling the memory. Eventually she says, “Arda and Nix mourned for many years; they still grieve her. I don’t think feyn were made to endure loss the way that the mortals do. But Vos, I never saw sadness in her, though I’m sure it was there, buried deep. All she ever showed me was her rage.”
“I remember,” Nurai says, absently smoothing one of the silks folded neatly in the stall.
“There were days when I thought she might end the entire human race herself. She was so consumed by it. And then,” Muri says, a small smile forming on her face as she recalls it, “her belly began to swell, and all that anger vanished. I could never explain the joy I felt at having my sister returned to me, how it felt to see her smile again. It was as if she forgot what it meant to live, and with that life growing inside her, she began to remember.”
Muri bites her quivering lip as she continues, “If anything happened to that child, I think she might have drowned all of Terr in her sorrow.”
“Luckily,” Nurai reassures her, “the fates knew better than to take the child from her, and that is a world we will never have to live in.”
Muri nods, her smile now seeming somewhat less.
“Now tell me, how is your sister enjoying motherhood?” Nurai asks.
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Muri says, “Her world begins and ends with that child.”
“As it should.”
Muri nods her agreement, and the friends wander into the stall of a bog sprite, overflowing with bushels of rare flowers and herbs only found in the marshes deep within the Braxian forest.
The sprite shuffles forward, her short crop of fine green hair flowing about in the air as if she were underwater. The tangle of mossy branches protruding from her head are adorned with the coveted white lilies that grow upon the marshy wetland of her home. Her skin shifts in the light asshe moves. At first, it’s patterned in a glistening array of scales that shimmer in the sunlight, then fades to the dull thick scales of some of the larger and less likable beasts that inhabit the waterways. Finally settling into a skin that is a perfect reflection of the weather-worn, moss-laden trees of her home.
She rummages through a nearby basket, producing a large seed from under a dense layer of flowers.
“Rue tana hi rin thi’le meh,” she says, handing the seed to Muri.
Muri’s brow dips curiously as the feyn replies in the sprite’s own tongue,“Vareh?”
No sprite had ever taught Nurai their language. In fact, Muri was the only feyn she knew of in the veil that the sprites deemed worthy of the honor.
It gnawed at her. For some reason, she was not enough. She could not help but think that she must lack something vital to the fea, as did nearly all feyn, or the sprites would have accepted her as eagerly as they had the female beside her.
Perhaps it is only vanity and selfishness that she wants them to accept her in such a way. Stars know that they are the most meddlesome of fea. She should be relieved that it is Muri and not herself that they had taken to. But the sprites seemed to weave the fabrics of the fates’ design, carefully stitching the pattern as they went about their lives. On the whole of Terr, in every veil, there would never be a friendship more coveted than that of a sprite.
The sprite’s pale green eyes flick to Nurai and the conversation shifts, the fea’s words lost on the wind to all but Muri.
