OTA

[willysilver]

It was a lovely night by all accounts. The weather was just cool enough for a jacket, the breeze making the leaves flutter and twitch. The moon hung bright in the sky, nearly full, and in the park there were people enjoying the night.

Willy was out busking tonight, though he had no heart for it. No joy, no enchantment. Tonight, as for the past nights, he sat on the edge of a fountain and he played sorrowful songs of lost love. He understood them now. He had never truly understood love, that much he had come to realise since Fin had departed. He knew desire and passion, he knew friendship, he knew possession, but he had never understood partnership or equality or even the necessity of respect. He knew now, though.

It was a hard learned lesson. His music wasn't the only thing lacking enchantment. His own visage was ashy grey, his luxurious hair drooped flat, the curls dull and limp. There was no light in his green eyes, they were flat and dull and dark.

His fingers strummed the strings mournfully.

I've stolen all the stars to make a wish we can fly
Away, away up high to that old place in time
Where our pictures never fade and our hearts don't lie
Won't you stay a while and watch our world go by
I'll keep holding on to you and your Saturday smile

Has our Autumn died
Help me find you again

I think it's love
I think it's love
That gets us through
All our goodbyes
So when we die
Think of love
I'll think of love
And thoughts of you
To lay me down
I think it's love
That keeps us new

If only it could be the very first time
Kiss me like it means something inside
I don't want to leave and I'm afraid to find
Our fate die in a dream and let me know you're not mine
Lie a little longer, my Saturday smile

Has our Autumn died
Help me find you again

I think it's love
I think it's love
That gets us through
All our goodbyes
So when we die
Think of love
I'll think of love
And thoughts of you
To lay me down
I think it's love
That keeps us new

The people who passed nearby were struck by the power of the fae's melancholy. He mourned not only his lost love, but the fact that he couldn't find him. He had visited the hotel many times but now the Phouka and Winter had gone off to make a home of their own and Fin did not come or go from the hotel anymore. And the longer he was gone the harder it became to feel him with any specificity in the city of millions. He knew he needed to find Fin to speak to him, do make what repairs he could, but he could hardly find the energy to even strum the stings tonight.

Comments

[wispofathing]

"Glad I could help," Curnen murmured with a shy duck of the head, this time remembering not to say thank you. She felt a little better herself, since she'd had no chance to do any singing or playing at home before she'd fled with Rob. She sang with Bliss over Skype sometimes, but that only went so far.

[willysilver]

"I should repay this debt. Perhaps now, perhaps later. What are your needs, Curnen? Do you have food? Shelter? Would you like company? You could come sing with me again," he offered.

[wispofathing]

"I'm gettin' along fine," she assured him. This too was something that Curnen had been warned about, creating debts in either direction with other fae courts. That wasn't why she'd done this, and she tried not to look a little afraid. She desperately didn't want to fuck anything up. "But I wouldn't mind singing with you again sometime."

[willysilver]

"Then we shall. Do you have a phone?" he asked, putting his guitar aside so he could produce his own to get her number.

[wispofathing]

Curnen nodded and reached into her pocket to pull it out. "Easier if one of us does this," she said as she held out her hand for his phone. It was the first clear look she was giving him at her fingers, and that came as it always seemed to, with a pang of self-consciousness. It meant different things at home and out in the world. Most people let it pass with a bit of a double take, but not everyone had even the manners for that.

[willysilver]

Her hands were unique and, to him, beautiful. A reminder of home where not every fae was shaped the same. It made him smile faintly and he watched her as she worked his phone.

"Tell me more of your kind, little one," he urged, unable to contain his curiosity of an exotic fae unlike any he knew.

[wispofathing]

This was one of the first things Rob had taught Curnen how to do, since it seemed everybody in mainstream America had a cell phone. She called her phone from his, saved her number in his phone before dismissing the incoming call on her phone and saving his number. She handed his phone back. It was an excuse to take time to think before she spoke. "Well, like I said, we keep to Tennessee. Eastern Tennessee specifically. Most people leave us alone because they think we're just some weird ethnic group and backward mountain folk besides. Then you get the conspiracy nuts who think we're aliens or the lost tribe of Israel, but they ain't all that common."

[willysilver]

Backward mountain folk brought out a soft chuckle from the melancholy fae. He took his phone back from her when she was done.

"I have not been among anyone like your kind in years and years. So long, in fact, I cannot recall."

[wispofathing]

Which was more true than he knew, probably. Curnen didn't think he was old enough to have any memories of Rockhouse. Or at least, who Rockhouse had been in the homeland. And even if he was, it was so long ago now that the whole mess had probably faded from memory. Even the queen probably didn't recall the forester who had displeased her.

Which sucked for Rockhouse, considering waiting for her pardon was all that he lived for.

But she couldn't say these things. At least not right now.

"Ain't that much to us," she said with a shrug. "In some ways, we aren't that different from the humans around us. And then in some ways, whoops, someone tried to hard to dig into our business and they get lost in the woods for God knows how long. The locals know better by now." Fairy circles were alive and well in the new world, only now they took the shape of a barn dance and a forest that would fucking betray you.