londoncallingrpg

And so she had become the Forgotten Queen of the Trooping Fae. Her grandfather's passing had come at a price and now she was some sort of royalty she didn't quite understand and Fin had gone blind again. It was nearly too much to take but Pippa was carrying on. What else could she do? The facts were the facts and no amount of fuss would change it. And she'd tried. She had power coursing through her now, all the time she felt it, and she'd tried to restore Fin's sight. It didn't work. Of course not. Why would it?

And then the dumb twit had gone back to stay with his stupid boyfriend. Pippa was outraged about that and she'd told Fin so. And that didn't work, either. Of course not. And so on that front she bit her tongue. Fin knew how she felt. It had little to do with keeping him close and everything to do with keeping him out of the treacherous prince's arms.

Pippa sighed softly and looked at her mobile that had just chirped. He newest client wanting a progress report. She needed something more concrete and so she sat down at the cafe on one of the dwindling nice days of the London summer, and she texted her client back.

It was striking, just how much she looked like Fin. And, of course, she'd been all over the papers thanks to the paps hounding Fin about his drug use and his blindness. The gentleman at the next table actually had a copy of the daily rag and she smiled at the photo on the cover.

If only life could be as dramatic as the paper made it seem. If only being queen meant something...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Learning the ins and outs of fairy politics was not something that Sunny envied her. "Fin's my friend," Sunny answered quietly. "He deserves better than this. There's few people who don't deserve better than this."

"Fin needs friends. And maybe a gentle reminder every single day that he's worth more than some shit fae prince hiding from his mother," she said. Then she sighed again. Dwelling on this wasn't going to change anything other than her complexion.

Sunny had never really thought of Willy that way. It would never do for her to forget he was dangerous... but it also wouldn't do to overestimate him, either.

All the same, she didn't want to humanize him, either. Finding out from Phouka that he was the baby sibling, like she was, had started her on that mistake.

"Anything I can do to help your sanity in the meantime?"

"I don't know," Pippa said with a rolling shrug of her shoulder. "Honestly I'm just trying to find out all I can about Trooping fae and what it even means to be the queen of a bunch of nomads and refugees. It seems, to me, to be a powerless position. But I'm probably wrong because why else would grandfather broker such a deal?"

"I don't know if there's such a thing as a powerless position with fairies," Sunny mused. She had no idea in this case, of course, but that just wasn't her experience of magic. "Could be it's like chess. The king seems like the most powerless piece, but the game's over when he has no more ways out."

She thought on that for a moment, then smiled.

"The queen really has all the power on the board, anyway," she said. "I'm sure it will come about that I'll be tested and then I'll know just what my role is."

"That tends to be how things go on the other side of the veil," Sunny agreed wryly. You got tested and either you knew your role... or you were dead.

"I've stepped through the glass twice, but I didn't get far before I turned back. I don't like the idea of being lost forever," she said thoughtfully.

Sunny nodded. "It's terrifying over there. Mostly because so few people know a thing about it."

"That's where I'm at right now. I need to know...but I feel like I ought to have a guide and I've not the faintest clue where to find one," she replied.

"Well," Sunny mused, "sometimes you just need to step into the soul-eating death forest and see what happens." Not that that wasn't terrifying, she knew.

"Well when you put it like that..." Pippa replied dryly, then broke into a smile and a soft laugh. "I just wish I had a better handle on what I was meant to do."

She said the words and instantly felt a pull in her that tightened and snapped back, so sharply it made her gasp. Wish. It was there, inside her. Primal reflex, almost.

Sunny's eyes widened a touch. She had not entirely been joking, as her very first lesson had been to survive the Nightrunner Forest with her new friends. "Gotta be careful with that word," she said instead. Even though Fin and Pippa were her friends, she knew better than to say 'wish' around either of them.

"There's a lot I'm learning only as I mess up," Pippa said. "It's not good when I say it but it's almost irresistible when someone else says it. It's mental."

"Yeah, that's about how learning magic goes," Sunny agreed with an idle nod. "You try something, you endanger body, mind, or soul, and if you live you don't do that again."

"I wish..." she started, then caught herself. "I'd really like to have a teacher. You'd think there would be something in place. I'd like to think Grandfather made arrangements...but it's likely no ones going to come to help us."

"I wasn't kidding about soul-eating death forests," Sunny said, as straight-faced as someone could be making that statement. "Properly it's called the Nightrunner Forest, but it's basically West Africa's Wyldwood. My friends and I knew there was someone waiting for us because Anatov wasn't awful enough not to give preteens an objective, but we still had to get there. In this world sometimes you're just not going to get help until you prove that you're strong."

Pippa shivered.

"I've been in the Wyldwoods. You could be lost there forever. If it's all the same, that's not the place I'd like to be tested. I can prove I'm strong here on Earth, thank you very much."

OTA

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