Where did you go?
I’m left here alone.
Why am I alone?
I’ve lost everyone.
Am I to blame?
My thoughts are clouded.
Will the nightmares end soon?
I just want to disappear.
I am tired of the loneliness.
I miss you, but I have lost myself.
I have never felt so lost…
Can I still be saved?
My hope is fading.
I am tired. It is okay.
I’m left here alone.
Why am I alone?
I’ve lost everyone.
Am I to blame?
My thoughts are clouded.
Will the nightmares end soon?
I just want to disappear.
I am tired of the loneliness.
I miss you, but I have lost myself.
I have never felt so lost…
Can I still be saved?
My hope is fading.
I am tired. It is okay.
For several centuries, Sadie had lived in her sort-of-adoptive tribe of Sindarin Fae, though she had never been anything less than an outsider. The Sindarin, and all púcas for that matter, viewed women as little more than an incubator for sons and servants to keep their husbands or, if they were fortunate, mates happy. Her old tribe had even promised her to a young male when she was only twelve years of age. She did not know if it was a blessing or a curse that she had been whisked away from the village all those years ago.
Few stated this to her face, but the Fae of the tribe she had been taken into seemed to view her with a mixture of pity, suspicion, and disdain. Her lack of social skills and appearance- haunted and lost- have exempted her from such pressure, but not the judgment of being an unmated, unmarried female.
It seemed to not bother her all too much. Sadie was quite content to be exempt from the expectations that once weighed her down as a child. She hadn’t even known why the others in the village rarely acknowledged her existence. Her behavior was strange, her mind too distant to be of any use. The Fae did not just believe her to be an antisocial, awkward, lost girl. They thought she was cursed from the day a small army of guards landed with the tiny winged girl, hair wild full of twigs and leaves and feet frostbitten and bloody, in their arms. Even then, she seemed so abnormal. Her eyes glowed luminous purple, never quite focused on anything tangible. Her dragon scaled wings, though similar to the rest of the Sindarin Fae, seemed to be coated in an oily iridescent sheen.
Centuries spent working odd jobs to keep a roof over her head, and still the locals remained wary at best.
Cursed, bringer of ill omens. She left a chill in her wake, like a shadow of ice that left everyone feeling on edge.
The village seemed to stand still. Tucked away in the dense woods within the Autumn Court lands, the Sindarin Fae were scattered about. Ryanore was known for being one of the largest tribes and behaved like a small city. Homes were made of stone, roofs of thatch or sometimes tiles in the homes of Fae who had lived there since its founding. To outsiders, it was a haven for the Fae, a place where fires never died and magic thrived. To Sadie, it was a cage of whispers and shadows.
She sat on the edge of a wooden bench near the village’s square, knees drawn to her chest while she listened to the bustling sounds of the locals who avoided her like a plague. The evening sun was setting finally, painting the sky in shades of gold and red that matched the leaves. It warmed her wings, making their oily sheen more pronounced, dripping with iridescent colors.
Wind stirred, a cold gust chilling her sun-warmed skin. Her hair brushed against her face in loose, unkempt waves that didn’t seem to disturb her lack of focus. She had been sitting there for hours. Alone.
She could feel eyes on her- watching, always watching. Even after hundreds of years, they still treated her like an enigma. A haunted little girl who arrived and never made it out of her shell. She had grown older, but still looked like the lost and broken child delivered to their tribe after the tragedy which befell her own small tribe.
The whispers grew louder over time, the Fae finding it unnecessary to hide their voices when they wondered about her. When they spoke of the way shadows clung to her, even on the brightest of days. Men and elderly women, most of all, enjoyed reminding each other that she was not vibrant and full of life like the other women.
“Cursed.” One woman had said to her grandson, a boy no older than she was when she first arrived. “Haunted. Poor thing. Do you see how she reaches for the light, and yet she only ever grasps at the shadows.”
Sadie had heard the worst of it, but never reacted. She couldn’t care. She never did.
Glowing purple eyes stared blankly ahead as children splashed in a fountain. A shadow flickered in the corner of her eye and for a moment she tensed, holding her breath as her heart skipped a beat. But it was nothing, just a bird in the trees. That was what she told herself these days.
A shout- many shouts- broke her reverie, pulling her from the trance. Sadie blinked, heart racing at the sudden commotion. A group of villagers had gathered nearby, a flurry of wings and heated words were exchanged between them and him.
Her stomach twisted. She did not know what the argument was about this time, but the tension was palpable. Villagers were turning against the male, a foreigner she had never known to be part of this village or tribe. It was certainly not the first time it had happened. It seemed they rather enjoyed isolating and expelling those who were unlike the majority. No one trusted too deeply, not even in a safe haven like this.
Sadie rose from the bench, hands trembling, and walked towards the group. The group parted, afraid of being touched by the cursed girl. Their eyes shifted from the girl to the angry male, curiosity filling them as she approached. And then, she continued.
Work would begin as the sun settled below the horizon and her walk was a long one.
Sadie preferred the nights. Darkness was familiar, a comforting veil in a way that daylight never was to her. Room to room, she moved silently through the shadows of the scholar’s study. Only a lone flame filled the silence. If her job did not require vision, she would have put the flame out and enjoyed the darkness.
The scent of old parchment and tomes bound in aged leather filled the spacious study, a balm to her restless soul. In the solitude of her work, she could almost forget the whispers and fear that followed her like a shadow.
She was employed by a scholar named Eluin. Eluin was as reclusive as Sadie was. He rarely spoke to her directly, preferring to leave her daily instructions scrawled on a torn piece of parchment from his notebook. Today’s note already lay on the old chipped maple desk when she arrived:
Sadie,
Handle the preservation of scrolls delivered this morning. They are fragile. Keep out of direct light and minimize their exposure to the elements. Finish transcribing the text from yesterday.
-E
Handle the preservation of scrolls delivered this morning. They are fragile. Keep out of direct light and minimize their exposure to the elements. Finish transcribing the text from yesterday.
-E
His notes were always simple and very impersonal. He never asked how she was or if she needed something. Sadie, oddly, appreciated the relationship...or lack therof. She disliked unnecessary conversation. Words had been a difficulty for…ever, she supposed. They were too easily misinterpreted and too dangerous. Her silence was easy, it was safe.
She tucked the note away and pulled on the gloves he had gifted her a hundred or so years ago while she prepared to begin. Sadie was grateful for Eluin. He had been the only one kind enough to offer a permanent job in the village. Though it wasn’t much, only a few hours per night, it paid enough for her to rent the smallest room at the edge of the village. And she was his only employee, so she could work without judging eyes and whispers of curses.
Sadie unloaded the box, laying ancient scrolls neatly on the table before her. Each one was delicately rolled, sealed shut with faded ribbons. Carefully, she released them from their binding and gently unfurled the first of five scrolls. Faded, faint lines of script were revealed- a language long forgotten by most. A language Eluin had given her books on early in her employment. It was not a kind gesture, not a gift. It was an order for her to learn so that she might perform her job well enough to remain his employee. She stared at the symbols, tracing them in the air before writing down, in a journal that was falling apart at the binding, what the scroll said in the common tongue.
She preserved the scrolls after transcribing the materials, painting them with a mixture Eluin had crafted himself. It was a quiet rhythm she had, repetitive and meticulous that gave her a sense of control.
Hours blurred into one another, time passing easily as she completed one task and then the next. She liked this kind of work. It was a job where her mind could wander and she had no need to explain herself or the trail of thoughts. She simply followed ancient lines, letting her hands work while her mind drifted to the shadows.
Her mind often drifted to those shadows that followed her. The ones that whispered to her in voices no one else could hear, whispers of a past she did not understand. She saw them dancing in the corners of her vision often, but refused to acknowledge them until she was completely and utterly alone. She was not afraid of monsters- at least not the ones that were visible, like great wolves and bears and the mireclaws of the swamps. She was afraid of the fragments that came to her in unexpected flickers.
She dipped her quill into the ink, transcribing another line as her mind wandered to thoughts of the village, burning the faces of her tribe into her memory. The way they looked at her, with suspicion in every glance- those who were brave enough to stare. She knew they feared her or pitied her, perhaps both. It hadn’t mattered that hundreds of years passed since the night she became one of them. In their eyes, she was just a girl who survived something that no one should have, a girl who carried the gloom of the shadows everywhere she went.
A sudden sound broke the stillness of her work- soft creaking from the hallway outside the study. Sadie froze, her quill poised above the page, droplets of ink splashing the parchment below. She held her breath, listening intently.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Moving closer.
Her stomach twisted. Eluin almost never came down during her shifts, preferring to keep to his own chambers either working on his private studies or, better yet, sleeping while she worked. His letters were their only form of communications and even those were brief. He had never checked in on her unannounced and she was ill prepared for the conversation.
The footsteps stopped just beyond the door.
Silence. It pressed down on her, threatening to suffocate her until she released the breath she held. For a moment, she wondered if it was her imagination, the shadows playing a trick on her. But the door creaked open and a dark figure stepped inside.
Not Eluin.
Not Eluin.