Private Tales Twin Embraced

[Quacey]

Sole witness of a lost child's birth.
Fellow witness of a lost child's death.
Knower of your true worth.
Provider of first and last breath.
Twice embraced,
Twice encased.
Released of sorrow,
But only on the morrow.

Eyes the color of the twins fully awakened high in the sky stared at the words written upon the page. Words permanently stained upon birch bark paper by ink dark as the new night skies. A frown setting in more deeply with each passing moment.

"What is this?"

Words echoed about the sole resident of Twin Home, a grand castle built upon a high peak to be as close to the celestial beauties it was named after. There was no one to answer Quacey's question. There never was any one to answer him. Long centuries of silence with only him and the Twins to fill the halls with life. A cold tomb by the standards of others. A safe haven for a fae who wished only for the peace of isolation.

But the peace could never be.

His poem was cryptic to even him tonight. Those sensations. Those feelings. The tugs and pulls of his domain were intense tonight. More than ever. Yet they drew him nowhere. A first. It was frustrating and unnerving. He turned to writing poetry, which always calmed him down. It made things worse. He had lost memory of the act. Quill dipped in ink before an empty page. A blink. Inky words replaced the white void. Time had past without his recollection.

He had written possessed by his domain. Another first.

Quill set by journal. The mountainous duanann pushed back and rose from his seat. To the open window he stepped. Frown even deeper. Thoughts more frustrated, annoyed, and worried than before.

His gaze went to the other calming presence in his life: the twins. The moons were often referred to as a pair of sisters or a sister and a brother. He didn't know which was true. He just knew one was always female. Not that it mattered what gender they might be. Their importance in his life could not be changed. The only witnesses to his birth. The celestial he was aligned with from his first moment. Shapers of his forms and domain. His only family left was them and the earth herself who had aided his mother in his birth and sheltered him from then to now.

"Fondest greetings my lovely radiances."

A slight smile formed. A return to familiarity.

"Fondest greetings lost little lamb~"

Eyes snapped towards the darkness. Towards the place an impossible response had originated from.

 

[Quacey]

Halls lacking any form of luminance not originating from the moons stood dark and empty. Steady, measured steps bounced around stone and timber. Further into the void the fae moved in search of the impossible voice from before.

His thoughts began to drift in the relative silence. No torches, candles, or lanterns existed about his home. His eyes were better built for the darkness of night. No vibration but his own could be felt from the stones about him. His touch perceptive to the movements within the elements of the earth. As bare feet touched flooring with each step, he never had noticed how cold it felt before.

More importantly, he was alone.

"Who is there?"

It was folly. No sight. No sound. No sensation of any kind of any but himself. There was only him in this forgotten place and no response would come. He knew this. Why would anyone be here? This place was far out of the way of anything of interest to mortals. His fellow fae wouldn't even hold much interest outside of the views of the sky and stars.

"Anyone there?"

Silence had answered him before. It would answer him now. He knew this. Asking was foolish when there would be no answer. He was just in an odd state because of the directionless promptings of his domain to aid some lost soul who was lost even to his powers.

"Silence then."

The fae turned to head back to his study. Reading under the moonlight might calm him. Writing certainly hadn't before, but reading would. It always did....

Giggling. "No silly." More girlish giggling.

Quacey froze in place. Eyes darted all around in search of the ambiguous source of yet another impossible sound. There were others here. This voice was different. There had to be others here. But where and how did they escape him?

Pixies and fairies perhaps? But why come here and to such a place cold for their kinds?

Giggling.

It echoed all about vaguely, equally from all directions.

This could not be pixies or fairies. They were trouble makers, but they would not dare provoke a duanann they did not know. They valued their lives and more of his kind than he cared to admit would end a pixie or fairy for playing a prank just because it annoyed them. So they would not do such a thing.

....Yet the giggling was familiar. Intimately so. It was as if a part of himself that he had forgotten remembered but was not telling him. He was meant to guess until he got the answer right.

His frowned deepened. "Who is there? Where are you?"

Eyes continued to dart all around as he prayed to the Twins for an answer.

 

[Quacey]

How? Who? Where?

Quacey's mind raced with questions unanswerable. The giggling continued without words from everywhere and nowhere all about him. It sounded as if off a small being, perhaps a child. Every so often he might get what sounded like the tap of a tiny foot meeting stone. Yet no sensation would verify if it was real....

Was he going insane?

His domain surged in strength demanding he help a lost soul and yet it had no direction for him to go. No sign. No guidance. And now he was hearing impossible things. He saw nothing. Felt nothing. All his senses were failing him and providing no evidence nor answers. Next he just knew he would begin the smell the scent of his mother's favorite perfume and baking of her secret sweet bread.

Quacey sniffed the air. Fresh, chilled winds over mountain stone. Birch bark. Black ink. Parchment. Papyrus. The same, familiar scents of his lonely home. Nothing new. Nothing strange.

The giggling stopped. A sigh escaped him. He must be losing his mind.

The fae turned and finally began to head back towards his study. His figure constantly being bathed in the shift from the light of the twins to the shadows of the stone and back again. His mind still racing. Still trying to sort out all that he had heard and all that had not occurred with it. If there was something he was good at it was finding others, yet none could be found this night. Only the silence. Only the emptiness. Only himself.

....And then he stopped in his steps once more. Growing close to his study once more the scent of freshly baked sweet bread graced his nose. A kind he had not smelled in milenia. A kind that was as impossible to exist as the sounds before. His dead mother's sweet bread somehow existed in his study if his nose was to be believed.

His stomach growled. His tongue coated in drool. Both demanded he investigate. Both demanded he continue.

Quacey knew it true now. He had gone crazy. He was crazy. Perhaps due to the isolation of late. Perhaps due to having mostly dealt with mortals with little true socialization in centuries. Perhaps due to the Twin's playing a rare prank upon him. He did not know and could not know. All that he was for sure of was that his sanity and mind were gone.

So the fae continued with one long step followed by the next. Back to his study he went. The scent of honey, fruits, and grains growing stronger. The unique scent of an unknown number of wild summer flowers mixed in. His mother's favorite perfume.

Memories began to surface. Triggered and strengthened by the scents. Or perhaps it was the other way around. He was unsure. He feared to ponder on the ravings of a madman. Feared to ponder on the ravings of his own mind.

And then the duanann of the lost turned to enter his study. In his seat looking out towards the star filled sky was a fae woman. Hair mostly red with mixes of gold, white, purple, and blue. The colors of summer flowers. Skin pale yet tan. Like both the sun and stars. Eyes that same gray blue as his own. Figure like a particularly curvy hourglass. A face that drew the word beautiful from your lips.

In Quacey's seat sat a fae woman. In his seat sat his dead mother. His eyes fixed on her. Her eyes fixed on the moons.

"About time my sweet mooncalf. I was beginning to think you would make your mother wait all night."

 

[Quacey]

A pet name that both conveyed affection while insulting him. It was more a sign that this was indeed his mother and not some imposter more than her mirror perfect appearance. If she still lived that was the line he would have been greeted with.

..... But she wasn't of this realm any longer. She had past on to join the celestial lights and bones of the earth many millennia ago.

Quacey was certain now he had gone insane. The only other explanation was that she was a specter here to haunt him, but if that were true then she would have done so long ago. Too much time had past for her to only make herself known now.

The large duanann moved himself over to the chair next to her. He sat and held his eyes to the twins. They stared back in their distant affection. The all too familiar scents of flowers and sweet bread was now overwhelming. Nothing else could exist along side them.

Yet no flowers nor sweet bread existed in the room. Their source was entirely the woman sitting next to him also staring up at the moons as well.

The pair sat in silence.

Moments. Minutes. Hours. An unknowable amount of time past them by.

But then she spoke in that matronly voice from his youth. "How long do you plan to ignore me dear? I am real. The only thing wrong with your head, Kynthelig, is your hair." A sigh left the fae woman's lips. "It would look so pretty if you would only manage it."

Kynthelig.

Quacey frowned deeply. His true name. The only ones who knew it were he, his dead mother, and the twins who were offered it for their blessings. It should prove who she was. It should prove that she was real.... But it was easily possible his own mind had conjured her and placed it upon her lips.

Was there any way to prove her true or a fantasy?

The fae had been thinking it over the entire time, but he gave up. All too aware of the impossibility of the task, he chose instead to just give into whatever this event was. Truly her calling him a mooncalf was accurate. His birth was influenced by the moons and was a mistake. In the eyes of the Summer court his parentage made him an abomination. The spawn of the foolish coupling of a fae woman and a mortal man. She should never have carried him to term by the views of her seelie peers. Better to damage her reputation than to birth something unnatural.

But she had not. Instead she allowed his existence. She did not abandon him and raised him as any fae mother would raise their fae child. She pushed him to be his best for his own sake. He would need to justify his value and worth. He couldn't afford to be average. Only being better than them would prove to them he was more than some half mortal child.... Assuming they ever learn that dark secret of his creation.

And him being allowed to live no doubt was why she died. She was given the time to get him to his adulthood but then had to be gone as punishment for bringing a mooncalf such as himself into this realm.

He had been the worst kind of fool since her passing: one who is many kinds yet thought himself wiser after each mistake.

Quacey was indeed her mooncalf. He had much to ask forgiveness from her for. It was surely his mind playing a trick upon him but it might be his only chance to speak with his mother again and ask for that forgiveness he did not deserve.

Slowly after far too much time had past in silence between them yet again, he spoke.

"I am simply overwhelmed mother.... Please forgive me. Of this and everything else that has brought you nothing but shame."

 

[Quacey]

A frown that resembled his own formed on his mother's face. Her eyes held firmly on the moons.

"What do I have to forgive? The woman who failed you by leaving you on the day you rose into adulthood."

Quacey glanced over towards his mother, noticing the little details. Following her lead he directed his gaze solely on the moons as well. Were her words reflections of how he felt about his own deceased mother? Did he truly feel that she had somehow failed him by dying? An event that would eventually come to all and was as unpredictable as the spring storms. He would never fault anyone else for passing on, yet he would hold a grudge against her for it?

He was ashamed of himself more now than ever.

"You did not fail me mother. You were very sick and there was nothing that could be done to save you."

Memories of the healers came to his mind. Those great healers of the Spring court who represented the great healing of life as the warmth of Spring overcame the chill of Winter. Some of the best healers the fae had to offer. Not a single one of them could do anything more for her than ease her pain. Her passing was inevitable. Poisoned by her own domain. The result of Joy spoiling into a sickness that ate away at you from the inside until there was nothing left of you. For everyone else it was metaphorical. An emotional thing. For his mother who's domain was Joy itself it was all to literal. The great inspiration, fortitude, and healing that she could bring unto others when soured turned into the most volatile of toxins in her blood. One that literally ate away at her until her body could function no more and she was claimed for the next life.

They had informed him of this. He had time to know it was coming and would happen. Perhaps not as much as a fae would consider long but certainly very long for mortals. Like the wild summer flowers she loved so dearly and kept in her garden at the transition to Fall, he was forced to watch her wilt away in front of him more and more every day.

And he thought she failed him in spite of these facts. How cruel could he be? How villainous? It was no wonder she would choose to insult him by calling him a mooncalf. She should be cursing him. It was what he deserved.

"You deserved better. I could have done better. I was the one who failed you. I was the one who...."

He had to stop. Was his next word truly what he thought? What he believed? If it was then he was not in a good state. If it was true then he was more of a monster than the Seelie Summer Court would claim him to be.

A sudden burst of laughter from her lips. "The one who what? Killed me?" She adjusted herself in her seat. Her tone become sharp as obsidian and hot as the core that created it. "Stop being a mindless fool. You are better than that. I raised you to be better than that."

"I-"

Snap!

She had cut him off. "I killed myself dear. My own mistakes led to my own end by my own hand. Unintentional suicide. A slow, accidental death. I was too caught up in my own pride and vanity. And it cost us our time together. It cost me getting to see the moment my son became a man. It cost you your joy both as a child and an adult."

Her eyes drifted over towards him in the silence of her pause.

"I failed you as a mother and you have had to bear the burden of it every day of your life. So once again I ask you, my fool of a son, what do I have to forgive?"

Quacey shrunk into himself in that moment. A fae broad of build and tall even for their kind that behaved as if he was no bigger than a pixie before this woman who was on the shorter end of average at best. He could not look at her. He felt her eyes upon him yet he could not return it.

The twins did not mock him. One would assume they would as much of the royal fool as he was playing this night, but they did not seem to. No they felt as if they pitied him. Why would they? Certainly they had witnessed every moment of his life from his birth till now. None of this should be a surprise for them and by this point they should know he was beyond worthy of pity.

All the more so as his sense of shame in himself grew stronger. His mind was making this delusion of his mother say things in an attempt to comfort himself. How sad and low could he be? How disrespectful of the dead?

 

[Quacey]

Silence.

There was nothing to say.

Quacey just looked up to the moons hanging high above him. Those words spoken by his dead mother cut him deeper than any blade or beast's claws ever had. Beyond just his bones. They went into the core of his being. Was all of that what he thought? What he truly felt about his mother's death? The woman who sacrificed so much to bring him into this world. The woman who became sick yet continued trying to push him to be his best. The woman who likely did everything she could to hold on till the moment he became an adult and could truly live on his own. She had given so much for him.

What had he given?

When he noticed it he didn't know, but the scents of sweetbread and wild flowers had faded. And now was gone. He dared not remove his gaze from the twins. Fear of knowing what he would, or rather wouldn't, see had covered him like a thick quilt.

But he looked.

After some time Quacey made himself look. He found what he had expected, had dreaded, to find. His mother was gone. His mother was lost to him. Again.

He just stared at the empty place she had been. She wasn't true. She wasn't alive. The woman he knew as his mother was long dead. That had only been a delusion. A phantom image of her conjured up by his mind. A fantasy played out so that he could hear what he wished to hear her say but never could. A shifting of his feelings away from himself and a victim to blame for what hurt him. He had worked so hard to gain her praise. Praise that never did come. He broke down and let it fester in him. A sickness of the heart. And then he let that toxic disease manifest into an image of her to say words he wished to hear.... Yet she still never did say she was proud of him. She never did when she was alive so of course his mind couldn't let her even after her death.

Something wet dripped onto his leg. He looked down. Another drop. It came from his head. He touched his face. Tears. He was crying. The fae was crying.

So he let his face sink into his hands. His entire body curling up as best it could in his seat. And he cried. He just simply cried like he had not done in millennia.

 

[Quacey]

Reddened. Dry. Quacey's eyes hurt.

Long into the night he had wept. Unmoving as the stones of the mountain embracing his home. Every word spoken had gone through his mind again and again. Every time a new bolt penetrating his soul until he was a pin cushion of a man. He felt as if he was in tatters. Shredded by his own means.

Why had he imagined his mother? What could have sparked this madness within him?

He didn't know. In the millennia of his life he had done well pushing thoughts of his mother and her death aside. As a fresh, young adult he had just continued to train, learn, and do those little social activities of his youth. Hunting, tournies, and balls. Things all fae were expected to partake in and gladly did so. The scale and particulars being relative to station. They were things he had done up until he had met....

The fae reached for a bottle that was not there. Wine. Ale. Poison. He didn't care back then. He barely cared right now. Seeking a comfort he had long abandoned as it did little more than temporarily mask the pain for all too short a time. And each swig he took made it last all the shorter.

Giggle.

Quacey heard it and chose to ignore it.

Pattering of small, bare feet against cold stone. Not a single vibration felt.

Quacey chose to ignore it as well.

Giggle.

He had met his mother before and thoughts of another had drifted in after for but a moment. Would she be the next delusion his fragile, unstable mind willed into being next? The next fantasy in an attempt for his mind to trick his heart into some state of comfort. He prayed to the Twins it was not. Events with his mother had nearly broken him. What happened with her had been the last blow to see it done. He couldn't handle seeing his dead mother before. He wouldn't handle seeing her again.

Giggle.

He prayed for salvation.

Pattering of bare feet against stone.

He prayed for mercy.

Muffled giggles as small feet tried to quiet themselves.

He prayed for an end.

"Boo!" Giggling. "Did I scare you?"

Quacey looked up towards the Twins. His look seeking refuge. His eyes seeking sanctuary. Neither was granted. He was left there. Left in his home. In his madness. In his suffering. With her. With the one he had failed more than his own mother. The one he had failed most in this world.

"Always little one."

The fae slowly turned around in his seat to see the one behind him. A small fae girl was smiling back to him. His heart sank even as it broke. His face grew as pale as she had that day he failed her. A smile was forced to his lips. More effort required than any action in his life.

Giggling. "I hide for so long. You were never any good at hide and seek."

"No... No I never was...."

By the Twins, why did his mind have to make him see her?

 

[Quacey]

The little girl immediately began to wander around the study. Her attention lost as soon as it was gained. She marveled at the sight of all the books Quacey had amassed on his shelves over the millennia. Sadly something less common for the duanann than one might think. Books did not suit parties well, generally, and were more private forms of entertainment. His kind was far more social than he ever could be. The tome lined walls were proof of this.

After a bit the girl began to hum. It was that cheery little tune she had invented. The one she always hummed when they had stopped for the day in their travels together. Once he had asked her for the words. All she did was smile, giggle, and call him silly. Seems music didn't require lyrics or words. A rather big difference from poetry which was completely crafted from them.

How the two were like a poem and a song in that way. Similar yet different at their core.

But he had to wonder if her being cursed was not one of those differences. This evening already had him questioning if he was not a cursed existence himself. A mooncalf as his mother had so rightfully pointed out.... The delusion of his mother. Not his dead mother.

He slunk into his seat more. How far gone was he going to end up? Thinking his mother was real already creeping into his beliefs. If he did that then he would no doubt end up the same about the girl.

Truly he was cursed and the end result would not be his death as it had been for her but the end of his sanity.

"Do they all have stories in them like the ones you read me?"

Quacey's attention was directed back to the girl. The delusion of the girl.

"Some. Some are histories. Some are about languages and cultures. Some are poetry."

The girl perked up. "Poetry? You love poetry. Read me a poem!"

Why? Why was his mind doing this to him? Why her? Why now? Why ever?

The fae slowly rose from his seat. The girl smiling and bobbing back and forth on her heels as she waited in her energetic patience. He moved over to a shelf. No looking through tomes in search of a suitable thing to read. No, he had for a very, very long time had a book for her. Perhaps like his mother this would be his only chance to read the contents of it to her. The delusion of her.

He slipped the thin spine from the shelf and sat back down in his seat. As he did, she darted over to him and plopped herself down in his lap. Her back cuddling into his chest. Weightless. Not a single point of impact.

What little was left of his heart broke upon feeling it.

He opened up the book. The pages in view of her nonexistent eyes. Simple poetic words written for a child were contained within. Little drawings along side them. It was meant to be a gift for her after she was reunited with her parents. One he had crafted himself.... But that never came to be.

"Settled? Ready to begin?"

"Yep!"

Quacey cleared his throat and steeled himself for one of the hardest things he knew he would have to do in his lifetime.