First People: La 'lor Ae

Mortal

Morning came with birdsong and a warm autumn sun. As the light touched the forest, the trees sighed with relief, and the next life-cycle began again as it always did.

The silent mountain was calm and serene as dawn broke, a slow deliberate fog burning away and leaving a dreamy haze over the peak.

Sybil sat back on her knees on the bed, her back against a large soft thing. Her eyes puffy and red from a restless sleep, cheeks smeared with dirt and tears. Feathers and beads clinking together, dangling from her long tresses of dark hair as she moved her head side to side. She'd awoken the first time this morning to the sound of people shouting, but the over exertion of her magic made her loopy and unable to stay awake through even that.

She remembered someone handing her off to someone larger, remembered arriving at some camp. A woman in a pink cover screaming and crying and then another woman echoing those cries. She remembered a loud vehicle with flashing lights next, people tying her to something so she could not move and putting her into that vehicle.

The boy was with her.
Eli. His name was Eli. The pink woman had shouted it before swallowing him in an embrace.

She caught glimpses of them shining lights into his eyes and inserting a cold metal rod into his arms. A burly man clapped him on the shoulder and called him another name. Hero.

The pink clothed woman was next to the other bed in this room, holding Eli's hand tightly as he lie there. Her eyes focused on the boy the entirety of the drive. He kept squeezing her hand and laying his head over onto her shoulder, seemingly to make her feel better. Sybil wondered why. if he was the one who'd almost died, should it not be the other way around? After watching them silently for a while longer though she understood. This was his mother, clear as writing it on their faces. He had her nose and mouth and chin she thought. His dark hair and eyes though must have belonged to his sire.

Sybil thought of her mother and winced. It was dawn, well past dawn.

"Please, if you can hear me. Just give it back to me, I swear that I will never do it again." She looked up at the roof of the stark white room as fresh hot tears streamed down her cheeks. She waited for an answer. At this point she didn't care what it was, just a flash of pain or a sour taste in her mouth to let her know her mother was listening, She needed to know that she wasn't completely cut off.

Nothing.

This isn't fair! She pushed the thought to Aine.

She slammed her hand into the table hovering over her lap. The food on it rattled and everyone became focused on her, a woman in all blue clothing called "nurse" continued to monitor her vitals. She stretched her fingers into the paper like sheet beneath her roughly, tearing at it. Tears welled up in her eyes and she sucked in a deep breath through her teeth. She closed her eyes and called her brother.

Jaxx...

A lean muscular man with the same dark hair as hers and a stoic chiseled face appeared in front of her in her minds eye. The circular gold tattoos above his brows flexing as he raised them in surprise. The tattoos circled his head like a coronet and covered his shoulders and forearms in larger geometric patterns, he crossed his arms over his chest menacingly and peered down at her with a disgusted expression.

Jaxx was her half brother, the most arrogant and harsh of her many siblings. His father Drajin became Aine's second king consort after the death of her own father. Jaxx was over three hundred years her senior, his late mother had been an Unseelie Princess. They had never married but in the realm of the Fae children are rare and sacred and so his father raised him alone until a Seelie Queen favored him in battle and began an unconventional courting.

"How could you do this?" Jazz's unyielding voice rang out in her mind. "A human? Gods Sybil... You've always favored them." He accuses, turning away from her and pinching the bridge of his strong straight nose. He was physically utter perfection, but Sybil often found him so ugly. "Even over me, and I favor you above any one of us!" He spat.

He did favor her, to her dismay. In a the way that a brother should not. It was why she'd known he'd answer her.

"You always watched them as a child with longing, but we are the last of the First People Sybil! Wolf brethren! Fae! Vampyre! Angels! Demons!" He hisses at her. "We are Gods to these insects!" He is speaking so fiercely that she winces on every word. Spittle flying from his lips as he thrusts his words down at her. His jealousy was always legendary, she had never even kissed anyone because he would probably kill them.

She wondered if her mother had told him that the person she saved had been a male.

"You've tested our mother for the last time, and now you are powerless! Pathetic! and worse... You are mortal! I hope you understand she will not forgive you so easily this time! You've upset the balance and threatened our people by saving that... creature." He spat the last word and her gaze flew up to meet his.

Mystery solved.

Jaxx moved in close to her, crouching down to eye level in the open foggy space that was her mind. She avoids his gaze as he inspects her. His hand shooting out with preternatural speed before she can react and he snatches her chin, gripping it hard and forcing her to look him in the eyes. His silver irises reflect light as they take her in. The iridescence that all Fae eyes have is so terrifying when filled with disdain.

"I couldn't Just watch it die, you once told me that we are their ancestors. So what is wrong with protecting them? I just gave it a little magic, and if you, my own family will forsake me here for saving its life then so be it! He was freezing to death right here before me Jaxx! Dying in front of my eyes. You don't understand..." Sybil whispered, swallowing tears. She was playing the damsel, and maybe Jaxx knew it, but his gaze softened a bit anyway.

"You remember when your friend Neer saved that runaway girl? You remember what mother did? Jaxx leveled his electric gaze on her.

Sybil looks away from him as she recalls a couple of decades back, her most treasured friend for a century was a young Fae male on Morar. He was the original reason she'd loved these woods, he'd brought her here to the realm of man many times.

Neer had saved a girl who'd run from her abuser and out into the woods in the middle of the night. She would've died if he hadn't intervened. He'd stayed with her for two moon cycles, helped her find the courage to return and finally leave that place with her mother. When Neer returned to the Fae realm he'd brought the girl and hid her on Morar, for two nights. The Queen eventually discovered them and killed Sybil's best friend, she'd whisked the girl back here herself without anyone's knowledge. Her very last promise to Neer. She knew in her bones that girl had been pregnant, and to this day, not another soul knew that secret.

"He made the right choice." She snarled.

With out any kind of warning Jaxx slapped her hard across the face and she was stunned for a second, pulled from her thoughts with a ringing pain. The pleading expression slid from her features, replaced with the wild Princess She was known to be. Her pointed fangs fully on display now as she defiantly stared into his eyes. She raises her chin, leveling her shining green eyes back on him. She doesn't miss the way his silver eyes flick to her lips or the hunger roiling beneath his skin. His need to possess her writhing like a living entity within him.

"I don't care! Humans are a plague and righ now, you may as well be one of them!" With that he yanks her chin up and flings her face to the side. Stepping away slowly, he watches her intently as a wolf watches their prey and then he turns and leaves her there. His deep voice bellows back through their bond to her as he vanishes.

"You are mine Sybil." He growls.

She waits a few seconds to see if he has really left, and finally lets herself break down in the quiet confines of her own mind.

Quietly Eli moved from his bed in the sterile hospital room to push as close to the girl's side as he can in her bed. He embraces her without a word and she allowed herself to cry true tears outside of that safe space for the first time against another person. Her face pressed softly into his chest.

She felt nothing of her power usually flowing gently through her, her mother had truly left her mortal. She probably couldnt bare it for very long, this mortal existence. She now knew that she had been cut off from the Fea realm and could not return to Morar. At least not anytime soon.