And again - the faeries.
Aug. 5th, 2004 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessDarren still asleep. Grrr....
This was going to be more than this, but it's been so long since I wrote this, I turned it into a snippet thingy as much to get my head back round it as anything else.
This is continued from waaaaaaaayyyyyy back here.
Ilatheril strode easily out of the Marcherson village, eyes lazily accepting the world beyond, a world where glamour was poor to non-existent, where faerie visions ached at the lack of hidden worlds overlaid over the mundane. Where the magical gaze saw nothing but a dead, washed out world, lit only by a few brief flares. The last vestiges of human imagination and creativity and the power that human’s held dormant within their soul. A power that seemed to fade even faster than the fae themselves. A world where beings whose hearts had never known the touch of magic lurked.
Sitharensor moved stiffly besides the Unseelie, watching him almost reproachfully beneath his layers of glamour, trying to find some modicum of comfort in the strange human clothes. He looked almost as uncomfortable as the hulking form of Sir Hrolf, glamour taking more than three feet off his height. “How do you stand it?” The Seelie growled in heavily accented English. Anyone human would have had to flounder, guessing at a mix of Irish, Scottish and deep Welsh but with a lilt far more musical even than these languages and an edge of almost Germanic gutturals.
Ilatheril rolled his eyes at the struggling Seelie, secretly enjoying this. He settled the jacket around his shoulders with only a little discomfort, caused more by lack of familiarity with the formal clothes more than the human style. “Easily,” his English was flawless, with a perfect local accent. “What, you can face down all the nightmares faerie can throw at you but a pin stripe suite is too much for you?”
“This place is utterly alien to me. How can anything as wonderful as the fae - the Sidhe! - understand something as base as humanity?”
“You Seelie have some really bad class problems, y’know?” Sitharensor just glared, purples eyes visible only to faerie eyes behind the blue glamour. “Besides, those trousers show off your behind perfectly.” The Unseelie tightened his gaze on the other Sidhe’ rear, pushing aside the mist of human glamour to admire the curve of tight flesh. “Anyway, why do we only have one bodyguard out here in ‘alien territory?’”
“Yeah, you’ll need more than one, fags.”
Both Sidhe turned in irritation towards the speaker, neither accustomed to being spoken to without leave. The speaker was lit only by the cigarette in his mouth, the rest shrouded in the darkness caused by the smashed and vandalised street lights. Faerie eyes need no light beyond the moon’s pale shine and saw the cocky young man plainly; though even a mortal could probably spot the luridly shaded hair and the light gleaming on a face full of piercings. Fae vision could also rove onwards into the shadows to pick out the dozen or so followers. A mortal gang.
Sitharensor looked at them curiously. “What is a fag?” Laughs from the darkness, just a little uncertain. Three men out alone in this neighbourhood shouldn't be this unconcerned.
“An insult, Sith. Gods, you’ve really got to update your vocabulary.”
Sitharensor ignored this comment, he was so very good at ignoring things he didn’t want to hear, and continued walking. “We have tasks this night, Ilatheril.” He was very good at ignoring a lot of things really. Including armed mortal gangs. Ilatheril guessed it was a learned skill.
The mortals didn’t seem to appreciate it. Some people just couldn’t recognise talent. “Where the fuck d’you think you’re going?” The kid reached out to grab Sitharensor's arm, there was a flash of steel in his other hand. Sitharensor ignored both.
Hrolf lacked his patience. The Troll pushed the human back with one hand, eyes narrowing beneath heavy glamoured brows. Even his human guise was huge, hair a shock of wild blonde, his features were hard and chiselled. “You will not touch hi- them.” Just a slight catch, but Ilatheril had got a mention, that was something. The kid looked at his knife and seemed to be involved in some painful calculation. Whatever the numbers were saying, he didn't seem to think they were good. See, kid wasn’t that stupid.
His friends were, though. They stomped forwards, all trying to out do each other with the hardest look. It resembled nothing more than a before scene for a laxative advert to Ilatheril. An amusing thought if they weren’t all carrying weapons. Weapons made of steel. Weapons with iron in them. Sitharensor ignored them. Didn’t even gather his magic.
The first knife - almost a short sword! - slashed at the Troll. And broke. Ilatheril managed to hide his grin. Not a good enough blade or a good enough wielder to pierce a Troll’s stony skin, and not enough iron content to do damage anyway. Not to a Troll, anyway. Trolls, along with Ogres, were probably the most iron resistant of all the faerie, even carrying iron weapons into battle.
Only when all the humans were stunned by the broken blade did the Troll move. He didn’t use the weapons he had concealed by layers of glamour. He didn’t need to. He was strong enough to crush stone, near impervious to their weapons and had fists like boulders. A Troll possessed none of the supernatural sped or agility of other fae, in fact their size and weight made them less agile than some humans. It was hard to remember that watching Hrolf fight as centuries of battle experience made him more deadly than ever speed could. It was awe inspiring to watch, Ilatheril wondered just how those first Sidhe ancestors of Sitharensor had managed to stand against so many.
Sitharensor walked on, ignoring the screams and the moans behind him. Thankfully this was a neighbourhood where most people knew better than to listen to screams in the night. The untouchable presence of the Marcherson model village and the factory had dragged the local areas down to crime ridden squalor, made all the worse by perceptive or sensitive people becoming ever more edgy and irritated by the huge gap in their thoughts and senses they just don’t understand.
“So what’s the plan, Sith?” Ilatheril tried to imitate the obliviousness of the Seelie to the sounds of combat behind him, but finally had to settle with amusement at the other Sidhe’s irritation with the dress shoes he was wearing.
“First we go to the business district and begin searching as subtly as possible. I think that we cannot plan for anything more complicated.” Added amusement for the Seelie’s terrible English accent. At least it wasn’t archaic English like some fae spoke. There was no way to cover that up.
“I was actually wondering about how we’re going to cover up the small war happening behind us. Not where we were going to pick up a taxi.”
“Nothing. The young humans will not want to report that they were vanquished by one man, and they’re even less likely to believed. And even if they are, what is there revealed? A man who was a very good fighter and apparently wore armour under his clothes - certainly no evidence of the fae.”
“Yeah, but someone could investigate the area. Well, maybe.” Unlikely, the police were not all that eager to investigate anything in this area, certainly not if the bad things taking down criminal gangs.
“Unlikely. Sir Hrolf will not resort to killing any of them, so an investigation is not essential. And the glamour cloak of the Iron Gate will distract them if they get too close. Let us concentrate on the task ahead of us, what is the most direct route to the business centre? I have no wish to be walking most of the night.”
Ilatheril laughed, savouring it. It felt good to be the knowledgeable one for once. “Or we could take a taxi.” He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. He hardly ever used it, there was little point since you couldn't get any signal through the glamour of the Iron Gate, and besides there were powerful anti-electricity wards to stop any humans driving into the Marcherson area. It was the latest model though - he was a Sidhe after all. Sitharensor wasn’t impressed. Not even by the little camera.
He was even less impressed when the taxi pulled up. “You can’t expect us to get in there? An iron box!”
“I really don’t think cars are made of iron. Sure of it, in fact.”
“And how’s Hrolf supposed to fit inside?” Ilatheril had to concede he had a point. Most modern cars weren’t designed to move nine foot tall Trolls around.
“Guess we’ll have to do it alone. Sorry, Sith, but we can’t walk there. Besides...” Ilatheril took a breath and switched to telepathy Aren’t you loosing control of the other fae? Something about rebellions?
Sitharensor narrowed his eyes, but nodded sharply.
Well, surely it’s best to have your loyal Troll working with them to bring them back to the fold. Besides, we need to do this alone if we’re going to impress people.
Impress people? We do not need to impress people.
Sorry, but I think we do. Don’t you see? Just about everything the Sidhe have been doing for the past, what, two centuries? For the last two centuries or so has been grand standing, putting on a good show, a few nifty tricks and lots of charisma. We've implied - Seelie and Unseelie, that we can move mountains, bring the moon down from the sky, whatever. We’ve done nothing concrete to back it up - even in the war most of our magic was spent countering each other, on one on one duels or on leaving no survivors to tell the tale of our power. How many of these rebellious fae are wondering just what magic the Sidhe have left?
Sitharensor looked, almost stunned at the Unseelie. And how many Sidhe wonder how much magic we truly have left? How much magic do we have left? His mental voice sounded lost and quiet. But slowly he nodded and leadenly instructed the surprised Troll to return to the castle and spend some time with his people.
The two Sidhe climbed into the taxi, only breaking the thick, heavy silence that had fallen to instruct the driver on their destination.
They felt their destination grow closer more than they saw it. They felt the iron in the air, in the minds of the people crowding outside the car. They felt the monotony and the mundane given force. beneath it all... just slightly, there was something. A magic, a glamour almost, a glamour of dreams new and alien, a glamour of dreams already born dead. A glamour of mundane dreams, empty, crabbed hopes, and dull imaginings. Dreams twisted round until they were even less magical than the reality the dreamers allowed themselves to be shackled to. Both Sidhe felt an overwhelming wave of disgust and pity as they finally reached their destination. The City.
This was going to be more than this, but it's been so long since I wrote this, I turned it into a snippet thingy as much to get my head back round it as anything else.
This is continued from waaaaaaaayyyyyy back here.
Ilatheril strode easily out of the Marcherson village, eyes lazily accepting the world beyond, a world where glamour was poor to non-existent, where faerie visions ached at the lack of hidden worlds overlaid over the mundane. Where the magical gaze saw nothing but a dead, washed out world, lit only by a few brief flares. The last vestiges of human imagination and creativity and the power that human’s held dormant within their soul. A power that seemed to fade even faster than the fae themselves. A world where beings whose hearts had never known the touch of magic lurked.
Sitharensor moved stiffly besides the Unseelie, watching him almost reproachfully beneath his layers of glamour, trying to find some modicum of comfort in the strange human clothes. He looked almost as uncomfortable as the hulking form of Sir Hrolf, glamour taking more than three feet off his height. “How do you stand it?” The Seelie growled in heavily accented English. Anyone human would have had to flounder, guessing at a mix of Irish, Scottish and deep Welsh but with a lilt far more musical even than these languages and an edge of almost Germanic gutturals.
Ilatheril rolled his eyes at the struggling Seelie, secretly enjoying this. He settled the jacket around his shoulders with only a little discomfort, caused more by lack of familiarity with the formal clothes more than the human style. “Easily,” his English was flawless, with a perfect local accent. “What, you can face down all the nightmares faerie can throw at you but a pin stripe suite is too much for you?”
“This place is utterly alien to me. How can anything as wonderful as the fae - the Sidhe! - understand something as base as humanity?”
“You Seelie have some really bad class problems, y’know?” Sitharensor just glared, purples eyes visible only to faerie eyes behind the blue glamour. “Besides, those trousers show off your behind perfectly.” The Unseelie tightened his gaze on the other Sidhe’ rear, pushing aside the mist of human glamour to admire the curve of tight flesh. “Anyway, why do we only have one bodyguard out here in ‘alien territory?’”
“Yeah, you’ll need more than one, fags.”
Both Sidhe turned in irritation towards the speaker, neither accustomed to being spoken to without leave. The speaker was lit only by the cigarette in his mouth, the rest shrouded in the darkness caused by the smashed and vandalised street lights. Faerie eyes need no light beyond the moon’s pale shine and saw the cocky young man plainly; though even a mortal could probably spot the luridly shaded hair and the light gleaming on a face full of piercings. Fae vision could also rove onwards into the shadows to pick out the dozen or so followers. A mortal gang.
Sitharensor looked at them curiously. “What is a fag?” Laughs from the darkness, just a little uncertain. Three men out alone in this neighbourhood shouldn't be this unconcerned.
“An insult, Sith. Gods, you’ve really got to update your vocabulary.”
Sitharensor ignored this comment, he was so very good at ignoring things he didn’t want to hear, and continued walking. “We have tasks this night, Ilatheril.” He was very good at ignoring a lot of things really. Including armed mortal gangs. Ilatheril guessed it was a learned skill.
The mortals didn’t seem to appreciate it. Some people just couldn’t recognise talent. “Where the fuck d’you think you’re going?” The kid reached out to grab Sitharensor's arm, there was a flash of steel in his other hand. Sitharensor ignored both.
Hrolf lacked his patience. The Troll pushed the human back with one hand, eyes narrowing beneath heavy glamoured brows. Even his human guise was huge, hair a shock of wild blonde, his features were hard and chiselled. “You will not touch hi- them.” Just a slight catch, but Ilatheril had got a mention, that was something. The kid looked at his knife and seemed to be involved in some painful calculation. Whatever the numbers were saying, he didn't seem to think they were good. See, kid wasn’t that stupid.
His friends were, though. They stomped forwards, all trying to out do each other with the hardest look. It resembled nothing more than a before scene for a laxative advert to Ilatheril. An amusing thought if they weren’t all carrying weapons. Weapons made of steel. Weapons with iron in them. Sitharensor ignored them. Didn’t even gather his magic.
The first knife - almost a short sword! - slashed at the Troll. And broke. Ilatheril managed to hide his grin. Not a good enough blade or a good enough wielder to pierce a Troll’s stony skin, and not enough iron content to do damage anyway. Not to a Troll, anyway. Trolls, along with Ogres, were probably the most iron resistant of all the faerie, even carrying iron weapons into battle.
Only when all the humans were stunned by the broken blade did the Troll move. He didn’t use the weapons he had concealed by layers of glamour. He didn’t need to. He was strong enough to crush stone, near impervious to their weapons and had fists like boulders. A Troll possessed none of the supernatural sped or agility of other fae, in fact their size and weight made them less agile than some humans. It was hard to remember that watching Hrolf fight as centuries of battle experience made him more deadly than ever speed could. It was awe inspiring to watch, Ilatheril wondered just how those first Sidhe ancestors of Sitharensor had managed to stand against so many.
Sitharensor walked on, ignoring the screams and the moans behind him. Thankfully this was a neighbourhood where most people knew better than to listen to screams in the night. The untouchable presence of the Marcherson model village and the factory had dragged the local areas down to crime ridden squalor, made all the worse by perceptive or sensitive people becoming ever more edgy and irritated by the huge gap in their thoughts and senses they just don’t understand.
“So what’s the plan, Sith?” Ilatheril tried to imitate the obliviousness of the Seelie to the sounds of combat behind him, but finally had to settle with amusement at the other Sidhe’s irritation with the dress shoes he was wearing.
“First we go to the business district and begin searching as subtly as possible. I think that we cannot plan for anything more complicated.” Added amusement for the Seelie’s terrible English accent. At least it wasn’t archaic English like some fae spoke. There was no way to cover that up.
“I was actually wondering about how we’re going to cover up the small war happening behind us. Not where we were going to pick up a taxi.”
“Nothing. The young humans will not want to report that they were vanquished by one man, and they’re even less likely to believed. And even if they are, what is there revealed? A man who was a very good fighter and apparently wore armour under his clothes - certainly no evidence of the fae.”
“Yeah, but someone could investigate the area. Well, maybe.” Unlikely, the police were not all that eager to investigate anything in this area, certainly not if the bad things taking down criminal gangs.
“Unlikely. Sir Hrolf will not resort to killing any of them, so an investigation is not essential. And the glamour cloak of the Iron Gate will distract them if they get too close. Let us concentrate on the task ahead of us, what is the most direct route to the business centre? I have no wish to be walking most of the night.”
Ilatheril laughed, savouring it. It felt good to be the knowledgeable one for once. “Or we could take a taxi.” He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. He hardly ever used it, there was little point since you couldn't get any signal through the glamour of the Iron Gate, and besides there were powerful anti-electricity wards to stop any humans driving into the Marcherson area. It was the latest model though - he was a Sidhe after all. Sitharensor wasn’t impressed. Not even by the little camera.
He was even less impressed when the taxi pulled up. “You can’t expect us to get in there? An iron box!”
“I really don’t think cars are made of iron. Sure of it, in fact.”
“And how’s Hrolf supposed to fit inside?” Ilatheril had to concede he had a point. Most modern cars weren’t designed to move nine foot tall Trolls around.
“Guess we’ll have to do it alone. Sorry, Sith, but we can’t walk there. Besides...” Ilatheril took a breath and switched to telepathy Aren’t you loosing control of the other fae? Something about rebellions?
Sitharensor narrowed his eyes, but nodded sharply.
Well, surely it’s best to have your loyal Troll working with them to bring them back to the fold. Besides, we need to do this alone if we’re going to impress people.
Impress people? We do not need to impress people.
Sorry, but I think we do. Don’t you see? Just about everything the Sidhe have been doing for the past, what, two centuries? For the last two centuries or so has been grand standing, putting on a good show, a few nifty tricks and lots of charisma. We've implied - Seelie and Unseelie, that we can move mountains, bring the moon down from the sky, whatever. We’ve done nothing concrete to back it up - even in the war most of our magic was spent countering each other, on one on one duels or on leaving no survivors to tell the tale of our power. How many of these rebellious fae are wondering just what magic the Sidhe have left?
Sitharensor looked, almost stunned at the Unseelie. And how many Sidhe wonder how much magic we truly have left? How much magic do we have left? His mental voice sounded lost and quiet. But slowly he nodded and leadenly instructed the surprised Troll to return to the castle and spend some time with his people.
The two Sidhe climbed into the taxi, only breaking the thick, heavy silence that had fallen to instruct the driver on their destination.
They felt their destination grow closer more than they saw it. They felt the iron in the air, in the minds of the people crowding outside the car. They felt the monotony and the mundane given force. beneath it all... just slightly, there was something. A magic, a glamour almost, a glamour of dreams new and alien, a glamour of dreams already born dead. A glamour of mundane dreams, empty, crabbed hopes, and dull imaginings. Dreams twisted round until they were even less magical than the reality the dreamers allowed themselves to be shackled to. Both Sidhe felt an overwhelming wave of disgust and pity as they finally reached their destination. The City.