#Your Own canon; U.W. canon take your pick

[eternalstrigoii]

Haunt-ober Night #8: Lantern                                                                      

There’s a monster in those woods,

It will get you, if you’re not good.

Ulstead’s children sang that rhyme, still. They had when he was young, and he imagined they would when he was as old as the king; the young man had been repeating it to himself since his brother flinted their lantern under the cover of the dense canopy. Their dinghies rested, overturned, beneath the first tree across from the fishermen’s bridge – somewhere they hoped would be easy to find once they ensured they would be paid for their trouble.

Drag you under leaves and sticks,

Punish you for all your tricks.

It seemed like a simple prospect until they were engulfed by darkness. They grew on stories of the wicked and tricky fey who would lure children into the woods and spin them in circles so they would never find their way home, yet he had the nagging suspicion that it would not be Their fault if they lost their way. When the leaves rustled overhead, he looked up out of the corner of his eye to spy the squirrel or the possum that made the sound, but his eyes did not linger; it’s a wood, he reasoned with himself, that is what woods do. Things live here.

A nest for hair and claws of bone,

You are never, ever coming home.

They had to have passed plenty, by now. They just weren’t looking hard enough.

He had thought the glowing mushrooms might be fey, but they were simply glowing mushrooms – they did not struggle when plucked, and they did not provide enough light to pocket more than the one. If it was not for the chirp of the insects and the scurrying of night-animals, he would’ve believed them entirely on their own.

The darkness of the canopy had given way to open fields of summer’s wildflowers, and the young man plod through them with no regard for what might be occupying the earth or the safety of the tall-grasses where he stepped. His brother moved more lightly, barely more aware of nature’s intricacies.

“Where would they go?” he whispered fiercely.

“I don’t know – to a fairy ring,” his brother replied.

“A fairy ring?”

His brother’s cheeks ruddied. He threw an angry glance over his shoulder and held the lantern higher. “What do you expect, to reach out and just—?” Find one? His brother reached out, swept his hand over the tops of one of the wildflowers, and “pulled the flower from its stem” –

Except no flower came away. His hand closed around the body of a sleeping petal sprite, whose abrupt awakening came with a soft, gentle cry of pain at the crumpling of their fragile wings.

The young man nearly threw them to the ground.

A heart’s beat of silence passed between them, and then the boy dropped his lantern to rifle through his bag. There was a cork-topped jar that they’d stolen from their mother’s kitchen, and he hurried to pry the top loose so he might stuff the little creature inside of it. His brother snatched another off the top of the tall grass, bent down like a stem beneath the weight of their round little bodies, and the small creature yelled out in fear as they were disturbed. He reached for another, who ran; grabbed at another, still. The other sprites were quick to rouse, and their high, panicked voices rose above the tall grass like a song.

A fleeting darkness blotted out the moon’s pale light. The young man’s eyes lifted, but he saw nothing pass; his eyes were still raised as his brother pocketed the half-sealed jar, and a heavy thump landed upon the earth behind them.

For a heart’s beat, neither moved. The petal sprites did not soothe, and yet their cacophony did not detract from the certainty that accompanied their shared apprehension. His brother dared begin to turn, slowly raising his head, and then his eyes, to look over his shoulder at whatever creature’s landing claimed the advantage of familiar territory.

He did not take the time to look for himself. He saw the fear that seized his brother’s face, and he surged forward without regard for the sprites that had not fled.

He ran.

The petal sprite struggled and chittered and screeched when the pressure built upon her fragile wings. He did not understand a word of the language she spoke, but he should’ve understood raw panic when he heard it – help! Don’t hurt me, please!

He did not have the time to dig his heels into the soft earth when the shadows themselves descended from the blackness of the tree-line. The light of will o’ the wisps fluttering in practiced coordination had been snuffed out by the sheer breadth of your wings.

He dropped the petal sprite.

There’s a monster in those woods.

The tender, fragile little thing hit the dirt face-first. He did not once look down at it, for his eyes were fixed upon the seemingly back-lit, demonic gold of yours. The blood rushed away from his already-pale face. Oh god.

It will get you, if you’re not good.

Low. Guttural. The sound you made – the snarl that left you – could not have come from you, yet it had. Faintly human. Your shape was faintly human, but your wings. Your horns. He backed away. He could not take his eyes off of you; he would’ve been a fool to.

One. Measured. Step. Forward.

Drag you under leaves and sticks.

That was what happened to his brother. The roots had turned to prehensile branches with unnatural sentience, guided by the hand of the other wingéd creature. God in Heaven, it wasn’t just you. How many—?

Punish you for all your tricks.

His back collided with something solid. Be a tree, he thought, though an involuntary shudder passed through him. Trees are not warm.

Another languid, measured step. He could see you in the light, now. Cheekbones like a jagged cliff-face, broken-glass webbing over your cheek, talons…claws of bone.

You are never, ever coming home.

From not far above his head, a low, coarse voice hissed, “Boo.”

                            Thankfully for the flower sprite, her petal-wings were bruised, but otherwise unharmed. You loved the way their fat, alien little bodies fit in your palm – her fuzzy moth-feelers brushed over the sharpness of your talons as you examined her delicate, curling tails. Satisfied that she was in sound physical shape, you set her down on one of the many beds of flowers and apologized – again – under your breath.

Confused, but pleased, the little creature chittered something that sounded kind, and crawled off of the flower into the thicket of overlapping leaves beneath.

“How is yours?”

“Hm?” Borra had been watching his rather intently for a time, and you would’ve been concerned, had you not seen the little thing kick their feet several times when his thumb brushed over their fat little belly. A little one, you figured, and were likely right. They had thinnish, white-tipped-blue petal wings and much sparser antennae – long and curved like reverse forest-horns with little, brush-like tufts on the ends. “Fine.”

Fine, shorthand for, they’re unharmed and relatively unscathed.

Your back cracked when you stood, and you fanned out your wings to help crack it again. Thumb-claw to thumb-claw, they nearly stretched as far as four of the moors’ old trees.

“Her wings were bruised, but she’ll recover.”

One of his sparse, fair brows lifted. “You can tell them apart?”

“Women’s intuition.”

His jaw flexed. The pad of his thumb ran over the little creature’s belly again, and the little thing kicked its tiny, gentle legs with a merry peal of laughter. They were insufferably cute.

He released them onto the flowers without a word, and the little thing flared and flapped their inverse-morning glory wings. You thought they might disappear into the foliage too, until you realized that, by holding still in a given place, their flared wings made them totally resemble flowers – as useful of a skill as the feathered bases of a jungle fey’s horns, blending their bright horns in with the foliage.

“Goodnight, little one.” You patted their delicate back with the pad of your index finger, and their gentle, fragile wings fluttered once more.

You did not need to watch the smattering of sprites settle on their stalks to sleep, yet you lingered for a moment longer; every night on the moors was a beautiful one, and the gentle, stirring breeze fanned strands of your dark hair over the front of your shoulders. They – and the will o’ the wisps you’d loosed the last time poachers sullied the sanctity of their homes, the willow sprites before them, and the one, unfortunate wallerbog who had once been cornered only to spend the night on your lap like a child, squishing their wet hands around your horns and trailing pond-slime through your hair while Borra pretended not to smile in your periphery – needed protection. They needed the wall of thorns, at least on along the river-border. If only you knew who created them and why they’d finally lowered. If only you didn’t suspect that someone else had once protected this land as you did.

He nudged you. The incline of his head proposed that he might go ahead to push the boats back into the river without you, if you liked; you shook your head and fell back into step with him, already considering where, along the banks, you might next land.

High up in the trees, well beyond where the moorland fey flit and pattered about, an unkindness of ravens picked at the carcasses of the men cornered by the pair of you. The guts within their open bellies had not been too badly mangled by their mounting, and were uncharacteristically whole. The eldest of the ravens plucked one of the unseeing eyes from its socket as he watched, cocked his head, and swallowed the morsel whole.

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