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beansidhebumbling · 14 days ago

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The End of the World is a Love Story

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Part 1: A Most Familiar Stranger

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The end of the world started with Feyre Archeron.

And maybe in another life the stars foretold a different story, one where she was the hero. The chosen. The change.

In this world, there was only one truth.

The end of the world started with Feyre Archeron.

And she was no Saviour.

Her birth was unremarkable. She arrived silently amidst too much blood into a village that dealt in death, misery, and little else. A grey place, named on few maps and known to fewer people. It lay on the edge of the boglands and bred a hardy sort, who knew the pang of hunger and the taste of iron between teeth.

With a father who shucked the title and a mother who left the plane as Feyre entered it, she became a daughter of the fen.

She learned to tread softly so as not to mark the wet peat and to swim in the black sludge of bog holes where so many grown men perished. This land was her birth right and it spoke to her in kind, so that she sung the sibilance of the marsh snake before the clunky tongue of Man. The frogs she often caught, raw and wriggling, eyes crunching between her first molars, provided the lullabies of her youth.

The trees, that carried word across space and time, told of what the Village called her.

Animal.

Monster.

An Chríoch.

As was written in the Book of Man, each is born in place and station to suit their disposition and destiny.

And so was the case for Feyre Archeron.

All she treasured held some part of herself.

Her bow made of ash and stained with blood.

Her bracelet of baby teeth.

And Nesta, the extension of her soul.

Although speckles of Feyre floated in the sharp twist of her sister's smile and in the bronze braids that circled her head like a crown, Nesta was decidedly singular.

Her presence seemed too big for her slight frame, like the air around her carried the excess crackling sparks of her essence.

If the villagefolk were perturbed by Feyre's silent watchful eyes, they were downright fearful of Nesta.

She asked about it, once, while they weaved baskets at the banks of the hidden river, a common wage maker of their youth. They were sat, buried in the high grass side by side, with the fieldmice making conversation nearby, when she mumbled almost incoherently,

'Druid Osheen is scared of you. He can't look at you straight.'

'Is there a question hidden in that mess, Feyrín?'

Nestsa countered, nimble hands deftly weaving rods as a gentle breeze danced with a stray curl at her nape. She was careful with words, like they were intricate as braids or sharp as knives, wielding them expertly and with precision. Feyre treated them like poison, to be used rarely and held in one’s mouth only briefly.

She whined, shouldering her sister lightly,

'Why do you scare him?'

Nesta grinned, eyes creasing and laughed, a silvery breathy thing that dissolved almost as soon as it left her mouth.

'He thinks I'm dangerous. He's right of course,'

She said flippantly, glancing at her sister from the corner of her eye.

'I am marked by Death. He professes that those around me will surely die. But the Book of Man says that killing the Marked is insult to Death himself, so I cannot be burned on any pyre. Instead, they let us roam like wild things here and pray we don’t come close.'

In her tenth year, on the eve of Alban Arthan, young Jimmy Deenihan called her the nightwhore’s shadow. He muttered it as she passed, lacing the word with spittle and spite so it landed like a punch. Feyre’s teeth proved much more cutting than any verbal insult however. She had not heard the term since, but the memory still sat heavy around her neck, intertwined with the bones of Jimmy’s index finger.

There were no friends to be found in the Village.

Nesta dropped her half-woven basket so it sat in the dipped linen of her patched apron, and turned to Feyre. Her eyes, blown black from pupil to sclera, held the dark within them.

She was resplendent and horrifying and greater than all that had come before.

Grabbing Feyre’s hands, she squeezed them within her own and vowed, voice dropping and gaining weight from the earth and heavy air that had settled around them,

'I promise you. I swear that you are safe with me. I don't care if he gorges fat on all of them. Let him burn the world to cinders. I won't let Death take me from you.'

And Nesta who never wasted a thing looked ready to spend water on tears.

She rarely named her love for her sister, for why comment on something as natural as breathing, as vital as a heartbeat. But in that moment, she felt the need to, like a compulsion.

'I love you, Nesta.'

She whispered.

And more hid inside that undressed fact. The seeds of other words like sacrifice and revenge and desperation. Words too precious to be exposed to air.

She felt the ground swallow her prayer and all the secret prayers within.

The bog would hold them. For safe keeping.

Death haunted the periphery of their lives for years but left them to grow freely among the peat like wild roses. She never told Nesta of her Sight, thought it might alarm her to know that the doom she feared most was always so very near.

From time to time she saw him, in the shadows of the damned.

A handsome devil indeed.

With hair the colour of pitch and eyes like the tanzanite a wandering pedlar once sold at the market, he cut a fine figure for a demon. He even bore wings on occasion, large bat-like appendages, that carried him high into the air, to swim between the clouds. They fascinated her and she longed to run her hand along the membranes, motivated by the same desire that urged her to trace the sharp edge of a blade.

Sometimes she dreamt of flying beside him, of his hands around her waist, holding her tight to his frame as the land became a patchwork quilt below. And though the beginning differed from dream to dream, the ending was always the same- her body, cold and lifeless and alone, hurtling towards the earth.

He never seemed to notice her scrutiny though he moved ever closer with each passing season, like water circling the drain.

He became, in the compounding tragedies his presence heralded, a most familiar stranger.

It was the Samhain of her 26th year when they met.

She told Nesta she had to hunt for blood owls. A falsehood. She resented him for forcing her to lie but necessity demanded it. He was starting to examine Nesta too closely. She’d caught him distracted from his reaping of souls on more than one occasion since the last harvest moon.

Leaving Nesta in their willow hut to read by candlelight, she made her way towards the village, skulking through the thicket and wading up the stream so as to avoid leaving a trace.

She knew exactly where to find her mark. He always attended the bonfire celebrations in his honour, happy to bask in their pitiful human worship, vain creature that he was. It made him extraordinarily easy to stalk down.

Death lounged at the base of an old oak, drinking fae wine, just on the outskirts of the music and merriment. His silk top was unlaced, exposing rich chestnut skin with whirling black markings. They covered his arms and crawled like creeper ivy up his neck, tickling at the sharp line of his jaw. He did not glance her way as she approached, secure in his guise. He did not even tense as she sat before him.

The arrogance of an apex predator was astounding.

Keeping her hood up and her eyes fixed on the knotted bark above his head, she announced bluntly,

'You cannot take my sister. I've seen you lingering near her shadow. And I know what that means. So I'm here to tell you that you can't…Or else, I'll kill you.'

She'd rehearsed this speech and recited it to him as practiced amidst the great ferns, measured and mannerly, making sure to annunciate the consonants crisply, like the Holy Ones did.

Just in case it mattered.

She reckoned it would not have mattered if she’d spoken gibberish, the fact she addressed him at all was enough to spook the Grim.

It was almost comical, the way his back snapped straight, water becoming ice, finely arched eyebrows climbing beneath his tousled fringe as the full force of those violet eyes rested directly on her for the first time.

When he spoke, his voice, rich like sweet birdsong with a pleasant grit caught amidst its tone, was tinged with surprise.

'Why have I never seen you before?'

A hard glint rose above the retreating tides of shock on his face.

She felt a warmth ripple up from the base of her spine to colour her cheeks. Danger had always held such beauty in its thrill. And there was no doubt, as he exposed his sharp gleaming canines, smirking in response to her flush, that he was dangerous.

'I didn't want to be seen. And you're not very observant.'

The smirk vanished.

And in an instant a silver fire broke out. It scorched first the scant space between them before catching onto their bodies. And though she wanted to scream from the pain, Feyre stayed like a statue. For the hawthorns had warned her of this. As the flames rose higher, his indigo shirt dissolved to smoke and ash, and his skin began to melt like candlewax, dripping down his face to expose the rotted flesh and sinew beneath. Shining hints of bone and cartilage peaked through the red, like bog cotton on the hills.

His was an ancient power that he used for horrible tricks.

He growled, his voice echoing through the silver haze, as the gaping maw of his skull hung loose,

'I am Death, girl. I see all.'

In the hitch of a breath, the world turned on its axis and the fire was gone as quickly as it erupted. He sat before her whole and hale again. The sweet relief of cool air did little to quell the phantom burn that tingled on her skin or the irritation that rumbled just beneath.

'And yet,' Feyre snapped, 'you did not see me.'

He sighed heavily, ruffling his wings behind him in irritation, before admitting,

'Yes. And yet. There is that.'

She took the chance to study him. Although she knew each posture of his well enough to draw from memory, she’d never had the chance to be this close to him, to count his sooty eyelashes or the faint freckles that scattered constellations across the bridge of his nose. He was the most handsome creature she'd ever seen. Each feature exactly placed and proportioned for perfect harmony. It raised the hackles on her back.

He was like the Cage Flowers in the Northern Plains, that entranced humans with their syrupy fragrance, only to encase and consume them whole.

Such unnatural beauty could only be suspicious.

He scanned her in turn and found her entirely unintimidating, if the way he stretched lazily and leaned back, once more, was anything to go by.

‘Who are you?’

He drawled, snapping his long ink-tipped fingers so his wine disappeared in the blink of an eye. She wondered if that was how it was to die. Here and then with a single click, gone without a trace, to a place unknown.

‘You should never give your name to the fae.’

She retorted.

‘A good thing that I’m much more than a piddling faerie then, isn’t it?’

He scoffed, indignance etched in the furrow on his brow. As if to be called such was the gravest of insults. He was as mercurial as any fae she’d heard about. As childish too, she mused, watching him sketch a a beheaded pixie in the air with sparks of starlight.

She offered him a name to soothe his wounded ego.

So she wouldn’t feel the searing heat of the fire again.

So she could hear him say it.

‘They call me Críoch.’

Death stiffened at that. Just barely. Just enough to make the slight tremor of his wings, as he affected an air of disinterest, meaningful.

‘Who are they?’

‘The trees.’

She replied quietly, patting a protruding root of the oak, before turning the question back again and asking,

‘Who are you?’

He considered her for a moment, giving a long look to her hand that still lay on the root, before asserting, star-flecked eyes boring into her,

‘I am many things to many creatures. I am older than the stardust that made you. I bring forth the start and the end. But’, he huffed in amusement, ‘the trees call me Rhysand.’

It was no surprise to her that the trees had aptly named him. Rhysand suited him, fit him like his fine leather trousers and slipped from his forked tongue with a well-worn comfort.

‘W-will you let my sister live, Rhysand?’

She ventured, cursing the weakness of her voice at such a crucial moment.

‘That depends, Críoch’, he dared, leaning closer until she could see the whirling emptiness of his pupils, ‘on whether you’ll shake my hand.’

He extended his right hand so it hung limply in the air like a patient noose, wisps of night leaking from his blackened fingertips.

He was lethal.

He was breath-taking.

He was close enough to make her heart race and cause a warm feeling to stir deep within the pits of her stomach. His grin looked more like the bearing of teeth and his eyes, hard as granite, stayed affixed on her, his prey.

And though, being so near a God was intoxicating, she still recognised a trap before her.

For the first time that night, Feyre allowed a small smile to break her blank face.

He was not the only hunter in the clearing.

She grabbed his hand.

And the world exploded.

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Tagging @ae-neon since you've already read a conservative half of this and @middlingsister because i know you like a bog story.

#feyre #rhysand #feyre x rhysand #feysand #acotar #acotar fanfic #a samhain celebration #rhysand is a death god #feyre is a bog girl #rhysand isn't nice #neither is feyre #the world will end #it's still a love story #gemwrites

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