#so just let my little fledgling ideas fly out into the wider world

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Whumptober Day 24: Alt Prompt: Comfort

CW: Referenced wing whump/nonconsensual piercings, dehumanized whumpee, noncon touch (nonsexual), pet whump

As always, details of fae biology and this universe in general all belong to @wildfaewhump and they are Vic’s express creation

“Hey there.”

The creature looked up, and the girl managed only with an effort to hold back her wince at the sight of the strange fae eyes that looked at her from such a deeply human face. 

Lord Regyn’s contribution to the salon’s theme of something we haven’t seen before was quiet, faintly trembling, and the girl had seen the poor thing eyeing the cups of steaming coffee poured for everyone else, seen the rush of saliva as those big fae eyes looked at plates piled high with pastries that no one ever moved to feed him.

The creature did not speak, not right away, but she smiled as though he had, sweeping her skirts up a bit with one hand so she could drop into an easy crouch, getting down to its level where it sat, legs crossed, on the smoothly polished floor.

On the other side of the room, the nobility had all gathered around someone else’s bit of pride, a centaur foal pressed shivering into her mother’s side. Centaur born in captivity were exceedingly rare, and the poor dear would keep the attention of the lords and ladies for a while, the girl thought. 

“My name is Melody,” The girl said, nearly extending her hand, but then she realized the creature’s right hand was nothing but wickedly sharp talons, and it was bound in front of him to his left. “Oh, I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

The creature blinked once, twice. Watched her, tense and maybe suspicious, and then shook his head. “No… no name.” He spoke slowly, as though words came only with difficulty but a soft little trill sounded under one voice, layered it with another. “Pet.”

His wings were heavy with copper-colored chains that held them closed even though it clearly pained the boy to have them wrapped so tightly. Chain wound through piercings again and again until left wing and right were forced to touch along the first two joins and then curved down into his back. The chains clinked together a little as he shivered, and Melody wondered what it must feel like, to have great big wings and know you could fly, but to be trapped here on the ground instead.

Melody shook off the melancholy thought and wrinkled her nose. “Well, I don’t like the idea of calling you that. I’ll call you…” Her eyes scanned the room, trying to think of something that might be a good placeholder name. “I’ll call you Ale.”

The creature blinked at her, and one eyebrow raised.

It made her smile, a little more brightly. Whatever his eyes, whatever his wings, the look on that thin face was utterly human.

“Well, if you won’t give me a name, what do you expect, hm?” She poked forward at his arm, cocked her head to the side.

When he smiled - faint and barely there, not even a smile but just a softening of the serious lines of his face - her own smile widened in response.

“Can I get you something to drink, Ale?”

“I’m not… one of them,” The boy - and he was a boy, even if he was half-fae, something she’d always been told wasn’t possible, it would kill a human woman to bear a fae fledgling with wings, wouldn’t it? Or it would kill the tiny fae to bear big human babies. She’d always been told that, anyway, but seeing him…

Melody wondered how much there was in the world she had been told could not exist that stubbornly existed anyway.

“I don’t mind whatever you are,” Melody said, firmly. She reached out, and he let her touch his hand, staring at her with that serious expression again as her fingers rubbed over the rough almost scaly skin of his talons, then the smooth keratin that curved down with a sharpness greater than any man’s blade. “You are a thirsty boy in my brother’s cafe, and I would like to get you something to drink. What’ll you have, manda?”

His eyebrows furrowed, and Melody laughed, a little.

The crowd of nobles had moved on to a mer, who was settled in a tank of water moved in for the occasion and chained to a small rock they had been settled onto, muzzled to make sure those sharp teeth caused no one any dangers.

The mer had been glaring at the boy, earlier - all the rage it should have had for the humans who held it captive had been on the boy instead, who had only cringed back away from the heat of its gaze. 

“My brother and I come from the far south,” Melody said, cheerfully. “Manda is how we say ‘sir’, down there, or ‘my lord’. Tu ba dom pi’lar, manda?”

“I know,” The boy said, and it was Melody’s turn to furrow her eyebrows in surprise.

“You… know?”

“I’m… from the south,” The boy said, in nearly a whisper. Outside of the cafe, the snow fell in great drifts, as it would fall for days and days this time of year. Piling high outside all the doors, so that Melody’s brother would have to go out and shovel clear the walk from the street to the little house he kept the cafe in. They would wake to pure whiteness only to watch the passage of carriages and horses and men and women smash it to gray slick flat nothing.

“Are you?” Melody sat back, and looked him over. He was pale, but it was a paleness underneath a natural tan, a grayish look of someone who had gone too long without the sun his body had been born to. “I didn’t know there were fae in the south.”

“In the… the mountains, there are. Not fae,” The boy said, wearily, sadly. “I say it and say it, but…” His sentence ended in a soft, sad chirp. “I’m not… anything. But I was from the south, once.”

Melody nodded, slowly, and when he looked up at her this time she could see the tiniest hints of stitches around the corners of his eyes, and see the places where his talons had been connected to a hand that had once held fingers.

Not born, she thought with horror, but made. She wondered if Lord Regyn himself had done it, in the pursuit of endlessly novelty. She hid her horror behind her sweetest smile. 

“I’ll get you some of our tea from our home in the back,” Melody said softly. “My brother keeps the spice tea here, the chirag. Did you ever have it?”

The boy’s eyes widened, the slut of his pupil dilating to wide and round with interest, and Melody swallowed down her discomfort. His wings ruffled a little, rattling the chains. “Would you?” he whispered, eyes flickering to the lord and his friends, and back to Melody again. “Chirag, mandar?”

She grinned. “Hai, manda. Tu bak mazi?”

“Hai,” He replied, quickly, and held up his thumb and forefinger to show how much. “Juul, du?”

“Hai, juul du, ill’nah.”

“Tak, mandar.” His voice stumbled over the words, it must have been so long since he spoke them to anyone but himself, but the longer he spoke the more easily they came. “Tak.”

“Ill’nah, manda.” She was up in a flash, happy that her brother kept water boiling for customers all day long and it was an easy thing to steep the tea and warm the milk and add the imported juul, a honey from bees who could not live in this cold climate. She worried that the boy would be the centerpiece by the time she returned but he was still sitting just under the table, watching the crowd watching a dancing girl who spun with ribbons in her hands, creating a blur of elegance and movement.

So long as you didn’t look at the desperation in the dancing girl’s eyes, it was beautiful.

Melody came back with the steaming hot tea, cardamom and black pepper and the sweetness of honey and warm milk surrounding her, and placed it into the boy’s hands. She didn’t pull back when his talons came close, but kept herself steady, and her eyes on his.

He whispered his tak, his thank you, and she smiled at him, wondering what would have brought a boy from the south this far north - and what had ruined him with fae parts where there had been human bits, before.

The boy finished his tea just as the lord turned to beckon him to his feet, to be the final subject of their attention. Melody took the still-warm empty mug from him and watched him push himself up, moving with careful steps, his eyes focused on his lord.

She swallowed against the sight of the lord lifting a hand to run fingers through the boy’s hair, whispering a command that the boy nodded to. He leaned forward, and the lord’s fingers moved to the chains that bound his wings, pulling on one hard enough that the boy trilled in pain - and the chains fell in a clatter of metal to coil on the floor, the boy’s wings spreading out all at once with a dramatic whoosh of air that ruffled the hair along the sides of Melody’s neck.

She stared, mug forgotten in her hands, at how beautiful his wings were. Deep reddish brown, with shades of lighter color - nearly to cream - and wide flight feathers.

The lord hooked his index finger through one of the brass rings that had been pierced into the joins and pulled hard, causing the boy to whimper and trill again, but he forced his wings to spread even wider, showing their full span, as Lord Regyn smiled and praised him.

The boy smiled, sad and slight, and leaned his head eagerly in to the lord’s touch, nuzzling into the palm of his hand. Melody felt her stomach curl in something like fearful disgust. His talons could have torn the lord’s throat open in an instant. Instead, when Lord Reg bade him give one more call again, he chirped, and the lord whispered poison praise to him while the crowd applauded the sight of it.

Oh, she couldn’t stay out here. It was an honor, for nobility to use the cafe for their salon, an honor and a great deal of coin, but-

Her eyes went to the centaur foal, the little filly still hiding against her mother. The little filly - the little girl, really, for all that centaur had liquid dark eyes like horses did - looked back at her, and Melody felt an ugly twist of guilt for even existing in a place where thinking, breathing, speaking beings were put on display for the nobles to poke and prod and treat like things.

Melody fled to the back of the cafe when the boy, who was fae and not fae, was ordered to show his fae voice, and his trills grated down all her nerves. It was a song whose refrain Melody couldn’t stand to hear, and she demanded her brother serve the nobles now instead.

You could help, but you won’t, the boy’s trilling said. You could do good things, but you won’t. You could you could you could-

All she’d been able to give him was a moment of being human and a bit of warm tea. 

It wasn’t enough.

---

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