the queen of thistles.

wolf

Julie gets the front seat this time, but only because she's navigating. Well, and possibly because Kenneth is chivalrous. No stone on a string to follow this time. Just a fox-faerie's instructions. City like Milwaukee, where winters are long and brutal and summers too short, there's a lot of construction in those few warm months. Sooner or later they have to go through a construction zone, traffic backing up, orange cones closing off lanes. Still doesn't take them too long to get through though. It's a small city. Just not a lot of traffic here.

Open roads again soon enough. Wolf cruises with wrist over wheel, satellite radio turned down low. As they get closer he asks, "What should I know about meeting this queen of yours? Am I supposed to curtsy?"

The Queen of Thistles

The good news is that they've passed the part of the morning when drivers are out in force.

The bad news is that when Julie starts giving directions, somewhere in the mishmash of her words it becomes clear that they have a bit of a drive ahead of them. It's not terrible, but with traffic it will take about an hour.

The slightly annoying news is that it takes them a good fifteen minutes for Julie to be able to give them enough instructions for them to figure out where they are headed, and it's something of a game of Who's On First.

They are going to a place called Random Lake. This alone provides several minutes of Julie not making sense until it is revealed that Julie is making perfect sense, it's Kenneth and Rafael who are stubbornly refusing to understand her. Or something.

On the road, they also learn that Random Lake is certainly not where the Queen of Thistles usually resides, but that given the circumstances she is graciously agreeing to meet them there.

So they're on their way. Kenneth is, according to him, doing research, which may mean he's texting with Ursula or may mean he really is trying to learn more about the fair folk from his elders or whomever back at the sept.

Rafael asks Julie if he should curtsy.

"Well," Julie muses, "she has been a Queen for somewhere between several years and several centuries, and she's quite proud, and I don't think she's ever had anyone killed for making fun of her.

"She's extraordinarily beautiful," Julie says sharply, "and some plebs can't handle her flava."

"I think that means you should be respectful and careful," Kenneth chimes in from the back seat. "I'm not going to bow because I'm not one of her subjects, but I'm going to make up for it by being somewhat deferential while in her... territory."

"Court," corrects Julie.

"Court," echoes Kenneth. "Territory," he mutters, more to Rafael's ears.

"He's a terrible liar, you know," Julie says, of Kenneth. "You really aren't her subjects, and she knows that, so if you let her or her courtiers walk all over you, then she won't respect you, either."

"But if you lose your temper, we won't convince her to do something about Conrad, and we might be surrounded by faeries with silver swords."

Julie perks up. "And arrows and daggers and spears. Maybe a trident."

Hard to tell, there, which part is the lie.

wolf

Court.

"Court?" He's thinking Judge Judy.

Court. Territory.

"Oh."

And there's talk of silver swords and arrows and daggers and spears and a trident and he is not amused, but then he smirks.

"Can't I just yell I don't believe in fairies, then refuse to clap my hands?"

The Queen of Thistles

There's no snappy rejoinder from Julie this time. Nor even a breezy lie covering a painful truth, or an emotional lie distracting from an unimportant detail. Nor anything at all.

She glances at him. And then she looks out the window.

wolf

EMPAFEE VIA GOOGUL:
7, 5, 9, 7, 3

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

The Queen of Thistles

[Well, Julie is peeved, most obviously. She's not huffing and pursing her lips or anything, but she is trying to control her anger because, well, she's in a car with two wolves. There's also frustration: she is trying to help them, and she does have quite a bit at stake if it doesn't go well. But beneath that is a bit of a flinch; a bit like the way she might respond if his joke were actually about something terrible that really happened to her/her people, and not just a silly reference.]

wolf

Silence stretches on. Gets awkward. Kenneth doesn't help, though wolf flicks a glance into the rearview mirror.

Then, quietly: "Look. Appreciate that you're helping us out. Won't do anything stupid. And if I do, won't let it fly back in your face. Okay?"

The Queen of Thistles

Kenneth is useless; he just shrugs at Rafael when he catches his glance with the benign cluelessness of so many of his age.

So the silence is awkward, and goes on for a while, and then Rafael promises he won't do anything dumb. Perhaps more than that, he says he'll protect her. No, not in so many words, but it's what he means. More or less.

Julie turns her head to look at him. She shrugs, and then she nods, and then she wrinkles her nose, and grimaces, and then she reaches up to scratch the tip of her nose like it itches horribly.

"Okay," she says, however, quietly.

wolf

Wolf glances over. Seals that promise just as quietly: with a look, a momentary meeting of eyes.

Then he sets his attention back on the road. They cruise. They get closer to this Random Lake, which he still can't quite believe is the name of the place. They've left the city behind; traffic is sparse, and the lake, occasionally glimpsed to their right, is a bright saltless blue.

Halfway to Sheboygan they leave the highway. Broad country highway now, both sides tree-lined, lush with the tail end of summer. Wealthy northshore exurbs turn into farmlands, prairies and marsh. Eventually foxgirl proves to be not (completely) a liar and the signs for Random Lake show up.

"Huh," wolf mutters. "Really called that."

The Queen of Thistles

At Random Lake, most of the houses are in fact close to the shore of the little lake. Julie stirs when they get there, directing Rafael to a spit of land that sticks out in the middle, pointing south.

"Hope everyone's up for a little hike," she says, since the road doesn't go that far. It's not even a park; no trails go into the thick trees and brush. No pathways traverse the narrow spike of earth. So they park somewhere against a curb, heading across a ditch, towards the hilt of the dagger-shaped stretch of land.

Julie pauses when they get to the edge of the trees themselves, the base of the hilly ground. The day is bright and just barely beginning to crest into afternoon, but somehow the sun overhead doesn't quite pierce through all the greenery. She looks at Rafael, then at Kenneth, then at Rafael.

"Neither eat nor drink, unless you wish to. Neither dance nor sing, unless you wish to. Enter no contest of will or wit, unless you wish to. If you become lost, speak kindly to an animal or a tree or the water or any old woman. If you find treasure, leave it where it lies. Remember that everything lies, but no person can."

She seems quiet serious.

And then breaks into a grin, runs into the woods, shouting "CANNONBAAAAAAALLLL!" as she tears off her shirt and starts pulling at her pants, too.

wolf

"What?" says wolf.

CANNONBAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!, yells fox. And she's off. And wolf stares after her, disgruntled, then looking rapidly away as she starts tearing items of clothing off.

Takes a moment to tap out a text to witch:

Going to a fairy court. Might be a while. Don't worry.

Then he puts the phone in his pocket. Looks at Kenneth. Shrugs. Drops down on four paws, swift and stark-white, and lopes after the fox-girl.

The Queen of Thistles

Kenneth stares. Kenneth blinks, then starts running into the woods too, hopping over hurdles. He seems content to run in homid for a minute, and he can't help but laugh as he sees a flash of red fur, a white-tipped tail, up head. He laughs again when a streak of brilliant white dashes past him, and lets out a whoop.

Suddenly he's in lupus, catching up to Rafael with the sure-footed agility of a born runner. He might be a mix of two tribes, but in this form he is clearly and completely Fianna, every grey strand shot through with red, his eyes a glowing, green-casted gold. He lolls his tongue happily.

Julie is playing with them. Runs ahead and vanishes, only to pop up behind them like nothing happened. She leaps off of the trunks of trees, narrowly missing landing on one of their backs. She's so much smaller than the two of them, but for a fox she's quite large, quite strong. She yips, and she barks, and the deeper the go and the darker it gets, the more otherworldly those fox-shrieks become.

After a while, though -- and really, the spit of land is small enough that their free run doesn't last nearly long enough -- she slows to a lope, her black-furred legs turning silent, her delicate paws becoming stealthy in a way that would make a Ragabash envious.

(Later on, Rafael will check his phone and see a picture of his girlfriend in his messages, giving him the finger, with a message telling him: Not worried. JEALOUS. Be polite. but right now he doesn't know that, she hasn't taken that picture, that phone melted into his skin along with all the rest of his clothes and belongings. But he'll get it later.)

Julie is treading carefully now. Kenneth noticed and slowed, too; he keeps an almost pack formation with the other two, even though one of them isn't a wolf; a triangle of sorts, with the scout up ahead, flanked by healer and tank. He chuffs to himself; it's a nice sort of thought, because he likes Rafael and he sort of likes Julie, too. But at the same time, she isn't a wolf. When he flicks his ears at Rafael and swishes his tail, Rafael will understand what he's saying in a way Julie can't:

he thinks this is weird, but sort of fun, and he's glad he's with here with Rafael, and he's glad Rafael called, and he hopes this goes well, and if Rafael needs anything, all he has to do is let Kenneth know.

The woods now seem deeper than is possible. Logically Rafael knows the land is narrow and the lake is near, but he cannot hear the water. He cannot hear the town, or a plane overhead. He can smell the water, but it seems far underground, a spring or stream flowing through rocks and not over them. There are crickets who think it is night; there are cicadas who think it is day. A bird trills, and another answers in short, hollow-sounding whoops. Leaves rustle as rabbits and snakes alike seem to burrow and hunt. He cannot see the sun but there is, all the same, sunlight. He cannot see the moon but there is, nonetheless, the sense that she is there, filling his blood with the thing that makes him what he is.

Only a glance at Kenneth tells Rafael that he feels it, too. Rage, as much as the dimness, is blowing out the Theurge's pupils. The Fiannalicks his maw; there is less of a boyish loll to it now, and more a hunter's hunger.

But it is not so overpowering yet that when he looks at the fox ahead of them, he sees prey. In fact, the smell of her is even more confusing. She smells like Julie: a young woman's perfume, something devilish and delightful and unsettling that may in fact be her faerie self, and of course there's the memory of enchanted brownies. She doesn't smell like meat, even when she looks like a fox. She turns her head and looks at him, eyes round and golden and sparkling.

A moment later, just after her glance is met, Rafael begins to hear music.

Childlike music. Lullabye music. But brighter, lighter than you'd play for bedtime. He won't know the instrument by name, not just hearing it, but it's called the celeste. Then, soon, layered with a glockenspiel, and then something like a... harp, but sharper than that. (This is called a gu zheng, but Rafael doesn't know that, either.) Spanish guitar. Timpani.

The music grows louder, and clearer, and with every new layer, stranger. It's beautiful, in a discordant way, and hypnotic,

in an unsettling way.

And then they see the lights. Globes of golden shimmer, floating through the tree-boughs. Some are as small as fireflies. Others almost the size of basketballs.

wolf

The deeper they go,

the stranger it gets.

Like any dream, they descend beyond the reach of day, and then beyond the reach of reason. Something is happening; a sort of eldritch magic at once like and unlike that which took them over at Conrad's lair. They run like a pack, delightedly, racing over wildgrass and fallen leaves, leaping clear streams and storm-broken boughs. Then, later, they trot. Then, still later, they walk, the paws of the fox soft in the shadows; the wolves noisier, broader frames and heavier bodies shouldering through the --

wilderness doesn't seem like the right word anymore. The enchantedness, perhaps. The world is confused here, deliciously so. Is it day? Is it night? Is she a fox, or a girl? The young wolf beside him is licking his chops, and this time he does not tease him for his hunger.

Now there's music. Wolf's ear flick and turn, following the sounds. It swells around him, a dozen songs or just one. Now there are lights. A curtain drawing back on some strange, lawless stage. Wolf looks up, which is not a direction in which wolves usually look, and so he comes out of one form and into another. He's wearing clothes now, shoes, human shape. He has a phone in his pocket but he gets no reception here. Perhaps he is not even really on earth anymore.

Lights drift through the trees. Some float quite near. He thinks about touching one -- reaches to do so -- draws back at the last moment, thinking better of it. Fox-girl's warnings ring in his ears. He adds one to the list, mutely: neither touch nor take, unless you wish to.

The Queen of Thistles

Kenneth shifts, too, almost instinctively. Those instincts are stronger here, especially as his rage grows beyond what he is used to: he sees his -yuf who may as well be his -rhya shift, and he follows suit with hardly a thought to reason out why he does so.

He's in his same rumpled jeans and rumpled striped t-shirt. His breath is high, and he pushes his hand through his hair as though this will help him let go of some of the energy that has flooded his veins. He looks at Rafael, his eyes still wide, and huffs a little, the laughter exhilarated with a touch of nerves.

The lights come. Kenneth doesn't touch them, either, even though a few smaller ones circle his belly, float up and zing past his face. Julie never told them how that warning ended, though it's only now that either of them consider that there could have been more:

unless you wish to... what?

Julie is still with them, small and silent now, and after they shift, she starts loping into the woods, from whence both music and spheres come toward them.

--

Before they know it, they are in the court. It happens organically: the trees open up, the ones nearest to them more slender than the ones at the outer edges. The brush clears out, and they're left with golden-green grass underfoot, soft as dandelion tufts. And after a while, they start to see a checkerboard pattern in the grass: gold here, green there, queen's knight to rook four or whatever. The trees and flowers begin to bend and curl into decorative objects, forming themselves into chairs, even into tables, into lamp-posts with little nests for the gleaming spheres to rest.

The courtiers, too, seem to happen organically: a rock rolls over and opens one glaring eye above a long, pointed nose. Another eye opens and the creature unfolds itself, a bulbous body on spindly legs, with twig-like arms and a dirty leather cap. It grunts at them and waddles off, long toes flapping at the ground. A sylph seems to emerge from the bark of a tree itself, her skin a burnished bronze, her hair rustling like leaves, though she wears a suit of armor that appears to be worked from gnarled and hardened roots.

These and more, and still more, some from shadow, others from the ground itself. There are pixies, literal fucking fixies like literal fucking Tinkerbell, zipping merrily through the air, laughing. A trio of them encircle Rafael's head and for a brief second he feels a small but sharp pain in the center of his skull, and then the three of them begin clapping at him, hysterical and manic. Julie is at his feet then, barking up at them with that ungodly shriek of this form, leaping up to swat at the pixies with her little black paws. They fly away, laughing like harpies, and fox-Julie looks up at him with what he might imagine is apology, or at least empathy:

fucking pixies, the swish of her tail seems to say.

There are animals, like Julie, and faeries who have animal characteristics: whiskers and tails, wings and slit pupils. There are creatures with the legs -- and horns -- of goats and rams. Faeries that tower over the others in armor of leather and armor of -- is the fucking armor silver, too? There is at least one who seems made of shadow, clings to a shadowed tree, stroking its bark with pale hands and sobbing in a whisper. She might not be the only one of her kind: there are a lot of whispers in the shadows. A white-haired grotesque with red cheeks and knobby knuckles sits in a stiff ruff and pantaloons, having a mild panic attack over a puzzle box that keeps emitting strange noises, like something awful is trapped inside. Sitting alone off to one side, occasionally casting hateful glances at a group of reveling satyrs, is a nightmare of a faerie: he wears a bright red executioner's hood, the lower half cut off to reveal his rictus grin, all rows of sharpened yellow teeth. He wears black leather armor. He is polishing a gleaming silver axe.

Two trees up ahead are bent as though bowing, their heavy leaves creating a veil. As the wolves enter the court and soon find themselves standing among the faeries, the leaves rustle anxiously.

A voice from behind those trees, then. A warm, low, seductive alto, with a well-buried tracery of amusement:

"You have no herald."

It is noticed, only then, that a second before she spoke, the music ceased. The court has grown still, and the fey that were ignoring the wolves in their midst are suddenly paying attention.

"You are guests, nonetheless. Be welcome, then. Drink of our mead and enjoy our sweet bread. We must receive our guests with revelry, my dear children."

A tittering of laughter. The leaves rustle as though in their own chortling delight. The satyrs start pouring goblets and goblets of mead, and little rock-men like the one they first saw start carrying around trays of bread and fruit.

wolf

Perhaps in the far reaches of the Umbra, Kenneth has seen stranger sights. Wolf, being a rather earth-bound and practical sort of wolf, has not. He stares openly, gawking at the strange creatures rumbling in the shadows, lurking in the trees. The sobbing shadow-creature gets a particularly baffled stare. No one ever accused him of being well-mannered.

Then pixies! Pixies zap him. Somehow. He is not amused, bares his teeth and snaps at air and swats at them -- though one might notice he doesn't aim for them. They're so small. They're faeries, and someone quite special told him not to harm any faeries. There can't be many of them left.

Anyway: Julie shoos them away. And away they flit, cackling, leaving wolf to rub his head grumpily as he follows her deeper.

--

It is not a court as he imagined it. He thought of soaring buttresses and stained-glass windows, marble floors polished to mirror sheen. He thought of glittering thrones and filigreed crowns. Instead, he stands in the heart of what can only be called an enchanted forest -- shimmering with lights, shot through with the ineffable sense of diaphanous, pure magic.

Even the trees bow to the queen of thistles. And when she speaks, wolf has no doubt of who it must be. He turns to face the voice: eyes first, then the rest of him.

Mead. Bread. Even if Julie the fox had not warned him, he would have hesitated. He's heard fairy tales before. Rip van Winkle and all the rest. The many and myriad dangers of eating magical food. The strange, unpredictable ways of the fairy folk, a sense of humor rooted in an incomplete understanding of mortality.

He glances at Kenneth. And then looks into the shadows beyond the trees.

"Thanks for your hospitality," he says, "but we ate before we came here." Pauses a beat. Too late, he realizes he should have brought something, a gift in return. Stands there flailing internally for a moment. Then digs his hand under his shirt collar, jaw tight, keenly aware of this sacrifice.

"Brought a gift," he says, roughly. Pulls out a little trinket, a pretty little gewgaw: a fragment of quartz wrapped in wire, hung from his neck by a leather cord. "Doesn't look like much, but my mate made this. For me. It's a protection charm, and a symbol of what's between us.

"I want you to have it because ... I'm here for her sake. And because just like I'm bound to her by devotion, you've got a wayward knight out there bound to you."

Pauses.

"Not that I'm presuming anything about your relationship status."

The Queen of Thistles

Maybe one day, in the far reaches of the Umbra, Kenneth will see stranger sights than this. Feel stranger things than this. But he's barely out of his fosterage, and his mom isn't even happy about him being gone this one night, much less vanishing into the mists of the deep umbra, and he has never seen or felt anything that approaches what he is seeing and feeling now. His amazement is open-mouthed; a dancing hookah never prepared him for this.

So both of them are uncool, gaping at everything.

At one point, when the Queen of Thistles speaks to them, Kenneth is staring at Rafael, mouthing DUDE. Because what else can he do?

The court takes a minute to do so, but it quiets down again when Rafael answers rather than throwing himself to the mead and pastries. Music that had started up whimpers down again. Everyone realizes he is not going to revel first, and there are more than a few pouting faces.

And that obscene grin from that nightmarish creature with the axe. He never stops smiling. He looks like a fucking corpse.

He is listened to, because this is a more or less civilized place, at least when the Queen is in attendance. So after he speaks, there is a protracted moment of silence. Then, rustling musically, the two trees part, unfolding their willowy trunks, standing straight once more. Their branches and leaves part like curtains, revealing the place where the checkerboard of grass ends and an ocean of silk begins.

The hem of the Queen's garments are, in fact, as blue as the deep sea, the night sky, and it fills far more space than is necessary for any dress. The breeze ripples the surface of the gown, chopping it into miniature waves, turning the silk glints of silvery white briefly before the color fades back into that fathomless blue. The silk rises, climbing up to a throne made of branches that have woven themselves to suit her whims, covering a shapely body right up to the throat. The sleeves extend to her knuckles, then turn to a silken mesh, draping over her fingers extravagantly. At the top of her throat is a many-layered lace collar so fine, so delicately detailed, it must have been made by pixies. Or spiders. It rises up over her jawline, embracing and framing her face.

Her features are narrow, yet not pinched. Her lips are full, and yet not plump. Her cheekbones are prominent, but nothing about her is gaunt. Long, pointed-tipped ears rise through thick, glossy red curls that cascade down her shoulders. Something about her hair flickers like flame, the tips of her curls more gold than red, her hairline darkening to the color of burning embers. Her eyes

are black.

Black on black. Void eyes. There is no emptiness to them, though. There is somehow a sense that worlds exist in that darkness, that she is filled with stars and planets, that meteors fly through her, that every light that might appear in those eyes is a wonder to behold, a creation of worlds.

She is beautiful in a way that awes. She is beautiful in a way that hurts.

She is, too, every inch a Queen. She does not even wear a crown.

There is no need.

--

It takes several moments to even notice that she is flanked by six guards, three to each side, standing in gleaming silver armor, each holding a silver shield and a silver spear. There is also a man-at-arms standing just behind her throne, similarly adorned, but with a bright red sash across his chestplate. He has no spear, but a sword sheathed at his side, his hand resting on the pommel as though it is always there, has always been there, always will be there

but for the moments when he draws that sword.

All of them have their face-guards down. All of their faces are lost in shadows.

The Queen observes her visitors, barely taking note of the little fox-faerie who led them here and arranged this whole meeting. She looks at the bit of wire-wrapped obsidian Rafael is holding up, and her head tips a bit. Her lips part.

It is only then that he notices that the trinket, warm from being close to his body, has a faint glow about it. An aura, almost, soft and small but there nonetheless. One moment it is the bright blue of Devon's eyes. The next it is as dark as her hair. Green as one of her potions. It wiggles in midair, like a child being praised, terribly pleased that someone finally noticed how special it is.

The Queen looks at it for a while, the corners of her lips curving upwards as the obsidian dances for her. Then, with the faintest of nods and a flick of her veiled fingers, a pixie in a matching blue gown launches from her hiding place behind the Queen's hair and zips over to Rafael. She's bigger than the ones who tormented him, but still only a little bigger than the trinket. She chitters at him, and nods at him, urging him to put it in her arms. And when he does, she does indeed falter a bit, but manages to fly back to the Queen with the treasure, laying it in her lady's palm.

Again, closer up now, the Queen observes the gift she's been brought. Then, she wraps her hand slowly around it. She closes her eyes, and for a moment she almost looks human if you ignore how beautiful she is. She breathes in deeply.

When she opens her hand, the obsidian is no longer dancing. It is no longer glowing. It lies on her palm, still pretty, but inert. With a curtsy, the pixie picks it up again, and flies it back to Rafael, chittering at him that he should take it. When he does, she returns once more to her Queen.

"I have accepted your tribute," she says, and that's when it becomes even more clear: the material item matters little. It matters not at all. Only what it was imbued with: by his mate, and by him carrying it.

It may also be worth noting that it was not destroyed in the process. That it was inert and empty, lifeless in this way, when Devon bought the stone at the gem show. It is only a physical carrier; the magic can return to it.

"You speak of Sir Marquardt, I presume." A titter goes through the court, quickly silencing itself. "He is not bound to me. He has been banished."

wolf

Never,

not in his wildest dreams, and not even in the depths of girl's wild and witchy eyes,

has he ever seen beauty like this. The world, vivid as it is here, glorious as it is, seems to pale in comparison. The lights seem darker. All the others, all the queen's strange and merry crew seem to fade a little; even that pretty little fox-maiden that Kenneth seems so taken with.

It is hard to look upon the queen of thistles for long. Wolf is loathe to lower his eyes like a subject, like a goddamn unwashed peasant, and it is a strange realization to have. That he has pride of his own. That he is, however infrequently or dimly, aware of his own proud heritage, the strength and purity of his own immortal essence.

So he doesn't. He blinks slowly, deliberately, sometimes keeping his lids shut for a few seconds longer so that he can bear the presence of this impossible creature.

--

The stone, depleted but unharmed, drops back into his palm. It feels no different, and yet it does: emptied somehow, as pretty but impersonal as it was when his mate first bought it. He looks at it for a moment, brow furrowed. Then his fingers close around it and he slips it back into his pocket.

"I've heard," he says. "What would it take to reverse that?"

The Queen of Thistles

Laughter, again. Darker, from a few corners, and some entirely dismissive. The Queen herself laughs, soft as chimes.

"One does not reverse a banishment," she says, almost tenderly, as though his poor mortal misunderstanding of the ways of court have touched her heart. "Whysoever would you even wish me to? As I have heard it, he has hardly done you any kindnesses."

wolf

"No, he hasn't."

The words are blunt as stones. Flat as concrete.

"He's out there tearing magic out of people. Leaves them drained and emptied. Suckered onto a girl who thought he loved her, and he's been feeding off her like a leech. Seems to have developed a taste for a particular sort of magic, a true magic, like the kind of magic that makes you what you are and makes me what I am.

"So far, he claims not to have done any permanent damage. But he can. And he's not really sure he won't. I'm not really sure he hasn't.

"This is a man who used to serve you. This is a man who's doing terrible things on your doorstep. Don't know why you banished him, but I'm going to guess it was for something along these lines in the first place. Thing is, he doesn't see himself as banished. Calls himself your knight still. And I can't say he isn't right.

"Your Majesty," the words are awkward, "I'm a werewolf. We run in packs, with Alphas. Some of them are official, with totem spirits that guide us. Others aren't. At home I run with a real pack. Out here Kenneth's my pack. The fox Julie too, sort of. No totem binds us but that doesn't mean we're not bound. Doesn't mean I don't feel responsible for keeping them safe, and keeping them honest. They might not even feel that way toward me. But there's still a bond here, from me to them."

Silence for a while. His right hand works, nerves or agitation or both. Open and closed, open and closed.

"What I'm trying to say is, kicking him out of your territory doesn't erase history. Doesn't erase the bond from him to you, whether you like it or not. He's still your knight, and he'll listen to you if you'll only command him.

"So I want you to take him back because I think you can stop him. And if you can't, then I think you still have a responsibility to keep the peace in your territory.

"Even if that means imprisoning him." He doesn't look at Julie, but if she's looking at him he feels it, "Or executing him."

The Queen of Thistles

While Rafael speaks, the Queen does not slouch, or prop her chin in her hand, or yawn, or look away, or wave her servants over with mead and pastries. She does not seem to be a good faerie. But she is, to some degree, a good queen. She attends to the visitor at her court quite carefully. She even looks quite interested when he tells her a bit about he and his people organize themselves: she has always been curious about how such primal creatures have adapted over the centuries to a rapidly changing world.

Kenneth does react a little more strongly; when Rafael calls him his pack, and includes Julie, Kenneth grins. He can't help it. He just looks pleased.

But the court grows quiet again by measures. A measure when he speaks of Conrad ripping magic out of people. A measure when he speaks of werewolf-kind. A measure when he tells the Queen that she is duty-bound to keep the peace in her realm.

But that last measure is a final one: the court is silent. Even the redcap sitting against the tree has stopped polishing his axe.

One may get the impression that Rafael has said or done something quite serious, indeed. One would not be wrong. Kenneth is looking at Rafael nervously, and he's the one who notices first: Julie is gone. The little fox at their feet slipped away at some point, silent as...

well. Obviously.

Before them, the Queen is silent, taking in what has been said as though it were not spoken by a commoner and foreigner, as though it were not spoken bluntly and awkwardly. She considers what he's told her: that Conrad is ravaging Dreamers, even engaging in romantic relationships with them (not unheard of, but not openly condoned). That he still calls himself one of her knights, which is a crime in itself. That whether Conrad is banished or not, there is still a cord between he and the court, and the Queen herself.

She also hears, behind his words, his claim that he is an Alpha of at least this pack with him, and that he sees such a relationship as analogous to the one she has with her subjects. He is wrong, of course, but only in the detail of it, the nuance. At the core, it is something far more primitive than the trappings of court.

Most commoners think the sidhe have forgotten these roots.

Most commoners do not know the first thing about ruling a people.

"Miss Busch," the Queen says, out of nowhere, several long seconds of silence later. She has not taken her eyes off of Rafael.

A few moments later, Julie appears out from behind some trees. She's got wild hair, but she's back in her human...ish form. Here, they can see her whiskers, her black nose, her tail, the tufted fox-ears that stick up through her hair. She has some clothes on at least, a simple dress, and when she quick-steps out to face the Queen again, she gives a quick bob of a curtsy, then folds her hands before her.

"Are these two," she says, flicking her fingers at Rafael and Kenneth, "your 'pack'?"

Julie tips her head to the side. She looks back over her shoulder at them, then at the Queen. "Well, m'lady, I'm not a wolf, obviously, and foxes don't really hunt in packs, but I'm not really fox, either, I'm a pooka, and we love a motley crew of equal fools to be equal with when we aren't hunting solitari...ly. You could say we like it more than some kiths but I'm not naming names and we probably like it less than others but we all know I'm talking about satyrs, let's just say satyrs."

The Queen closes her eyes for a moment, breathing out through her nostrils, praying for patience before she opens them.

"And, to the best of your knowledge, does the wolf you brought to me speak truth to my court?"

Julie is stymied for a moment. Behind her, her tail twitches. So do her whiskers. "Um."

A pause. Another twitch.

"That one," she says, almost angrily, pointing behind her at Rafael, "is basically a troll, so he's probably offended you even asked me that."

Kenneth, having no more idea of what a troll might be other than a horrifying gnarled monster under a bridge, looks baffled and betrayed. "What the hell is your problem?" he snaps at Julie, his rage too high for him to stop himself. Julie flinches from it, feeling the onslaught of what makes a wolf a wolf.

The fey must sense it; the guards all shift their footing, though they do not otherwise move. The redcap chuckles to himself and rises to his feet. Even some of the goat-legged hedonists take notice and look eager for a brawl.

The Queen lifts one hand.

"Her words are not an insult, friend wolf," she tells Kenneth. Her hand slowly lowers again. "That was a pooka's way of saying that your... Alpha, here... is a being of honesty and honor." She waves her hand at Julie. "You may sit, til called upon again."

Julie hesitates. Kenneth, taken aback and confused, also hesitates. Both of them glance at Rafael. Kenneth nods at Julie, a question or a plea in his eyes, but in these human bodies it's a little harder to tell what he's trying to communicate.

wolf

In the space of a few seconds, he is called a troll, Kenneth is called a friend-wolf, and then he is called a being. He's still trying to figure out whether this constitutes a promotion or a demotion when abruptly he realizes they are all looking at him.

He glances between them, blank.

"What?"

The Queen of Thistles

Kenneth widens his eyes, mutters under his breath: "Dude, you just called her part of our pack."

Julie looks at Rafael. Her lower lip juts out. She lowers her head below her shoulders. She starts to turn, pitifully moving to slink off as directed by the Queen, rather than standing with the two of them.

"Dude," Kenneth repeats, in a tight whisper.

wolf

Oh. He gets it.

"Your Majesty," this time it comes out a little easier, "let Julie stay here with us. If she wants."

The Queen of Thistles

Julie puts on as much of a pageant for delight as she does for sadness; she beams, hopping back into place between the two wolves

The Queen just sighs. She doesn't roll her eyes, because it would be impossible to tell if she did or not, but she waves her hand, permitting it.

Strange, that: they aren't wolves. The request doesn't offend her. She doesn't suspect Julie of not wanting to be a faerie anymore or something because, right now, she's in a temporary pack with these two interlopers. It barely causes a blip.

So Julie stands with them. Kenneth settles, and looks at Julie, his expression apologizing to her for snapping, and Julie shrugging and making a face at him, which is her way of... accepting that apology?

Which means that they have a raged-up Theurge kid, a compulsive liar and trickster, and... Rafael. The most grown-up and under control of the three of them.

The Queen waits for the agitated wolf and the pooka to settle themselves before she addresses Rafael again.

"Sir Marquadt is no longer, and shall never be again, a member of my court," she proclaims.

"But he is my subject," she adds a moment later, her eyes on the Silver Fang, "and subject to the laws of my realm. From your testimony, I believe there may be a number of these laws he may have flouted.

"But we are civilized," says the woman presiding over a court of nightmare clown executioners, goat-men who look about ready to drag the nearest nymph under a table, and mind-reading pixies who torment the unwary.

"He shall be brought into our custody, and a tribunal held to determine his guilt or innocence on all counts. Should he be found guilty of any or all, he will be sentenced as I see fit."

Her eyebrows lift.

"Does this satisfy?"

wolf

"Yes," he says.

There's just a hint of hesitation there. A moment of indecision. Then:

"If it's possible, Your Majesty, show mercy. There's no love between us. But Julie told me a little about your people. How you live. What you remember. What you forget. What you lose every time you die and live again. Seen a little of it for myself.

"Your very existence brings a rare, precious magic into the world. There can't be many of you left," an echo, and when he hears it a slow warmth pulses for a moment in his breast, "and I think losing even one, even an asshole like Conrad, would dim the world somehow.

"Besides. Kenneth and I are among the last of our kind too. Understand how desperation can make you do stupid things. Maybe terrible things. Don't condone it, or forgive it. But I do understand it."

The Queen of Thistles

The court is quiet again as he speaks. It is strange, to have so many strange beings listening to him with such attention. So many of them are wary, as if they are waiting for him to explode.

But what he says now brings a darker sort of silence. It seems to dim the light here: the sunlight filtering through the trees has a silvery cast, and the glowing spheres that light the court proper flicker. The boughs of the trees seem to slump; even the gleam off the silver armor and weapons dulls, somehow. In the shadows, the whispering fey weep coldly, quietly, but morosely.

He is outnumbered here. But he's also right: there cannot be many of them left. There are not many of them left. They are sustained by a sort of energy: like that which the Queen drew out of the talisman he offered her, that symbol of love, of devotion, of protection. And, according to Julie, the inspiration that keeps an artist awake all night working, or makes a group of people start laughing for minutes on end for no apparent reason, or whatever it is people feel when a certain song reminds them of a moment they thought was lost to their memory.

Seems like such a fragile thing to rely on for survival. More fragile still, in a world that now broadcasts its resentments, its fear, and its cynicism on every channel, 24/7.

For a moment, he can see through the enchantment: see the mortal bodies these fey inhabit. The thin-looking kids at the edges of the clearing. The athletic types drinking from imaginary goblets. The asshole over there who can't hold down a real job because he's just too creepy. The woman before him, still one of the most beautiful he's ever seen, but beginning to age, trying to hold a mortal life and a royal kingdom together without losing her soul completely in the process. Her guards: all young men and women trying to reconcile the demands of 'real life' to the equally real oaths of fealty they took on one knee.

Just a moment, and then it's gone. The grey gets shaken off. And he catches sight of her, of the Queen of Thistles, her hands tight on the armrests of her throne, her fingertips glowing faintly, her eyes glowing faintly as falling stars shoot across them. Rafael sees it, ever so briefly: the enchantment around them faltered, and she is giving it strength again.

Her strength.

Perhaps even the morsel of it she got from Devon's talisman.

She pours it back, and the grass waves again, and the globes shine, and this little forest regains its magic where for a moment it shuddered under the reminder of just how breakable it really is.

And then she nods. "Whatever his judgement, and whatever his sentence -- if there is to be one -- Sir Marquadt will be told that you pled mercy on his behalf. Perhaps it will encourage him to do better in the future... whatever that future holds for him."

The Queen of Thistles, her momentary paleness only -- somehow -- making her beauty more striking, raises a hand. "You may go in peace," she tells him. "My court and I will return to our usual places, and Sir Marquadt will be brought before us.

"You will not see us again," she cautions him, quite seriously.

But her eyes flick to Julie. "Except maybe that one," the queen says, a touch dry. Her gaze returns to Rafael. "So I thank you for your counsel, and wish you well. For the sake of the Dreamers that Sir Marquadt ravaged, please take them each a pastry from my table. It will enchant them," she admits, "but... not in the way he did. It will help restore them."

wolf

For a moment there, the illusion wavers. The magic threatens to fade. Wolf holds his breath without knowing he does. Clenches his fists, as though waiting out an earthquake, a meteor roaring across the sky.

He sees them as they are in those moments, beautiful and pitiful, strange and sorrowful. A misfit band of last survivors without even the option of a blood-red last stand. How sad that is, he thinks, to be consigned to a silent and heatless ending. An asymptotic exhale from a dying parallel universe.

It never hits. There is no apocalypse -- not the sort that rains down fire and ash, and not the sort that strips dreams from the bones. Magic returns, as it always does, reborn and renewed,

but a little lesser every time. Another piece gone, every time.

He is looking at her directly now, the Queen of Thistles. Because he will not see them again. Because he doesn't know how much longer they will even exist. Because he has never seen anything so strange or so beautiful in his life, and never will again. Only when she gestures to the table does he glance that way. Considers a moment, then returns his attention to her.

"Give me something to remember this by instead," he says, "if you can. Want to show them a little of your kingdom and your court."

The Queen of Thistles

The Queen looks upon him with that same gentle, indulgent tenderness as before. She gives him a small shake of her head. "Would that I could, but I cannot. Whatever I might give you would, to unenchanted eyes, seem to be nothing at all. And were we to give you something that might survive such passage, its very existence in your world would break our own laws of secrecy.

"I have heard that your people understand the importance of such laws, as well," she says delicately.

"We learned long ago not to allow mortals to remember us clearly. We can only exist as we are in their dreams and stories. It is better that way."

wolf

If he weren't in the presence of immortal, dying faeries, he might pretend indifference. Put on a stoic face. Hardly seems worth it here, though. More accurately, seems impolite, a lie like that. He gives them honesty: disappointment, then acceptance.

"Understand," he says. Glances at the pastries as well. Moves over, selecting two of the smallest morsels he can find, holding them carefully in his hand.

He takes a last look around. Slowly, turning in a circle, looking at every fae, every pixie, every orb of light, every shimmering leaf. When he faces the Queen of Thistles again, he bows his head briefly.

"Your Majesty," he says, "goodbye."

The Queen of Thistles

The people at the table are mostly the goat-legged ones. Buxom, athletic women wearing skimpy tops and loincloths, jangling with bracelets and earrings, grinning at him as he approaches. The males, their horns curving back, are all shirtless and most of them are tattooed. They give him room, though, so he can get a couple of buttery, flaky pastries from the table, both filled with bright, tart fruit. Someone hands him a handkerchief to wrap them in.

He looks around and it's all still there: the checkerboard grass. The red-cheeked tinker elf with the screaming puzzlebox. The shadowy figures stroking the trees. Pixies flitting around the air. A sea of blue silk that leads up to eyes like galaxies. He looks at all of it. He notices Kenneth doing the same, though the poor kid can barely take his eyes off the Queen.

He bows his head to her. Kenneth does, too, following suit. And the Queen nods in acceptance of the gesture. She looks to the fox-faerie, too.

"Go with them, Julie," she tells her. "Make sure they get back safely. But I want you back here bright and early to assist with your patron's tribunal. You will be a key witness."

Julie just bobs into another curtsy. "Yes, m'lady," she says, without dissembling.

The Queen turns to Rafael and Kenneth one last time. "Farewell, sons of Gaia. Remember us."

That is when it begins. On those two words, even before they turn, even before they take their first steps. The Queen on her throne seems farther away than she did a moment ago, and then farther still, like a star flying away from them. The pattern in the grass is harder to see as they start walking. The trees come closer together. Faeries they could see clearly seem fewer and farther between, and then there are none at all but Julie.

The globes of light that follow them around are left behind. The quality of the light changes, becoming more natural. The last thing they lose is the music, so distant at the last that it's hard to tell if they're imagining it.

If they imagined all of it.

And there is Julie. Tromping along with them, no longer whiskered, no longer with tufted ears, no longer with little black nose. She's just a redhaired girl in a very plain sundress, her feet bare. They're nearing the edge of the treeline, of a wood that is not nearly so broad nor so deep as it seemed, when they entered it. They're just on a spit of land sticking out into a lake in the suburbs. And then they're in the suburb, and picking up Julie's clothes from behind a tree, and there's the sidewalk, the curb, the Honda Civic.

To some extent, it's like coming down off ecstasy. The banal normalcy around them feels impossibly heavy, and the memory of the faerie court seems like a poignant dream already. Kenneth looks rattled, and he looks tired, and he looks depressed. Julie seems fine, but that may be because she still sees the world in the dual way her kind always does. Or maybe she's just been dealing with this comedown since she was six years old.

The car doors unlock, and the three of them pile in.

There's a brief silence.

Then Kenneth sighs.

"Fuck me, man."