The smell made Jinsol's head feel filled with air, as if she couldn't think anymore. She didn't mind. Not thinking was good.
"But don't you worry. You're going to be just fine. I'll help you settle in." Yves said, letting go of Jinsol, taking an apple from one of the branches, making it jump up and down in her hands, as if testing its firmness. It was sort of hypnotizing. "Come you, you're hungry. You can eat this."
It wasn't a question, and Yves didn't wait for an answer to the question she never posed before putting the apple in Jinsol's hands. Jinsol stared from the apple - shiny and red, unnatural to any human standards - and then to Yves, who wasn't human. She was too deep in this mess to leave, and didn't even know how to go back home (not that she wanted to, anyway. She had run to a forest for a reason.), for starters.
Jinsol bit the apple.
The first lesson Jinsol learned was that time passed differently in the fairy realm. She met people who thought it was still the 17th century, who thought it only had been ten minutes since they had been playing a card game with the fairies, who thought that a minute had passed when no, it had been a day.
The sun, too, never rose and never died; it was always a sunset, warm and yet cool, giving the world more shadows than it asked for, and she figured it corroborated the idea that time didn't pass.
When she asked Yves - something of a fairy queen, but she didn't seem to care for the title; it seemed many fairy queens existed, all clustered together - about it, the girl smiled, pulling her closer, hands in Jinsol's hand, dragging her closer in the couch they were sitting on, watching a party go by. Yves didn't seem cold to the touch anymore, but maybe it was Jinsol who wasn't the warm one now.
"Time is meaningless when you live forever, Jinsol. Why should the sun rise and set, when it doesn't matter?" Yves replied as an answer, and put a finger under Jinsol's chin, raising it up slightly, analyzing her face from all possible angles. "You're going to be this pretty forever."
The answer to a question Jinsol had never cared about. She sighed, and Yves seemed pleased with herself, putting one hand in the side of Jinsol's face, and she couldn't help but lean into the touch, closing her eyes for a moment. It was familiar and comfortable.
"That wasn't what I was worried about," Jinsol said, and Yves giggled, letting go, draping herself over Jinsol as the girl opened her eyes. She laid her head in Jinsol's lap, closing her eyes, and Jinsol knew it was stupid to smile at it, but she did, nonetheless. "You can't sleep."
"Maybe I want to," Yves said, eyes closed, stifling a false yawn. A mimicry of sleepiness Jinsol was sure Yves had never felt. "I always wondered how it would feel to fall asleep like humans do. To dream. I heard it's very pleasing."
That was sort of cute. Jinsol couldn't help but stifle laughter, and pretended not to see the gentle smile Yves had on her face.
"Then let me correct my phrase: you don't sleep. None of us do."
Yves giggled, but said nothing. She touched Yves' face with one finger, tracing the contour of her bones, and thought.
Fairies (and Jinsol was one now, she guessed; something with the apple made her one. She wouldn't learn until later that eating fairy food would bind you to their realm) didn't sleep. It had been maddening, the first few weeks, awake and restless, staring at a wall and praying for sleep to come, but now she was used to it. Spending the entire life awake was a bit boring, at times, but she played games with other to pass the times she should've been asleep.
She still missed sleeping - Jinsol figured it was something of her human nature that simply couldn't be changed, fairy or not.
"At least give me an apple, before you sleep," Jinsol said, carding her fingers through Yves' hair, and the girl smiled, moving her hand slightly, and a branch filled with apples appeared over their heads, offering soft shadows in Yves' face, emolduring it like it was a painting. Yves could be a painting that Jinsol loved and went back to see every day (and in a way, she was).
