Stories of Faerieland

Edinburgh Moonlight

This scene is what would be the prologue of my book. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please read the description of this story, it explains everything.

She walked through the city streets, hands trailing along the stone bricks. It was quiet, impossibly so, even in the quietest parts of the town. Pubs still ran, late night groups passing in and out in various states of sobriety and drunkenness. The moon was unusually bright tonight, illuminating the way for even the most impaired of humans. Only faint sounds of cheering could be heard through the alleys of Edinburgh that night.

Against her better judgement, Aisling pushed open a glass door to a tavern, and walked up to the bar. "Dè an ìre airson peant?" She asked. How much for a pint?

"Trì󠁞 notaichean." Three notes. Far cheaper than usual.

She needed to practice her Gaelic. It was awful, compared to her Irish. She kept mixing them up. She liked to think she was decent at French, and Russian, but not fluent. Most of her people preferred to speak only Irish or English. Easier that way. Some still spoke Greek, from the old age. The seafaring age. Those were the ancients. The ones so old their consciousness had all but faded to what they knew back then. A window to the past, of little use to the present.

Aisling didn't much care for those people. She learned her languages because of the places her work sent her, out of necessity. But still, she took pride in them, and pride in her work. Those who had no use could go and hide in their little holes forever. Just so long as they didn't get in her way. Her power gave her claws and poison, and she used them well. She was nothing if not useful.

Her ale came, in a large glass mug, foaming at the top. She liked this place, this pub. Some of the pubs would laugh at her if she walked in and ordered an ale. Some of them would only serve her if she got a man to buy it for her. This one asked no questions, only brought the beer.

She sipped it, enjoying the bitter burn down her throat. Alcohol was like poison, she thought. Sometimes it's sweet, sometimes it's sour, but it'll still kill you in the end. She took another sip, smiling over her sharp teeth at the rest of the humans. Yes, alcohol is a poison. Most other poisons just tended to kill you faster.

She took a large gulp, feeling power fill her. She practiced mithridatism. The art of consuming poison to gain immunity. Most humans practiced it without even knowing. She gained power from poison. Before her first kill, before her Naming Day, before choosing her patron, Aisling had bright green veins visible beneath her pale birch skin. She began cultivating poison, and drinking it, shortly after. Her veins then turned a blue-black, like the ink velvet of night.

She downed the rest of her beer in one gulp, astonishing those watching her. The burn traveled down her throat, reminding her of her brother, and his fire.

Then she absorbed the poison, the coolth of power flooding her veins banishing her thoughts of him. It was best that way. He was so low ranking, and seeing him was a risk. Always a risk.

She was in Edinburgh in her free time, which she had precious little of. She was only in Scotland to brush up on her Gaelic. At night, she would visit pubs, and drink. In the day, she would glamour herself, and strike up as many conversations as she could. The language, the sound, the syllables rolling off her tongue would help refresh the memory.

It was lucky she had an eternity to learn them all.

Her drink done, she sauntered back into the stone streets. Everything was gray, the brick buildings lining the old town, the concrete streets, the clouds in the sky, and the mist standing on silent cat feet in the night.

The city was its own type of poison. It wasn't the type she liked best. But it was a poison all the same, gray choking out green, the light choking out stars, and the mist choking out light.

For a sect of sidhe who most often devoted their lives to growing life, she spent an unusual amount of time humouring death. But she was okay with that. If death is the opposite of life, wouldn't understanding it help you better defeat it? Death would never claim her unless it was carried on wings of iron or steel or teeth or stone. Age could never seem to grasp her. Suffocation, water, darkness. All had little effect. And she knew that poison would never betray her. The forests were hers, the thorns were hers, and she was theirs. Death came from life came from death came from life.

She was ripped out of her reverie rather indelicately by sobbing. She looked around the alleyways and streets, and found a man crying. Tears like mercury falling from his eyes and great heaving breaths being ripped out of his lungs.

The sound grew. She burst back into the pub. Tears of ink and opal streaked black and white down cheeks reddened with alcohol. Every eye wide open. Every face wearing frighteningly blank expressions. Except for the tears. Streaks of wetness.

She watched, wary, as the blankness became wonder. They looked up, at the polished wood planks. Aisling walked back outside to see the moon glowing like a sterling sun, illuminating everything. The air turning silvered, the mist absorbing the magic and becoming alloyed with the light.

A figure appeared ahead. A faint, but familiar one. Short chestnut hair falling to a woman's shoulders. Ears subtly pointed with immortality. But all of it faded into white like an aged sheet of parchment.

"It's here, isn't it?" Aisling asked, twirling her long fingers through the swirling sea of molten silver.

"Yes. Finally," the figure said. "Can you find them?"

Aisling nodded. "I can find them easily enough. Who is handling official pickup?"

"Falcon. Using him will make it seem believable to the courts. Though I wish he'd become a full member, with you, years ago."

"And I believe it was me that prevented that. And for good reason," Aisling added.

"Fair enough. You always get the job done best. I wish you luck."

The tears must have affected her. She felt like crying herself. "Does it make you sad?" Aisling asked, out of the blue.

"What?"

"That fact that," Aisling waved her hands around, searching for the words, "it's almost over."

The figure paused, and thought. "No," it finally said. "I believe that after we've finished, we will begin a whole new mission."

"What could we possibly do, after centuries, millennia, of this?" Aisling's heart trembled inside her, expressing the fear Aisling could not. The thought of idleness, of nothing, haunted her. Like a person cast away from their path, their purpose ripped away.

"We will either have to save the world from them, and start all over, or," it paused, and bit its lip, "We will have to devote our efforts to documenting it."
"Documenting what?" The night only seemed to get brighter with every second. Aisling could see it reflecting on her birch-white skin, almost erasing the dark veins beneath it.

"The coming age."

The breath caught in Aisling's throat as the figure faded away, leaving only formless shapes in the mist to dance around her as the glow in the moon finally dimmed, then disappeared. Back to work, Aisling thought. For we've almost won.