Fey

Part Two

Part Two

 

     "So it's true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love."

                       ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

 

     Rifts.

     Faeries.

     Guardians.

     Aidan still could not wrap his mind around those things actually existing.

     After Aisling and Elspeth had persuaded Bettina not to kill him, he'd had nothing else to do but wait and watch as they made plans on how to "close the blasted hole" and "repair the walls between realms so those fuckers don't get out", according to Bettina. He'd asked questions every now and then, which they'd answered readily.

     "What are you?" he'd asked first.

     "Of fae but not fae", Elspeth had replied in a singsong voice.

     "What?" he'd replied, confused by her answer.

     "Our blood is a mixture of faerie blood and a few other beings. We Guardians are created, not born", Aisling had explained, never once taking her gaze from the ancient - looking open tome before her.

     "Faeries? Like elves and pixies?"

     "Yes, but there are many more types of fae than that. We kill the ones that try to escape their realm without the permission of both the Seelie Queen - that's the queen of the light court of faeries - and our creator."

     "But...aren't you faeries too?"

     "No. Never that, Aidan", Elspeth had replied,suddenly very serious. "We are many things - but not faeries. The best way to destroy monsters like them was to make us a little like them. That is what our creator had in mind when we were formed. So we only have some essence of them within us." She'd whirled out of her chair and tapped his chin impishly. "You are more of a faerie than we are, Aidan Cassidy!"

     "What do you mean by that?"

     "Somewhere in your Irish ancestry", Aisling had explained, "there was a couple - one human, one faerie - that gave birth to one of your direct ancestors. Some of the traits of your faerie ancestor have been passed down - this is common in descendents of matches like those. The traits pass on no matter how many generations pass, though they do become less powerful as time passes."

     Perhaps witnessing Gwen's sudden disappearance had made him more open - minded and accepting, because Aisling's explanations had made complete sense to him. It had been as if he had been given a missing piece of a puzzle he had not known he was trying to solve. Suddenly all the pieces had fallen into place, aligned, and felt right.

     "So", he'd said after processing this information, "what exactly happened to Gwen?"

     "She got sucked into a rift". Bettina had replied simply.

     "What?"

     "Whenever a faerie is attempting to breach the walls between their realm and this one, they create a rift in the fabric of the walls separating the two. Some can have a vacuum effect, but if this was one of those, we definitely would have sensed its appearance", Aisling had answered, once again seeming to be speaking out loud to herself than to anyone else. "The strength of the faerie determines the level of control they would have over the rift they are trying to create. The lower the level of the faery, the easier it is to detect them."