5. alastair

The fire was inching closer and closer to Nyx's toes as it burned up the floor of straw.

Nyx's hands, pressed against the cold wall of the tiny cottage, pressed harder into the surface when the front door burst open and filled the room with outside light, a formidable figure standing in the threshold.

The roaring fire between her and the figure prevented her from being able to see them clearly, but somehow she knew they were watching her. She felt a strange sense of calmness come over her, even though the fire was now inches away from eating her up.

"Caspian, do something!" she heard the boy-creature yell, and only seconds after came a loud swooshing sound, and before she knew it the fire that had once been blazing and burning her eyes died down quietly until there were only a few pieces of straw that were lit with flames. The entire ground was covered in water that slowly pooled to the tip of her leather boots.

Blonde eyebrows creasing as her body immediately began to grow cold from the absence of the fire, Nyx slowly rose her head to the figure in the door whom she could see much more clearly.

It was a man—well, as much of a man as one of those creatures could be. Even though he was standing next to the boy-creature who was only three quarters the size of Nyx herself, he was immensely tall and buff. He wore a silver shirt whose long sleeves were stretched by his bulging biceps, and below it he wore silver pants of the same color that went down to his ankles until they were nothing but jagged and ripped ends, similar to the wrists of his sleeves; yet the rips seemed completely natural, as if they were made to be that way and hadn't been fashioned by several years and hard labor like one would've naturally thought.

His skin was dark, his face strong and sculpted by a muscular jawline. His nostrils flared under the flat edge of his nose, his lips pursed forward. He reminded her of a cavalry general save for a few noticeable characteristics that definitely distinguished him as nonhuman. His eyes were an unnatural aquamarine, a soft blue hardened with an underlying shade of green. They glowed the same way the icy woman-creature's had, except his were calm and sturdy, not piercing and volatile like hers had been.

Behind his wide shoulders were a large set of wings colored a chalky navy blue. They were majestic even though they sat still on his shoulder blades, adding to his overall stoicism. His face was serious and slightly agitated, but his eyes certainly peaceful.

It was when she noticed the last few flames of fire extinguish that she saw what the man-creature had been doing with his raised hands. Her eyes widened upon seeing water that streaming from the center of his palms, directed towards the floor that was charred black from the fire. The loud swooshing sound she had heard must have been the water coming from his hands, but now it streamed much quieter and softer, almost like a waterfall.

Her honey brown eyes widened in shock at the sight, and for a moment she thoroughly believed she was dreaming.

"Whew!" the stout boy breathed, wiping his forehead that was lined with sweat. "I was sure that I was two seconds away from becoming tomorrow's bacon for breakfast!"

The tall creature seemed to ignore him, his eyes boring right into the small human girl's frightened ones. The clear water that had been streaming from his hands stopped, and he slowly lowered his arms back to his sides. Nyx looked between the two of them and the open door behind the intimidating water wizard, and for a split moment she had thought about dashing out between them and through the door; but by the looks of the taller creature, one hand movement would be all it would take for him to snap her neck.

"Nyx," the smaller creature began, pulling on the belt that dug into his chubby belly. "This is Caspian. He is a water fae, the last of the line!" He pointed to the tall man who apparently was a fae named Caspian.

Caspian gently nodded his bald head downwards, his full lips shadowing some sort of smile. He was still scary and serious, nonetheless.

"Oh, and I'm Erlin, by the way. I'm a shifter fae, the last of the line, as well!" He brusquely stuck out his hand towards her, to which she reacted by jumping slightly and eyeing it suspiciously without ever even considering shaking the fae's hand.

Nyx looked between Caspian and Erlin, trying to make sense of the fact that there were two creatures with wings and pointed ears right before her and that one of them had just put out a fire with some magical water that had flowed right from his hands.

Seeing that she was not going to accept his polite handshake, Erlin slowly retracted his hand as his ears twitched and his soft cheeks blushed with embarrassment. He was a rather dippy little thing, for his embarrassment immediately shifted to a more upbeat tone as he told her, "Don't fret about the fire, by the way. It's a regular occurrence around here."

Caspian chuckled at Erlin's comment, looking down at the shorter fae with a knowing look. "'Tis true," he spoke, his voice a deep timbre that reminded Nyx of the low bumbling of rushing water in a stream and the way it would vibrate against any rocks that stood eternally in its way. Even his voice was steady and calming.

Erlin began turning his head about the room until his dark brown eyes finally landed on one of Nyx's boots that was lying on the floor a few feet away. Scurrying, he picked up that one before finding the other and cradling both in his arms. Nervously approaching the girl, he hesitantly held the boots out to her. "As long as you swear to not try to injure me with these again."

Nyx pursed her lips, keeping her eyes on Erlin's as she carefully took the boots from his hands and avoided touching her hands to his. "No promises."

Caspian released another small, unsmiling chuckle. "Put your shoes on, human. There's someone you need to meet."

"She does have a name, y'know," Erlin immediately countered the taller fae who disinterestedly turned his head to stare at the hobbit.

Wanting to be thankful for Erlin standing up for her but still wary of him and her entire reality, Nyx gripped the leather of her boots that she ached to throw at the both of them and inquired in a hoarse voice, "Why am I here?" Her fingertips grew numb from the coldness seeping into the cottage; behind Caspian and through the open door she could see the snow-covered ground.

"That is why there is someone you need to meet. She will explain everything to you." Caspian's navy blue wings fluttered a bit, a few snowflakes falling from them, as he turned towards the door with his hands clasped in front of him.

Nyx bent down and began reluctantly pulling her boots onto her feet. Turning her head downwards made her remember the pounding headache she had, and she could feel that the small drip of blood from her wound had already frozen cold against her skin. Shaking from the icy air, she pressed the fae further by asking, "Who do I need to meet?"

"Alastair," Caspian answered her, slowly turning his head towards her, aquamarine glowing a bit brighter as he continued, "Our leader."

The mere words made Nyx gulp in fear. "Y-You have a leader?"

Erlin's feet shuffled against the ground as he plucked Nyx's tan cloak from where it hung on a hook beside the door, scuffling over to her and handing it to her. "Of course we do," he answered. "Now, come on. She's waiting."

"She?" Nyx carefully pulled her cloak over her shoulders and clasped it at the neck, pulling the hood over her head that was still spinning.

"And she can be quite a hothead when kept waiting," Caspian continued, glancing over to Erlin who immediately started chortling at what must have been some kind of joke that went straight over Nyx's head. Seeing that the girl had her boots and cloak on, he waved his hand gracefully towards himself. "Follow me."

Turning, the tall fae exited the small cottage through the open door. Nyx watched him, frightful eyes widened, still unsure whether or not she was dreaming. She wanted to think that she was, that after the quarrel with her mother that caused her to flee the house like a chicken with its feathers ruffled she had fallen somewhere in the snowy forest and was still asleep, still dreaming.

The sound of Erlin scuffling drew her from her mental debate. The fae a head shorter than her gestured towards the door and bent slightly, allotting her to walk out before him. She didn't trust the little thing to be behind her, but she took a step forwards anyways, gulping down her trepidation and stepping through the front door.

The snow-covered ground immediately blinded her, causing her to raise her arm and shield her eyes from the brightness. That tiny cottage had been so dark, and her pounding headache made her eyes even more sensitive to the light. She retracted her arm back around herself, clutching her own waist to preserve body heat in the extremely cold temperature she was now thrust into.

Caspian, who walked a few feet in front of her with his bare feet padding the snow, was seemingly unbothered by the freezing air, and so was Erlin behind her who had snowflakes softly accumulating in the spikes of his hair.

The cottage they had been in was surrounded by tall and mighty trees, and Nyx had the instinctive feeling that they were several miles deep into an endless forest. The trees looked like any other trees she had seen in her life. The snow was like all other snow she had seen. But the inkling feeling inside her told her that she was far, far away from home.

"W-Where are we?" she questioned, licking her lips from the dryness that the cold air was already imposing on them. She squinted her eyes to shield them from the brightness, keeping them trained on the way the ends of Caspian's wings dragged lightly on the snow, leaving lined indentions. She had heard villagers talk before about how the mythical fae creatures could be tracked by the long marks their wings made on the ground. She had always thought it to just be legend.

"This is where we hide," Caspian's strong voice called out through the flurries swirling in the air about them.

The snow started to get even thicker on the ground the further they traveled. She struggled to keep up with Caspian's pace due to her boots sinking down in the snow and taking too much effort to be pulled back out of it. Glancing behind her shoulder and over Erlin's hair she saw that the small and nearly dilapidated cottage with snow blotting its roof was now dozens of meters behind them.

She turned back around, the snow beginning to calm down again. It seemed to be coming and going in waves. "Hide?" she questioned. "F-From humans?" Her words came out forced because of the way her teeth chattered from the cold.

An amused laughter from Caspian's deep voice drifted in the air, and she even heard Erlin chuckling behind her. "No, no. We may choose to separate ourselves from the human race from pure disinterest, but we would never have a reason to hide." He stopped for a moment and turned to her, deep blue eyes twinkling towards her. "If anything, humans should hide from us."

An unsettling feeling rose in her stomach at his words, but the impish smile on his dark face eased her and gave her hope that he was only joking. He never answered her as to why they had to hide, but she was too cold to really care. They continued marching through the forest until they came upon a hill, one that proved extra hard for Nyx to climb. She grunted as she pulled her boot up out of the deep snow only to plant it right back in about a foot forwards. This was a strenuous process that made her calves start to burn.

Caspian and Erlin, whom she assumed had lived their entire lives in nature, ascended the snowy hill with ease. Biting her numb lower lip, she took a final step forwards which landed her at the top of the hill. She panted, clutching her cloak around her shuddering body as she caught her breath, Erlin scuffling up next to her.

Raising her head, Nyx's golden eyes widened in awe at what they caught sight of from under the brim of her hood. There, over the hill and before another one, nestled several cottages between the tall trees. They were similar to human cottages, built of cruck and wood, but there was something ethereal about them. Instead of being shaped completely square, the cottages were curved at their sides and circular towards the roof, as if they had been melted and then solidified a bit misshapen. Nonetheless, they were elegant and cute, most of them having dark green vines running up the sides with their leaves covered in fresh snow.

The cottages weren't even the most awe-inspiring part of what Nyx saw. What really amazed her were the snug little treehouses built high up in the trees, so high that she had to tilt her head up to see them. She had heard of treehouses that kids' fathers would make for them, but she had never seen any of such majesty. They were built of dark wood that blended with the barks, and they were completely circular as if they were giant bird nests built right around the sphere of the trees. There were quite a few of them, five or six from what Nyx could see. What stunted her human mind the most was not only how high up they were, but the fact there were no ladders or steps built into the barks of the trees to reach the little treehouses. She couldn't see any way to possibly climb up to them. When she remembered that she was living in the land of creatures with giant wings and bodies built for flight, she realized that ladders and steps were useless where she was.

"You see the big one there?" Caspian interrupted her thoughts, pointing his finger to a particularly large treehouse where Nyx's eyes followed. "That is where our leader stays."

That treehouse was wide and tall, with windows lining the middle section all around. Through one of the windows she could see the orange light of a fire burning, smoke rising from the roof of the treehouse where some sort of chimney must have been carved to release the smoke.

"Come," Caspian urged, waving his hand towards himself. "We've kept her waiting long enough, with you trying to burn down our guest cottage." He began marching towards the treehouse, Nyx following behind him.

"I've already had my lectures from Al today, so I'll see you guys later!" Erlin called from behind Nyx. She turned around to see him flap his wings, lifting himself off the ground as he waved goodbye which she hesitantly returned. Flapping his wings that were measly compared to Caspian's, the small fae turned and glided away through the trees, hovering only a few yards above the ground although she knew he could probably fly much higher than that.

"Al?" she repeated the absent Erlin's words, turning back to Caspian whose navy wings dragged on the ground before her, her own feet stepping in the trails they left behind. "I thought you said your leader is a her?"

"She is," he answered valiantly. "Alastair is her name. She goes by Al for short."

They reached the thick trunk of the tree where their leader's place was, and Nyx could hardly see it because of how hard she had to crane her neck up. She glanced back to Caspian, thrown off guard to see his aquamarine eyes staring at her as he held out both of his hands. Blonde eyebrows sewed together. "What?" she breathed, fog leaving her mouth.

"I don't suppose you have any way to get up there, by the looks of it." He glanced over her shoulder where, on a fae's body, a pair of wings should have been. "I'll have to fly you up."

Her eyes lowered to his hands with distrust. With another glance up at the treehouse, she felt a dread to meet whomever was inside of it. Meeting their leader would officially set in stone the fact that it was all real and not a hallucination, and the girl was having a fond time pretending it was all just a dream. But this dream seemed all too real, and she knew she needed to figure it out.

So, glancing back to the handsome fae whose black eyebrows rose in amusement, she nodded her head downwards in a signal of permission. Stepping forward, she went to grab his hands, but the fae took hold of her sides and suddenly leaped up into the sky, a huge rush of wind fanning across Nyx as his large wings flapped and sent them shooting up into the air. Nyx, full of surprise and fear, let out a scream as she clung to the fae whose wings raised them higher and higher up.

Before Nyx's scream could even become full-fledged, Caspian landed them onto the outer wooden ledge of the treehouse, all the wind that had been created dying down into pure silence. Her eyes which had been squeezed shut slowly opened. Arms gripping the tall fae tightly, she looked over the ledge only a few inches from their feet to the white ground so many yards below. A dizziness came to her head as her stomach dropped at the height.

The sound of a deep voice chuckling vibrated against Nyx's ears. She felt Caspian gently unlatch her hands from around him. "You've got quite a grip for a human girl," he remarked with a pearly smile.

Realizing how close she was to the creature she had just met and discovered was even real, she quickly took several steps back. Although looking downwards only made her feel like she was about to fall right over, looking straight ahead and upwards pulled the breath from her lungs. She could see everything, all the cottages on the ground, the other cabins built onto tree trunks, and near above she could see the tops of the snowy trees, the glorious mixtures of brown, dark green, and white.

Caspian stepped forward and took hold of the knob of the door that was between him and the girl who leaned against the cabin wall to keep herself safe, slowly swinging it open. His eyes, still as the ocean, bore into the girl's as he kept the door held open for her. "Well, go ahead."

Nyx clutched her arms over herself both from the cold and from her nervousness. Meeting the leader of this mythical species was already nerve-wracking enough, but she would probably also explain why it was that Nyx was being caught up in it. Nyx had an aching suspicion that she didn't want to know why, that the leader was going to be the deliverer of horrible news.

Glancing up at Caspian with a look of doubt, she was shocked to feel suddenly more at ease when looking at him. Something about the tranquility in his eyes, like a still pond on a cold autumn morning, infected her nerves and squashed them. She remembered from the way he had put out the fire earlier that he was a water fae. She wondered if having the so-called "powers" of water meant he also had the relaxing capabilities of the element, as well.

He must have, for his look of assurance gave her the confidence to take a deep breath and take a step through the door, keeping that breath held as she slowly raised her eyes upwards.

The figure who met her eyes stripped that breath from her lungs upon first sight.