Sequel

I believe I started this on Tuesday, thus... four days ago? My head was hurting and aching and just... bad. I find it odd, how Jay reacted to Mm. It's not an angry thing, with Sidhe, it's what those who are being subdued do when someone one dominant tries something funny.

The markers... clicked in a piece for me that I've been wondering about. Barring sick and old, there would still be times when there was a need for sacrifice and Sidhe are not the type to sit around voting on who should go. They leave that kind of thing up to the gods and thus.. er... markers.

Annnnd I just broke my keyboard! periods no longer work aargh

Thus authors note is cut short and hopefully not the story as I like using periods! A lot

Just tried to dot dot dot

Read, Review and Enjoy





Mari slipped into the room and flashed a smile at Rel even as she turned her body towards Mm. The woman made a complex hand motion and bowed her head just slightly towards the Sidhe. Mm clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and bent his head to Mari.

“What?” Rel asked Mari, “hiding again?”

“No, not this time. Someone has offered up a very clever idea as per…” Mari motioned to the walls, “we are going to paint over the marker and install a white board. Then he can write whatever he pleases and we can just erase it later on.

“But first we have to get you out of the room so that we can paint over, so. We have to explain to him that we’re taking a walk and then I’ll take you out and we will deal with the walls.”

Mm stood from the bed and looked between both people. Rel looked to the door and back to Mm, he made a motion towards the door. Mm frowned and seemed to consider it all. The Sidhe shook his head in a way that implied that the Sidhe didn’t understand what Rel was trying to imply.

“Maybe we should open the door and just… walk out,” Rel murmured.

“Very well, the hallways are cleared, the doors are locked. However… if he does decide to break down a door, we will have to sedate him. With a tranquilizer gun.” Mari motioned towards the door and it popped open, like magic.

Mari walked out first and the door stayed open. Rel walked to the doorway and glanced down the hallway, grimacing at the strange fear he had of leaving the small room that was slowly becoming his home. His stomach did a lurch and his head spun as he leaned against the door frame.

Mm walked towards him, propped him up and gave him a puzzled look. Not a concerned type of look, Mm wasn’t wondering if there was something wrong with Rel. Mm was wondering why Rel was doing that.

But Rel had no idea what Mm meant. Perhaps Sidhe did not get suddenly dizzy, perhaps those that looked to be dizzy were only faking it for some reason.

Or perhaps there was something else that Rel was unaware of.

Mm stepped into the hallway first and turned, offering a hand to Rel, helping the man across the threshold of the room. It felt completely strange. Rel had become so used to his only awareness being that tiny room and suddenly the whole world was out there and at any moment it could come crashing down on him.

“Agoraphobia is not uncommon in those who are conditioned to small places, without the ability to move about prisoners in solitary confinement often go mad and refuse to leave their prison cells because they know nothing else. They can’t function in larger spaces,” Mari’s voice was calm, like she was speaking to a troubled animal. The tone was likely for Mm. The words… somehow calmed Rel’s fear.

Facts. Mari was feeding him facts to distract him. Rel growled at the woman and stalked down the hallway towards her.

“Where are we going?”

“Green room. Mik’s mother designed it especially for waiting Sidhe. Of course, we’ve had to empty it, as the tribe cannot interact with your Sidhe, not yet, anyhow,” Mari smiled politely at Rel and motioned down the hallway, “the green door at the end.”

Rel growled again and put distance between himself and Mari, even as she fell back to walk alongside Mm. The Sidhe had come to trust the woman, even after meeting her twice?

“Sometimes I wonder who we are supposed to be taming here, you, or him,” Mari murmured quietly.

He came to the green door and pulled to a stop. There was something very disturbing about the bright, rich colour of the door against the white washed walls of the program building. Despite the door, Rel could smell the plants on the other side, could practically smell the sunlight.

Mm was there an instant later, reaching over Rel’s shoulder and demonstrating a skill Rel hadn’t known the Sidhe had. Opening doors. If a Sidhe could open a door, and there had been no chains, no shackles -for Mm bore no marks from them- then how had they been confined? Could drugs along keep a Sidhe?

Or was it their land? Rel’s thoughts turned towards the idea and held it close, possessively. Sidhe were considered a pest by many and could not be easily gotten rid of, as many historical accounts claim. When a Sidhe claimed something, they held it close and fast and refused to give it up, becoming violent if anyone so much as suggested possession of the object in question.

“Lel?” Mm murmured, right in his ear, as a big, long fingered hand made a motion that Rel assumed was ‘go inside.’

Rel stepped into the green room and was transported to another place.

There was no neatness to the green. Chaos reigned the very floor he stood on had some how been transformed into grass. Pots and beds about held plants, herbs, sticks, stones, barren soil and salted ground. Trees grew, stunted variations of the forest giants Rel had seen in pictures. This one an oak, that one a birch, the other a pruned down cross between a shrub and a tree, something the Sidhe had created that grew very little in a very long time, something that people had taken to shaping. Even in the pruning of the shrub, chaos reigned.

An altar to De.

Rel’s heart skipped a beat when the wafting smell of holly met his nose. De’s smell. There was something about that scent that could light a woman’s blood on fire, that drove Illuva mad and presided over De’s temples. A poison and yet a blessing, discovering holly on one’s travels was an omen to many, though few knew how to read such an omen from De.

The plants were fed via huge windows along the walls. By one of the windows were two people. One was a woman, beyond middle aged, white streaking her hair and gray edging its way into the dark brown. The other was a tall, lanky male. The male’s eyes grew wide at Mm’s entrance, the light tapping on the woman’s shoulder became a quick, scared sort of jab.

“A moment, it would take several more minutes to even… oh…” the woman looked up at them and grimaced, “Damned to the fucking hells and back, I’m not supposed to be here. I apologise, Mm.” She stood and dusted her hands off on her very expensive looking pants.

Mm made a sound at the back of his throat and then a rumble of a few things that might have been words. The male bore his teeth, the woman smacked the male’s chest lightly.

“Behave Jay, or you can leave. The door is behind him, by the way.”

Jay wilted, for just a moment, before he replaced his wilt with a cold, indifferent mask. A Sidhe masquerading as a people.

Mm wandered from plant to plant and helped himself to a bit here, a bit there. The Sidhe sniffed at the holly tree, fingers grazing over the smooth, gray trunk for only a moment before Mm turned away from the bright red berries. There were several trees that Mm stopped at and ate more than a handful of berries.

The woman watched it all and noted which plants Mm went to.

Rel took a step deeper into the green room and gave into temptation. He wandered towards the holly and looked over the tree that stood for the god of Chaos. The opposite of Illuva, the god who stood on the balancing scales.

“And Illuva… I expect my payment

Rel snatched his hand away from the tree and backed up. Mm came over a moment later, looking between the tree and the man in seeming confusion. The Sidhe shrugged and walked away, browsing through several shrubberies.

For several hours Mm wandered the green room, seemingly taking great pains to follow Jay about the room. Mm made a game of it, or so it seemed.

Finally Mari came to fetch them and escorted them back to their little concrete room with a few new items.

A new bed, a proper bed this time, wider than the last with a frame made of wood and a very comfortable looking mattress topped with several pillows and blankets. Under the bed were piles of blankets. At the end of the bed was a wooden frame with what looked like the basis of a bed started, blankets and pillows piled and arranged in a haphazard fashion.

A new couch in front of the television set and a small table beside the set with a small, electronic fountain atop it and their tea kettle. The trickling of the water was meant to be soothing, but Rel wasn’t certain he’d be able to put up with it.

The walls were not white washed, not any more. They were a tone of green. Meant to be calming, soothing even. The ceiling was done in a calm blue, nearly the same colour of the sky. He could see the hints of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. When the lights went down there would be a different sort of view for them.

Against the wall that the bed and the box were set against was a long, long white… board. Rel hadn’t been certain what Mari had meant, until he saw the archaic thing on the wall.

“What,” Rel muttered, “no chalk board?”

“Chalk boards are impossible to recreate, expensive and not as forgiving as white boards,” Mari murmured, “he can read, correct?”

“Seemingly.”

Mari walked up to the white board and picked up several markers from the shelf there. She brought them over to Rel and Mm and held them out to Mm. The Sidhe seemed to understand what Mari meant and plucked up a marker. Mm turned it over in his hands and leaned towards Mari’s hands, looking at the other markers quizzically.

Fear sliced through Rel.

The fear multiplied when the Sidhe held out the marker he held to compare the length with the other marker’s in Mari’s hand.

Picking straws.

By the gods, Rahl-ta’s betrayal and may De be merciful. Picking of straws, the only possible thing that Rel could come up with that Sidhe in Mm’s … position… would pull straws for was to be the next to die. A way to keep the population alive while being fair to them all.

Mari’s clenched her jaw for a moment and took the marker back from Mm. She held them all up, showing him the coloured caps. Randomly Mari chose red and popped off the cap, she went to the board and made a vertical line on the board so that Mm could see the purpose of the markers. Then she recapped it and came back to stand in front of Mm, holding up the colours.

Green. Tahl-ra’s colour. Black, Rahl-ta’s colour. Red, Illuva’s colour. Blue, Ringe-il’s colour. Purple, Il-Rin’s colour. Brown, Mother’s colour. Yellow, pink and orange sat at on the board’s little shelf still, neglected and forgotten. Mari held the colours of the gods, on purpose.

Mm leaned his head close and looked over all the colours. The Sidhe plucked up the black. Mari seemed satisfied. She handed Rel the red and took green for herself. She uncapped the marker and sniffed the end. Mm copied the motion and winced back from the smell.

“Only Sidhe can smell a scentless marker,” Mari murmured, glancing at Rel, “just making certain he knows not to stick it in his mouth. Now.”

The woman went to the white board and wrote very clearly “hello, my name is Mari“ before stepping back and looking at Mm.

“Whallo maaah neume es M….” Mm frowned, stumbling over an unfamiliar word, “Mare…. Mary.”

“Mar-ee”

“Mari.” Mm frowned and then looked at Mari. A moment of puzzlement before understanding dawned on the Sidhe, “aaaahhhyuuuuu!” the Sidhe jabbed at his own chest, “Whallo maaaahhh neume es Mmwa.”

Mari pointed at Rel, “es neume?”

“Es neume Lel,” Mm patted Rel’s shoulder and then jabbered something that was completely incoherent.

“No consonants,” Mari muttered, cocking her head to the side, “wonder if Sidhe have an ancient language. When Sidhe and people met, we both took from each other’s languages. Lahu, meaning shirt, came from Sidhe lahhhluuu meaning covering of one’s chest. Harsher words with consonants and guttural sounds came from people.”

“Right. I… have found no meaning in his words, no mimicking or repeating,” Rel murmured, “without that, I can’t learn a language.”

“But he can learn ours.” Mari murmured, watching Mm look around the room, spinning in several circles.

“Neume,” Mm jabbed a finger at the bed, then at the floor and the ceiling and all around.

“Manners are something that everyone could learn,” Mari sighed.

“Not him, not my Sidhe,” Rel growled at Mari, “I’m not going to push him into the constraints of our being, it would destroy him. He needs to be whole.”

“For what?” Mari asked, setting her marker onto the little shelf.

Rel’s mind did a stumble, a tremor ran through him, head to toe, “what?”

Mari blinked at Rel, her marker still in hand, confused expression on her face, “what? What did you say?”

“I… you just…” Rel looked at Mm, the Sidhe was looking at Mari, eyes moving up and down and then focusing on the marker, “never mind… must be the fumes getting to me.”


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