Partner

Yesh. Plotting. During a good deal of the first half or so I was writing and going, why is Mik so stupid as to not make a connection? But if he weren't the way he was, he wouldn't be loveable.

Mik's mother has a very green thumb, but I suspect there's more to her gardening skills than what kind of fertalizer she uses... just saying.

Mik learned something today. Yay! He may also have learned the founding problem with the language barrier he faces so he might be speaking Sidhe soon. Whoot.

I'm looking forward to those times when he listens in on Sidhe conversation that the Sidhe are having when the partners are around, and him just giggling at the randomness and the jokes they're throwing around.

Jay is good amounts of fun... but I'm afraid he'll have to sit on a back burner for a bit.

Read, review and enjoy.







Jay avoided his every question, his every nag. When his mother was in the room, the two were perfect gentlemen to her.

He wasn’t happy that it was a Sidhe, like they were keeping an eye on her just in case Mik did something. But if it was the opposite, if the Sidhe had somehow placed Jay there to protect his mother… Mik could think of no better bodyguard.

Jay was stronger than the Sidhe in the program seemed to be. He lifted full pots and stone statues that weighed three hundred or four hundred pounds. A new fountain came in and Jay had pulled it off the back of the truck by himself, not even a grunt.

Mik’s mother’s garden was taking over nearly the entire yard. There was space at the center where she was going to build a wood platform, perhaps a gazebo, she wasn’t certain yet, and have parties and the little lights that gave off no heat and Mik shouldn’t look at her like she was crazy, she wasn’t going to burn to death just because she had a wood house. The small trees, saplings when she had first planted them, towered over the year, shading her garden. On either side, the neighbours had clipped the tree back and over the fence. So there was the nice, normal, healthy looking tree, whose leaves suddenly cut off as if a magical line had separated them from the next yard. There was another tree near the center of the yard, a sturdy oak that would block the sun from his mother’s proposed porch. His mother had recently added a sixth tree, to the front yard.

The old, six is a lucky number. Everything from ancient times revolved around children. Most families had six children because it had been thought to bring luck. Deaths, a type of law maker, were grouped in sixes. Councils had been grouped in six. The original territories that had arisen to make his country were even six.

A pond, dug into the ground and surrounded by rocks, would hold his mother’s precious fish, huge orange and white and black spotted things that she removed every year for the winter and placed in the living room’s enormous tank so she could watch them swimming about. Behind the pond was the vegetable garden, a new edition.

When Mik had left, his mother’s garden had been beautiful, but had no use besides that. Flowers and trees. Pathways wended between the shrubs and flowers that had taken over the once orderly flowerbeds to spread across the yard.

Mik stood on a porch, a new porch, that had been stained and properly treated against weather. A small patio set sat behind him and there was even a modern barbeque sitting beside the patio set. It was illegal to run the old things, which he was certain had upset his mother a great deal.

Spattered amongst the garden were solar lights, another new edition. One was shaped like an imp, another like a fairy. A rabbit with a farmer’s hat stood, pulling his wheelbarrow by the vegetable garden, a large “crystal” in the wheelbarrow that contained the light.

So many new editions.

And Jay had done it all.

The Sidhe would allow Mik’s mother to “play” with the plants, to shift this and that and to do what only she could do best with the wilting roses and the incredibly huge sunflowers that bordered the back fence. The first time she tried to pick up a watering can, Jay had snatched it from her hands. Mik had dismisses it.

The second and third time? Panic welled up in Mik.

Certainly, he wouldn’t mind having a brother or sister and his mother was not too old… but Jay, the only man who had been in her bed in near sixteen years -gods, would Piho really be sixteen this year?- was a Sidhe. Which meant that any child conceived would be of mixed bloodlines and. And. Mik sighed and gripped the rail of the porch.

What was he going to do? Report his own mother to the better breeding bureau?

She made no comment and Mik didn’t push. He could claim ignorance.

When he had asked where the money had come from, to pay for all the new editions, he had been told Jay had paid for them. Known each other for a few weeks and he was buying her everything. Where was he getting the money for it?

Jay ignored that question as well and when Mik had sarcastically asked how the weather was suiting his old bones, the Sidhe had started after a long moment and responded that it suited his bones fine, thank you, and who was Mik calling old?

There was finally a day when Mik and Jay were alone in the garden, his mother having gone to the market to buy food. How long had there been a farmers market in this town? Mik couldn’t recall ever having going, ever having heard anything about it. And a farmers market was just the kind of place his mother would exclaim over.

“Your mother talked them into doing it last year. Today is the first one,” Jay murmured, in response to the question Mik hadn’t realised he had asked out loud, “much can happen in a short period of time.”

“Not from what I’m told,” Mik sighed as he dropped into a wooden chair that Jay had miraculously procured from somewhere, “what is it, exactly, that you do?”

“Rob people,” Jay responded, “sell myself as a whore. Kill for money…”

“No. Really.”

Jay shrugged, “You will laugh… but I invest. Buy and trade. Started with a few dollars we managed to scrounge up from the streets and moved from there. People are predictable, it is easy for us to understand how you work.”

“Wait. We?”

A grunt, “some have had to… assimilate. Have you ever seen a boy who was strangely tall for his age, who kept to himself?”

He had. Piho had had a friend like that, before he was sick. That same boy had searched Mik out years later, looking obscenely young with bright, blonde hair. A memory that Mik had hidden away, or perhaps it was because that all those years later had been at the funeral and Mik had been in such a cloud that he hadn’t recognised the boy until he had left.

“Like illegal immigrants, we slip in and go unnoticed. My tribe, they rely on my income to keep them all in our mansion.”

“You all live in a mansion?”

“The one past the interstate, that when you’re on the bridge that is part of the interstate, you can see sitting along the river with the gardens and the land that is four city blocks.”

“Some eccentric rich guy bough four city blocks, demolished it all and… oh.” Mik sat up, “How long?”

“Us? This will be our sixteenth year. My cousin went to school with Piho, so it was easy to find your mother. She hasn’t moved since then. When I was told to come here, I was afraid that she would be a wreck, but there she was, working in her garden, smiling and happy, one of those floppy straw hats on her head and gardening gloves that were too big for her tiny hands.” Jay smiled to himself as he looked out over the garden, “Our gardens have never thrived as hers has. Every bit of information, everything I learn from her, I take back home at we try it. Doesn’t work as well. But it works.”

“You can’t have her.” Mik growled, “she’s mine.”

“Ah. People stay in contact when a mate moves from one tribe to another. Sidhe live too far away to do so. Mik assumes that the tribe would accept your mother.”

“And her child?”

“You are a bit ld to be a child…” Jay was silent for a moment before he laughed, “oh no. No. Mik. Your mother is not with child. I am sterile. Incapable. One of the reasons I think I was chosen. She has such a voracious appetite-”

“Stop! I don’t want to hear about my mother’s sex life!”

Jay sighed and moved to sit on the rail beside Mik. The Sidhe perched perfectly on it, not using hands to balance himself, setting them instead in his lap, “this life is not the one we want, not for our children, not for anyone. We hear about how people kill and people rape and people rob and we fear that that shall happen to our own tribe. This life you live, in metal huts, with the sky closed over you. How can you live like that, Mik? When it rains, to not feel it upon your face. To not have dark, clean, healthy earth to dig one’s toes into. To know the ache and the desire for a long time tree is just… there are no words to describe how hollow we feel without our home.”

“Then why live in a city?”

“Because Whisper told us that this shall be our new home. That we will be needed here. We have the seed for a long time tree,” a pause, a sigh, “but we don’t think the soil will support it. Your mother is a blessing and a job at the same time. I am happy that I was sent to her for so many reasons.”

“Why not plant it here?”

Jay looked around, “I doubt the neighbours will move. They take pride in the fact that they live beside Piho’s mother. Long time trees need a lot of land. Downward and up and all around. The trunk alone, once it’s large enough for us to live in, will take over the land we have already purchased. Even if I convinced the tribe to accept her and her to move in with us… we are odd in our ways and this garden of hers…”

“Make it into a memorial garden,” Mik was surprised the words came from his mouth, he sighed, “I just can’t seem to make up my mind, whether I hate you, or whether I like you.”

“Mm,” a sound at the back of Jay’s throat.

“Am I a half-breed?”

“Your father was a bastard, so you could call yourself a bastard-people,” Jay murmured, “but if you mean, do you carry Sidhe blood in your veins, the answer is no. No more so than any other people.”

“How long does it take a long time tree to grow?” as in… how long did Mik have to prepare Koln for the fact that Sidhe had moved in next door, so to speak?

“Depends on the soil, on the care. Twenty years and the young ones could sleep in it. Forty and the young and the elderly could sleep in it. Sixty and perhaps I could. I would be elderly then…” a sigh, “but still. To die knowing an old time tree has been planted, that my family will be safe because they live there. There would be not better way to go.”

Both were silent for a long, long moment, “do you love her?”

“As I have no other woman,” Jay responded quickly, “it is not often that Sidhe look outside of Sidhe for a partner. But it does happen. It is a calling between the bloods, a need to understand, a need to know, a need to draw the people back to their beginnings. Our gods say that people like myself and your Sidhe will one day be referred to as saviours, for we shall have saved the people from themselves.”

“Not everything good about people is Sidhe, surely. Otherwise… why would you bother saving us?”

Jay laughed, “Mik. Gods play with people. Illuva keeps them from playing with Sidhe, but for how long? If people no hear gods’ voices, then they cannot be played with. Fodder.”

Mik gave Jay a look. Jay shrugged.

“Not everything good about people is Sidhe. Not everything bad about Sidhe is people. You have redeeming qualities. Like popsicles. And kittens. The fact that all on your own, your government made a program to save the Sidhe, that speaks monumental … monumental… eh… there are hardly the proper words.

“Once warriors walked the lands, these warriors, we could tell from a distance away. They would protect their families no matter what. They would stand in battle and bellow their rage and the enemy would cringe and our hearts would soar. That. That is the feeling we feel now. The warrior that your program will become is on it’s hands and knees, crawling along, trying to find out how to walk. It needs that extra help to stand on its own. But when it finally steps into the battle field, the enemy will step back, aghast at what they must face, afraid of their own demise.”

“Teach me to say love.”

“Ayato, means lover, ayata means love, people words, but… Ayata was the only name the people could give to mother earth. Her true name is beyond your capabilities to understand, yet alone say. Ayato… his name is long forgotten, but in most of your myths, he is the one the gods have used and abused. He is the one whose blood built your cities, saved your lives time and again when you turned your back on him. He has not been back since you began making metal moving things.”

Mik was facing Jay when he spoke, and so he saw the slight hand motion every time Jay said Ayato. Like making a wave with his hand, across his chest, from right to left. Ayata was the same, but from the other side.

“What if I just say, Ayato.” No hand motion.

Jay looked at him puzzled, a confused look on his face, “that sounds hollow.”

“And if I say… Ayato,” the hand motion.

“That seems better. What did you do?”

Did they not realise that they were reading body language? Was it just that natural to them? To learn the language of the body along side the spoken words? To listen to the words and watch the body unconsciously, putting two and two together?

“… and if I say Ayato,” he made the motion for Ayata.

“Insulting, you seem to imply that Ayato is love. Ayato is lover. Masculine. Only something feminine could represent love.”

Mike made a small sound, “no wonder people screw up the language so much.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just… a muttering.”


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