Sequel

Two chapters in one day! This seems to cover a lot more than I meant it too. Well. It does cover a lot more than I meant it to. There are several things in here that the Sidhe in Partners do not do.

Muan is shedding - shedding the bad skin, replacing it with good skin. I've heard of a few Sidhe doing this, but I think it has more to do with him being a healer. Kind of like how when Paw was hurt and Lillow healed him, the dead or bad flesh was expelled from Paw's body.

The other part... well if one has read Namesakes this almost makes sense.

Except no Sidhe in modern history has done it.

Now my Tuesday/Wednesday begins so I'll see you all in thirty hours or so.

Read, Review and Enjoy.






After Koln left, and the coffee was gone, Rel took the craft supplies into the center of the room and dumped them onto the floor. Literally dumped them. The items spilled out of the box and a few Styrofoam balls rolled across the floor. Muan chased one and gave it a bat. The Sidhe chased after it, on hands and knees and began batting it about the floor as Rel riffled through the book of crafts. Looking for something simple to do. A chain of people holding hands.

Sounded, and looked, simple enough.

Rel took a piece of paper and folded it just as the book instructed. Muan plucked up the ball and brought it back to Rel. The Sidhe watched Rel cut the shape of a person out of the paper and then as Rel pulled it open. To reveal.

A bunch of individual, very crookedly cut people. Rel frowned at the paper people. Muan plucked up a piece of paper and peered at the book. The Sidhe folded according to instructions and then tore little bits out of the corners, off of the edges and even folded the paper again to pull more out of the center. Muan unfolded the paper to reveal.

A string of icicles.

Rel’s mouth dropped open. Muan looked at the icicles and then looked at the window as if wondering where they were. The Sidhe looked back at his icicles and then up at Rel questioningly. It was a sort of puzzled look, like Muan couldn’t understand why they looked like icicles but weren’t icicles.

Rel chewed his bottom lip and looked about the supplies. He pulled out a glue stick and silver glitter. Very gently he took the icicles from Muan and painted an edge here, and edge there, with the glue. As Muan watched, Rel opened the container of glitter and sprinkled it over top of the glue. When Rel dumped the glitter from the paper, thusly revealing the glittered icicles, Muan clapped his hands excitedly.

Taking the tape, Rel walked up to a pillar of their apartment floor and taped the icicles to the pillar. Muan watched him do this with great interest. The Sidhe snatched the tape from Rel’s hands and broke off a piece, playing with it with his fingers before pushing it against Rel’s forehead. Leaving Rel with a piece of tape on his forehead.

Muan took a piece of paper and a glitter glue thing. The Sidhe began a very scraggly, line heavy picture that made no sense to Rel’s eyes. Rel took up cutting strips of different coloured papers for a paper ring garland. For a while, the only sound was the scratching of Muan’s pens and the tap of the Sidhe’s toes against the floor.

“Lel?” Muan said finally, propping his head up with his hand. The Sidhe’s eyes were on the paper and the jumbled mess of lines.

“Mm?” Rel had meant it as a question. He hadn’t meant it as the Sidhe’s name, had forgotten it as Muan’s name even, oddly, until the Sidhe looked up at Rel and smiled just a little.

Muan turned his attention back to the picture, scratching away at it, “Cone,” a motion to the stuff and then the elevator.

“Koln brought the craft stuff, yes.”

“Cohhhn br. Bough. Br…”

“Brought,” Rel said slowly, realising what Muan was doing. Trying to teach himself the language.

“Broughhhhhhth teh crift shturf.” Muan’s eyebrows drew down, “yessssh? Te yesssh?”

“Yes,” Rel gave a nod of his head, then said, as he shook his head, “no.”

Muan considered this and turned back to his picture, “Auh,” a nod, “Awuah,” a shake.

Holy gods in the heavens. Rel shifted his position and tried not to seem too interested in learning Sidhe. Not Sidhe. Well. Sort of Sidhe. A different dialect of Sidhe, a language so dead that the other Sidhe didn’t know it. A dead language. That wasn’t so dead.

Rel’s heart skipped a beat. To know something that no one else knew would amaze him and interest him to no ends. He felt the shift in his attention and knew that this would be a new obsession. That he would learn the language like he had learned to cook. Quickly, eagerly and lovingly.

“Auh,” that was easy. Very, very easy. “Awuha.” Shit, that one was harder. It was like the sound of it didn’t want to come out of his mouth. Why was yes so easy, but no so hard? Because one had to be certain how to say no, that no was the word they wanted? Could a slip of a tongue of someone who said no be taken as that person saying yes? “Awuah.” there. The sound of it made the back of his throat tingle in a very bad way. Like a sound that wasn’t meant to be made.

“Auh,” Muan grinned and set the glitter pen to the side. The Sidhe held his picture up.

A jumbled mess of sparkles and in the center of it all a little black stick figure. Green and red and… all the colours of the gods. What did it mean, what could it mean? If it meant anything at all.

Rel looked at the picture and then at Muan. He plucked the tape up from by the Sidhe’s leg and walked to a nearby pillar. He taped the glitter picture to the pillar and returned to Muan’s side, handing the Sidhe the tape. Muan blinked at the picture up on the pillar, frowning. The Sidhe bit his bottom lip as the frown deepened.

Did Muan not realise what he was drawing? Strange but. Art was supposed to be a method of therapy. Not one Rel was good at. Not one he was interested in becoming good at. There were other things to divest his energy into.

Muan scratched absently at his face. Bits of skin flaked off.

Bits of.

“Muan, look over here,” Rel motioned and Muan looked over at him.

Down the side of Muan’s face was a patch of skin that looked rather rough. Rel reached out and brushed his hand over the skin. It flaked away easily and under it was bright, healthy skin. Muan was shedding.

Rel tugged at Muan’s hand and led the Sidhe to the bathroom. He had no idea if the shedding was normal, but he pretended it was. He ran a tub of water and skipped on the oils that were meant to hydrate skin. That would make it harder to get the shedding skin off of the healthy stuff and, to Rel’s mind, would cause problems. Health problems.

He pulled out a washing brush and set it beside the tub. It took a lot of urging to get Muan out of his clothing. The Sidhe made a face as he climbed into the water. Rel didn’t have to urge the Sidhe to give him arm or leg. Muan let Rel move his arms and scrub it with a lack of resistance that spoke of years of such treatment. Rel was gentle as he could be and the skin came off, falling to the water in small clumps.

Once Rel had given Muan a gentle scrub, the Sidhe looked away, to the wall, as if expecting something else. Rel had done the same in prison, had looked away from his molesters. He sighed and gave Muan’s shoulder a pat. Rel plucked up the towel and stood, holding it out for Muan.

The Sidhe frowned for only a moment before standing and moving into the towel. Despite being taller than Rel, Muan bend his head and touched it to Rel’s shoulder. For a moment they stood like that and then Rel forced them apart, as Muan had done earlier in the day. Showed Rel the same care and respect that Muan had shown him.

Dried off and in new clothing, Muan was wilted but still the Sidhe gave Rel a small smile before shuffling to the living area. Rel cleaned the tub, for the skin seemed to cling to the sides, and moved to the living area.

Where Muan was on hands and knees, chest heaving. No sound was coming out of Muan’s mouth.

Shit.

Rel rushed to Muan’s side and dropped heavily to his knees. Sidhe needed breath less than people, so he, oddly, had plenty of time to dislodge whatever it was. Muan’s mouth was already open, all he had to do was slide his finger into Muan’s throat. His fingers grazed something hard for just a moment before the contractions of Muan’s throat forced his fingers out and a moment later, the something hard splatted into Rel’s hand.

He frowned down at the small gray lump and moved to the kitchen sink. He stuck his hand under the tap and turned on the water. The mucus washed away and with a bit of a scrub, Rel found himself looking at a lump of metal.

A lump.

Of metal.

There was no sheen to it, it did not sparkle and it had no hard edges. It was just worn smooth. There were lines, where the metal had cooled and then more metal had come down on top of it. Here and there, in those cracks, there was a bit of a sparkle amongst the dark, almost black of the unfinished edges.

What the fuck was it, and where the fuck had it come from?

Rel turned it over in his hands, studying it this way and that. It just didn’t. Compute. It didn’t make sense. There had been no metal in Muan’s system when he came back from the operation. None, he had seen the scan himself. Not a speck of anything that shouldn’t have been there. Yet here. Was metal.

No where along the way could Muan have eaten the metal. They were together nearly constantly and there was no metal showing in the apartment. At least. None that would have been shaped like this, smoothed out like this. Coloured like this.

Such a dark gray, Rel couldn’t name a single metal with this quality or that other. The lack of sparkle in the finished product but the sparkle in the unfinished? Sounded like something from science fiction. From fantasy. From the black blades of myth.

Impossible.

Just as impossible as the only explanation that Rel could come up with for the metal.

For if it had not come from the outside environment, it must have come from Muan. From inside the Sidhe. Which was impossible.

Not a creature on the gods’ green earth could create metal as a bodily product. Not a single one.


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