Sequel

It took several days for me to decide whether or not to update Partners, as there is a signifigant bit. But then I realised it won't really change so... Partners can wait until there's something more to write.

Rel keeps surprising me and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing... but it happens and it changes regular old, "I'll make popcorn for a popcorn garland!" into "holy shit, please don't kill me"

Read, Review and Enjoy.




When Rel woke the next morning, he found himself built into a little nest. There was a pillow to his back, another to his front and several blankets draped and tucked around him. Several more blankets than he had started with. Yet is was comfortable.

He peeked out over top of the blankets to find the sun was shining…

And his apartment was nearly decorated.

The paper garland that Rel had started had grown to wrap around a pillar and then across and to another pillar, drooping low enough for Rel to touch without standing on his tip toes. More icicles were on the pillars, creating an odd, half melted cave look to the apartment. Snowflakes had joined the icicles in various forms. Large and small, paper, glittered, painted, pipe cleaners and even pompoms. Rel had no idea that pompoms could be used for making snowflakes, yet somehow Muan had gotten them to work.

Rel crawled out of bed and rubbed his head. Just as he finished he heard, “oh, he’s up.”

A woman’s voice.

Rel growled and looked up at Mari. The woman’s hair was braided, beads and feathers and leather bits all throughout. She wore clothing that was cut into a very presentable style, yet was made of a coarser material. Not flannel, but not the wrinkle free stuff that was used for dress shirts. She wore a pair of pants that cut off below the knee and were well patched.

Across from her sat Muan, concentrating intently on the glass ball he was filling with sparkles. Not covering in sparkles, not decorating with sparkles, filling. With iridescent sparkles. Muan made a sound at the back of his throat.

“You slept like a rock,” Mari murmured, “poor guy got hungry and tried to cook his own dinner. I got here just as the flames shot up.”

Flames? He didn’t smell any-

Rel breathed in through his nose and wondered how he could sleep through something that left such a heavy smell of smoke on the air.

“How long was I…”

“Sixteen hours,” Mari responded, “I made him breakfast. There’s some fried potatoes on the stove. I also cleaned up the mess he had made. Oh, and do you know how to make popcorn the old fashioned way?”

“Uhm…” his head was blurry and he couldn’t seem to think.

“Coffee’s on the stove.”

Rel bolted for the coffee. It wasn’t the instant stuff, or even pot brewed, it was made in a hand press thing that was so old, Rel had to do a double take. And so. Very. Good. Like a coffee he had once had when he was twelve and…

He had gone to ask the Illuen permission to disown his family.

The familiar taste brought up the bitter memory, but a moment later Rel managed to squash it. It was easy to forget that Mari was Illuen. She was not the usual priest line of Illuva, she did not obsess over one thing, she was not OCD about her appearance. Mari did arts and crafts, cooked, cleaned, ran the program, likely babysat the ambassador -Mik-. She let the Sidhe braid her hair and sat on the floor to do her arts, made food for others and cleaned up after others.

Sounded more like an Illuen servant than the youngest daughter of the highest priest.

How the hell did Rel know…

“Have we met before?” Rel asked Mari, adding milk and sugar to the coffee even though it was perfect black.

“Uh-huh.”

“When we were younger?”

“In the concrete room.” Mari said without turning around.

“I meant when you were still in that yellow robe that denotes you property of Illuva,” Rel turned before he finished speaking, “Your hair was pinned up with jade beads…” Rel traced back his memory and forced his thoughts into a time that he didn’t want to relive, “shaped like flowers. Your hair was lighter than. Dark brown instead of black.”

Mari looked over her shoulder, at Rel and to the cup and back up at Rel. She sighed and rolled her eyes, shaking her head and rattling around the beads and leather bits.

“What?”

“It is the duty of the Illuen to go out with their parents. To learn the duties.”

“I spoke with Shousterren Illuen. The highest high priest of the Illuen line, of course you know who I am.”

“No,” Mari responded calmly, “I went a great deal of places with my grandfather-”

“Father,” Rel sat beside Muan, who had finished filling the glass ball with the sparkles and was slipping the covering back on the top of the ornament, “he introduced you as his daughter.”

“And? We are the Illuen, who would question the Illuen?” Mari responded.

“Other Illuen,” Rel muttered.

“Pohpcorn,” Muan said, holding the ornament out to Mari before looking at Rel.

“What?”

Muan plucked up a book that sat at his feet and motioned to the popcorn garland on the page. Rel nodded and shuffled back to the kitchen. A bag of popcorn was sitting on the counter. He dug out a pot and some oil.

“So he was my father.”

In an angry tone. But such information would mean that the cameras were off. Mari could shut them off remotely. To Rel, for some reason, that was significant.

Muan was looking around as if wondering what had changed in the apartment.

Rel delivered the popcorn to Muan and sat down beside Muan.

“He made my life hell.”

“He did as he was instructed to do.”

“Free will-”

“Does not apply to pieces,” Mari looked up at Rel pointedly. The priest lines often referred to themselves as such, “we’ve sold out souls to the gods.”

“I don’t recall selling my soul,” Rel joked.

“Nor do I, but to Illuva I have sold myself, through and through. Two children I promised her, for her own devices and now, my first born, is being bartered for, whole lines of Illuen and Deun are spending fortunes in hopes of being able to afford my asking price. I want my first born for me and even that, she seems bent on taking from me.” Mari shook out the beaded garland she was working on and glanced up at Rel, daring him to say something.

“Or. She’s keeping you from simply having a child. She’s steering you towards the one you should have it with, the one who will actually give you freedom. For even as Illuva takes our freedom from us, she delivers it back with willingness and even happiness, should we obey her need.”

Mari tied off her garland and let it fall in a heap to one side of her leg, the woman pushed off the floor and straightened her clothing, “better than working for Ill or Ringe, I suppose.”

“Ill-Rin, Ringe-Ill,” Rel corrected Mari without thinking.

Before he recalled that that was not how mainstream media referred to them. It was his own twisted fantasy, that Ringe, the bastard child of Rahl-ta and a shadow daemon and Ill, daughter of the Blood line and forever in Illuva’s shadow, could find happiness.

“Excuse me?”

Rel blinked up at her as Mari’s eyebrows drew downward.

“Their mating has not been announced yet, how could you know of that?”

“What?” was all Rel could managed as one of Mari’s delicate hands reached out and yanked him to his feet by his shirt front.

It was a fantasy, that was all it was. It wasn’t real, none of it was real. And she was crazy to think that it had any connection to anything. Rel just wished Mari would go away.

The woman growled at him and then looked down, at her hand and around her as if she lost her train of thought… in the middle of that? How could she? Mari let go of Rel’s shirt and put a hand to her head, confused.

“I… have to go…”

“Okay,” Rel said shakily.

He waited until the elevator doors closed on Mari before he let his legs go out from under him. Rel sunk to the floor and bit his bottom lip. He crossed his arms in front of him and willed his mind to be still, willed himself to not think about what he had just done, how stupid, how foolish he was to not be able to keep the two worlds from bleeding into one another. But even that thought brought tears to his eyes.

He’d failed. Again.

“Lel?”

Go away, Muan.

“Awuah,” Muan wrapped long arms around Rel and drew the man into his lap, hugging him tightly. The Sidhe’s chest rumbled as Muan rocked Rel slowly and hummed a lullaby.

When had Muan learned lullabies?


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