Partner

As I was writing this I was going w.....t....f? And then I got to the end and couldn't decide if I wanted to facepalm or just laugh. In the end I don't know how much was said for the sake of the end result and how much was real. Most I'd say was real.

And in there again is a point that people may want to pay attention to. Although it oculd be of several different things but I'm not going to be specific as to which one I'm talking about.

*coughs*

Read, Review and Enjoy





Mik was tending a plant that Paw had placed in the kitchen when Essuan walked in, Lillow trailing behind her. The woman went immediately into the living room and up to the green room, where Paw was playing about with his plants. Lillow propped herself atop the kitchen counter and swung her legs idly.

Of all the Sidhe, Lillow had grown the least.

“Hohi bit me the other day.” Lillow murmured, fluffing her short, blonde locks.

“Lillow,” Mik murmured back, propping up a vine of the ivy on a rock he had smuggled in from a walk he had taken down to the park around the corner, “I don’t know if that is normal. I can’t be a confidante for you.”

“Of course you can,” she responded, “because you don’t know what is normal.”

“Whe-” Mik sighed, fluffed the plant the way Lillow had fluffed her hair and finally gave up and joined her on the counter top, “do Sidhe even have normal?”

“Yes. Lots of Sidhe can’t do what we can do. Lots of Sidhe are like people. Blind and stumbling. Just trying to survive. Souse sees us, he wants all Sidhe to be like us, like we used to be. Powerful. Lillow. I. I envy them. Those without power live so free.”

“How is it free? To be confined within one’s own mind?” Mik murmured, “They would envy you, if they had the capacity to do so. To know what they miss. When you and Hohi touch one another, when he opens his mind to yours and you are so certain of everything that is Hohi… are you going to tell me that you don’t want that?”

“I want that. I do. But.” Lillow looked into the living room, waited a moment as if waiting for Essuan and Paw to begin talking again, before she turned back to Mik, “but Lillow’s power makes it possible for her to see things. Things that Lillow doesn’t want to see.”

“See?”

“Yes. Mik has said that Souse does as much. Souse’s power is to see of the minds. Mik surely saw and felt Souse’s power. To slip into the cracks of another’s minds so thoroughly that it is hard to tell where he begins and the other ends. He is not trained to use it, something he, and we, are grateful for.”

“What is Essuan’s power?”

“The ability to learn any other power. Essuan is an innocent, one of those from a tribe that is untouched by oh so much. Her tribe still has the old powers, the old ways. The stress of people, the stress of running and hiding and just trying to survive is what destroys our ability to learn everything. In some Sidhe it is strong, so strong that it surpasses all else.”

Lillow took in a breath and stared down at her brightly painted toes, “my tribe was once large. I was born in amongst people. I was torn from my mother’s womb and left to die on a refuse pile. They sewed her back up and threw her to the men to be used. My father, they killed him before approaching my mother. My mother was too numb from everything they gave her to even try to protect herself, let alone me. Souse found me there, in the refuse pile. A bitch had found me and cared for me somewhat but she was rabid. She had attacked me and the sound of it was what brought Souse running. He said that he has never heard one so young scream so loudly. She tore into my leg,” Lillow reached down and tugged up her pant leg, “and ripped off what little flesh I had.”

There was nothing wrong with that leg. And Mik had to look away quickly and remind himself that this was an underage girl. Young or not, Lillow had the legs that any model twice her age would kill to have.

“Nothing wrong with that leg,” he managed to gasp out through clenched teeth.

“Souse took me to Essuan, his mate. He and his hunters had heard that the city stole Sidhe so they had gone in to free us. She helped me. Then she and he raised me. They are like family to me. But Souse refused to call me child. I always thought it odd. When other children came in, they would be adopted by a pair. But by not claiming me, Souse was leaving me to all the others. Males who could no longer produce children loved me, they would pet me and sing to me when I was sad and teach me to fight. As I got older I began to understand that they weren’t doing it because they thought a girl my age needed those skills, but because Souse told them to.

“He was using my own power against me. Keeping it a secret from me. I attacked him. We fought and argued and I declared myself grown. Even though I’m not. It was so stupid. And he glared at me and told me that it was a stupid idea and I fell for it and turned my belief of my rightness into stubborn fact. I was only there because I was stupid and fell for it. Souse baited me. He doesn’t understand how my power works. So he didn’t know exactly what would happen, but he knew it was better than leaving me there.”

“Well. Sidhe have been seen on battle fields before. And it has been said that they fight like they know what is coming and how it’s coming. Maybe what you have is just that… only amplified.”

“If the program works the way it claims that it wants to,” Lillow looked away from Mik, then pinned the man with her startling grey eyes, “then Essuan’s children will be stronger than Paw and Essuan. Combined. I don’t know how to raise children with power. I’m just a kid.”

“But. Essuan and Souse will raise the child.”

“No. People have a saying. It takes a village to raise a child. That’s true amongst Sidhe. A pair may claim a child, but that only means that the others can’t teach the child anything without trading with the parents. Souse is trying to change even that. Saying that if a child has been claimed but is better at carving than he is at catching fish, why should a carver pay the parents for a child who cannot catch fish?”

“Almost makes sense. Why would you pay me for my garbage when all I’m going to do is throw it out or wallow in filth if you don’t take it? Once there were apprenticeships, and parents paid other people to teach their children necessary life skills.”

“I don’t want to learn necessary life skills. I want to laze about in a tree and couple and eat fruit and play with children. Souse says that that is an important role in the Sidhe tribe. A lazy bum. But I don’t want to be a lazy bum. Lazy bums aren’t productive, they don’t help. Why should they feed me if I do nothing?”

“You would eat the fruit, thus giving the fruit pickers something to do, you would sleep, thus not needing fruit as often, and you would play with the children, thus baby-sit while other parents go off and have more babies.”

“But I want to do that as well.”

“Aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about sex?”

“Now you sound like Hohi,” Lillow grimaced, “he wants to wait until I’m old enough. I want to now. If he doesn’t hurry up and do it, I’ll take one of Paw’s toys and do it myself.”

“You’re thirteen.”

“Fourteen. People girls my age are having sex all over the place. And he-”

“You aren’t people.”

“What’s good enough for people-”

“Those girls will get pregnant and lose everything. They are too young to have a child, and so are you. I don’t know why your sex drive is so high, but sex isn’t everything. Sidhe are not supposed to be mauling each other when they are your age. They are supposed to be watching adults to figure out what goes where and how it works. You. You sound like a people.”

“A people?” Lillow glared at Mik, “Lillow didn’t come to Mik to get told that she was stupid.”

“Lillow,” Paw stepped into the kitchen and arched an eyebrow as the girl hunched her shoulders and tried to look smaller, “Paw would like to please of the speaking with you.”

Lillow whined but hopped off the counter and followed Paw. Mik sighed as Essuan took Lillow’s spot beside Mik.

“Sos.” She said, “Essuan lear-ander ‘eople spokens.”

Mik stared at nothing as he tried to understand what she said, “Essuan is learning people. That’s very good and well. How well can you understand people?”

“Verily. ‘eople spokens verily hard. Ehm. Of to understand, Essuan,” the woman tapped her temple, “of the rotting to get past the carpooling troll.”

Mik pressed his lips into a tight line. Then he had to bite down on his tongue. He just… couldn’t. He burst into laughter.

“What of mofo funny?”

Paw slid back into the kitchen and looked quizzically at Essuan, “what Essuan say?”

“Of to understand, Essuan of the rotting to get past the carpooling troll.”

Mik rubbed his hand over his mouth and gave Paw a look. The Sidhe looked at Mik and looked confused as he said, “why Mik think that funny? Essuan say that to understand you, she reroutes thought processes to a near backward momentum.”

“That makes less sense than carpooling trolls.”

“Rotting cow patties?” Essuan muttered.

“She has no idea what you’re talking about,” Paw shrugged, then jabbed a finger at Mik, “you stop talking to Lillow about sex. Sidhe are highly curious at that age and it is completely normal. Yes, usually she would watch adults and that would keep her mellow for a few more years, but the issue here is that unless you are going to volunteer, there’s no one to show here. There are no other pairs. So zip it about the sex.”

“She started it.”

“Nu-uh,” Lillow growled, giving Paw an innocent, puppy dog look, “Mik started it.”

“Lillow did.”

“Mik did.”

“No, Lillow did.”

“Well Mik is afraid of sex with toys.”

“Well Lillow said she’s just take Paw’s toys and do it herself if Hohi didn’t.”

Paw rubbed a spot between his eyebrows for a very long moment as Lillow turned a bright red colour, “Lillow cannot use those.”

“Why not?”

“Only pairs may use toys.”

“Toys were made by people for people without other people to couple with. The computers say so,” Lillow made a jab to the living room, “So why not?”

“Because you’re too young,” Mik snapped at her, “damn it, age of majority is sixteen and until you are an actual adult, you can’t have sex.”

The girl stared at him, mouth hanging open. Paw let out a whine and rubbed the spot again. Essuan gave Mik’s arm a poke and said something to Paw. The male Sidhe sighed out loudly.

“What?”

“Mik just claimed Lillow.”

“But it was just-”

“Yes. But it was still claiming.”

“So…”

“Mik and Paw just adopted a whiny teenaged girl,” Paw muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Wait a minute.” Mik muttered, hopping off the counter as he gave Lillow a look, “You planned this.”

“Uh-oh, lookit time, hear Tuhn calling. BYES!” Lillow ran from the apartment.

Essuan snorted and said something in Sidhe about trouble. Paw muttered a response and remembered that Mik could not speak Sidhe.

“She said that Lillow was going to be trouble and better us than her to have to suffer through the maturing of power.”

“Lillow’s powers aren’t mature?”

Paw snorted, “No. Power only manifests at beginning of puberty for most Sidhe.”

“But she baited me. She can see the future, she knew what would happen!”

“Doesn’t change fact that Mik claimed her.”

“On accident!” Mik protested, “It was on accident and she manipulated me! It’s not my fault that your women are twice as crazy as people women.”

WHACK.

Essuan had cuffed Mik upside the head and Mik had hit the floor. Maybe she hadn’t meant to hit him that hard, maybe for a Sidhe that was just a cuff. But Mik couldn’t help but curse about the female’s lack of understanding as he fell into unconsciousness.



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