"The Changling"

 

The Forgotten Fae

 

He is alone. A wooden box he calls his home. He moves, this way and that to the gentle rocking of the lonesome cradle. His limbs are limber-youth entwined in his ungainly face.

 

His pupils, aged before their time,  are dilated and weary-falling to green and hazel then back again. He is hungry and calls for milk, though his cries go unnoticed.

 

He was placed here, alone in the secluded nursery-for now the child is gone. Taken away to settle an otherworldly score-he is the woeful pawn of an enchanted grudge. He vaguely remembers though, being griped in the night, to the din of cackling voices and webbed fingers and set off to journeys unknown.

 

He saw it, the smokey light of his realm dissipating. He sensed it, the rush of the cold human air and the wild branches reaching to  and moving past him at hellish speed as the lark made a final call to the night. He feared it-the descent into the timeworn home at the forest's edge where the dogs howled and the moon trickled overhead.

It was foreign. He was frightened.

 

To the unearthly buzzing of fractured wings, he cowered. Now here he is in his home. He has not been seen yet. The midwife is gone, the mother yet unseen. To his right-a kindling crackles. To his left, the gentle ever certain pur of the housecat-who has seen it all before.

 

He fears his circumstance. Will they scream when they gaze at him? Will they fall away. The poor fools who wronged the fates. Ever uncertain-all he can do is close his tiresome eyes and rest.

 

Her screams were heard across the valley.