Join me in night painted with crimson and black.

Spring came in the song of birds, of new leaves and warm wind. Retreated so many times, to eventually stop its shifting. And stay.

The people from Venklann Valley slowly – reluctantly – began to thaw as well.

It came in small acts of courage. Returning home an hour later. Enjoying life more. Allowing children for more. The rowan and iron still protected houses – but humankind started to learn how to not hide.

A year passed since winter came back from where it seeped. Inamora would never feel fully safe – but it learned to not fear all the time.

Slowly.

Like a soul reborn, still remembering its past life – but trying to start anew.

Human lands became a newly born, very old soul – touched with night magic. But not surrounded by pain anymore.

That day, which before the fae invasion celebrated the first day of May, Inamora feasted and danced – old customs steadily reappearing. The meat was not anymore half-rotten, the trees gave first flowers. First spring after so many years of cold and uncertainty. Humans knew how to be grateful – to the weather, to the goddess, to the soil.

Yet – the one which allowed it all, who silently ended fae reign over Avras – didn’t feast and didn’t dance.

Noyd twirled with her brother in a dance around the fire. The night found Inamora wild, bathing in freedom. Everyday still was reluctant, marked by too much fear birthed in the past. But today…

… it was flaming.

Women surrounded the maypole, each ribbon attached to it, celebrating different sides of the goddess – green for the maiden, red for the mother and brown for the crone. Life and death, old and new. This night would start a new generation of Vennklan people – even if the retreating winter chill still bit. The first day of May was colder – still warmer than before.

Villagers already were leaving the square to join in body and soul. To start a new life. To begin new cycle.

Tiyan sat on the wooden log, far from the flames. He observed how Noyd laughed and every time her gaze fell on him, her laughter died. She belonged to human land – and he still to the fae realm. Though possibly he was a pariah in both.

His eyes fixed on flame.

So many things have changed.

Before he almost hoped spring wouldn’t return. He wasn’t ready; he craved winter as much as he craved Lorian’s harming touch. He didn’t speak of it, he tried to even not think of it.

But winter crept into his mind, with each Lorian sculpture, with each shadow creature that polluted the house.

Their house.

His house.

This house belonged to the past. Just like himself.

A relic of old, that latched only to pain, not allowing the remaining half of his soul to bloom with leaves and fresh moss. His moss was rotten and the leaves frozen.

Flames were dancing in his eyes, in darkness almost black. He stared into them, like hypnotized, allowing them to eat his fragmented soul and mind. Fire felt familiar, his element, his curse. He still felt safer when it blazed nearby – even if it produced shadow.

Maybe exactly because of that.

“How do you know that Reynardine steals women?”

“Because it’s known. All know fae steal girls!”

“Why not boys then? They go into the woods much more often. To cut trees and hunt.”

“Because… boys are less pretty?”

“Silly Tiyo!”

“And because boys have weapons. You know, steel and iron. Fae fear men, because they can harm them.”

“I like the theory of being less pretty better.”

“Women also aren’t knights.”

“I will be a knight.”

“Noyd, the king needs to name you a knight. And no king ever named a woman.”

“Why?”

“Hmm, maybe because they do not fit into armor? They are too small and have breasts.”

“That’s stupid.”

“And I heard from a wandering bard that women have weaker arms, so they wouldn’t be able to carry the sword.”

“Even more stupid. I am stronger than you.”

“That will change. I will grow muscles and go fight Reynardine and save all the girls he kidnapped.”

“He will kick your ass!”

“I will kick his.”

“You will need more than muscles to do that. Fae have magic.”

“I will have the magic of big muscles.”

“Ha! I would love to see how you tussle with a fae!”

Tiyan’s eyes filled with tears. The people around him celebrated, passionately abandoned to the light in darkness. Which in their hearts was tonight stronger than shadows. A burst of laughter near him. A naked breast in the bushes.

Eyes of Noyd gleaming in darkness, looking at him. Then, turning to her father, who handed her a cup of freshly brewed beer.

He stood up from the log and slowly, allowing his feet to carry him rather than going by his own will, he turned home.

The snow melted completely a week ago. The warm breeze carried the smell of primroses.

And somehow… also jasmine and violets.

He stood in place for a moment, inhaling the scent that terrified him and fascinated. The scent that became his terror and his deepest wish.

He entered the house, his steps firm. His room welcomed him with hundreds of Lorians. Shadows took this home in possession – he could feel them on his skin, hungry, devouring – a welcomed torment, an awaited punishment.

“Because it’s known. All know fae steal girls!”

He began to gather the sculptures. Some landed in a sack, some he took straight into his own hands. They carried the weight of his guilt. Each sculpture had eyes gazing into his heart, seeing horrors. Each of them – a part of himself, which he couldn’t leave behind.

He took them all.

When he was in the courtyard again, the wind attacked him with aroma of spring, hard. Even harder. Almost pushing the air from his lungs. He belonged to no spring and it was chasing him back into the winter.

He tossed sculptures on the ground. They made a sound – not even of wood falling into mud. It was a soft, sensual laughter of Lorian Ain’Dal.

“That will change. I will grow muscles and go fight Reynardine and save all the girls he kidnapped.”

You couldn’t save anyone, Tiyo. Even yourself.

He took tinder and flint and created – among the wood and memories – a small flickering flame. It danced lightly on Lorian sculpts until it fiercely started to spread. It spread fast in the wind. Hungry. Possessive. Finding a kindred spirit in the one who it ate…

“If I ever marry someone, it will be you, Noyd.”

“Silly Tiyo.”

“I say what I feel. And you are my best friend.”

“Would you save me from the fae, then?”

“From anything.”

“And everything?”

“And everything.”

“As long as you can fit into armor and lift the sword, I trust you.”

The black wood made fierce love with the flames. The fire bursted into the sky – savoring shadows and horrors intertwined. Lorian bathed in them – like he did in Tiyan’s flames. They suited each other – Lorian and fire. They ate and spread, one with lust and darkness, the second with heat and light.

And Tiyan felt they called him.

To the only embrace he ever belonged.

To the only love that he could accept.

To the only warmth that could heal his cold.

He was the last god of fire – devoid of powers, stripped of identity. Taken and used and put into the world who wanted to continue into rebirth – he wanted to decay.

The flames were the only home he could find solace in.

He stepped forth, feeling the heat warming his limbs, blood boiled in his veins. It was almost a caress – being understood by the power which was chosen for him. Which wrote a dark lullaby to him, before he was ever born.

His hair caught the fire first. Sparkles floated around him like small dancers.

Like fae.

Like wonders with teeth and promise of pain.

He entered the flames. Slowly, without screaming, like the pain belonged to another person. A person who still had life and still had hope. He welcomed it, when it started to crash against him, fire to fire, his heritage and last breath. A burning caress, painful, beautiful, charring the rest of his soul.

He was full again.

And he allowed the flames…

… to eat.

*

The fire burned all night. Fed with a god, it burned high and wildly. Its roar piercing the air, offering its son a funeral dirge.

The villagers reveled on the promise of the abundance. Their joyful voices resounded through the woods, filling them with more life that they possessed during all last years.

And the lonely dog lay next to the bonfire, his eyes reflecting the blaze. His muzzle on his paws, his wet eyes fixed on the flames.

Trying to understand.

Waiting for his owner to return.

Noyd took him home—his home, their home. It was their home now, rebuilt and breathing warmth that Noyd managed to create among the scattered memories—which should appease his hurting heart.

But it didn’t.

When Noyd took him, passionately, lovingly, the first night after his return—he almost believed it, that it’s possible to live without a soul. That all that happened during the last months can be unmade and one day, perhaps he will be able to reconcile with his path. It was dark—but he was still alive. He still breathed. His heart still pumped blood, red and human.

He hoped he could start anew. With Noyd by his side, as a proof that not all in his life was always cruel and these sparks of good one day will remind him how to breathe. Fully. Not choking on dry blood.

He loved Noyd that night. When his back bent with ecstasy, he almost cried. A touch not intrusive. A craving not hungry.

Yet… the fae were still there, deep in his mind. Lorian’s memory grinding it with iron thorns. His shadows, his power, his cruel seduction…

And he realized he can’t live without it.

Noyd was loving and pure. His past left a stain on him though. Her gentle strokes, her soft passion would be healing. Would be enough.

If he wasn’t destroyed.

His dreams were circling around violation and pain, he summoned Lorian’s imagery and power, to bathe in all of this. And wake up, painfully stiff—with sleeping Noyd but his side, who didn’t deserve it.

His mind still belonged to the fae realm. His body too. He couldn’t offer Noyd anything. Even if he wanted to.

He would fall on his knees before her and beg her to leave him. He somehow sensed he would harm her one day—not physically, but with his emptiness. He was going deeper and deeper into a broken well, eaten by moss and shadows. Parasitic night, that crawled into him and rooted deeply, tasting his nerves and sanity.

First weeks.

First months.

To villagers’ surprise, winter became softer. The freezing wind stopped stinging so much. Mushrooms poked from under the white—the ones that were born early spring.

One day, Noyd said that she saw a bird. Colorful, not raven or a crow. Not a scavenger. It was a spring bird.

Then, the frost and cold hit once again.

The world didn’t know what season to keep.

The winter king died—and with him the darkness. His spells were too powerful to just dispel.

The weather shifted and tossed in a cage. The bars rusted and soon, it will fly from its prison, bathing in sun the human realm needed and deserved.

Tiyan bathed in dreams of blood and pain.

*

He chopped the wood with one blow of the hatchet. His muscles amassed, now he was looking more like his father than his past self. He grew a short beard—not because he wanted to look older. It just grew, and he accepted it. Noyd liked it.

Seven months went from his return.

The villagers were seeing spring birds all the time. Tiyan heard their joyful yet still unsure song when he was going on the hunt. His hunting skills grew. He could only look in the animals’ eyes.

He was seeing himself in them.

The wood scattered over the stump.

The day was warmer. The sun still was dim and misty, but it brought relief to Inamora.

The villages started to thaw, not only his. They heard of shadows that took Arelt into possession—the whole city drowned in dark tentacles of night. They were spreading sometimes to nearby villages, eating what they met—some said that if you come closer to Arelt, you can hear heartbeats and moans of humans trapped there. Even now, more than half a year ago—the passerby people still heard silent screams and torment from those who lived there.

Tiyan knew it was Lorian.

And he was both craving the news and abhorred even thought of them.

Some nights, he was dreaming he lives in Arelt—surrounded by shadows, chained by thorns, moaning into the hand made of night that choked his throat.

He lifted a small chunk of chopped wood.

And he started to sculpt.

Meticulous moves, like in a dream. He carved and he didn’t even realize that with each carved shape, tears appeared in his eyes. The process took his whole attention, his flawed and incomplete being.

One of the tears fell on the almost ready sculpture, baptizing it. Tiyan touched with his thumb. The light wood darkened and took the water in when he smeared it over.

It was a fae. Not a little fae which still inhabited his—and Noyd’s now—bedroom.

It was an almost perfect depiction of Lorian Ain’Dal.

Tiyan looked at the sculpture with open mouth and tears falling down his chin. His body tensed, his veins pulsed under his skin like eager worms.

Then, he tossed it on the ground, among the wood chips.

It was the first Lorian sculpture out of many.

*

Spring moved through the Avras like a breath of hope.

Some saw an animal losing the fungi colonies and clawing the rotten flesh fro, itself. Which fell off him in a fountain of blood. That animal died. But hunters reported more of such incidents. Until one of them didn’t perish. Those who observed this phenomenon didn’t see that animal anymore. But one day, a hunter from Inamora spotted a healthy animal with cubs.

The magic retreated.

The fae were leaving Avras—busy with their own affairs.

Tiyan sculpted Lorian one by one. In a shadow form and in his royal robes. Each figurine more alive and each shadow more looming. He could feel the power radiating from them; even if it was only in his mind.

In his dreams, he begged Lorian to return. To wound him, and use him.

To give him a purpose again, even if it would be a purpose of a slave.

Lorian’s subtle violence haunted him and filled him with desires so different from what he truly preferred.

He always felt shame after it, not being able to look Noyd in the eyes.

“Tiyan… Tell me. Tell me all. Maybe it can heal you, if you open your heart to me. I am here.”

How could he tell her of all the atrocities he experienced in Ain’asel?

How could she tell her that he ate Mina?

Sometimes he remembered how he killed Noyda. In such moments, he felt void so deep that it was endless.

His well was shattered but was filling itself with rot. Slowly… yet inevitably. Its sweet, cloying scent was the only scent he wanted to feel.

Lorian sculptures polluted their house. He cut and drilled, like he wanted both to cut Lorian from his mind as well as bound his memory to himself even stronger. Noyd didn’t ask. Villagers—at the beginning happy from his arrival—often asked Noyd is she doesn’t want to come back to her family home. Her father and mother urged her too; for her own safety.

“He is fae touched” he heard once Noyd’s father. “Who knows when his mind fails him? Wasn’t it uncommon for those who returned from Faerie?”

Tiyan didn’t feel pain then.

Maybe it would be safer for Noyd to leave him.

*

Tiyan worked again.

Noyd was sleeping in the common room. She said those sculpts scare her.

He understood her.

They scared him too.

He painted them black—aside from eyes—these were white, like those of Lorian’s shadow form. They looked like particles of night; always watching, always observing. The more of them guarded him, the more intense and terrifying were his dreams.

Take me.

Ravish me.

Take my body.

As you took my soul.

Lorian and the whole Ain’asel called him.

Tiyan finished the last figurine. It had shadows spread in all directions, so finely made that they looked real.

He could see his own reflection in the sculpting knife he was adding finishes to the whole opus.

He lifted it, looking into it.

His face was not as famished since animals slowly started to return. Strong body. Firm jaw. He was not a boy anymore. What price did he pay to grow up? Would he not prefer to stay in childlike naivety? Perhaps Noyd would stay in their bedroom, if not his obsessions and his lack of…

… soul?

He moved the knife over his wrist—with a dull side. His missing fingers—a reminder of much colder days—haunted with nothingness.

His veins were more prominent and his hands more worn.

And next to him, a wooden shadowed creature. Beautiful. Tempting. Cruel.

Slowly sipping his sanity alive.