Allory Fae and the Dragon's Whiskers

THE BEGINNING OF HER dance was every bit as awful as Allory had imagined it would be. She was not just stiff, she was in pain. Substantial pain. Nothing moved as she wished. No twirl was elegant, no extension of arm or leg came unaccompanied by excruciating pangs in her joints, and her attempts at anything but the most delicate, cautious one-tenth-speed wingbeats seized up her flight muscles entirely. Cramps! Every Fae's favourite recipe for misery.

There was a great deal of teeth-gnashing and groaning going on, all of it hers.

The Pixie matron, called Inshandixi, begged her to stop.

Allory sobbed and continued to hurt herself. How could they not understand the pain that she carried – the deep inner pain, the knowledge that she could not bear to fail one more time and thus live up to all that her family had ever expected of her? How could she dishonour her fallen pupae-siblings? The captivity of her people? The charge once given to her to guard the soul locket …

Nothing she ever did went right. Nothing!

Oh Ehlshinoi … all she wanted to do was to whine about how useless she was? Allory cut off her thought. No! She would find a way.

It was Izzini who stopped her by literally flying into her, grabbing her around the waist and not letting go. "Allory. Allory stop, please. Listen to me –"

"No, let me go. I must dance."

"Allory –"

"You don't understand – suggids! Did you just … eh?"

Izzini rubbed her antennae, smiling uncertainly. "I think I just … sparked you. Sort of. We sparked each other off, which is the part I want you to listen to, alright?"

"Your spark? Sorry, I don't quite follow."

The other Scintillant, watched by her three brofae who clearly had no clue what she was driving at, nodded excitedly. "As a certain Jokerbro would say, Allory, it's all about the sparkle. We're Scintillants. You're a Scintillant too – albeit a special one. We can help you. Please. You don't need to carry this burden all alone. You have friends here – good friends, who are prepared to be every bit as exasperating as real family."

Giggle. What a perfect lesson!

Words choked up in her throat. "Iz … Izzini … would you?"

The other girlfae folded her arms and pretended to tap her foot. Air tapping. "Allory, as we'd say over in our colony, we're your people. We share Scintillant sap, find ourselves overshadowed by every other kind of Fae and we've even got the same unruly hair. So please, let us dance for you. With you. We'll … throw you about and see if that can't trigger a spark of scintillance. If my brofae can't get you to spark –" she leaned in close to murmur "– I'll toss you at Hansanori and see if that doesn't spark your sparkle."

"Eep! You wouldn't dare."

"You watch me, sisfae. I've seen how you look at each other. About time His Royal Highness learned to hold onto a few things other than some fancy old harp, if you follow my meaning."

She did, and that was how Allory discovered that the flow of her sap had just reached the tips of her ears, because now they burned like tiny torches. Great.

"Definitely exasperating enough to pass for family," she chuckled, yet with a pang of a different sort as she remembered her own. That childhood seemed but a distant memory now, an echo of another life hardly lived. Agony carved pathways for the sap of the soul. Could such hurts ever be made new? For she had seen resurrective power enliven a body, true-sap, but that did not erase memories of the life before, for doing so would erase who a person truly was.

Suggids, healing was complicated. Was it even … possible?

"Let's go make some sparkle!"

Only a Scintillant could say that and not sound completely silly.

Well, maybe a teensy bit silly.

To the tune of a ragged Chameleon cheer, the Scintillants formed a dance-troupe of their own and set about working out how to dust up a few sparkles. This was because Allory's renewed body appeared to produce a kind of following trail or halo of scintillance which definitely had not been present before. She supposed she must look like a glittering miniature comet. Despite the arms of Izzini's not unhandsome three brofae being available and further willing Chameleons joining in the fun when it became apparent that whatever the desired effect was, it was not quite happening. Allory could not find the right sparkle. She just … wished and wished, and wished some more. Even Ash and Jhoranyal joined in the dancing, encouraged by a bevy of willing – or was that smirking – Chameleon Fae.

Meantime, a certain harp-plucking silver Fae turned markedly green over to the side at all the attention she enjoyed – green to her sight, at least, which remained able to gaze into her friends in Elemental ways. Still nothing. Another question to be answered. What was she now? What would she become?

On and on Allory danced, struggling to become, to overcome.

The Quellsteel Pixies and the Janghorash waited with the patience of those who had already waited for aeons. Guess if they had spent the better part of a thousand years building her world, a few minutes' tolerance was neither here nor there.

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Mid-spin between Varzune and Saritan, who by now had worked up a respectable glimmer of their own, a pair of hands deftly snagged her waist from behind and Allory realised that the music had changed. In other news about the cocoon, Fakori Fae was a capable amateur harpist. And if he was over there – eep with extra nectar slathered on top – she attempted a stiff-necked glance over her shoulder …

"Milady of Scintillant Fae, if may I request the honour of this dance?"

Swoon, o my sap, swoonity-swoon! It's him!

"A-Aye?" Since he already had a secure grip of her waist, how could she refuse? "M-M-Mmm … Prince," she managed to gasp. No idea what to say. Nor what hot-pink sapphire looked like, only that she must define it. Effortlessly.

No-one had ever asked her to dance before.

Certainly not like this.

Most definitely never a Crown Prince of anywhere at all, who produced an outrageously elegant bow plus a hand-twirl out of some textbook of courtly behaviour Allory had never read nor even imagined and, upon receiving her nod of consent, urged her skilfully into the dance.

He sent them swooping through the air as if they had danced together a thousand times before. Hansanori moved like liquid silver, lithe and assured, at once so perfectly in control that her awkwardness melted away, yet his touch was superbly responsive, a keen reminder of the gifted musician in the manfae. While Allory lost track of the music because of the thundering heartbeat in her ears, the Prince missed neither a step nor a twirl, deftly spinning her out to the full extent of his reach before winding her back against his lean, muscular chest with the uttermost grace. Princely embrace!

"Oof," he coughed politely.

Oh, suggids! She had planted her numb left knee firmly in a rather sensitive spot. "Sorry …"

Her ears burned ten times worse than before, but Hansanori had a gracious smile and a murmur of encouragement for his flustered partner. So tiny compared to him!

Not that His Highness was huge for a Faerie, being perhaps eighteen or nineteen inches in stature. As ever, she felt like a Faeling in his hands, but not quite on the scale of a heroic Harzune, say.

Still, Hansanori had to adroitly dodge a flailing elbow on the way into his next move, a triple swoop above her head that ended with him behind her, lightly holding her outstretched hands in his fingertips. He spun her delicately antennae-over-heels, taking three beats of the music rather than the one she suspected should have been proper, before capturing her gaze with his.

"It seems I must endeavour to behave with greater decorum?" he suggested playfully.

"No, that was … me, mixing up the knees," she smiled. Dizzy, oh so dizzy … "I'm not familiar with that sequence."

"Nor am I accustomed to dancing with so petite and graceful a partner." Droll humour. He spun her about twice, guiding her with another deft touch upon her waist.

"I feel as clumsy as an overripe jungle fruit."

"That is the very last comparison I would have made."

"But you have danced with many girlfae."

Ouch. One Sapphire Scintillant had just paraded the forest-green of her jealousy.

"Duties. A royal dance every other week during the season, for which one is trained from one's Faeling days," said he, swooping nimbly past her left hand. With perfect timing, he reached out and untangled her left wing-cluster, which she had snarled up without even noticing. "However … none like you."

Awkward. He flushed and glanced away.

What did that even mean? None that aimed a knee like an Allory? None who felt as exposed, as gauche and inadequate as this girlfae? His dance partners must come six inches taller and a great deal better armed on the suitability scale.

Dance with a runt? Oh, the scandal! She'd have those traditionalists tearing up their own cocoons in horror.

Allory studied her dance partner on her next pass, wondering if Izzini's idea might possibly work. To her surprise, Hansanori appeared to be emotionally unsettled – his pulse was all over the jungle, his throat muscles stood taut against the silver column of his neck, and the colours she read in his aura were so chaotic she could not draw any conclusions as to their nature.

Coming about with a debonair swoop and a perfect wingtips-clap on the beat, he spun her out to the end of his fingertips again. The Prince did not release the hold as would be normal in Fae dance, she realised, likely due to concern about her delicate state. Back in toward him now. His face twirled before her, then in quick succession the Pixies, Ashueli, Yaarah and Sabline, Hansanori's chest upcoming – left knee? Right? Ah … oh, oh no – left!

"None I – oof!"

She could not have aimed more precisely with all the intent under Middlesun.

She burst out in a nervous giggle, "Suggids! I'm so clumsy, so sorry, so –"

"Allory Fae. Shh. I'm trying to … trying to say … none I care about … as you," he gasped, clearly battling to catch his breath. The disparity in their heights really did line up her sharp little knees to perfection. "Lest I detect a subtle intimation behind these repeated blows?"

"Intimation?" Allory could barely think, barely breathe, for the nearness of him. "Uh … no? No! Please, I wouldn't … ever."

Still sounding winded, he said, "Then, may a wretched runaway Prince, a poor son and a worse Fae being, say this: Allory Fae, it is clear that you hold the power to move Middlesun, yet in the same way, you have moved my heart and made me altogether a better Fae. You make me so … so … angry!"

Her high-pitched chime of laugher advised him of his faux pas. So dreadful.

"I – I mean, nobody's ever made me so angry before," he explained doggedly. Worse and worse. Allory twirled daintily away as he spluttered, "Plank of a tongue! Sap's sakes, it's that you make me feel … things. Like anger. Purpose. Passion – towering passion, like never before! My musical gift has come alive because of you. I'm so confused. The things … what I meant to explain about these things you make me feel …"

They danced a gentle stanza, a stately dip back and forth, a wingbeat that rotated them as a pair about a central, imagined axis. Light winked between them, argent to her sapphire. His poise was the paragon of elegance and his speech, entirely the opposite.

Allory knew something would happen soon. It must. The pressure inside her skull grew unbearable, almost like one of her halo migraines, yet this was the very sweetest kind of pain.

"I'm in love!" he blurted out.

Thunderbolt!

Number two of her day. One had brought her alive. This … so alive, yet in a different way.

Yet every iota of her background, her upbringing and her life cried out in strident disagreement. No. You can't be. Don't you see me; don't you know who I am?

Hansanori truly appeared to be on the verge of losing his nectar over the matter, yet with a self-deprecating chuckle, he raised her hand gently above her head and, suddenly all grave yet conspiratorial, he spun her back to him to time with a descant that signalled a brief interlude in the dance.

Oh. He clasped her close; they breathed in time, waiting for the next cue.

His cue.

For her alone, he breathed, "I'm afraid I must confess to being deeply and incurably in love with you, Allory Fae, and I'm sorry if this declaration comes as a bolt out of Centresky's azure or is even deeply unwelcome, given as you've seen fairly much nothing but the very worst of me, but –"

Allory could not speak, consumed by the wailing of her mind: I'm the boneyard girl! I'm beyond toxic!

"– how I feel about you is never going to change. Well, it might only get worse, I suspect. That's a definite possibility."

He pushed her away ever so lightly to create the requisite space between them as the next stanza began, but Allory thrilled to the softness, the vulnerability shining in his silver eyes.

She beheld his soul.