what makes you pull the poison rose? [backdated to ~4/22, for rian]

[fairywren]

This is taking a little longer than Wren had anticipated. He's had luck, good and bad, along the way in his search for a patch of nettles big enough and wild enough that he won't be caught picking them. A kind little girl throwing bread to what she saw as a wild swan, before her mother warned her away ("What is a swan doing resting this far from water? It's sick or enchanted, come away from it.") and she'd frowned and waved goodbye as he flew away.

He'd spotted what seemed like a good patch, big enough to send him home to Hana with all she needs and more if he's fast about it, but he'd run into some hunters on the way back and lost not only the nettles but a few wingfeathers.

Wren tries to keep flying and can't, too exhausted and with nothing to show for two days of work but determination and the graze of stray shotgun pellets. He'd found a thick woods, thick cover from hawks and hounds and a vast array of plants growing there including nettles. It's hopeful.

When night comes, he transforms, setting his mind to his task. Nettles sting, and he curses softly as he bends to pulls them.

Comments

[wastelandflower]

"Because pleasant is the faerie land," Rian says. "But the eerie tales they tell, for at the end of seven years, they pay a tithe to hell."

He gestures at himself, handsome, magically gifted. The kind of captive that makes a lovely human sacrifice.

[fairywren]

Wren raises an eyebrow. "You? They're just going -- to sacrifice you to hell?" He gives him a disbelieving look. "There's no way to fight that? You just accept it?"

Wren doesn't have much way to fight his own fate, true, but he could have at least made life living hell on Hana's parents even if she'd chosen to leave him to this curse. Swans are mean. Or perhaps he'd have accepted it, but he's not the kind of person who gets told his lot easily. Or he'd never have been stuck like this to begin with, for one thing.

[wastelandflower]

"Unless some mortal intervenes," Rian says, a little insulted by the implication he might simply accepted. Cossetted by the Seelie Court he may have been, Rian hasn't run out of self-preservation.

"To catch me again from my horse and hold me fast, even as the queen transforms me into all manner of beasts."

He has no mortal ties nor mortal love and so, Rian knows, he will die.

[fairywren]

"A mortal," he says, and looks up at the man who's granted him nettles for a song, that he feels so drawn to, a tragic tale to mimic his own "And you have no mortal who would risk themselves for you?" He tilts his head toward him. "No wayward girl you've charmed? Or boy," he adds with a small smirk.

There's a part of him that's angry at curses, and another part drawn to the man in a way he can't altogether explain, that would fight this for him. And another part that thinks this might all be another trap. It doesn't matter: if it's going to take place during any semblance of daylight, he won't have the ability, and if it's too long from now, he can't afford to stray. But it's unfair, and it pulls at him.

[wastelandflower]

"Charm and glamor are faery tricks," Rian says. Otherwise, he'd have tried it and have done to escape. "No, it takes a real, mortal bond. Love, family. I've got neither."

He sighs tragically, melodramatic despite the horror of the situation.

[fairywren]

"You'd be surprised," Wren says, with a raised eyebrow. "A good song and a bit of gold flake goes a long way toward entrancing."

"I can't offer you true love," he says, "I think that's a thing that takes more than an hour and some nettles. But I am in your debt, and that bargain's not fair. I don't say things I don't mean. If there's a way I can help you, even in friendship, I owe you that much."

[wastelandflower]

"You don't even know me," he says, caught between being intrigued and alarmed. He doubts this mortal knows what he offers.

"The end of this month will be the Eve of Beltane and we will be taken into a procession." He will be fed the sweetest food and given the best wine, fatted and comforted.