person switch
Switch Pov
Written in 1st person
2,981 words
Like a swan I glide across the stage, my body a bending blade of grass beneath the breeze of the flute and the piano. My dress like a gentle current of the ocean swirls out behind me, then like a rolling wave it rises up with me as I curve into the air.
Like surf on the sand, the applause of the crowd roars around me, falling on my ears like grainy foam.
I bow before them, sweeping my arms out and letting my hair cascade over my face.
Then I straighten and swivel, my dress curling behind me, and I exit to the left.
"Amazing Laurie!" My mother exclaims.
"Great job!" My brother compliments.
"You were wonderful!" My Aunt adds.
"The trophy will look nice on your shelf, Laurette" my father says, eyes twinkling "right in the middle of all the rest."
I hold the heavy bronze cup tightly and smile.
"Well, should we go straight home or should we grab some ice cream?" My father asks while we exit the auditorium.
"How are you feeling Laurie?" My mother asks "You look tired. Do you want ice cream?"
I shake my head, feeling my arms beginning to ache with the weight of the cup.
"Oh well, maybe tomorrow," my mother says.
I watch the city lights rush away as the hover car's engine starts and we join the line of traffic shooting through the narrow slits of sky between the towers of concrete and metal.
"You get some rest!" My mother calls to me as I enter my bedroom.
I nod and smile.
I fall onto my bed, my dress pooling out around my, and I close my eyes.
Before you read any further, there is something you must tell understand.
My name is not Laurette.
They are not my family.
I am not young.
And I am not human.
My tale is long and were I to tell it now it would only serve to confuse you.
It is just as well, for I do not have time for the telling because tonight I leave.
But I wanted you to know these things, lest you be lost while I begin my journey.
Those who have been my family for the past sixteen years are now sleeping and I am slipping out of our home.
Out of our home, high above the ground, above the factories and into the vehicle storage unit.
I slip behind the hover cars and to the small closet that is dusty inside.
No one besides me ever goes in here. No one ever saw what I was working on.
But if they had seen it, they would have thought nothing more of then what it is.
A pocket watch.
From my favorite era as well, the Victorian age, the time of guilded edges and the longest luxurious dresses.
And heavy pocket watches.
It was in those times that I discovered how much magic could be contained within the tiny gears and springs.
And, over the course of hundreds of years, I never forgot my craft.
No.
They think I've forgotten, but I remember everything.
And I've learned so many new things.
But I cannot work with wires and circuit boards, oil makes me ill, gasoline poisons me, and electricity slips through my fingers like dry sand.
But the clockwork in my hand is like a tool to me.
A tool I thoroughly am familiar with.
I open the doors to to unit and disengage the safety force field, my feet skim the concrete edge before I leap.
I let myself fall, my arms flung wide as my stomach drops and my dress spreads out around me, then I flick open the top of the watch.
The world slows, I can hear my heartbeat, a slow long roar in my ears, and the night changes.
No longer am I suspended above the city of lights and pollution. A soft clean light streams around me and I gasp as for the first time since the first factory let off its chocking bellow of smoke I breathed a breath of pure air.
I smile as I stand and turn, taking in the forest glade I had landed in.
No longer am I on the planet they call Earth, no longer am I in man's domain.
Dear reader have you heard of the Courts of the Fae?
Have you heard of the dreamlike Otherworld that could be blundered into from fairy rings and the Celtic standing stones during the betweenyounger
That is were I am.
I smooth out my dress and pull my hair free from its ties.
This glade is familiar to me, I spent many hours here when I was far younger.
I had a friend-
I have a friend.
I close my eyes and allow myself to be lost in the memory.
The dry earth hurt my feet so much and the unfiltered sunlight seemed to burn me, I had lost my way when the dryad appeared in front of me, asking if I needed help.
She was nothing like what I had imagined.
But imagination tends to play strangely with the few facts that it was given.
She was beautiful, her coat a burning brown, her mane green like her leaves with a mist drifting around her shoulders, and her hooves and legs woven from the same branches of her tree.
I had seen many horses, ones who swam like fish and ones who flew like birds, but none who breathed out of the trunks of trees. But I still knew she was a dryad.
"Onodine?"
I look up and there she was, standing in front of me, like the first time we had ever met, her black eyes glittering with tears.
"Is it truly you?"
"Isanese. Yes, it is me."
I stand and as she comes closer to me I wrap my arms around her shoulders and bury my face in her sun soaked mane.
"But where have you been? It's been so long since you last visited. I've been so worried! As has your family."
Tears spring to my own eyes as I remember my true family, my family of blood.
"They are here?" I ask stepping back.
"Your mother and elder brother are. But what of your father? Do you know where he is?"
"Yes," I wipe away the tears, enjoying the salt but rejecting the pain "You don't understand Isanese, the ways to man's earth are almost closed off."
She shakes her arboreal mane and whimpers in surprise "What? How? I thought that the ways through the ocean where still open."
"It is...such a long story my old friend, but right now I must get to the High Council, would you bear me on your back?"
"Of course," she buckles her knees so I can climb up "but you must promise me an explanation when we arrive."
"I promise."
And like the summer breeze over the balmy seas, she begins to run, her gait smooth and easy but her pace swift and the woodlands bend like a tunnel to allow us to pasof
I close my eyes to rehearse the story I would need to tell the Council.
It was a story of extraordinary proportions and when I think about it I still feel as if I am suspended in a dream.
When man began to grow, to spread, to overrun the world and the otherkin realized that they would not share, we retreated, to the one place that they were truly terrified of.
The sea.
Dragons dove deep beneath the waves, faeries turned themselves from beings of the meadows to beings of the bright corals, the Wild hunt scoured the desolate regions of the Pacific sea, the dryads dragged forests down and became guardians of the kelp, the unicorns stayed close to shore, basking hidden in the foam to care for man, whom they still loved despite his transgressions.
And we thought we were safe.
But still man found a way to follow us, and many fled to the Otherworld when the pollution began to poison the gardens of the deep. But still, some of us stayed, unwilling to leave our ancestral homes and believing that one day, man would realize that the sea needed to be treated with gentler hands and when that day came we would be able to aid in healing, unseen but still there.
We believed that right up until the very moment it was too late.
Right up until man found a way to drain the ocean.
Right until he found us.
We hadn't known it, but there had been elder forces conspiring with men against the fae, but we knew it on the day man drained away the waters to accommodate his population, for that was the day that the unicorns were stripped of their horns, that the dragons lost their wings, the day that I remember with agony as the sea water drained from my lungs and I was forced to breath the harsh air. The day that I was forced to shed my natural form.
The day that they thought they took my memories.
The day that it rested on my shoulders when the wipe failed and I remembered it all.
But today, as I ride to the council, this is the day were I correct it all. This will be the day that I will see my family again.
They thought I'd forgot.
But I remember everything.
Queen Titiana stares at me as I finish relating the last part of my tale. Her eyes are filled with sympathy, but her mouth is taut with concern.
"Well, Onodine, this is a grave revelation indeed that you have brought to us," King Oberon says, stepping down from the dais, his long glossamer wings fluttering slightly "And it explains much of the silence between the two worlds."
I bow slightly, out of respect rather than fidelity to the fairy king "Our position is dire, sir, and I beg the council's aid in bringing our peoples home."
"That would be very good," says The Green Man, standing, clad in long green wreaths of moss, his skin like the long trunk of an old tree "If there were any portals between our worlds left. But there are none left."
"Yes, I know," I turn to face him and lift up my pocket watch "But this can create one."
"Yes," Titiana says, joining her husband on the lower steps of the dais "But can it create one stable enough to support everyone who needs to come through? And if it can, how will we find them all? You said that they do not remember who they are."
I straighten my shoulders and try to steady my beating heart. This may be the most difficult part to explain.
"I have theorized," I pause to swallow "That if the watched is placed between the deepest roots of the World Tree and its power is activated there, that it would draw to it all the fae and other creatures and peoples who belong here."
"You want to use Yggdrasil as a portal?" The Green Man splutters "Young child do you understand what you are proposing!? Do you realize the consequences that could follow if the Tree was damaged during your ritual?"
I bristle "Of course I understand! I am no mere child to suggest that we use the life blood of the Great Tree trivially. I have seen the rites preformed before and I know the power that flows through its green veins."
Before I can continue he cuts me off.
"What sort of magic is yours child?"
"Water," I reply, gritting my teeth as his continued his degradation of my age.
"So what are you? Some kind of nymph? A water fairy?"
"Merfolk, actually," I can't help but toss my head a little, for there is no other people who hold so much power with the water magic.
"I see," he growls "Man destroyed your home. Don't you wish revenge?"
"No, I simply wish to see our kin brought home," my voice drops to a soft murmur and I turn to face the King and Queen.
They sigh in unison, but only Oberon speaks "The World Tree is under his care. Reason with him and not us."
The stomp of hooves interrupts us and Isanese storms forwards, her leafy breezes of a mane billowing as if whipped by a gale.
"Sir," she speaks to The Green Man. He is her protector, her advocate amongst the world of magic, as well as the voice for every dryad, every wood elf, every creature tied to the forest, when they speak, he must at least listen.
"Yes, Isanese?" he replies, with a heavy frown.
"I have seen Onodine use her magic, I have watched her perfect it over the years. She can do it. And I can help her."
"Are you certain," he growls, softly, patiently.
"Of course," she paws the ground, the sound of wood scraping against the marble grating filling through the air.
The Green Man turns to the King and Queen of the fairies.
"She may try it," He rumbles "But if the Tree shows any signs of decay or harm she must stop immediately."
"I will not harm the tree," I step closer to him, craning my neck to look up "If it is decided, then may we go?"
He nods.
I turn and bow to Tatiana and Oberon. In turn they bow to me.
Then Isanese kneels to allow me to climb up onto her back. I tighten my knees against her side, the King and Queen spread their wings, I glance backwards, but The Green Man has already disappeared.
"Hold tightly," Isanese whispers as she gathers her legs beneath her.
"I am."
But I still gasp as she leaps into the air, the wind gathering beneath her and she begins to gallop across the mist of green spreading leaves beneath her hooves.
I try not to look as the world falls away and we begin to fly, race, across the sky towards the cliff that towers over the Otherworld.
I dare to glance to the side and see Queen Tatiana flying beside us, sparkling wings buzzing. I do not look to the other side, but I assume that King Oberon is there.
I grit my teeth as Isanese's steps angle higher and the clouds begin to look as though I could easily snatch them up in my hands.
The wind rushes as we rise up past the gray stone cliff, whipping my hair around my face.
Then, Isanese slows, my hair falls back across my shoulders, and I hear the soft thump as her hooves touch the grass.
"Well then, mergirl, let me see what you are going to do to the Tree that binds this world together," The Green Man steps forwards as I slip off of Isanese's back.
I smooth down my hair before saying anything, then nod to him "I believe I have already explained what I am going to do, sir."
"Yes, explained, now demonstrate."
Isanese whickers softly and follows me as I step up to the huge tree that stands at the edge of the cliff, thick trunk, enormous knotted roots reaching out in every direction, and eternally green leaves spreading out in huge thick clumps above our heads.
The green life that binds the Otherworld together.
I near it, the clock ticking in my hands, every step I take, the tick increases, until it is one rapid, incessant, mechanical sound.
"Weave your magic with mine," I whisper to Isanese "It will allow me to impress the workings of the clock with the tree."
She nods and a green stream of energy winds around the pocket watch.
"Are you...certain this will work?"
I turn my head to look at her, feeling a stab of disappointment, not even she fully trusted that this could work.
"It will."
It has to.
The watch begins to glow gentle summer green and the metal turns warm within my hands.
This will work.
Slowly, to hide the trembling of my arms, I walk to the base of the tree and kneel between the two greatest roots.
I set the watch down where the two roots meet and stand back, summoning my own magic, flowing like a single piece of fluid silk. Tendrils of green reach out from the watch to meet the blue of my magic and they meet with a tremble of electricity and thunder, then begin to pulsate.
The ripples of energy are absorbed by the tree and the ground around me begins to quake, I tremble, my arms shiver from the strain of holding the magic in such a complicated design. But now the clock begins to take over, doing as I had created it to do, opening the portal.
Then it begins to tap into the tree, using the great plant as a beacon, to find and call to it all those on the other side of the portal.
Voices are ringing out around me, The Green Man is shouting, Isanese is whinnying in fear, I force myself to ignore them.
There is a wave of sound, many voices opposing and fearful and an explosion of light follows them.
I hear the Green Man and Isanese and The King and Queen of Faeries and my father, all speaking to me through a darkness.
I open my eyes, my body prone on the ground and the muscles in my arms still shaking. They are all standing over me.
"Did it work?" I ask weakly as a strong pair of arms lifts me up.
"Yes," a familiar voice replies and I smile as I recognize it.
"You brought us home, Ono."
I lean against my father as I fight off tears "I've missed you."
He smiles down at me "I've missed you too."