[FICTION] Pallid

     Eabha trudged barefoot through the sodden moonlit forest of early Winter, with soot and ash in her dark hair, and a spike of iron hanging on from her waist. Inquisitor Molan of The Black Saint had come to her home after the ill-fated duel with the closet thing she ever had to a brother, Cillian. And Molan had come with torches, and force. The last memory Eabha would ever have of her home was its conflagration.

    It had all started when famine came at the hands of rot that took the grain. The village blamed Draoi Righnach, Eabha’s mentor, and whose line had been there in the Ban Forest for longer than it knew that name. So the Tiarna, the lord, called for an Inquisitor of Saint Macsen. Righnach had then soon disappeared searching for the culprit she knew caused the rot and harvest failure.

    The issue was, however, that Righnach had vanished the same day Inquisitor Molan had come to The Ban. When Cillian had realized this, he quickly blamed him for the assumed harm of his adoptive mother. And in accordance to the very oldest customs, Cillian challenged the Inquisitor to a duel of honor, and was swiftly found wanting in his skill. With the boy dead, Molan had capitalized upon the spectacle to form the mob he needed to do what he had come to do.

    Eabha harbored a strange love for Righnach and Cillian; they were more like kin to each other than they had ever been to her. Righnach had always been stern and short with her, ever since she had taken her in when Eabha’s parents in the village abandoned her, and Cillian had always treated her as a house servant. But Eabha knew she was the only living of their home, and if she did not seek recourse, then none ever would. She knew that no law of men would see justice; she instead sought revenge from The Otherworld.

    And after her frantic flight into the night, she found the instrument of her vengeance; a still mere deep in the forest that reflected the cold light of the Winter moon like a silver mirror. Righnach had struck Eabha with an iron key when she had dared to even suggest summoning a Faerie, even a minor one. What she was about to do would surely have caused her mentor to strike her dead.

    Her heart gripped in icy hate and fear, she approached the frigid glass-like water. After a moment, Eabha began:

“O Fair One of The Water

Biting as Winter Gale

Somber as Moonlight

I ask to speak with Thee.”

    A chilling wind answered her, and a dread hum sounded as the mere burned in the cold light. From the pond, a form rose out of the water; neither man nor woman, and with beauty both great and terrible. Looking at Eabha with eyes of clearest ice, it spoke;

“Young Draoi

Who Knows Not Courtesy

And Comes Without Gifts

I ask thine name.”

    Eabha stood there shocked that her call was answered,

“O Sp—”

“Cease thine prose, young one, for it offends mine ears! Tell me, plain and true; for what reason do you call?”

“Righnach, Draoi of this land, was murdered for crimes that were not her own!”

“For what crimes was she accused?”

“She was blamed for the rot that took the grain in the fields!”

“And who was it that you say murdered the Draoi?”

“It was surely Lir Molan, the Inquisitor of The Black Saint Macsen!”

“And why is it you believe him the one responsible?”

“Righnach vanished when he had come, and later slew another of our kith when challenged!”

    A long moment passed, and then the Faerie spoke again:

“Tell me, child, what is your relation to the Draoi?”

“I was her apprentice, and child in practice.”

“I see; I reject thine plea.”

“What?! For what reason-- on what grounds?!”

“Be silent, fool child; I will not seek this Molan, for it was not he who killed the Draoi.”

“Then I beg of you, kill the one who did!”

“Cease your mewling, for I will do no such thing-- I have no desire to kill mine own self.”

“What?!”

“Your Draoi came to me, and demanded of me things to which she had lost the right to. She came and spoke to me with words, words of family and comfort and mercy. ‘Twas I who caused the rot, for those in your village had long forgotten how to endure the long, hard nights. She dared to approach Winter dark with kindness.”

    Eabha stood there in impossible fury, and with no words for the being that stood before her. Without thought, she drew her iron spike, and crashed into the water of the mere, toward the proclaimed killer of her teacher. When she reached her would-be victim in her mad splashing-sprint, Eabha drove her spike into where she thought its heart would surely be, the watery body of the being hissed and steamed, and… she heard it laugh close in her ear.

    Her wordless rage flash-froze as she felt the rime-cold and wet hands of the Faerie grip her own that had stabbed into it, and another in her filthy hair.

“You feral thing, with neither kith nor kin, and fear and anger in your heart; you understand how to address horrid Winter dark.”

    Where its hands touched, it paled greatly her hair, her skin, and her clothes, and chilled Eabha so deeply that she feared she’d never know warmth again.

“Very well, my new Draoi; I will do some of what thou asked of me.”

    In an instant, the form of the Faerie fell apart into the water and pool that formed it.

    As Eabha stood there in the pond, the wind picked up savagely with razor chill before its whipping gradually slowed. And as it approached a near silence, in the distance Eabha heard the screams of men.

Note: This was a story that I had been trying to submit, but honestly that entire process makes me hysterically depressed, so I just decided to share it here instead.