An Abandoned Hut [Evette]

[Jck'Lnn Mrk'ss]

The Crystal Desert was a good place for a body to hide from the world. The beautiful rainbow colored sands, often twisting and writhing in the air as furious sandstorms, would cut any Fey that was not of Wind to ribbons. That was the thought, anyway. It had been done before, and would be done again.

The usually good deterrant was the reason why Jck'Lnn had recently moved to the little hut in the Desert. No meddling Fey to come and ask for wishes here. And little was only how the Sand-covered hut looked from the outside. Once inside, one found that it was large and sprawling, either by magic or because it was dug deep into the sands, even Jck'Lnn did not know. She had been wandering and found it abandoned; decided on a whim to have it.

The heavy wood door had no lock, there not being a need for security in the middle of a desert, and so would open easily. Despite its look on the outside, there was not a speck of sand inside the so-called-hut; only bright, airy fabrics and comfortable things. An old, wooden piano, tuned to perfection, resides in the middle of the studio apartment--in the place of honor on a raised platform. A young-looking Jck'Lnn sits on the bench with her long, pale hair pooling around her on the seat and floor.

[Evette]

Oh how memories curled like a smoke, Evette tasting the piano's song as though it had just been heard yesterday. There were times when the Solitary Fey could be lost in her memories, so addicted to that beautiful sound, it was as breathtaking as the first time she tasted the sweetness of the Sound Fey's song. The sound of her changing fate, a requiem for her rotted life.

Staring lazily past thick eyelashes she watched behind her masquerade mask, Evette's cerulean gaze danced with the lithe fingers that played upon the archaic ivory for the second time. It was only when the Lady Mrk'ss ended her requiem did Evette let a single heart beat of silence pass between them before she made her presence known in the abandoned hut. Her voice was playful and quiet, friendly, as though calling out to an old friend or perhaps a lover. The tone so foreign, to someone who had spoken to her only ten years before, would have thought her a different person.

"Lost in a memory perhaps? I can't imagine you repeating yourself, especially to such an un-applauding audience as the silence," she commented lightly, tilting her head to one side. She was playing on Jck'Lnn's pride, though in reality wondered what it meant. This song, what was she doing? It was Evette's song, one that she had heard so many years before, in another time, in another life.

Evette stood in the doorway, just behind one of the Wind Fey's decorative clothes that hung from the ceiling, only revealing half of her form. She had her arms behind her back, smiling slightly, Evette had her head tilted back and leaning on the wall. With her eyes closed, she listened to the echoes of the ivory in her head, dancing in her thoughts, just out of reach.

[Jck'Lnn Mrk'ss]

"If there were a masquerade, would you already be dressed for it? Or would you find a new mask?" She knew without looking that it would be there, as it always was.

It was somewhat a cruel thing to say, yes, for Jck'Lnn new very well what the mask meant to Evette. Though the words were cruel, the tone was not-mischeivous, playful, slightly teasing in return. It was a silk screen to cover the real issue, why had she been playing that particular song? It had come to her in a dream, the music filling her brain, hearing it in the silence, seeing the notes written in the air upon awaking. There had been no choice for her but to play it.

Jck'Lnn had no gift in fortelling the future, but meddling in fates had cause a sort of chemical reaction in her. She sometimes got feelings, ideas, when something big was to happen. Dreams were rare, rarer still did she remember them. A new thing in her long life--coming to her shortly after she escaped her tomb. She one-eightied in her chair so that the piano was to her back. Being backless, the chair allowed for someone to sit in one of two ways--the armrests prevented the full four.

Jck'Lnn gave a thoughtful smile, too, at the sight of the woman who had somehow become a friend. She knew her as well as she knew herself. Better than, she ammended silently. Sometimes she didn't know herself very well at all. "Something big will happen, sometime soon. This is all I know."

[Evette]

Evette knew very well she was a puppet of fate, finding some kind of comfort in the idea of seeing her own strings, the fey had become mechanical in her resolve. Jck'Lnn, her puppeteer, had given her this sight, promising her everything and nothing. Perhaps it was unhealthy to find love for such beings as Jck'Lnn Mrk'ss, but it was better than having no love for the living at all.Evette moved with a grace as though she were floating, lifting her weight from the door way with life that was breathed into her doll-like parts. It was apparent now, one significant difference in the Masked Girl since the last meeting of the Wind Fey, and it glittered behind Evette, intricate and impossible. Evette's mechanical masterpiece was completed and no longer did she walk wingless.

The silver metals cast a rainbow upon the brightly colored clothes that adorned the walls, strangely quiet for so many gears and parts. They were large, and hung low, dormant, but the idea of their danger loomed with their heaviness, the light weaving humming in the metal quietly. Evette now had to step with her hips forward, model like, the weight must have been immense, but she accommodated it well.

A smile bled from her pale lips as Evette's sapphire gaze pierced through the many screens that surrounded Jck'Lnn. Evette had no time to contemplate the philosophies behind the Sound Fey, though she could marvel at the superficial layers she could see at all. Jck'Lnn was a complex creature, but even with her cryptic nature, Evette knew that repeating one's self was of evident importance, just as her words implied.

"At least I don't pretend," she commented lightly in return, "like so many, that my face is really my face. Perhaps, if I went to the masquerade, I would really be myself, without my masks, but until then, leave me with my play things, Jck." Her words were playful, riddle like; the meaning of them would be lost to anyone aside from whom she was speaking. Evette stopped short of a few feet of her friend, tilting her head thoughtfully.

"I hope fate is an optimist, but are you?" she arched a lovely eyebrow behind the white porcelain.

[Jck'Lnn Mrk'ss]

Her eyes widened imperceptibly. So that is what the false sense of purpose that was Jck'Lnn's gift had produced. She stood and closed the distance between them. Reached out as if to touch the monstrosity she had created.

"You mentioned a vague idea when we last parted ways....I did not believe it was possible..." she murmured, eyes becoming more contemplative now. How like her own wings they were, both mocking Life itself. From a distance, both pairs would look like true Wings--but neither could stand up to a close inspection. Beautiful, but fake. Evette's mechanical, Jck's ghostly. Both ever-changing colors. Ironic, how alike the two Fey were, and how it showed in their wings.

"Tell me, dear Eve, how do they function as wings? Do they fly?" Will there be one more similarity between them? Were they even corporeal? Another irony was not lost on the Meddler of Fate. Counterfeit wing produced by a counterfeit purpose. Her hand altered it's course at the last moment, and traced the curve of the wing in the air.

[Evette]

Her vision only heralded to imagery of static dancing on surfaces, and without any volume or mass to speak of, Evette had never been able to see Jck'Lnn's wings. Well, not quite see the enigmatic spectacle of Jck'Lnn's soul like everyone else.

Ghost particles, she liked to call them, energy that had no bounds, and perhaps weren't even real, were the only reason Evette knew they existed at all. Unlike how other's saw the Wind Fey's wings as being large, wispy and beautiful, Evette gazed upon branches of vertical light, faint, blinking in and out of existence, and during certain times of the day - non existent at all.

They were strange in all of their beauty, ethereal, untouchable, just as Jck'Lnn herself was.

She closed her eyes as Jck'Lnn touched the warm, humming metal, Evette trying to feel the touch. Not even she would admit she felt nothing, no ghost pain or feeling. She lifted her lids, peering past thick lashes at the current that danced over Jck'Lnn bare shoulder.

"Yes, they work. So long as I have the light of a sun or well lit moon, the weaving with suffice a great weight and carry me far." She did not ask the same question of her friend, knowing that even the Wind Fey herself did not want to know the answer, though how she lived in such darkness, Evette knew not.

Souls and the ideas of having them were strange indeed, and Evette wondered if Jck'Lnn helped her out of reflection of self. If Jck'Lnn's wings did not hold her weight - did that make her soulless, empty, just as Evette herself once was?

"What a strange way we met, Jck'Lnn, under the circumstances, I offered flowers to the only fey tomb in our world only to have them given back," she looked nostalgic, thoughtful, as the thought hovered on her expression.

[Jck'Lnn Mrk'ss]

Jck'Lnn had expected a shock of cold, not the warm (almost hot) machine under her fingers. What did this say of Evette's soul? Or of Jck'Lnn's perception of her soul? For she indeed was one of those that believed the wings/physical attributes of a Fey told about the soul within. A bit looser than some, more believing that the attribute told some of the story, not all. She asked herself the same question that she asked of Evette every day, and never found the courage or strength to try. What would it say of her if her wings were useless, only there to look pretty? Oh, sure, she could feel them. Could feel their weight at her back, could feel them with her hands. But Jck'Lnn had the sneaking suspicion that someone else would go right through them. And thus she took care never to let anyone else touch her wings, and all her clothes were backless.

Memories came unbidden at the Exile's words. Complete darkness, no sense of time or space-just ink going on forever. Something akin to fear gripped her insides. Where was she? Was she dead now? Is this awful blackness the afterlife? You've always saved me before, Daddy, why aren't you here? And Mama? Gone in one horrifying explosion of dust-like particles. Jck'Lnn was suffocating, the shadows racing into her mouth and throat, filling up her lungs.

A slight breeze almost passed by unnoticed. It hit her face like the Breath of Life, as if the Mother Wind was calling Jck out of the hysterical chaos of her mind. It led her eventually to a crack, the crack in turn led her to a door, and the door to freedom. When she was out of that terrible place, that stone tomb, Jck'Lnn swore never to go back. It was one promise that she never kept, though it did keep her away for a long time. But Jck'Lnn had wanted answers, wanted to know what happened to her, why she slept for a thousand years, and found herself back at the tomb. The player's flute was the only clue, and interestingly weaved thing designed to keep away Fey of some kind, though she could not tell the nature of those to be kept away. It was there, sitting on the flute, that she spied the pretty flowers out of place in the hands of a wingless monster.