= Oiyg =

"W-where am I?" I stutter, slightly cold, and with a growing sense of something I had not previously felt to such a large degree: annoyance. There is an odd woman in the front of me, her scraggly and ruddy brown hair dangling nonchalantly past her shoulders. She is clothed in green, but it is such a green that it makes me shudder... it was similar in its shimmery-quality to the wings of the Fae woman, whose form I notice I still occupy. Her yellow eyes observe me carefully, they are like... sunlight, and I feel some comfort into looking into them. Despite the situation, my personality prevails and I giggle slightly. I hope she does not understand that I find her eyes settling.

"The marshes, dear girl," she answers, patting my arm in a friendly way. The gesture is lost, however, as the tingling sensation of dribbling blood falls across my chest.

"I hurt!" I shout, remembering the encounter with the Fae, and panicking slightly. My breathing grows desperate, and I exhale and inhale frantically. I can feel my heart speed up in my chest. My wrist is bleeding uncharacteristically, and I feel strangely alone.

"Now, now," she calms, quiet like the field mouse. With her slender hands, she grabs at a reed embedded in the dirt below. She snatches it up, wraps its large width around my wrist and ties it with a quick jerk. I am almost thankful, but her indifferent jerk causes a throb to jar my body.

"Youch!" I yell, and pull my arm away from her lack of mindfulness, but as it bends at the elbow, the pain burns me again. I clench my face, aching both inside and out. I feel a small gap within me, and as I think of the animal I crushed, the lies of my shifted form, and the Fae, I realize that my days of innocence have gone.

"Sorry," she mutters, unsympathetically. I let go of the strand of magic that is monitoring my Fae appearance, as it disgusts me. She stammers in shock, "You have magic?" I nod, politely, baring my pointed teeth, clenched in my ailing. Looking at my face, she eyes the wound, and I swear her face twists into a dull grin. "It seems you need a little schooling in your power, eh?" She says it carefully, like a coiled snake, or cat, waiting to pounce.

I see no harm in saying, "I suppose I could use sum'mat of a lesson."

She smiles, grinning more wildly this time. "Can you walk? You could come back to my lair, to rest and heal," she pauses, "and I might teach you a few things."

I look at her out of the corner of my eye, slightly suspicion, but in light of her hospitality and my hunger for knowledge, I choose to trust her. "Yes. Lead," I respond, finitely. I realize, quite suddenly, that it is no longer raining.

"Yes," she repeats, unnecessarily. Then she grins again. She stands up, and I stand up, and she is grinning all the while.

It is a very dodgy grin.

=

I look blandly at her home. I frown, in the slightest, but she does not notice. She tells me her name is Eleiamae. She tells me, after I ask her very kindly, she tells me so quite irritably, that I cannot call her Elly. I do anyway; this Elly, she has an odd abode. It is brown, it is dirty (for a cave even), and smells faintly musty. She takes a seat on a rock, and stares out into the muddy night, a vision that is blocked by cypress trees and reeds. Then, I realize, she is looking at the cypress trees and reeds; and the mud, the mud that is not so nice.

The mud, as it happens, chose to trip me on the way to this "nice" little cave. The mud, so it happens, is a savage creature. I slipped, and I fell, and I cursed it, my sworn enemy (albeit second to the pebble; there were no pebbles in marshes. Or were there? It would be a question I must pursue in my free time.).

"Elly?" I question this, but her head is turned, but I get the notion by her still figure that her face is mad.

"Yes, dear child?" She says, after turning her head. Her face is now an optimistic smile. I can tell it is a fake, because it is less dodgy than usual.

"Elly, where am I to sit?" I finish, vaguely, my gaze wandering across various objects in the room. There are several rocks, each similar to Elly's, each of which look marginally (ahem... largely) uncomfortable.

Her face is temporarily frantic, and her eyes flash wine yellow, but then she leaves her seat, pulls some cave lichen from its attached status to the wall, and spread it on one of the rocks in the room. She spreads it on the roughest one, actually. I fail to see how the lichen helps, but she spouts, cheerily, "Now is that not homey?"

I look at the rock, and at the pebbles by it, and at the lichen, and at Elly, and at the ugly, coarse rock again... and then I say, in such a matter-of-fact way that a bead of sweat rolls down Elly's embarrassed forehead, "No." Appreciating her kindness, though, I push past and sit daintily on the rock; my bottom hurts.

She, somewhat satisfied, crosses the "room" a second time and seats herself again on the rock; Elly folds her legs primly, and much to her anguish, I copy her. Her example brings me to believe it is only proper.

We sit, awkwardly, for several minutes. We both stare at each other. My lips are set in a thin line, and I can tell it unnerves her. But, she continues to pose a positive, but failing, countenance.

After this period, she slaps her knee, and bounds up again. "You wanted teaching!" She dances a little, and I cock my head at her; why does she dance?

"Now..." her faces becomes a mask of contemplation, and she mumbles, "now..." Then, quick as a finger snap (which can be quite slow), her demeanor turns determined- and slightly wicked?

She strides across the floor, stares straight into my eyes, slaps her dirty palm down upon my shoulder, and her eyebrows fix themselves in a downward arc. "Now, listen to me, you are going to be my apprentice. Have it, wild child?"

Her inflection seems gentle, and almost without demand, but her speech is laced with a funny tingle that makes me giggle. I say, almost accidentally, "Of course!" The excitement in my voice was not quite the excitement in my head, but she continues to look at me with her sunlight eyes, and I dismiss this thought; surely it is exciting, or so says the eyes.

"Good," Elly says, unflinchingly and continues to keep eye contact.

"Good?" I ask, carefully.

She merely nods, and her face sneers. She is looking dodgy again; no she is not, the eyes say. The eyes, those perplexing bulbs, fall darker at each heartbeat. She laughs, for no apparent reason, and I chortle too. "Good," she finally says, nodding vigorously to herself. And it is set in stone.

=====