Working in a dead-end, post office job in the heart of a primarily-Human city, Arya Salcrest cannot let her secret out else she loses her rights and her safety. Norren Sterling, a member of the Council whom she met after a failed museum trip, is det...
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Red painted the scene at the back of Arya's consciousness. She watched it blur and refocus until she could make out other details. Like how the red flows or how it shifted and flew with a passing breeze. It took her a moment but she realized it was hair.
Just the reddest shade Arya has ever seen, waving at her from her mind's eye, waiting for her to reach out and touch it. She did reach out but her fingertips brushed empty air. Whatever this was, it was simply unreachable. Unchangeable.
Arya's gaze traced the curtain of hair to a head lolling against the side of the cart. Her throat tightened, making her breath hitch. It was the girl from Arya's dream the other night. Only she wasn't running free down the blissful valleys. This time, she was chained around the neck, on the wrists, and on the ankles.
Was this...a continuation of the story? As far as Arya was concerned, the last thing she knew of this girl was that she was captured by armored soldiers which could only be humans. That's what woke her up last time and she thought it was just her anxiety and fear projecting into her dreams. But now, after seeing the same girl be in a grimy cart, Arya couldn't be too sure.
These dreams, unlike most of the ones she had all her life, were more vivid, as if her mind was forcing her to remember, to figure something out. They stayed at the back of Arya's mind like parasites eating at her brain. Sure, they faded to random details as soon as she woke up, but the emotions, the intuition, and the tiny pin pricks of conscience were all there. It almost felt like they're memories. Like...they're meant to be a message about something. Something important, probably. But what?
The cart's door suddenly opened, drowning the girl with light from the outside. Everything was quite muted but the alarm dancing in the girl's eyes was enough to tell Arya the hinges creaked and the shadow falling over the girl was not good news. A hand reached out. Scuffling. Struggling. Arya figured someone wailed in protest.
Soon, the girl's body crashed against the cobblestones. Her feathered wings splattered into full view. Then, the hand reached out once more. It didn't even belong to a face. Just a flitting crank grabbing anything it touched. Arya watched the girl squirm and flail against the hand as its owner dragged her away from the cart, away from the brief salvation brought by the light from the outside.
Arya followed them into the back of a shoddy house and came in front of a series of square chutes leading to the dark. All around the girl, people dressed in tattered tunics and torn trousers milled to and fro, their gaits resembling that of a starved horse. Carts of coal and other dark ores peppered the expanse, the trees providing enough cover over the clearing. It was in the middle of nowhere, after all.
The hand threw the girl forward, sending her stumbling towards the middle chute. There were no voices, no words spoken or heard, but the girl scrambled to the pile of pickaxes thrown without care on the dry soil. The girl took too long to go into the chute, oscillating between the light and the doom awaiting her. Black strings whizzed in Arya's periphery, slamming in full force against the girl's arm.
This time, the red painting the ground was not because of her hair.
Arya expected to wake at the first display of violence, to open her eyes to the comfort of her bed and flat with her heart pounding. It should have been over there. It worked so well last time, when the girl was attacked. But now...she had to watch more and more scenes, like they were a replay of the previous one.
The girl produced too little ores in a day. Whipped. She was late to emerge from the dingy sleeping quarters. Whipped. The pickaxe couldn't lift a few inches from the ground because of all the other wounds on her arm. Whipped. She couldn't show up because of the pain. Whipped.
If Arya could have shielded her eyes in her own dream, she would have. But she couldn't, forcing her to stand there, taking in all the unfairness and the violence a human was capable of. What more, this whole thing just made her angry. Arya wanted to help the girl, to get her out of this mess, but, as if fate was playing its cruel game once more, Arya couldn't do anything except watch and feel the wrongness of it all.
Why was the universe showing her all this when she wouldn't even be able to act on it?
The scene scattered and re-focused on the same girl staring up at the small window in the sleeping quarters. From the veil of darkness around her, Arya could glimpse lumpy bodies passed out in exhaustion or something worse dotting the floor spreading at the girl's feet. The girl, herself, sat cross-legged, a wistful look in her hooded eyes. Even through the dim light of the moon, Arya could see the thick flecks of dirt and blood on her skin. Her arms were bandaged but they were as dusty and disgusting as the remnants of her clothes.
But most importantly, she was alive.
They were stuck in this vignette for quite a while. Arya lost count of how many minutes, hours, or years had she watched the girl watch the night sky. Now that she's looking at the scene with enough focus, she noticed the girl had grown taller and more...mature. If not for the matted hair, the ruffled feathers of her wings, and the tattered clothes, she would have been much more beautiful. How many years had this fae spent in the mines?
Before Arya could get her answer, a shadow fell over the girl's face. It danced. A sparkle lit up the girl's eyes. It could have been because of recognition or comfort. Or something. Arya turned to the window to find some sort of a bird jumping with frantic hops on the sill. Something glinted by its leg. What was that?
The girl smiled—the only time Arya ever saw her did it apart from the valley-running days. With hurried movements, the girl untied the thing attached to the bird's leg. Arya forced her vision to sharpen until she could make out the green mane of feathers by the bird's throat, the bulging body, the brown feathers. It was a familiar bird.
Ouine's Socks. It was a lark.
And it looked like the painting she saw in Barnholdt.
The girl finished untying the object and she held it to the light just as the lark flew out of the window, back to freedom. Arya made out a pebble fitted between the girl's grimy fingers. Just a small, circular rock. But judging from the girl's beaming grin, it meant some other thing. One Arya wasn't sure she'd uncover in her lifetime.
A column of light flooded Arya's mind and Cornelia's voice filled the expanse. "Get up, darling! The wirebus left half an hour ago."
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