Didn't Think This Would Ever Happen...

Chapter 3: Bath Time

Sylvie laid out the meat on a few rocks to dry, sighing. She was glad she had gone hunting before bathing.
Now she had time to let the meat dry while they went and bathed. It was Lilia's idea to eat first... but he seemed to have eaten his fill for the moment...
Sylvie glanced over at the pile of organs. She shook her head as she stood up. She took the rest of the deer—the bones and other inedible parts—behind her cottage where there was a small circle of dead grass.
Sylvie always set out these sorts of things for the scavenging animals, but she wasn't so sure they would be coming by anytime soon...
Sylvie went inside and stuffed a bag full of laundry and soaps. It just so happened to be her usual laundry day. At least something was as it should be.
When she went back outside, Lilia had his hands at his sides, staring up at the sky. There were dark clouds forming.
Sylvie walked over, "it was so sunny just a minute ago..."
Lilia spoke quietly, "those aren't clouds..."
"Then what is it?" She matched his volume, not sure why he sounded so empty...
"Smoke."
Sylvie sniffed the air. It did sort of smell like smoke... but it was odd. It didn't smell like any kinds Sylvie had been around before.
Lilia finally looked over at her. He then realized how much taller she was than him. At least a whole head, discounting her boots, which she had just taken off.
She smiled, "we can go wash up, now."
Lilia frowned to himself. If he weren't so exhausted he would have made himself taller. His expression faded into a melancholy stare. He looked much different than normal now...
Staring down at the grass, he reached his hand up and ran his fingers through his hair. So much of it had been chopped off...
Sylvie gasped excitedly, "I didn't notice the pink!"
Lilia looked up at her.
"It matches your eyes! Sorta!" She was beaming.
Lilia grew concerned. Was this human defective? She had witnessed him devour a large amount of organs. Lilia's arms where covered in dried blood, and he was sure his face was smeared with it, too. To top it all off, Lilia was wearing a dress that probably made him look all the more creepy.
And she was smiling.
What was wrong with her?
"It's this way," Sylvie turned and started walking. Her auburn hair that got lighter as it faded down to the tips swished behind her in its ponytail.
Lilia found himself pulling at his hair as he followed her. He had to cut it off as a means of escape. He remembered spending hours brushing through it and playing with it... It all seemed pointless now.
They arrived at a small river with a gentle current and Sylvie set down her bag. She rummaged through it for a moment, "this is probably a weird question, but do fairies bathe the same way humans do?"
Lilia paused to think, "I would assume so... but I've never seen a human bathe..."
Sylvie laughed, "I guess not!"
It disturbed Lilia how she kept speaking to him like they knew each other. It was quite alarming. Didn't she have a sense of self preservation?
Sylvie sat down and put her feet in the water. She shivered as she took some clothes into her hands, "I'll get started on these. There's a little inlet down that way."

Lilia spent a long time scrubbing his arms. It was also a bit difficult to wash himself without submerging his chest.
The water was cold, but it wasn't hard to get used to. Again, he noticed how devoid of life the area was.
He stared down at his bloodied fingers. He wasn't normally so messy. And he didn't normally have an audience.
Lilia had never had problems with eating, until some time ago. It was completely natural for him to eat what he did. He didn't know how horrible it was until. . .
Now he felt like a monster whenever he ate. Of course, he wouldn't starve himself, but eating wasn't enjoyable anymore.
Lilia sighed, scraping the dried blood off of his fingernails. He wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.
But he couldn't.
When Lilia returned upstream to where Sylvie sat she was giggling.
Sitting in her lap was a raven. She was rubbing under its beak, "you're so silly, Mr. Bird!"
Sylvie noticed Lilia's presence. She pointed to a tree, "he was trying to steal the buttons off our clothes."
Lilia wanted to smile. He really did. But he knew this bird.
The raven hopped off of Sylvie's lap and flew onto a low tree branch by Lilia.
"I'm not going back," Lilia said.
The bird stared at him blankly.
"I'm not." He repeated. "Tell them I died or something. Give them all the gory details you want."
The bird stared for a long moment before flying off and leaving.
Lilia sat down, leaning against the tree with crossed legs.
Sylvie stood up and brushed herself off, "don't you have a family? Is that bird-"
"No." Lilia was staring at his reflection in the water.
Sylvie grew sad. What had happened to Lilia? Weren't fairies incredibly powerful? How could anything bad have happened at all?
She didn't want to push Lilia about something so personal, but... he just seemed so... apathetic.
"Was that bird another fairy?" Sylvie asked.
"You could say that."
She narrowed her eyes, "you always give such vague answers... You hardly told me that you were a fairy!"
Lilia would have sighed if he had the energy. He just took a moment to decide how to answer. "The bird is a fae. One I know strictly through business. We hardly know each other's names. They're only a messenger."
Sylvie nodded, thinking hard, "do they deliver messages for all the fae in your community? Is it a community? A town? A forest?"
Lilia didn't exactly like how many questions she was asking, but it was a nice distraction. Sort of. "Where I'm from, we had a whole forest. Hardly any humans ever set foot in our territory. Most are too afraid of us. ... I think you may be broken."
Sylvie laughed, "what are you talking about?! I'm not broken! I have no reason to be afraid of you!"
Lilia stared at her. Why was she lying? What was her angle here?
Sylvie put her hand over her stomach, sighing, "sure, you were a little creepy to begin with, but you're a person just like me."
Lilia frowned a bit, "I am not-"
"You don't have to be human to be a person," she smiled. "You live, breathe, and have your own opinions."
Lilia slowly folded his arms, "we are very different."
Sylvie giggled, "I guess it's a difficult concept to grasp, but I don't think we're all that different. You have magic and I don't, but we both share this earth."
Lilia couldn't exactly say she was wrong.
She leaned back on her hands, looking at the trees above her, "I do have a question, though..."
"Hm?" Lilia felt very tired. After eating, his body was trying to heal itself again, thus he felt a bit drowsy.
"Aren't most fairies tiny?"
Lilia seemed to grow tense.
Sylvie did her best to pretend she hadn't notice. She really hoped she hadn't upset Lilia... She had no reason to be scared of him, he would have gotten rid of her if he wanted to. But she could feel his red eyes slowly moving to look at the back of her head.
Lilia spoke slowly and calmly, "I am... a special case..."
Sylvie smiled, laying back in the grass and turning her head to look at him, "well, of course, you've got pink hair!"
Lilia rolled his eyes, the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips, "most faeries have many vibrant colors. There was just a dress code where I worked, and I'm too tired to change it right now."
"A dress code?! Fairies work, too?!"
Lilia answered, "yes... We were allowed to have one color that was dark and one that was light as long at it wasn't 'too distracting'." He used his fingers to make air quotes.
Sylvie grew even more confused, "'too distracting'??? Bright pink isn't distracting?!"
"Well... There were exceptions made for me..."
"Oh, were you close to the boss?" Sylvie was very intrigued to hear about how Fae society functioned. She had moved out here to be by herself to get closer to nature and its magic, after all.
Lilia smirked, "close? I was only their advisor and most trusted warrior."
Sylvie sat up and turned towards him, "what?! Really?! You're a warrior?? So you fight for a living?"
"Not most of the time... When it's peaceful, I guard the family and help teach the young..."
Sylvie hesitated, "I guess things aren't so peaceful right now..." She looked up at the sky that was almost covered in smoke now.
Lilia shook his head, "no. You can thank your kind for that."
"What?..."
"Humans." Lilia was twisting a blade of grass through two fingers, looking at it with a bored expression.
Sylvie's throat felt dry, "humans... attacked fairies?..."
"Have been for centuries," Lilia said in a way that sounded far too natural, "it's the reason we hide away in our forests." He continued in a quieter, more upset tone, "I cannot believe they would attack the queen head-on like that."
"Queen?" Sylvie slapped her hands over her mouth. She knew she shouldn't have said that.
Lilia's eyes flicked over to meet hers, "that's right. Your dirty kin thought they were strong enough to enslave us this time. If the queen weren't so young, we would have won without so many... issues."
Sylvie slowly lowered her hands. "How many died?..."
Lilia let the grass fall into the river, watching it float away, "your kind may be clever, but they are all so... squishy. Incredibly easy to kill. They have no magic... Well, most of them."
Sylvie knew it wasn't uncommon for humans to have magic, but she had never met anyone who did. Maybe they were all forced to do horrible things like wage wars on the fae.
"Humans don't know how to use the power they have. It was incredibly stupid of them to attack us without any sort of training or knowledge of what they can do. And all for the sake of enslaving us for our magic." Lilia sounded disgusted as he finished speaking.
"Is that... how you got hurt?" Sylvie ventured.
Lilia nodded, "they learned our weaknesses."
Sylvie blinked. She couldn't imagine such peaceful and powerful creatures having a weakness. Especially not one humans could exploit. Her curiosity almost got the better of her, but she didn't ask. Lilia probably wouldn't tell her.
Instead she asked a different question that had slightly better odds of being answered. "You said you were special, but that isn't just because of your hair, is it?"
Lilia shook his head, staring at the water, watching a fish struggle to swim upstream. "Because I'm cursed."
Sylvie almost gasped. She stopped herself. She didn't want to be rude!
Lilia smiled, his fangs showing, "not so eager to board me in your home now, are you? Tell me, what do you think fairies normally eat."
Sylvie hated that question. She didn't want to talk about that... She wanted to continue to pretend that horrifying scene hadn't happened... The more she thought about it, the less Lilia seemed like a fairy.
She pursed her lips as she looked down at the blood that was crusted to her arms.
"Hmh," Lilia sounded amused, "certainly you don't think I'm a cute little pixie anymore, do you?"
Sylvie shook her head, "but... you're..."
"F-A-E-R-I-E. Faerie." Lilia spelled it out for her. "Mischievous. Conniving. Evil. Dangerous."
Sylvie's hands were clenching her dress at her knees tightly. "But you haven't-"
"Haven't what? Hurt anyone?"
He asked his questions like he was interrogating her. Sylvie closed her eyes, remembering the fear she had been gripped with the night before.
"But being a Faerie doesn't account for my strange food choices, does it?"
Sylvie really didn't like this. She shook her head in response.
Lilia was frowning, "and yet you still refuse to truly fear me. ... why?"
Sylvie looked up at his confused expression. She took a deep breath, "because everyone deserves a chance, right?... Maybe you eat some weird things, and maybe you're kind of creepy sometimes, but you haven't deliberately tried to hurt me. This morning you said you didn't remember why you attacked me."
"I was hungry."
Sylvie went still.
"I lied to you."
She just stared at him.
"Do you still trust me?"
She didn't know what to say. No matter what, he wouldn't like her answer.
He scoffed, "you humans make no sense. I could decide to eat you!"
Sylvie shook her head, "I don't think so."
Lilia looked at her. She couldn't tell what he was feeling.
She smiled a little bit, "you were trying to leave before I came back from hunting... You were starving, yet you wanted to leave. You didn't want to hurt me."
It dawned on her.
Lilia looked away and folded his arms.
She blinked and held a hand out towards Lilia, "that's your curse, isn't it? Having to eat such horrible things?..."
Lilia stared angrily at the trunk of the tree closest to him, "maybe."
"Curses aren't normally so simple, are they?... the way you said it earlier makes me think it's much worse than that..."
Lilia blew air out of his nose in subtle offended-ness, "and complicated for no reason at all."
"What else is there?" Sylvie asked.
"You forget. You're human. You do not wish to know," Lilia crossed his legs. "Go wash, now. You smell."
"Oh-" Sylvie had completely forgotten why she was here!