A Court of Shadows and Lies / ACOTAR FF

Special Chapter - Phanes and Alfoor

Time and space hadn't meant much to me.

In fact, everything seemed to blend together. The land and sea, the mountains and sky, grass and earth.

I had created this, and I couldn't remember how or why.

One moment I was nothing then the next I was something.

A female was what the underlings, the populations who had seen me walk through their makeshift 'homes', had said. They feared me yet looked to me for guidance, coming to me and asking me if I could provide 'food'. What was food to them? I hadn't needed it but they requested for sustenance and so I had pulled from the depths of my core, stirring a murmur into a scream.

It was easy. A part of me.

Now, there stood fluffy white things with black legs and a face, with floppy ears. It didn't speak like the populations had. In fact, it had made a sound – baaaaa. The mortals had called it a 'sheep', or a 'ram', or whatever they wanted to.

Then they came to me and asked for more. Some of them didn't like the taste of sheep so I made a useless flying thing that clucked, a chicken, and a black and white body of an animal, apparently called a cow.

I kept creating, unsure when it would be enough. From different species to plants, to minerals, to beauty and art, I kept making.

Eventually I was given the name of 'Mother' or 'Phanes' to some. They were one and the same, but was given out of gratitude and adoration, with many saying it in fear. I could feel it in the air, see it in some of their eyes, and even the way they would bow when I would walk past them. The name was endearing, to me anyway. I envied the females who birthed children – perhaps it was a flaw in my making, that females needed males to carry on the bloodline.

Maybe the source of that envy hadn't come from the fact they could have children, but the fact they congregated as one. A 'family'. I was alone. I didn't have anyone who could create or have the powers to do anything. I was the only one.

I felt it as time progressed and the underlings grew old, and new ones popped up in their place. Not a single Being to talk to, to look at, to chat to, to relate with.

So, I left and entered space where I created another world. This too was just the same as the old one and so I repeated the cycle.

Until it broke.

I was sat along a winding river when a male, on some rogue world I had created, who was so striking and beautiful, stood on the opposite bank. His presence was only alerted by a pull I had felt from my depths, as if it were finding something my soul had instantly connected with. The feeling wasn't fun, but unsettling, abnormal. There wasn't anything I could relate it to, perhaps the closest would be the opposite of feeling the emptiness you'd find when you're at a unification of two underlings alone.

The male was watching me curiously, as did I, until he turned and left, only leaving a wisp of power in his wake.

I had found one just like me. Or he had found me.

I came back to the body of water every day since, at the same time, to find the male stood there, watching me. Neither one of us talking, just studying one another. My curiosity was getting the best of me, and I was getting rather annoyed at the fact he was refusing to speak to me. Not a single underling didn't greet me, they had always acknowledged my presence, even when the non-magics were terrified.

This male just stood there and didn't do a thing.

I could feel his power, it radiated off him the longer he stood there, but he just stood there. In fact, I had to admit, it was a bit 'creepy' – another word I had learned from the females who were gossiping about their potential partners. He just watched me and was severely unnerving until one autumn night.