The Second Star no longer flickered in the sky. As always. It now was considerably closer. As always. If always could be narrowed down to the last four seconds.
The crowd was a frenzy. Some swung iron left and right, trying to slice the airborne fairy but often wounding those beside them instead. Others dropped to the ground as if hoping that a few inches of difference would save them from the might of a meteor.
Gillan saw even her father hide behind the altar and with his speech broken, she was now free of the binding. She frantically looked around, searching for Birdsong, only to see that her father didn't exactly go hide behind the hunk of iron. He pulled out his own sickle and spun its pole in the hand, calmly listening for an approaching chitter.
With the pixie nowhere to be found — after a few moments of frenetic searching, the villagers' attention shifted to a pillar of cyan smoke towering over the hill. With a battle cry in their mouths, they charged towards it, everyone sticking forward whatever iron they managed to a hold of. And Gillan followed.
In the middle of a crater — appearing as an inversion of the hill that stood there beforehand — there lay a devil of silver. Of mirrors. Everyone saw their face reflected in the fallen one's breast. The devil — the man — in the pit seemed to be built of mirrors alone, every inch of his scaly skin showing a different image. Gillan noticed her visage in the tarnished-most part of the carapace.
One and all stopped to look at the curious sight. Even the thing's horns — hence 'devil' — mirrored the surroundings. A hundred breaths halted halfway up a hundred larynxes as the entire village watched for the thing to move. It didn't. One figure emerged from the petrified crowd. The Father.
Gillan neared the crater from the side, watching just like the others. After moments she turned her head and saw the people splitting, making a path between them for her Father to pass. His pace was slow, that of a wolf approaching a defenceless hare stuck under a root. He calmly spun his sickle's pole in his hands. The ominous crescent of the blade shone with a smoky light with every rotation.
Tiny explosions happened around the iron blade when the Father swung his weapon into the cyan clouds. He proceeded despite that. The small booms made the sickle's blade seem to be covered with a spell, and enchantment — of blue faerie fire. Funnily enough, it was the exact opposite.
Like a proper villain, Gillan's father then dropped the blade to the ground, allowing it to cut the earth as he dragged it along. He finally stopped, looming over the unconscious creature. He examined it. What he — and everyone else — at first thought to be scales, a carapace, turned out to be armour. At least it had to be. He knew not of a fey who'd take on such an appearance, but he never once in his head doubted it possible. What he saw and felt four years ago made that twisted open-mindedness his new default.
Gillan saw him elevate the shining blade. Two crescents, one true, one metal there were now in the sky. Thoughts battled and fought in her mind. No one knew what caused the Good Neighbours' attack. No one knew what caused the enchanted woods' trees to attack the village, to let out pack after pack of wolves into the humans' homesteads. It probably was the First Star that did all that, to doubt that causation would be foolish. But this...
She never took her eyes off the Father. Thoughts raced and sprinted through her head like a thousand rivers conjoining into a waterfall. The faeries' attack wasn't her fault. Her mother's death wasn't her fault. She didn't want revenge, revenge never solved anything, it just led people into cults of self-fuelling hatred that — though brightly — burned fast, and would never make a fire for people to warm up with.
The girl looked at her fellow humans' faces. In her Father's mind, no doubt, they were smiling, cheering him on as he was about to deliver a killing blow to whatever alien monstrosity had just fallen from the sky. In his mind, he was their hero. In his mind, thoughts of songs and ballads in his praise now occupied the folk's heads. But all that surrounded him was silence.
The silence of a hundred people, tired, sleepless people — all gripping a form of iron so tightly that their knuckles were now of iridescent ivory. This had gone over for four years now. And yes, the cause was just — they killed our friends, so let us kill them now. But was it? Was that all there was to it? A random meteor landing in the middle of a forest, a forest where lived gnomes, mushrooms, pixies, corgis, sprites, all manner of fae, a Folk great yet Small, Small, yet great... was a rock falling from the stars enough to throw them into senseless rage against the people who neighboured them? Against the same people whom they constantly tricked and enslaved, blessed and cursed at the same time with both good, evil, both or neither. Was that all there was to it? Was it all it took? And what of now? Would a random, metal devil's — a man's — death make up for all that had happened? Surely, his fleeting soul would restore everyone to life?
Gillan closed her eyes, the cascade of thoughts drowning her brain in grief and despair. Her muscles flexed, yet she couldn't move. The same spell as earlier overcame her. Or maybe it was never a spell at all. Maybe, it was just her. Her. Her fault, her everything. No.
No. She opened her eyes. Like a spring — held bent in impossible ways and then released, like Spring, the season, caged in the steadfast prison of winter — she leapt. The friend-slaughtering, fairy-cutting sickle in her hand, of a heft so great she could barely lift it, now was as light as a songbird's feather. She darted, bolted, and jumped till she traversed the crater.
Iron chopped into wood. The quickly hammered-out blade moaned as it lodged in the thickness of the oak pole. Gillan looked up and locked gazes with her father. His eyes, no longer filled with vile satisfaction, now seeped with a bewildered rage. The two sickles' blades produced explosions near both their faces, but none blinked.
The father ground his teeth and pushed his weapon further into the pole. With emotion overcoming him, all technique had been abandoned, with wild drive — literal push, in the one direction he saw possible, remaining.
He pushed forward. The tough oak resisted, imposing on the weak iron not only from below but pinching it from the sides as well. He could try to pull it away, but it would never happen. Metal struck wood, and wood was winning.
Gillan's hair exploded. It had tried to free itself for the past hour or so, and when the clash happened, it finally did. The laces gave way, not only untying but breaking, ripped into bits as a storm of locks flew into the night. Her curls were no longer a matte chestnut. Their crimson core had overtaken and they now shone as a whirlwind of scarlet. Tears streamed down her face, two rivers emerging from below the ethereal emerald of her eyes.
A faint yet very much present melody encircled the two, finally landing on the girl's shoulder in the form of a tiny, winged person. The father's eye twitched. He stopped pushing.
The man's muscles relaxed. He twisted the sickle — opening the wound in Gillan's pole — and retrieved his weapon. He backed up a few steps. The pouring rage had now transformed into a venom of seething contempt.
"Whatever comes to pass now, Gillan," she winced as he spat out that last word, "think of it now, and think very, very carefully."
