Sunrise-Sunset

Bean Sidhe

It takes many moments for me to awaken- at least, I think it does.

The water is no longer cool against my skin. It does not burn my lungs. Indeed, it does not weigh me down and around me, the murky water of the ocean is clear. It is dark in the depths but there is light- there, the sun!

I cannot move, I find out quickly. Or rather, I am bound. Kelp binds my hands but it is not tight, breaking as I strain against it and I am headed for the surface. I cannot think of how I am alive. Had I hit my head?

'Surely', my mind reasons, 'I had imagined that creature upon the hill.'

My head breaks the water's surface and I breathe in the air my lungs had not missed- but my mind ignores that fact. If I consider it, I know I will break with the knowledge that perhaps... I have crossed a boundary I knew was not to be crossed.

There is a woman wailing on the hilltop, her cries are loud and it is the sound of utmost grief, as a group stands in a crude circle nearby and attempts to comfort her.

The woman is my mother.

Why is she wailing? She wails as if she has lost something precious, something beautiful and irreplaceable. But I am here, can she not see me?

I wave to her, splashing the water around me and calling out as loud as my voice can carry me. I know she could hear me from here, she's done it before. But as my voice tires and no one looks, I trail off and I am unsure of where to stand now. She cannot hear me- she cannot see me here.

"She's of your former Lyfe. She cannot see you on this Samhain day, not in the day where the hag rules your countenance. She would not know you regardless." The voice is young- or so I think for only a moment, for the creature has eyes that are ancient. A fae sits beside me, ashen skin cold in the light of the sun and features something more than mortal.

This is the creature who pushed me.

I cannot think, do not think as I launch myself at this creature, who has taken me from my life. "Why?!" I do not know the question I ask but it's clear the fae knows what I ask.

"You wandered between the Worlds and Saw into a world that was not your own. Samhain has marked you as one of us, and among us you must stay." The fae holds my wrists in spindly fingers and it is only now that I see the changes in my skin. I have been pale since birth, a fact shared by many who live in the cold isles of green but my skin has sunk into the blue-grey of shale stones, ashen grey and silver. My fingers are not like the spindle twigs of this creature's hands but similar, if thinner and longer than they had been.

I wonder at what I am. Am I elf-like and sinuous like this creature, this fae? What am I?

The question must be plain upon my face, for the strange fae's face softens at the distress it sees lurking in my eyes. "You are of the Corrigan now. By day, you are unrecogisable as you were, your skin is ashen and your face is obscured by the Hag. Look." A slender hand points to the water below and a hideous creature stares back at me. Twisted and old, the face of the crone stares back at me and it is my face. I can see the set of my eyes and the crook of my mouth in the hag's countenance.

I dash my hand through the water, rippling my image out of focus.