The cold

Not a homely potato

Neil was sitting in the car, quite nervous, his fingers tapping against his thigh repeatedly, letting out a long sigh every once in a while. His stomach felt rather weird and there was a heaviness in his chest, pretty much how he felt before writing an exam. He had tossed and turned the entire night, his brain feeding him crazy images of the Seelie queen, a female version of the joker, a tall ripped lady with a missing eye, an old hag with crooked teeth and huge ugly pimples, a lady with a long beard, a plump homely lady , Medussa, his brain didn't spare any expense when it came to thinking up faces to go with the name and just because his brain liked taunting his heart, none of said images were favorable , all scary enough to make him run for the hills. At least he didn't have to go alone, Damien tagged along, Nerezza not feeling very comfortable entering seelie territory. 

Seelie wasn't what Neil had expected, sure he didn't expect houses made of candy but he kind of thought it'd be different, not so ordinary. It would've been like any other boring city if not for all the fey walking around without trying to look human and the shops selling ugly toe nails and other strange things, one even selling the skull of a necromancer for a hundred crystals. He wondered why anyone would buy a necromancer's skull, it looked pretty normal to him, well it was dirtier and a tad bit more yellow than one in a bio lab but yeah whatever floats ones boat he supposed. He was kind of glad they got out of the car at the city gates, he could take his time and observe the place a bit and of course he appreciated putting off the meeting with the queen for as long as possible, the more time it took to reach the palace or wherever the queen resided, the better. 

After a long walk filled with eccentricities they finally arrived at the castle of the fair queen. Neil gulped when he noticed the big scaly ugly orange dragon that looked like it usually had different  versions of Neil for dinner. Damien though didn't seemed to mind the dragon, Neil watched horrified as he calmly made his way to the dragon and showed it the letter. The dragon's reached out as if to eat Damien and then peered at the letter before moving aside and breathing churning blue fire on the gate, which subsequently made the gate glow for a second or two before opening. Neil's brain was working on overdrive, dragons can read! Neil wondered if it meant that somewhere in this world there was a school with loads of little dragons running around bragging about who's fire was hotter. He almost laughed out loud at the thought, almost. Neil followed Damien into the building , walking as far away from the dragon as space allowed. He kind of preferred not being toasted if the dragon decided to sneeze. Did they even sneeze fire? Neil for one wasn't dying to find out. 

Despite being the fair queens castle, this was definitely one of the darkest places Neil had ever been in , literally too, the walls were a deep black with a lot of chandeliers giving the place just enough light to see. The lights actually made the place a tad bit scarier because it made visible the countless number of animal heads and skins put up on the walls, some of them looking very very alive. Neil jumped when he came across a preserved fey body that looked suspiciously like Santa Clause, his mouth wide open in a scream and one eye missing,  the visual assault a bit too much for him.  He felt like pulling his hair and screaming his lungs out, this place would beat any scary house by miles. "It was put up to remind people that rebellions don't go unpunished, the guy deserved it anyway" Damien said, his voice soothing Neil's nerves a very tiny bit.

They followed the tiny purple elf that was leading them to the throne room in silence, Neil's hopes for a homely potato like queen looking bleaker by the second. This queen looked like someone who could make the jokers head fall off, Neil thought, his palms sweaty from anticipation. He envied Damien for being so cool, he wouldn't have dared to accompany himself if he had a choice.

On finally entering the throne room, the elf bowed so low that his nose touched the floor , making his way out of the room still very hunched and not turning his back to the queen. Neil looked at Damien , wondering if he should bow too, but settled for standing awkwardly since Damien just stood casually in front of the queen. The queen looked different all right, with a face that's almost as white as chalk , her white hair almost touching the floor, a very blunt nose and eyes with no whites in them, two deep pools of black. Her dress looked alive , little ripples flowing through them occasionally, a slight glow surrounding her that hurt one's eyes . Her eyes cold ,not a hint of feeling in them, eyes that were currently judging Neil from head to toe. Neil controlled the urge to run out the room bawling, he could feel her extremely intimidating stare . Neil felt like his head was being pried open, his thoughts pulled out of his brain like random strips of paper in a bowl. He couldn't help but squirm where he stood ,  managing to somehow look straight at the queen's head throughout the ordeal, refusing to looked down, if he was joining Santa anytime soon he might as well go in style. 

Damien cleared his throat, anymore of this and Neil might probably cry and this was just not the right place to bawl one's eyes out. The queen liked making people squirm, this particular snake only bit when there was no other choice, being all hiss otherwise or at least that was what he believed. A wide crooked smile lit the queen's face on seeing the child, the myna resting on her arm screeching loudly.