Folks Of Fury (#1; Tales Of Elysia [COMPLETED])

two.

The moon was a hovering pale yellow crescent in the dark violet night sky, haloed by stars.
The Moors was alive with wildlife under the moon's luminescence.
Hunter's Moon.
It was night for every form of hunter to enjoy the chase and succumb to their basest instinct of bloodthirst and savagery.
That included the Fey Court. They celebrated this occasion with revels, games and eccentric hunts.
And if it was entertaining enough, the Wild Hunt would appear. It wasn't something I wanted to miss out of.
I knew where the red birch trees rescinded for the elms and swamps.
The burrows from where wild rodents stayed the night, the hollow barks of trees that was home to owls.
Vines thick as thighs snaked from beneath murky recesses of the Allais River and travelled into the steeples of the swampy forest leading to the Moors but I meandered around.
The Moors was home to everything wild with a life of its own- charmed mostly by the presence of the Fey.
The flowers were brighter in discordant shades and midnight dew sparkled like stardust, leaves jingles as if made of metal, fruits were heavy and shone with an inviting incandescence to lure fools to eat from them.
Then I came to the revel. Music was first sign of it- dousing the entire forest with abandon merriment and jolly.
My view of the vaulted glade was unobstructed and lit with the wishy-washy and hoary charm of the moon.
There were dancing circles and banquet tables; there were fey covered in furs, in armor, in great swirling gowns.
There was cruel mirth and insidious smiles brimming on their angelic faces.
Their variegated eyes glittered with the dearth and hopeful for torturous entertainment in the night's future.
The Fey were dressed in stunning finery, much more elegant than imagined. But then these creatures were more adverse to beauty as well as wickedness.
A woman with dark skin like humus earth wore a dress made of the feathers of a swan, stark and white, a necklace of dawn encircling her slender throat but a scorpion tail curved with poisonous tips following behind her.
Two pale men were dressed in lavender silk overcoats and waistcoats of shimmering green sparrow's wings.
One had skin tinted lime green and spiny like a withering leaf and the other was grey and cracked like weathered marble.
An milk-skinned woman with hair made of rose petals approached the pavilion, her dress an intricate cage of the bones of small animals, fastened together with thread made of human hair.
The creatures of knurled goblins with glittering jewel dark eyes, misshapen satyrs with snakes slithering as their tails and ecstatically senile phoukas parted to the pending presence.
The entire Court was placed under luminescent spotlight.
The gathering was bright and encompassing full that I thought someone had lassoed a pale full moon closer to the earth and its light, silver and stern against all it fell on.
At the far end of the glade chosen for the Hunter's Moon revel was a dais of child bones with entangling thorns and sprawling purple roses.
Hundreds of Fey faces under decorative masks, reflected upon the vivid slick surface of the pillars that held up the arched ceilings of flowers and willow branches, strewn with malice and joy.
Hunting wolves and falcons were moving undisturbed through the Court.
A laugh came unbidden to my lips and I couldn't look away from the wicked humour on the faces of the courtly creatures dancing in crowds.
This was the deadly assemblage of the Wyldwuds- and these Fey bore the terror and beauty of nature- blooming yet rotted.
Their clawed and thorny hands flexing with anxiety and wicked hopes as they stared at me with hungry beady eyes.
And then I saw, resting on huge tiles of gray stone, a throne that seemed to be shaped from the rock itself.
It was covered in pelts, creeping vines and roses, and a woman in armor was seated upon it.
A green skinned page- a goblin I noticed- scurried forward and whispered in her ear.
Mab. The Fey Queen inclined her head to me and she didn't so much as smile.
I'd not come to any revel but the court of the Queen of Faery.
My heart seemed to find the perfect moment to start to run away from me. I couldn't blame it, this was the first time I was in her presence.
Well since I was six days old. But that didn't count.
Creatures spun on the earthen floor, some with long-limbed, liquid grace, others tromping or gamboling.
Small faeries flitted through the air on tattered moth wings, merfolk would stick their shimmering heads from pools baring sharp teeth.
Then closer to the throne and the Queen were tall beings, shining in the gloom as though they were lit up from the inside, whirled in their dresses of leaves, in cleverly shaped corsets of bark, in exquisite bronzed mail.
I knew them to be gentry. Some might even be of the Queen's own children .
They were terrifying and beautiful and horrible, all at once. All of them.
These Fey would never tolerate the unfair criticism of witches. They would never hide their beauty with glamours and tricks.
I swallowed down and brushed past a few of redcaps who were about to go into a brawl, much to the surrounding Feys interest.
Not many humans. I thought with a full scan around.
On most revels, mortals were lured in by the Fey.
Invitation that ended in disaster for the humans, of course.
But then I would find human clothes discarded here and there.
Then I'd think I had seen someone I knew but I wasn't sure because of the masks.
Were they really human, though?
Or were they faeries who went among humans and wore their shapes?
Sitting in a corner, overgrown with hair and munching on beetles were a duo of trolls.
Ofus and Cog. I'd heard of them, heard of their taste for human flesh, and even figured out where their lair might be.
Back when my Fey traits started coming in.
Cog grinned in my direction with his red smile as if maybe he recognized me too.
"Here, have a drink?" asked a tiny, long-nosed creature with a stubby tail and eyes that were black as a crow's.
It held up a small tray of tiny, carved wood cups with some liquid inside, barely a thimbleful in each.
"I swear by the moon that you'll never taste a sweeter drop."
I smirked, knowing that this creature thought I was mortal and meant to ensorcell me.
But I took the cup, either way because I needed to calm my nerves which was still frayed from seeing the Queen.
It was like drinking sunlight, my tongue sang and throat ached for more.
The Fey grinned and began to tie the binds for enslavement.
But a laughing woman with thick plaits of russet hair paused as she went past with a goat-headed companion and came to me.
"Don't waste your time, Rut. He's of Fey blood."
Rut gasped and scowled at me for wasting his time and waddled away.
"You forgot to rid yourself of that insidious mortal guise."
Her name was Aina but the Court knew her as the Quarry because of her service to Mab.
"Perhaps I didn't for this reason." I took another swing to empty my cup.
"If you miss the wine so much, then leave that worthless house." Aina said.
She always made her case of convincing me to leave my family.
"You know I can't. Not until the Queen makes me a knight, I can't come without it."
"Trust me, Senoy. Knighthood isn't all it's made out to be."
"But then why do you still invite Engorel and Keno to your bed?" I replied with a gesturing look to the two Fey knights away from throne.
Aina grinned, a display of blood red jagged fangs. "My point exactly."
I laughed with her for a minute.
"If you truly wish to become one of them. You'd have to succeed in a quest and Queen Mab doesn't usher them as often."
I know. How else would I prove myself worthy to be named into her guard? And most especially leave the Manor St. Ours for good.
One of the tall knights in armor of tree barks and bronze, from the Queen's side approached us with a shallow bow.
He looked fluid like rainwater; translucent hair and sharp ghostly face that held a pair of amethyst eyes, which turned to me.
"The Queen would greet him."
My face jerked towards the dais and caught again those ageless eyes on me.
Aina curtsied and raised herself to kiss both my cheeks before she spun away to find a lover for tonight.