I love the ACOTAR series, but I think I’d adore a version of it where fairies (and High Fae too) are a bit weirder and dangerous and monstrous and inhuman: still beautiful, but beautiful in a way that is not uber-movie-star perfection, but a wicked, disturbing and definitively otherwordly thing.
Like, Tamlin would still be the High Lord of spring, sure - but his hair would be actual flowers, closing and blossoming with twilight and dawn, and antlers on his head, and maybe sometimes, when he’s sleeping or fighting or fucking, thorns would spread from under his skin, bleeding with wild roses.
Rhysand would still be breath-takingly handsome - but he’d be a sleek, smoky thing of moon and dark, pianist fingers ending in talons he can’t hide, and raven’s feathers instead of hair. His eyes would stil be lovely and violet-blue, but they’d be an actual moonlit sky - with stars slowly spinning in them, and a solitary moon rising and waning where pupils should be.
Mor would still be herself, but a tad more like the Celtic Goddess she takes her name from: sweet and silvery, refreshing like clear water, with hair spun in starlight tumbling down her shoulders and snagging in her amor, the maiden and the mother. But then she’d step on the battlefield, and warriors would fall at her blade, and then her cheeks would flush crimson, her eyes bleeding red, and she’d be beautiful and horrible at the same time, beaming with silver light, a quartz princess of the dark caves of her kin.
Elain would get out of the Cauldron with fawn’s velvety ears, vines and blossoms spiraling and spreading across her skin, almost tattoos, shifting with the sun and her emotions. At first, they’d stay tightly closed - shivering and wrinkled liker her soul. And Lucien would have true fox ears, and clever, gold-flicked fox eyes, and his ears would tremble with delight the first morning he would make one of Elain’s blossoms open to him.
Nesta would forever be beautiful, but she would never be lovely again. The Cauldron didn’t leave her any softness, any warmth, any sweetness of features or shape. Looking at the sharp planes of her face, at the bloody-red slash of her lips is like looking at the jagged peaks of a mountain - at white wood washed over a shore, polished and hard and dead. She mourns her youth in secret: she mourns whatever girl-like beauty she has ever had, that scrap of Elain that used to live in her. Now she looks like a monster. She looks like something you should be scared of. But Cassian has teeth, predator’s teeth, and his hands have claws, and when he’s holding her she’s not afraid he will be scared.
Maybe they’ll devour each other, but they’ll do it together.
And Feyre… Feyre would find herself with new joints, new hands - with eyes that could see clearer and wider than ever before, but that are also pure pools of black, with no pupil no iris and no white. Her teeth are sharp - they tear through her lovers’ skin and don’t stop till they draw blood. And there’s something of the forest in her, too, of the woods where she had made herself a hunter: twigs and leaves growing amidst her hair, corsets made of leather and oakwood, so that when she’s running through the trees she looks like a sprite or a pixie - barefoot, quiver on her back, fangs bared in pleasure. She passes by with the rustling of fallen leaves, the whisper of squirrels and owls’ wings. You wouldn’t know she’s behind you till she’ll lean in to kiss your cheek, or stop your heart.
“Feyre darling,” this strange star-eyed Rhys would say, cupping the cheek of his wood-made girl, holding her close so feathers and twigs would mix together, and they would smile mirror fanged smiles, and they would still be beautiful.
