okay! there are weird awkward jumps and strange dialogue because it’s not finished yet but here’s what i have so far— in second person for fanfic purposes
The whistling in the willows falls silent, in the lands of Éire upon your birth. Your mother dies upon your delivery, and your father flees into the night, the parchment in his wake citing a terrible omen.
It’s there, alone, you are left with your grandmother, Áine, in the valleys.
Áine raised you with a firm, albeit loving hand. She taught you how to read palms when you were but nine years old, she had you reciting ancient tongues at thirteen. At fourteen, when you began to grow into your womanly wiles, and the men of the village began to leer she handed you a stern warning.
“I’ve read your palm, little bird. Yours is a life of terrible luck, and witches tend to project their luck onto their kin, romance may be out of the question for you.”
You didn’t quite have the heart to tell her you had no such interest in the first place, having cursed the shoes off of any man who looked in your direction.
She’d stew the deer from the valleys in the long winters, string garlands of Kerry Lilies in your hair in the summers and delight you with tales of your vixen mother. When you began to show an affinity for bard magic, she refused to tell you what she had to lose to procure what must be the most beautiful lyre you had ever seen in your fifteen years, carved from the wood of one of the Five Sacred Trees and inlaid with spiralling designs and protective talismans. She sat you by the fire, wrapping a shroud around you both as she tuned the precious instrument— your eyes never wavering in awe.
“Since the First Songs, witches have been able to channel their magic through music. But I have seen none as proficient as you, little bird, you have a gift.” she said, reverent, “your mother was the same, she could compel anyone with that voice of hers.”
At the mention of your mother, you both go quiet. Neither of you ever comment on how she still haunts you both.
When you manage to sneak away from sweeping the floorboards and trimming the herbs, you take your harp upstream to the old oak tree. You don’t tell your grandmother that when you play there the wispy forms of old spectres jolt to life, and they whisper to you, oh the stories they whisper, the promises they make. At sixteen, you realise that the spirits would do you favours. What you didn’t realise was that nothing in this life came free. Spirits do not work charitably.
So at seventeen, you bury your grandmother beneath the hazel tree in your herb garden, and you are left utterly alone in the world.
That empty house drives you mad, the floorboards too cold under your bare feet and the kitchen notably absent of the smell of rosemary. The garden seems to wither when it notices her absence, and it infuriates you. Your songs grow lacklustre and stagnant, your spell work weak and aimless.
It seems that when your grandmother died she took all the light in the world with her.
Three days short of your eighteenth year, you bid farewell to that old house in the valley. You bury talismans at the foot of trees, your final act of love for the woman that raised you— to leave your sanctuary untouched, inaccessible to anyone but yourself.
You sang in tavern and castle alike, picking up Éire’s most unwanted as you pleased— your little troupe, your band, your songbirds. And if you slipped a tincture under a table here, sang songs of the future there it was not to be mentioned, you knew the danger that practicing your craft in public brought; you did what you had to, to get by, to protect your little birds. But your grandmother's words rang out every time you studied the lines on your palm, and you hoped (despite knowing that that woman could read any character this side of the Irish Sea) that she may be wrong, just once.
You would never mention it to the others, but Caoimhe had a very special place in your heart. She’s small and willowy, with long golden hair and deep brown eyes— and you think if you ever had a sister, it may have been her in the way her voice compliments yours in harmony and the way her fingers dance along the neck of her fiddle, she’s your little starling, apple of your eye.
So you feel no qualms about offering… less than savoury services to your clientele. After performances you slip tinctures under the table to a man set on assassination, you scrounge predictions for Lords hoping to quash rebellion, you convince husbands to sign away their earthly possessions before they conveniently meet their ends. People die, you’re sure they do, but so long as the money kept flowing and your troupe stayed fed and safe you were set in what you had to do.
You’re snapped from your reverie by a violent shake, it’s Ciaoimhe at your shoulder, you note your fingers mindlessly dancing on the strings of your harp and the sun has long since risen.
The caravan looms over both of you and the horses chatter and whinny in the background, the fire is on its last dying embers and it’s clear you were very lost in thought.
“Are you okay?” Caoimhe asks, her hand still resting on your shoulder and she’s glancing down at your fingers, still moving even with your attention fully on her.
“Just fine, little Starling, only lost in thought it seems,” you say considering the harp in your hands, “whatever is the matter, has Ruairí caught the caravan alight again?”
It seems he overhears you, because from within the caravan there is a shout of indignation, a ‘that was one time!’ that causes the pair of you to keel over in quiet, cheeky snickering.
“No, shockingly,” it’s then that you note her hair is hanging in loose, golden waves down her back, “Would you mind?”
She holds her ribbon and comb out to you, an unspoken question. This had become something of a routine for the two of you, you knew perfectly well that Ciaoimhe was able to braid her own hair and yet you took the tools and gently set aside your harp.
The day planned ahead was long, with you set to travel 20 miles south to a small Beltane faire in The Pale, a set of wonderful festivities ahead and a commission by a wealthy merchant hoping to sire an heir before he grew too old to operate his businesses. The light filtered through emerald leaves as you wound Ciaoimhe’s hair into two braids— a perfect day indeed.
It's truly a shame that you never made it to that Faire.
The caravan was intercepted by a band of men wielding pitchfork and torch alike, you were wrangled into a nearby church and it seemed then that God would decide your fate.
“Witch,” the priest speaks, “your time has come to face the Lord’s judgement. We have been watching you, and your brazen displays of unholy magick— it’s irredeemable.”
His Hand chimes in, “There is not need for trial here, Your Holiness— this Beast has been seen by many-an-eyewitness. We’d do well to burn her before she curses us all.”
The Priest looks, between His Hand, and you and the grand stained glass window depicting what seems to be the Holy Virgin, weighing up his options— considering. Your heart has long since stilled in your chest, in the chaos you did not see where they took Ruairí and the others.
You pray to whichever spirit, Virgin or God that listens that your voice stays calm and stable as you say, “The children are innocent in this, only I bear your so-called ‘unholy magick’, release them and I will go quietly into the long, dark night.”
In all of your seven and twenty years the desire to see what went on on The Other Side remained at an even zero, a non existent interest in the unknown. The woods were safe, the known, you could bend the spirits within them to your whim and live out a calm, quiet existence. You should have known not to be so brazen with your power, you should have known, heeded your grandmother's warning all those years ago (where now that life in the cabin in the woods was but a distant dream), that your luck indeed was contagious.
You didn’t want to die… But if your life spared your band, it was an easy choice.
It took three days for the men to drag you from the stone room hidden below their church, you went quietly, and for the second time in your life— you prayed.
You prayed these men saw sense, prayed these men had mercy, and selfishly, prayed that fate would spare what was yours, for once.
The two long, golden ropes of Caoimhe’s hair sway gently in the spring breeze. They’re messy now, far messier than when you first weaved them together this morning. How that felt like a lifetime ago now, a silly soft vision massacred by cruel reality. There was no chance at happiness here. From the moment you were born into this world, you were doomed to an eternity of bad luck— a despicable cosmic joke. You should have known you would bring about their downfall. You should have left them alone the minute you got that damned vision. You should’ve listened to your grandmother, and her warning all those years ago— at the time sounding just a silly reprimand of a grandmother for her granddaughter that grew too pretty as the years went on.
You should have known that fate would not spare your songbirds.
The priest leers at you, drinking in the sight of your trembling, battered frame, your wide eyes which fill with tears against your better judgement.
“You should never have dragged them into this, Beast,” he sneers, “this is the price for your transgression, they die with you here. Today.”
You don’t even murmur a reply, too transfixed on the soft curve of your starling’s jaw, swollen where they saw fit to beat her in your absence. She shakes now, with fear, or anger you cannot tell.
A million apologies could not begin to atone for this grievous sin. Your loneliness— your selfishness— murdered your poor birds. Would they follow you to Hell? Would God punish them by mere association with you? They’re dragging her now, atop a pyre that seems to have appeared from thin air with how quickly it is assembled— you think you may be screaming, with the hoarseness in your throat, but it’s hard to tell over all the noise.
And they set her aflame, you watch that little girl, your starling, who danced like a flickering lamp in a gentle night, who sung so beautifully all the birds in the woods stopped to listen, who taught you, solitary you, a love you have never known.
A love you will never know again, and you watch in horror as your only place in the world scattered like ashes in the night. You burn there, still.
THIS IS SOOOOO COOL this story is SO COOL and so sad )))): caoimhe ))))): (how do u pronounce that)
ugh if u make more TELL ME INSTANTLY! feed me more i starve
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