omg are you going to continue the powerful fae whimper yandere please do 😩
Powerful Fae Whumper Yandere x Human Whumpee (II)
Read part one here
By the next morning, Briar had convinced herself that it was all a dream. A very pleasant, very realistic dream, but a dream all the same. At breakfast, Gran told her she looked suspiciously well rested. Briar merely rolled her eyes and grinned.
“I had a pleasant dream.”
“Not too pleasant, I hope, girl,” Gran grumbled. Her husky growl of a voice, forged from a lifetime of cynicism and wisdom, disgruntled and honeyed. “Dreams have ways of leading the weak minded astray.”
Briar sighed inwardly and nodded. “Okay Gran.”
When she was grabbing Gran’s empty bowl of porridge, Gran’s hand shot out suddenly. Quick as a whip for a woman her age, it almost stopped Briar’s heart. She flinched as Gran’s warm, bony fingers latched around her forearm, just above her iron bracelet.
“Gran, what are—” her words caught in her throat, then she saw it. Gran’s eyes were locked on tiny, crystallised frost crystals formed on the iron band, and, more concerning, the black and blue bruises beneath the band itself. She didn’t— Briar didn’t feel that in her dream, she didn’t— why was her wrist bruised, and her iron band— did she sleep with the window open? No, the ice would have melted during the night.
Gran’s foreboding beady eyes met hers and Briar froze in place. “What the devils have you been doing, Briar?!”
Briar couldn’t answer her. She couldn’t. It was a dream. It was a dream, wasn’t it? She dropped the bowls onto the table with a clatter and backed into the chair. Gran’s eyes boring into her as she stammered, “I— I don’t- I don’t understand.”
Gran stood from her chair with a nimbleness, that other elders could only gawk at, and strode towards Briar who couldn’t form a coherent thought, consumed by the breathless panic in her mind.
“What have you done, girl?” Gran hissed and grabbed Briar’s hand, touching the band of iron around her wrist. A gasp slung from Gran’s chapped lips as she drew her hand back, as if the iron burned. “Briar! Answer me, where have you been?!”
Briar withdrew her hand from Gran’s and swallowed, nothing but dread and confusion filled her. She just knew she had to get away. To leave. She muttered out a quiet, breathy, “I have to go,” and bolted.
Gran called her back, but Briar was out the door and running, letting her legs carry her to a place she knew she would be safe from judgement and prying eyes.
***
Dane looked up as Briar snuck in through his open window. He grinned his boyish grin, exposing his laughter lines, as she gracefully landed in a heap of limbs on his floor.
“You can use the front door, y’know? Like a normal person. It’s not a sin. You can just—”
But he cut himself off as soon as Briar got to her feet and enveloped him in a hug. “Ah, Thorns. I’m covered in paint! You’ll ruin your dress—”
“I don’t care about my dress,” she muttered into his shoulder, burying her head in the crook of his neck. The nickname filled her with warmth and relief as she clutched him tightly to her, closing her eyes to block the black bruises around her wrist from sight.
“Aye,” he said, gently prying her off him. “But I care about living, and yer Gran will beat me silly if she sees the mess I’ve made of you. Let me get you a cloth, and some tea, and we can chat.”
He returned a few minutes later with a tray of biscuits and tea, and a damp cloth with a spray bottle. He grinned when he caught her gaze.
“It’s me mentor’s concoction,” he told her. “It’s actually magical. Gets stains right outta anything.”
He placed the tray on the table next to his canvas he was currently working on; the village square in Autumn, such a magical looking place he made it out to be. He made the cobblestone come out of the painting with its hues of green, grey and white, surrounding the well that was the centre-focal point of the piece. She could see the shops painted in golden rays of light. The dynamics were so real, she could almost feel the heat from the dying fall Sun as Dane poured her a cup of tea.
In the background were the woods, half-filled trees bathed in colourful leaves or fiery red, and warm browns, and soft orange, a litter of them paving the forest floor. He made it seem so inviting in his art. Alluring. His rendition of the forest didn’t look half as imposing as it did when she ran past it today. In Winter, the branches stretched like bony gnarled fingers of a witch, covered in the crystal frost mildew of the night before. Briar shivered.
“Here, get that down ya, and tell me what’s wrong.” Dane said, drawing her attention back to him, though it seemed his painting longed to stare at her while she spoke. He grabbed the cloth and the spray and started getting the paint stains out of her dress while she told him about her dream. About the man. About waking with the bruises, the ice on her bracelet and the strange fear that swept through her last night in the woods with the stranger.
“Ah,” Dane said, as if he spoke with the understanding of a wise elder. “That’s a story alright. Would’ve sent me running for the hills too.”
She hit his shoulder playfully as he smirked up at her, his twinkling brown eyes gleaming as he laughed. “No, I’m serious. That is strange. Show me your wrist.”
And she did. Dane whistled low, gently inspecting the black, blue and angry red skin. He cocked a dusty blond brow at her as he raised his eyes to hers. “You’re sure you don’t remember getting this? That’s pretty brutal looking, Thorns.”
“I know,” she said, her breath threatening to smother her. “I honestly can’t remember how it happened. And see, there. The ice crystals haven’t melted.”
“Does it hurt?” he asked, gently pressing his fingers into the bruises. White burst behind Briar’s eyes and she yanked her hand away, her heart screaming at her as the bruises ached, burning cold. She pulled her hand to her chest and held it, shivering as bolts of cold erupted up her wrist like twisting vines.
Dane hummed, frowning as he got to his feet. His paint flecked face covered some of his lingering sun freckles as he pressed his finger to his lips in thought.
“Do you think it’s the bracelet?” She asked softly. “I didn’t think iron could freeze at these temperatures.”
“I don’t think it can. I think it has to get extremely cold, like, North Pole level cold for that to happen, or so Alchemist said when he was teaching me how to weld and solder metal. And he knows everything.”
Briar frowned down at her bracelet that was still cold to touch. “I just don’t get it,” she whispered. “I’ve worn this ever since I moved in with Gran. It’s never gotten this cold before?”
“Maybe it’s cause it’s old?”
Her frown deepened as her eyes hardened. “Maybe,” she said, but neither of them were convinced. She placed her mug back on the tray and poured herself another cup of warm tea to set her nerves at ease and watched Dane paint in silence while he rambled about how long it took him to do the cobbles right.
“Can I ask ya,” he said, not turning or faltering as he painted the roof of the alchemist’s shop. “Why did you go seeking a fairy ring when ya don’t believe in any of that stuff anyways?”
Briar bit her lip. Gran would lock her in a tower and never let her leave the house if she told her what she was about to tell Dane, but Dane was her best friend. He wouldn’t tell a soul about her confession.
“I just… I was curious. I wanted to see how far the supposed rules could stretch. You can’t cross a fairy ring, but can you wave a hand in it? Can you crane your neck and look into it? Could you touch it with a stick, or break the circle by plucking a mushroom?”
Dane paused. He glanced at her over his shoulder, his expression grave.
“Whatever you do, don’t break a fairy ring, Briar. It doesn’t matter if this stuff is real or not, I wouldn’t invite that kind of misfortune on yourself, just in case.”
“Dane—”
“I’m serious, Briar.” Dane said, his voice brokering no room for argument. She had never heard him so serious in her life. It was strange to see his usual happy face stern. It set her teeth on edge. “Perhaps even messing around there, trying to push the boundaries of the fey is the reason you have that new bracelet to show off on your wrist.”
Briar swallowed and placed her hand over the bruise, flushing with shame and embarrassment as she looked away. His voice softened as he continued.
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you. I love you, Thorns. Look, I don’t want to turn into yer Gran, warning kids off the woods in case they end up like my old friend Briar who didn’t leave well enough alone.”
Briar left Dane’s later with a heavier head and heart, her arms hugged around her body. She felt like a fool as she crossed the village square back to Gran’s. But she really didn’t want to explain what she was doing to get such a bruise, or explain her dream or her—
Her eyes cast down past the well, towards the woods with its gnarled branches like fingers stretching into the sky, beckoning her with the wind. A hot stubbornness filled her and warmed her body as she turned and stormed towards the woods, determined to put this weird set of events to rest.
It was a dream; she told herself as she marched through the crunchy carpet of leaves crinkling gently beneath her boots. She weaved through trees and dense bush until she found her way back to the clearing in the trees, the circle of white capped mushrooms gleamed in the sunlight as the canopy opened above it. The trees of the forest seemed to part for fear of the fairy ring as well which she found preposterous.
This was all fairytale. Folklore. Stupid stories!
She stalked right up to the edge of the circle and the iron burned cold and she hesitated again.
Dumb stories with dumb children and people who foolishly played with things they didn’t properly understand. Briar prided herself on her logic. She prided herself on understanding the world around her. She enjoyed discovering mysteries and solving them. Questioning everything, something her teachers used to chide her on, that it doesn’t do well to be so contrary, to debate everything. But Briar knew it was really because some of them were too small minded to know the answer to her questions.
She waited by the fairy ring, walking around it, staring at the perfect circle. At some point she climbed a tree and stared down, dozing off against the bark for a while. When she woke the sky darkened into ribbons of midnight and cornflower blue, the sun setting casting rays of orange and red against the sky. She searched the clearing as she stretched, but there was nobody. She couldn’t quell the rising disappointment as she realised she was alone.
A dream, she told herself again. It didn’t stop her from wandering the trees around the clearing, listening for anything, any signs of life.
Nothing.
She let out a scoff of a laugh and walked back towards the village, unaware of the eyes that followed her fondly, as fine as spider silk and undetectable to human instincts.
****
I’m sorry this isn’t very Yandere-y, but HOT FAE WILL BE BACK SOON
Tag-list (lmk if you wanna be added or removed <3): @sootheandsavage @zillobeastrevival @sunflower1000 @d-cs @whumplicity @miklasma @auroragehenna @warmfuzz-ies @fa1rie (Tagged you even though no hot man in this one, but next time there will be don't worry heheheeh)