And came to shore by the Chankly Bore where the Bong-trees grow
In which things are revealed and revelations made. Some of which not so intentionally.
Co-written and edited by the amazing @honeii-puff! I write the Soren POV chapters, she writes the Corvus POV chapters. Also on Ao3 and it has a playlist!
“This is it.” Rayla said, stopping in the middle of what appeared to be a totally random part of the woods. She gestured around them, spreading her arms wide. “This is my home.”
“Erm. Rayla-” Soren was about to point out that her home seemed to be rather… invisible, and then it clicked. “Ohhh.”
He turned to grin at Corvus. “I think it’s invisible.”
The other man glanced back at him with a small smile. “That would explain why we’ve never been able to find it all these years.”
Soren caught sight of Runaan out of the corner of his eye. The older elf’s usually stoic expression had become what he could only call anxious, and he was absently cracking each of his knuckles in turn. It was a bit foreboding looking, actually.
“Hey, there’s nothing to be worried about.” Soren said, sidling up beside him. “I’m sure the other elves won’t care about the whole not killing King Ezran thing. We’re at peace now, anyway.”
His words seemed to have the opposite effect, and Runaan sighed loudly. “I hadn’t even-”
He shook his head. “Why don’t we just not bring up that detail, yes?”
Soren eyed him. “You don’t… regret not-”
“Of course not.” the elf shook his head.
Soren laughed. “Good. Cause then I’d have to arrest you again.”
Runaan didn’t seem to find that as funny as Soren did.
“Why don’t we just get this over with.” he said, stepping up to stand beside Rayla and Callum. His daughter gave him a sheepish smile.
“Yeah, about that… we can’t use my key.”
“They ghosted her.” Callum said heatedly, glaring at an empty patch of foliage.
“They… what?” Runaan looked aghast.
“What’s ghosting? Is that like… when someone dead haunts you or something?” Soren whispered, leaning over so that only Corvus could hear. His friend shrugged.
“How would I know? Most likely some sort of elven ritual we don’t know about.”
“Oh yeah. You don’t think I’m ghosted, do you?”
“Soren, why would you be ghosted?”
“I don’t know!” Soren exclaimed before quickly modulating his voice down to a whisper. “I don’t know. I seem to collect weird elf things I don’t know about.”
“That-” Corvus paused. “You are most likely not ghosted.”
“Phew.” Soren let out a relieved sigh, returning his attention to the others, who appeared to be arguing about why or how or when this ghosting might have happened.
“It doesn’t matter.” Rayla was saying, her voice rising in frustration. “It happened. That’s the end of it. I’m bringing you back because Ethari needs you, but they don’t want me anymore.”
“We will change their minds.”
“Can you even be unghosted?”
“If you can, we’ll find a way. And if not, then we’ll make one.” Callum told her, a fierce expression flitting across his face that reminded Soren unnervingly of his father. “There’s always a creative solution.”
“Speaking of which,” the mage dug around in his satchel for a moment before pulling out what appeared to be a large, glittering chunk of crystal. “Rayla, I know you gave this to me for safekeeping, but I think now is the time to use it.”
“For what?” she asked, taking it in her hands and turning it over.
“For…” Callum pulled a pair of twigs off a nearby tree, holding them to his head like horns. “Disguises!”
Rayla rolled her eyes and sighed. Runaan just looked stunned, and maybe a little bit offended.
“Eh?” Callum raised an eyebrow. “See, if you use that spell from Umber Tor and Soren, Corvus, and I tie twigs to our heads, it’ll look real and feel real.”
“I… guess it would.” Rayla mused, considering the chunk of crystal in her hand.
“Don’t be silly-” Runaan began, but his daughter had already begun the spell.
She crushed the crystal in one hand as Callum held out two more pairs of twigs to Soren and Corvus. Soren politely declined, feeling sort of uncomfortable at the idea, and Corvus followed his lead. Callum shrugged.
“Suit yourselves. It’s actually pretty fun to be an elf for a day.”
Soren figured it would be. For a day.
Rayla cleared her throat, throwing the shimmering crystal dust into the air. It lingered there for a moment, slowly settling onto the group of them.
“𝑀𝓎𝓈𝓉𝒾𝒸𝒶 𝒞𝒶𝓃𝒾𝓈!” she proclaimed, and for a moment the sparkling crystal dust glowed bright.
Soren squinted his eyes shut, and when he opened them, he was standing in a circle of Moonshadow elves. He glanced down, then quickly up again at the sight of himself in elven garb. None of the others seemed to notice his apprehension. At least, Callum didn't, he was too busy spinning around and studying his newly altered attire.
His girlfriend was staring at him with wide eyes, a smile slowly spreading across her lips. “You’re missing something.” she told him, reaching up and taking a tuft of his hair.
He froze under her touch, letting her twine the strands together into a little braid hanging beside his left ear.
“There.” she told him, stepping back and clasping his hands in hers.
A faint flush crept into Callum’s cheeks. Soren glanced over at Corvus to make a joke about how corny they were being, only to notice that the other man was staring at him.
“What?” Soren asked, suddenly self conscious.
“Nothing. You just… it suits you.”
Soren felt his own face color and looked away so Corvus wouldn’t notice. That’s silly, he thought, even as he did. He’s just Corvus. He didn’t mean it like that.
Runaan took that moment to clear his throat. “Shall we?” he gestured towards the empty clearing which must have held the Silvergrove.
“Uh, yes, sorry.” Rayla tucked her hair out of her face, dropping one of Callum’s hands and offering her own to her father. “Let’s begin.”
Callum held out a hand to Soren and he took it, not really sure what was going on. But it seemed like they were supposed to continue the circle, so he offered his other one to Corvus. After a moment the other man took it.
The contact sent an electric shock through Soren, and he glanced down as Corvus interlaced their fingers together. Probably part of the spell thing-y, Soren thought distantly. Not that he was complaining. But it was as though his thinking it had made Corvus realize what he was doing, and he shifted his grip to a far looser one.
Soren found that he was strangely disappointed.
“Follow my lead.” Runaan said, taking Corvus’ other hand and beginning to lead them in a semi-circle pattern. Soren saw his glance flit between them for a moment, lingering on their clasped hands before drifting out over the forest.
The group of them continued the strange dance, only messing up a few (alright, many) times at first. But they steadily got the hang of it, and then it was sort of fun. There was one part where Soren had to twirl Corvus around, and they nearly collided with one another, laughing when they tripped over each other’s feet. Callum and Rayla seemed to be having an equally enjoyable time; with Rayla spinning her mage round and round so many times he got dizzy and ended up clinging to her, the pair of them giggling.
Runaan didn’t seem impressed and ordered the lot of them to continue and take the dance seriously, saying that it was an ancient elvish custom.
Callum still found time to kiss Rayla when they did the next step. Runaan only rolled his eyes, a small smile on his lips. Though he quickly smothered it.
Soren grinned at Corvus as they finished the final steps of the number, and he thought that the other man might have been about to smile back when a blinding flash of light obscured his vision. Soren squinted, everything brilliant and white for a moment, before the scene around him snapped back into focus and he was standing, not in an empty forest clearing, but before a small and gently illuminated town.
Lights twinkled in the windows of buildings built into the sides of great trees, stairs twining up their trunks. Little flickering insects flitted through the air, shedding their light on the dark corners of the place. Soren stared at it with wide eyes. It wasn’t anything like Katolis, or what he’d imagined (story books had gotten it all wrong). It was beautiful, in a sort of enchanted and magical way.
He glanced around the group, expecting to find them similarly entranced, but instead found them all staring at him.
“Callum, your disguise dropped.” he said, realizing belatedly that whatever spell removed the illusion on the town had also removed the one on them.
He glanced between them, finding expressions ranging from confused to mildly horrified. He glanced back at the town. It looked fine to him. Better than fine, actually. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to be like this? He was about to ask when Callum piped up.
The mage glanced between himself and Soren a few times as he spoke, as though expecting what was in front of his eyes to change with each attempt at looking.
“Soren, my disguise dropped, but yours didn’t.”
Soren blinked at him, glancing down at himself. It had definitely dropped, he thought. The elvish garb was gone, as were the markings on-
He held up his hands, staring at them. There were small, purple bands around the knuckles on both his middle fingers. Soren stared at them, then threw a scared glance at Corvus. The other man was staring at him, mouth slightly open. He reached out a tentative hand towards him, then drew it back. But it was enough to tell Soren that there was something else. Something worse.
His hand went to his head, and he felt-
Soren’s hand brushed against something that shouldn’t have been there. Something that couldn’t be there. A horn. He had horns-
No, Soren realized belatedly as his other hand closed around empty air. He had one horn.
His breath hitched as the panic rose inside him, some sort of half-memory, half-hallucination flashing through his mind.
His father looming over his bed, face gray and marred with horrible scars, his eyes black, with only a small pinprick of light in them. There were tears in those eyes, slowly rolling down his face even as he gave Soren what was surely supposed to be a reassuring smile.
“It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
Except he was holding a knife. And nothing was going to be okay ever again.
Soren felt a scream rising up in his throat, the same way it had that day. Only now he swallowed it, turning away from them all even as the question in Callum’s eyes became one on his lips.
“Give him a minute.” Corvus said, cutting the mage off. He placed a hand on Soren’s shoulder.
Except that was what his father used to say, when Soren was struggling for breath, lying sick in his bed. Because it seemed simple, until you couldn’t do it.
Soren shook his head, pushing the memory from his mind. Viren wasn’t here. Neither version of him was here. Not the one with the scars and the black eyes, and not the one who held his hand when he was little.
They were both gone. They were both gone, and that little boy with them.
“I’m fine.” Soren said, turning back to them. “The spell must have just…”
Except the words died on his lips even as he spoke them. He knew, just like they knew, that what he’d been about to say would have been a lie. And he knew, just like they knew, that they would all pretend to believe it.
But Soren didn’t want to lie. He didn’t want to say that everything was going to be okay when it wasn’t.
“I- I don’t know where to start.” he admitted, and felt Corvus’ hand squeeze his shoulder. The other man gave him a warm smile, and Soren took a deep breath.
“I guess, at the beginning.” he said with a small laugh. “I… I might be an elf?”
“Might-” Callum began skeptically, but Corvus shot him a look and he shut up fast.
Soren glanced over at Corvus appreciatively before clearing his throat and continuing. It all came out in a rush once he’d started.
“You were all just going through a lot and I didn’t want to be a burden and also I wasn’t sure if it was real or not cause maybe I just got drunk and got weird back tattoos but it’s definitely real and I can turn invisible sometimes and also I have a horn now so there’s that and I think my Mom was an elf and maybe that’s part of why my Dad hated them so much? And also I think that- that-”
His hand drifted back to the solitary horn on his head. “I just really wish I knew how. And why. And it’s just a lot to find out all of a sudden and I wish… I wish I’d had someone to, I don’t know, tell me what to do. How to feel about all of this because… because I don’t know how to feel about it.”
“Oh, Soren.” Rayla said as he finally fell silent. She reached out, scooping up his must larger hands in her own. “You don’t have to feel any way yet.”
He gave her a wobbly smile. “Yeah. I… I sorta know that. I think.”
Callum, who had taken in his whole ramble with a somewhat confused expression, as though he couldn’t believe this had all been going on right under his nose and he hadn’t noticed, finally cleared his throat. “Well, I uhm. I’m glad you told us. Because these sorts of things can be complicated to navigate and-”
“Stop being so awkward, it’s embarrassing.” Rayla said to her boyfriend, nudging him with her elbow before turning back to Soren. “What Callum is trying to say is that we’re here for you, and we might not know exactly how to do that all the time, but we’re going to try.”
“What she said.” Corvus said softly from beside him.
Soren turned to say thank you, to say how much that meant coming from him, of all people.
Corvus, who had not grown up with him.
Corvus, who had met him at his worst and decided to stick around anyway.
Corvus, who had chosen to stay in Katolis even though his entire life was elsewhere.
Corvus, who had thrown his arms around Soren before he could manage to find the words to say any of that. Soren melted into him, burying his face in the other man’s shoulder. He smelled like pine sap and smoke, but not in a way that reminded Soren of the fires in Katolis. Instead he smelled like long summers spent at camp and under the stars. Days of hiking and training, and nights spent telling stories and roasting marshmallows over an open fire.
Days where Soren had felt truly alive, and free, and safe. The way he hadn’t been able to feel at home anymore.
So, in a way, Corvus smelled like safety. And that was the way his arms felt around Soren, too.
“Thank you.” Soren muttered into his shoulder, hoping those two simple words could summarise everything he wanted to say and didn’t know how to.
“Always.” Corvus replied, so soft Soren almost didn’t catch it.
When Soren pulled back, he found his friend’s eyes smiling at him. Sad and worried, yes. But warm, too. And Soren smiled back.
And then he saw the elf standing behind them.
He was on the other side of the clearing, and he had dropped whatever he’d been holding, the pieces of it shattered at his feet. As Soren watched, he took an unsteady step towards them, then another.
His eyes filled with tears, which slowly spilled down his cheeks. “Runaan?”
And Runaan spun at the sound of his voice, his own eyes going wide. And Soren saw something then that he would never be able to unsee. He saw the facade slip; the strong, stoic expression fell from Runaan’s face as his feet carried him across the field and towards who could only be his husband.
They collided in the center of the clearing, beside a small pool with two silver flowers floating in it, crystals shining in their centers. Runaan melted into the other man’s grasp the way Soren had done with Corvus only moments before. And they clutched each other, their words tumbling over one another.
“I saw the lotus but I- I didn’t dare believe-”
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry-”
“You’re here. You’re really here. You came back.”
And as Runaan pulled back to stare into his husband’s eyes, he smiled a kind of smile that Soren had never seen cross his face before. Then he reached up, gently brushing a strand of silver hair back behind his partner’s ear. And he said something so softly that Soren almost didn’t hear it.
But he did, and with that single word, Soren suddenly understood something that he didn’t know how he hadn’t seen before.
“Always.” Runaan whispered.
Soren’s gaze flicked to Corvus, getting a soft smile in return. It made his heart leap in his chest. It had always done that, he realized, suddenly understanding why he’d had butterflies in his stomach the day before.
Soren smiled back at him, and when Corvus placed a hand back on his shoulder, the contact was like a small shock. How had he been so blind?
It was startlingly obvious now. You could be the strongest, toughest person and still need a home to go back to. A place where you felt safe.
And maybe that wasn’t a place, maybe it was a person.
