You see — or rather she couldn't, wouldn't — Zouelle did not know which face to put on around Neverfell anymore, or rather she no longer knew, as easily as slipping on a pair of gloves everyday, how to react to her.
Everything had changed. Their very sky had been blown apart, and here was the real sky at last, as pale blue as robin's egg shell in the morning and all the varied things Neverfell had said it would be. It hurt to look at it sometimes.
Was there another sky above this one as well? Who knew? Did Neverfell? Neverfell, child from the Outer World, had never been long enough out there and couldn't exactly be said to be an authority of this new world they had crawled and clawed their way out for. Out of hungry clasping Caverna, into the light that hurt Zouelle to look at.
But she couldn't resist looking, each and every time, that slow inexorable rise and crack of the first sunrays on the mountain top, somewhere in between the thin line of the horizon and the land.
The sun is a scorching, burning egg of no paint she has ever seen that can do it justice. It is not just a pale shy sliver of yellow as the paintings - Uncle Max had had displayed up in his office, it sparkled and shone white, and as she learnt she really could not look at it for too long, even with the smoked glasses they had brought up.
This overworld was full of elusive sparkle, as she continued to learn as they journeyed over the vast spread of arid sand stretching far and wide, almost as infinite as the sea, as Neverfell had reassured, but never.
It was already surprising enough to watch water naturally flow over rocks and pools here, as clear as glass, as alive as any of the things that lived up here, water that rushed and rushed to have a purpose elsewhere, that was a vein that would continue to live on, water that cupped so many little things in it, not just the shards of sunlight that fell in (and was a natural jewel, unlike candlelight or traplight — had green traplight ever make anything sparkle the way sunlight does?), water that for the first time she saw could nourish so many other beings.
Strange new creatures she had never seen the like of before, the whistling winged bullets called birds, and humans like Neverfell.
The first time they met an overworld one, she finally understood Neverfell had never been one of them in the first place.
The face of the human boy in front of her shifted unnaturally (it really came naturally to Neverfell’s kind), not as clearly as Neverfell’s glass face, but it showed clearly his puzzlement, and his consideration to not mean harm to them. They were not Faces, shifting hardly from one to the next.
“Let’s go somewhere livable,” begins Zouelle.
Somewhere much less hot, and less dry, and less terrifying. Clearly no human really lived here, and Zouelle thought she would go mad if she had to look at this constant nothingness of sand — miles and yards of dry coarse powder that made her shrivel just from looking at it.
She wanted somewhere cool, with shade, with stone where she could work with her Wines. Somewhere — she could grow the grapes needed. Not that any of them have ever experienced growing things — plants — other than the traplights.
But now that she was out here, Zouelle was beginning to realise — she could do anything. She could go to the farms Uncle Max had told her about, watch how they coaxed those grapes they had used for thankless centuries to life, to burgeon.
Some of Neverfell’s talk has spurred some of the drudges to say they want to go to the sea too.
Erstwhile, to Zouelle’s annoyance, still sticks to them like a burr. Why on earth did Neverfell enjoy his company so much anyway? He was a braggart, that’s what he was, and now he had nothing to brag about, he hung around like the most sulky cloud with that nasty stiff face. Sometimes he made that simple angry face Neverfell had taught them all.
Sometimes she found Neverfell teaching him and others new Faces. She supposed Neverfell was now their Facesmith, and their universal communicator.
And their resident Inventor of New Things, clearly.
The thing that surprised both her and Grandible most, day to day, was the fact that most humans here were not out to backstab or kill them, not at first glance no. Perhaps some were shifty enough to want to rob. But it always helped, the fact that they could read the movements of their faces almost as clearly, while theirs were stone-faced, always.
And reputation helps. Don’t steal from the fairies, the rumours go before them.
There are people who will even do the odd gestures of fright — of falling to their knees, or turning away as if to hide, or flicking their fingers from forehead to shoulders.
(It is nothing like how fear is swallowed down instead of projected, how fear might be used as a cloying, simpering weapon instead to invoke pity.)
(Zouelle later finds out this is a gesture of those calling on their God to protect them. Zouelle finds the concept of gods — rather odd.)
It helps there is grizzled Grandible, a formidable sight, an old bear of an old man beside her to glare blackly at any shifty-faced slip. It helps that the stone faces of the drudges, following behind them, give the impression of an army.
It helps that many of the drudges, unused to this new day-and-night cycle, still routinely keep to being out-of-clock, and so there is always at least one up for guard duty. It helps that they have all now gained things of their own they want to protect, and Zouelle barely has to ask. It is not manipulative, she tells herself, not when all the drudges look at Neverfell and lope and shamble off to help her out.
And Neverfell and Grandible’s trapmaking comes in very useful. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of cheesemasters and drudges combined, she swears softly to herself.
//have some rough drafting i’ve been doing on this wip for femslash feb + A Face like Glass by Frances Hardinge!
current wips these days have been for small series that barely have fandoms, if at all. I’ll do my best to actually get the f/f ones out soon...
