Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ The Road Trip ❯ Chapter 1

The Road Trip
I met Adarne the spring of my Chrysalis....I was nine, he was twelve. He swept into my life, rescuing me from both the doubts of the change and the attacking chimerical lion. He told me I was a changeling, and that I was special for it. I looked into his terrible, glorious eyes...and I believed him.
I went into my fosterage, away from Adarne, but he was there when I returned. We became inseparable, two childing fae fighting, living, dreaming together. When I was eleven and he fourteen, he asked me to become his oathmate for the first time. We were bound for a year and a day on Pennons, he still flush from victorious combat. I wore a dandelion chain in my hair and my favorite T-shirt. Adarne gave me a ring of silver wires he had braided with his own hands. We came home to the hold, and our lord gave us a corner room, with a four poster bed that smelled of lavender. We slept there together like puppies from the same litter.
Towards the end of the bond, Adarne became restless, and he left the day it ended. He had discovered the call of women, and I did not qualify as such yet. I let him go without complaint, returning to my lodge to learn the ways of my kith. I spent the summers there, and the winters at home. Adarne came and went, free and unfettered, always with a different girl. Our school laughed and gossiped, and the girls were vocally relieved that such a handsome one had stopped wasting his time with me.
When I was thirteen, the inevitable happened, and one of them broke Adarne’s heart by being the first to let him go, instead of doing the expected thing and allowing him that honor. He returned to the hold, back to me. He told me I was beautiful, and I looked into his loving gray eyes....and I believed him. The next year, he asked me to be his oathmate again. We were bound on Midsummer for a year and a day. I wore roses and ribbons in my hair and a boggan crafted linen dress. Adarne gave me a necklace of silver beads and bells that he had crafted with his own hands. We came home to the hold and our lord gave us the corner room, with wood that smelled like lemons. We slept there together like lovers under a spring moon.
Towards the end of this bond, Adarne once again grew restless. I fettered him, he said, I was not spontaneous, or fun. He wanted...he needed...someone more like him. I had mundane aspirations, he said....I should want to be something more glamorous than a doctor. I was not surprised when he left the day the bond ended. He womanized, he drank, and he played away the rest of his wilderhood, while I studied and went away to school.
He came back to me a third time, over two years ago. He was older, and I was surprised to see how much the grump he had become. He moved in with me during my residency, and he began a gallery that he filled with his creations. But the banality in his heart darkened, and I mourned to see how fast he slipped from me. Finally, the week that I finished my residency, he asked me to be his oathmate a final time. We were bound on Beltaine for a year and a day. I wore a fillet of gold and my armor, with my best cloak chained to my shoulders. Adarne gave me a bubble of glass he had blown with his own lips. We came home to the hold, and the old lord gave us the corner room with air that smelled of dust. We slept there as old friends.
At first, things went well. The gallery attracted a following, I got a job as a staff doctor just blocks from the hold. On Midsummer, we became lovers again, and I revelled in the joy that was Adarne. He was filled with plans, ideas, hopes, and I let him sweep me away with him. But as the darkness and coldness came, so did Adarne turn dark and cold. The closer we got to the end of the bond...the less Adarne was. Rooms that were small when he stood in them grew then to normal size. His eyes lacked the terrible grandeur I was accustomed to. And I was afraid for the first time since I became fae.
I brought up the idea that we should take a trip a month before the bond ended. We should go, rediscover what it was to be fae, bounce from freehold to freehold without plan or direction. Adarne grudgingly agreed, complaining about the fuss of finding someone to watch the gallery while he was gone. But he came with me, and we headed north, letting the roads take us where they would. At first, Adarne was well, with a sparkle of himself left in his eyes.
Then, two weeks into the trip, Adarne became a stranger to me.....and I felt that I was even more a stranger to him. We had fifteen days left in this bond...and those days felt as long as years. He made the plans of a person I did not know. He spoke of marriage....not the bond of the Dreaming that I had entered into with him before, but the marriage of the mortals. He wanted a house, a car...children, 2 point whatever of them. He realized his life had been a waste....he should go back to school, get his degree...grow up. My heart froze more at every phrase. But I stayed, half out of the pull of the oaths I could not renege on, and half out of a morbid fascination I could not shake.
That evening we came to a freehold. I found it, instead of Adarne, who didn’t appear to notice it even when I stopped there. The boggan sweeping the front steps offered me a hearty greeting, but there was a sadness in his eyes when he saw Adarne for the first time. Adarne glanced at the hold, unseeing, before pointedly suggesting we should go to a nice hotel instead. The boggan’s eyes were full of pity when we left.
And so, I stood on the balcony of a nice hotel, watching the sun rise on the fourteenth day until the oath was over. We had made love in the banal surroundings he had chosen for us, and, for just an instant, he was there again with me. I knew, however, when he awoke, that little spark would be gone again.
Beside me sat a pile of crockery and a note. The boggan who had been sweeping the steps brought me dinner after Adarne slept, with a note from the liege of his hold. The note was terse, straightforward, penned in a hand that could only belong to a sidhe... “If you require any help, please make us aware of it.” The seal was that of House Fiona, Adarne’s house. Although short, the note made me feel as though I did not face this alone, and I was glad of it.
It took much convincing on my part to get Adarne to continue the trip with me. He worried that I would lose my job if I stayed away too long. I was more worried about losing something infinitely more precious than that, but in my heart I already knew that I was fighting a losing battle. He complained the few times he spoke to me at all. What little left in him that was fae remembered the bond, because no matter how hard he threatened to leave me, he was still there the next morning.
The day of Beltaine, he looked at me like he had no idea who I was. There was the slightest edge of disbelief that he actually had anything to do with someone like me. He mentioned off handedly that he heard that Rogaine works well on women as well, referring to the blurring of my mortal seeming that would not allow hair to grow where my horns did. He wondered aloud when my black hair had started to silver, and why hadn’t he noticed? I really should dye it, he mentioned, I was too young to go gray already. I was a doctor now, I should dress....act....be like one.
I took this in silence, and that Beltaine, the anniversary of the Oathbonding of our grumphood, was a mournful occasion. I did not see another of my kind that day, I chose to remain with Adarne rather than go to the freehold.
We spent the final time of the bond in silence, his is confused and belligerent. My silence is filled with thoughts he would no longer understand. I stayed awake again all night on the night that the bond ended. Adarne refused to touch me, went all of the way to edge of calling me ugly, but something pulled him back. He slept on the floor, and I did not sleep. When I came in after midnight, Adarne ap Fiona had left the bond on the day after, like he always had before. He had left the bond.....and he had left the Dreaming. There was a man I did not recognize on the floor, a pleasantly handsome man sleeping the sleep of the dissolute. I searched my memory for the name of this man, and it came grudgingly. Adam Jenkins, that was it.
I left before he awoke. He would find the money I left stashed on the nightstand, of that I was sure. I returned home as quickly as I could get there. The old lord said nothing as I returned alone, but offered me choice of rooms to replace the one I would not return to. He did not have to ask, and I was grateful for his understanding. I worried that the shell of Adarne would return, his banal dreams were filled with things that required my income to grow, but only a lawyer arrived to close down the gallery.
I realized later, that unlike the other bonds he and I entered into, I carried something away from this one. A friend who works the obstetrics rotation on my floor confirmed the pregnancy. A seer at the lodge tells me the child is female, and very possibly kithain. She will be born before Imbolc, and I will call her Adaine, and I will tell her stories of an impossibly handsome Fiona knight with fiery red hair and terrible gray eyes. I will show her a ring, a necklace, and a fragile bubble alight with the colors of the rainbow.