So this is very different so far from Winner Takes All or For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds. Very. So I warn, it's very less driven by dialogue and more by narration, and so on, but there is a story and while maybe not entirely apparent, this is the beginning of that 'beauty and the beast' thing, but in my own way, which brings it so far removed from the original that maybe I shouldn't say so at all. Ha. Anyway, let me know if you think I should continue. I'm quite uncertain with this one, because it's new territory for me, but this lays out the beginnings, so like I said, please let me know.
In short, review if you have time. For this story, it is especially appreciated and helpful since I know not if I should even build upon it.
Teen titans is so not mine. Balderdash.
And for those of you who don't know, 'Garth' is Aqualad. Yeah, the name could be better but hey, it's what it is in the comics, so Garth it is. I like Aqualad anyway though...heh.
Glass
Chapter One: Beauty
"No, not here either," she muttered to herself and threw another book over her shoulder. It landed with an insulted thump on the haphazard pile of all the other rejects and stirred some rueful dust bunnies back to life. The muttering continued and so did the growth of the literary mountain as Raven sorted through her many, many tomes—too many now, she thought. An exasperated sigh and about 207 books later, she sat in the center of her now disassembled library. Where was that thing anyway?
"Hey, what are you doing up there?" a voice called from below.
"Looking for a book," she called down through the hatch in the floor and jumped back when the source of the voice—a boy her age probably, with blackish eyes—appeared in front of her, standing on the middle rung of the ladder. He laughed at her and she scowled. "Yeah, yeah," she glowered.
"Sorry Beauty," he grinned and she rolled her eyes. Sure he was.
"You're about as sorry as they come," she teased and now it was his turn to scowl, offended.
"Tcha, anyway, Star wanted me to tell you supper's almost ready," he said.
"Thanks for the bulletin," Raven smiled and then all but shoved him down the ladder and closed the hatch.
"HEY! You could've killed me!" Her brother-in-law to be said sourly through the hatch's door and Raven gave a short and derisive laugh.
"Yeah right, you always land on your feet," she called through the wood and listened, amused as Garth shuffled away.
"What happened to you?" a voice chuckled that Raven recognized as her oldest sister Terra's.
"Beauty," Garth mumbled irritably and Terra laughed.
Raven sighed. Someday she'd rid herself of the ridiculous nickname and stuffed the memory far down in the recesses of her mind. She sighed again.
Beyond the absurdity of her nickname, their house was an odd one of its own kind of oddness, well not all that odd perhaps, but odd enough. When she was born, youngest of three, Raven's mother died almost directly after the birth. Tragedy pursued the young three as only six years later their father died as well. With no way to stay in the city where they had been born, the eldest of the three—Terra, a fiery blonde of fourteen at the time—decided they must move to the country. Certainly they were young, but it was their only option. There it was a more humble living than they were used to, but also something they might be able to get on with; none of them had any skills to speak of that would be appreciated in the city. So it was that Raven lived with her sisters in a small cottage outside the village of Green Hill—the northerner's were never long on imagination—and that was where she grew up.
It was probably easier for her because that was where she started; her sisters Terra and Starfire had a harder time of it, being accustomed to the softness of southern living with at least a couple servants and always clean sheets. On top of that, there was the fact that they were both achingly young and had Raven to take care of. Still, Terra was stubborn and more than a little outspoken and Starfire was generously patient. So they managed pretty well too.
For whatever reason, the raising that the two older sisters did of her was minimal. They told her it was because she was a 'precocious' child, which Raven now properly discerned to mean solitary and bookish, but that was alright with her. She did very much love her books.
Terra was slight in frame, but very beautiful and the village took to her immediately on their arrival. Starfire was equally well received and the toddler in her arms—Raven at the time—was permissibly cooed at and awed at. Had Raven been able to voice her opinions of such actions, it is safe to say that the welcome the girls received would have been much less inviting. But babies weren't known for their speech abilities—even a precocious one—and Raven did not cry much as a baby, so the cooing and awing continued. When they first arrived with Raven, Terra was fourteen and Starfire was thirteen.
In the coming years both her older sisters blossomed into fantastically gorgeous ladies and had eligible suitors from town lined up—and a lot that weren't too, but couldn't help themselves. This was when Raven was probably around twelve or so. By the time the literati was sixteen it became evident that she was going to disappoint the village boys by being comparatively plain—not ugly, but plain was plain and there was no getting around that when your sisters were nearly worshipped goddesses on earth.
So how did a 'plain' girl get the nickname of Beauty? Raven wondered herself sometimes at the uncanny way it stuck to her after that one fatal night when at a town gathering they had been throwing nicknames around in a sort of haphazard circle. When it had come to her she had been, as usual, disinterested and somewhat scrupulously annoyed, so she had said with all her cynicism and sarcasm: Beauty of course.
Well, that was, if nothing else, a mistake. For the name clung to her like clothes to skin, saturated by the rains in spring and she could not pick it off of her no matter how many times she told people her name was Raven.
And it was not a cruel continued use of the name, but to her it reminded her of what she was not and so she could not hear the kindness or jovial tones her nickname was used in. She heard only something that was as inappropriate as calling either of her other sisters ugly, and stayed well away from reflective surfaces with a more fervent purpose than ever before.
A verbal reminder of what she wasn't was enough without a visual one.
That was when she was sixteen, two years ago.
Now Raven herself was going on eighteen—still plain—and well-known to be even more outspoken than Terra; Starfire was twenty-five and Terra was twenty-six. Starfire was informally engaged to the young man named Garth, the town's woodsman. He cut a strapping figure with toned muscles from working in the woodlands and helping out at the forge or the stables and had an uncanny sense of knowing what people thought before they said it. To his credit—in Raven's opinion—he had not flocked to either of her sisters like so many of the young men had done; no, he had let Starfire come to him.
The pretty redhead had seen him often with Raven—who spent a lot of time at the forge because her surrogate older brother, Victor Stone, was the primary blacksmith, and spent equable time at the stables because she liked horses; the stableman's name was Garfield Logan and teased her about how much more time she spent with horses rather than people. It was a fact, if a fact known only by Garth himself, and maybe the blacksmith, that he made a point to be around when Raven was near; she intrigued him.
"Bah, she'd never have me," he bemoaned one night to Stone who shrugged.
"You never know," he said, pulling a long face at the sorry state of some of his tools and began to rearrange them properly. Garth scowled darkly and gave a short laugh.
"She's too much a handful that one for me, maybe. And I am not enough of one for her," he mused. Stone shot him a look.
"Sounds more like the eldest to me." At the smith's words, Garth shook his head vehemently.
"No, Beauty...Raven...she's got you know, a stiff sense of this world, likes her own better," the woodsman said from his own inferences and Stone chuckled.
"You read people well; I only know that because she's silently let me become like an older brother," Stone told him and then quizzically added, "Anyway isn't the middle sister interested in you?" At this, Garth nodded absently.
"Yes, I suppose. And she is very kind and beautiful. She must come to me though, for I do not know what motive I might have if I went now on my own," he said slowly and Stone grunted understanding as he shifted more metal workings. It was not wise to entangle one's self with a sister if one had questionable feelings for another without solid rejection; it made for gossip and then reality of the gossip and Garth was too smart to fall into such things. Still, he was human and his next musing said as much. "I do wonder though," Garth continued after a while but nothing more was said beyond that and so his secret feelings for Raven remained something he kept otherwise to himself.
And sure enough, eventually Starfire came to him.
After a few weeks of watching him with some apprehension and a lot of admiration, Starfire chalked up the courage to ask Garth for a dance at one of the town's solstice celebrations. That was a few months ago in summer and it had been a very bold thing to do.
After all, a lady did not ask a man to dance anymore than she might ask him to please meet her in a shadowed alleyway after midnight. Garth was a progressive sort in the midst of these people though and graciously accepted and Starfire's allure was such that he found himself loving her as much as he loved her younger sister and knew that that must be enough. Sometimes there was no defining line and he knew that, but it wa a quiet lack of a linen and so he and Starfire continued to grow together.
That aside, Starfire's 'boldness' was nothing compared to Terra's who might have had an equally promising—if not more so—suitor if not for her insanely shrewish streak. The town made light of it, because they liked her for all her fieriness, but it was simply not usual for a girl to be so...outspoken. Still, Terra was very quick-witted and she made people laugh and was good with her hands—cooking, sewing, anything of that nature—and soon she was the unofficial seamstress of Green Hill. Raven, however, remained a generally accepted and somewhat ignored member of the town after it became apparent that when she was spoken to, she did not take too kindly to it and often had some cold rejoinder to shut the poor soul up who did dare and try.
On occasion Garfield might have a conversation with her, which meant more that he made fun of her solitary nature and it was a harmless sort of teasing, but it did not escape Raven's knowledge that the source of his kidding around stemmed from the whole of what the town thought of her. His teasing did not stop her from coming though. Raven liked horses a lot and grew fond of a beautiful one of gold and butter coloring. It was a magnificent creature and it having no name, she gave it one: Arella, after her mother. Of course, it is not so flattering a thing to name a horse after one's deceased mother usually, but this was an indisputably beautiful animal and so the gasps of the appalled soon died down to nothing, especially when they saw Raven riding. She was rather good at it.
And when she wasn't riding 'her' horse or reading books, she was often at the forge. Victor Stone took a liking to her and even let her help him in the forge sometimes and while she was not so strong or skilled with anvil and hammer as he was, she did learn to do more delicate forge things, like glass-blowing. She was rather covetous of her creations too, fascinated with their fragility and Raven had many glass pieces in her attic room, set along the sill of the window and they cast fractured prisms against everything within a two-foot radius. And books, she had lots and lots of books. One day during a short visit to deliver some horseshoes, Victor got to see her growing collection and remarked that it suited her, and ruffled her hair genially. This, she allowed. He was one of the people she did get along with other than her sisters.
"Beauty, supper!"
"Coming!" She threw open the hatch and veritably slipped through the opening. Terra threw her an older sister's grin and whistled at the landing; Raven was very light on her feet. Starfire on the other hand, clucked her tongue worriedly.
"I wish you wouldn't do that. You might hurt yourself," she said and Raven shrugged.
"Probably I won't though," she replied and Starfire sighed.
"Probably you won't," she agreed reluctantly; she knew as well as anyone that her younger sister was very agile. Still, she was only human, and Starfire couldn't help but be concerned about what-ifs.
"Beauty," Garth smiled kindly at her and pulled out her chair for her; surprised a little, Raven nodded dumbly and sat. He pushed her in. He did the same for the other two with equal consideration of course and soon they were eating, talking about anything there was to talk about.
"There is talk of Mischief again," Garth said after supper as Starfire and Terra cleaned the dishes and Raven sat on one of the lower rungs of the ladder that led to the attic and thusly, her room.
"Mischief?" Raven raised a brow. He nodded.
"So I want you girls to be aware now, more than before," he warned and this was the first time any of them had seen the bright lad's eyes shadow with some inexplicable anxiousness.
"But Garth, it's all stories, isn't it?" Starfire asked tentatively.
"Of course it is, codswallop," Terra affirmed, showing a skeptical face, and though Starfire would never get used to her older sister's sometimes rough use of language, she was heartened by the insistence in it. It should be noted that Starfire's idea of rough language was sorely more sensitive than most.
"I don't think it is," Raven said slowly and her sisters eyed her strangely.
"Don't be silly," Terra dismissed.
"Yes, don't, please," Starfire agreed more politely.
"Raven is right," Garth said and the older sisters threw him incredulous looks as he used her real name and agreed with her. "They are not just stories as you call them. Things...happen in the country, especially around here. And this mischief is strange to us, but we who've grown up on these stories take to believing in them. I need you to believe in them too and when you believe me, I will tell you that it is best to stay out of the forest." This was the most Garth had ever spoken to them collectively and it got their attention right away.
"But Garth, you, you're a woodsman, surely you know there's nothing out there," Starfire almost pleaded with him to confirm what she said, but he did not and she wrung her hands in her apron. Terra said nothing but blew hair out of her face, irritated by what she could not understand but, it seemed, must believe anyway.
"Mostly we should be fine," he assured them once he knew they believed him—Raven more so, but she was always more given to being open to such things; he suspected it came of reading so much—and smiled disarmingly. Starfire nodded, soothed by this statement and Terra waved a hand that said she didn't care either way much but that was fine. Raven said and indicated nothing at this near-promise of safety but excused herself to her room, saying she still had to find that book from before. Feet disappearing into the attic as she stepped off the top rung of the ladder, she didn't notice or feel Garth's piercing gaze follow her until she closed the hatch.
There was a knock on her door (or hatch) not long after.
"Yes? Come in." He threw open the hatch and Raven arched a brow as he clambered through.
"Garth," she nodded cordially, inviting him without further ado into the whole of her sanctuary.
"You were listening tonight, right?" he asked and she thought him uncharacteristically concerned. She nodded to say yes. "Well, good. Pay heed, alright Beauty?" he smiled and began to go back down. Now Raven climbed off her small bed—some books went sprawling—and hurried to him.
"Stop worrying about me, you," she said with a gentleness that was a well kept secret of hers and maybe it was that that gave Garth the madness or courage to do something so simple and meaningful as take her hand in his and squeeze it and then bring her down to kiss her cheek—as a cousin might—and he could not be faulted. For Garth was a good man, true and honorable to a fault. His love for Starfire was genuine—as was his love for Raven—and he had made his choice, long since recognizing that if Raven ever did open her eyes to a man, it would not be him. Such was his wisdom and such was his strange fate to be near her always, now engaged to Star, but he did not mind
When you loved someone, it had to be something you did not mind or you might grow to hate them for something that wasn't their fault at all, and he could never allow himself to hate Beauty...to hate Raven.
He paused on the ladder, considering.
"I do worry," he conceded at last, and disappeared from the hatch's opening altogether, leaving Raven eyeing him in question, standing at the top of the ladder.
Hours later the moonlight fell through her single window in crosshatches of silver white and made her glass figures burst with radiance, and it seemed to fill the small attic. Her room was still a mess, books strewn all about, but the beauty in the glass things outshone the mess, shadowed in the night anyway and Raven did not look for that book from before. Instead she sat on her bed and stared out her window at the forest below; she had a good view of it. There was a stream that trickled in the green and edged out of the forest just enough to provide water for their house—for cooking or cleaning or whatever. She wondered at Garth's statement from earlier and found herself longing to disobey and find the mischief instead of hide from it.
Mischief was another word for magic, but that Magic should exist was preposterous and so it was called 'mischief'.
Magic, was it really the same though? She had her doubts and continued to wonder long into the night, for such was her tendency: to fancy and think more than the average person might, more than the average person would want to and when her sisters were asleep she still tossed in her bed, awake. Starfire slept in the room with Garth downstairs and Terra had her own room near the kitchen. And finally, sleep completely elusive, Raven threw her sheets off and opened the hatch in her floor as quietly as possible. It was not a completely silent action, but it was mostly and she stepped very, very lightly down the ladder.
She glanced around. No one was there and she bit her tongue, not trusting her sigh to not wake the others. Hand closing over the door knob, Raven exited the house and shut the door as softly as she might, which was also very.
The night air chilled her and she rubbed her arms up and down to keep the circulation fresh. Autumn was being short with them this year and it looked to be an early and unkindly long winter. It was the degree that let your breath hang like morning mist in the dark air and Raven could swear she saw images in it, but brushed it off. Surely that was a silly thought, even for her. Their house was precariously near to the woodland and she approached it like it was a wild animal—it was not far from it. Untamed, she clung to the stream's edge and paused on the invisible border only a second before she placed one cautious foot into the beginnings of the forest.
And nothing happened. She scowled and let out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding; she'd at least expected something...a hare maybe, or a deer? Some sign of life even if it was not Mischief or magic—synonymous really—was what she had thought would make itself known to her, but none did and emboldened, she stepped all the way into the woods.
Her steps were as light as she could make them and she only had one really bad moment when she stepped on a particularly dead branch. The crackling sound it made seemed to echo mysteriously throughout the forest and she feared it would reach its crackling waves all the way to the house and wake Garth. He would be furious. Not that there was much reason to be furious, she thought blandly. Though she could tell it was greener than any other place in or near Green Hill, and that perhaps the stream's sparkle was a little more alive here than back across near her house, well, these were all things she could dismiss for one reason or the other.
That was until she saw them.
It was only a glint at first, a hard and beautiful glint, but it caught her eye and she followed it like a shipmaster charting a distant star. For some reason it seemed to move, and not with her, and soon she found herself growing angry. Why wouldn't it hold still? It occurred to her that she was very chilly but just as soon as that thought came to her it also occurred to her that the moving light was teasing her and her resolve to track it increased.
Ten or twenty more minutes of painstaking follow-the-leader later, it seemed to hold its place and not daring to let out a sigh of relief, the youngest of three approached what looked like a large and netted mass of vines. It hung like a great wall of green between some of the taller trees and, gently she tried to move some of it to one side for a better look, shivering as an unexpected breeze rippled through the night. But Raven forgot her cold as she pushed back some foliage and let out a soft gasp.
They were beautiful. They were perfect. They were roses.
And they were all made of glass.
Entranced, she thought perhaps there was some Mischief in here after all, but she frowned slightly at that very thought. Such loveliness could not be Mischief.
And that was how Raven decided there actually was a difference between that and Magic after all.
So thinking, she tried to further part the greenery blocking her from the garden of glass and was surprised—and more than a bit alarmed—as the green seemed to move away for her, like water parting in a ship's wake...only backwards of course. Her curiosity staved off fear though—something she would never admit to having anyway—and she stepped toward the fragile roses. They were all immaculate in every way, the refined edges of each petal imitating grace, and the rivulets of crystal refraction surpassing the radiance of sun and the glimmer of stars all at once. And here Raven thought she could no more leave this place of delicate and even literary beauty any more than she could breathe water.
Venturing deeper into the midst of shining glass, the thorns looking like ice, she found herself in the center of it all and facing the loveliest rose of all. It should have been harder to say it was the loveliest, should have been far more difficult to set it apart, but dark eyes scrutinizing, Raven found it was only indisputable. Somehow this one managed to be a little more generously made, not in size either, for it was not the largest of the flora, but more in the care it seemed to have required. She swore she could actually see the slight veins of a real rose in the transparent petals of this glass one, could see the lines in the tiniest of its thorns and maybe even catch sight of its roots, deep down in the forest ground.
It must be real, she thought wistfully and almost unconsciously, she reached out her right hand to brush it gently, not hold it or break it, just touch it to know it was really there.
There was a flash of light, she thought and then cawing.
Ravens?
She shielded her eyes and opened them again all in one instant.
Wings were everywhere as ravens poured out of nowhere and engulfed her. Light shone...was it behind them? No, she realized with confusion and understanding in one, the light was shining from inside of them, their wings throwing the light from each blacker than black feather. She tried to see through them entirely and pushed against them.
"Let me through!" she cried and the wings were gone.
That was too easy, was her first thought and her heartbeat pulsed faster as the sound of flapping wings returned...but this was somehow lighter. She turned and was startled to see a small robin on the forest floor. It looked...lost amidst the great glass roses and she empathized with it somewhat. The roses were beautiful but suddenly her desire to be near them was gone, replaced with an estranged cold that left her feeling very empty and wandering.
"Here, I'm lost too," she said and she did not smile as Starfire or even Terra might have but the little bird must have seen something in her face that was trustworthy; it hopped toward her and Raven's eyes widened as its little feet made prints in...snow.
It was everywhere, and she guessed that was what the blinding white light had been. Snow.
But that couldn't be right. It was only mid autumn.
This is an enchanted wood, her mind reminded her and she yielded as she swept her fingers through the cold, white crystals of ice. It was very soft, she mused, for something made of such hardness as tiny pellets of ice, and she scooped some up in her hands and stared at it for a moment before the robin decided to hop up on the small mound.
"There, you've a little platform," and now she smiled at it softly. "I wonder where we are," she said to the robin and it tilted its head at her as though it considered her statement. A sudden gust whirled around her and she drew the bird to her to shield it even as she began to tremble from the arctic winds. "Too cold for autumn," she remarked with chattering teeth and rose from her kneeling position. She should go home, she realized and made to leave the eerie and beautiful glass figures behind, but there was a whooshing noise and the fall of a shadow that was not her own and Raven found she could not get the green curtain to budge. It seemed she was trapped.
"You cannot go," a voice said.
"And why is that?" she asked bravely—or recklessly, whichever. There was the crunch of the snow behind her that she accurately took to be footsteps—boots by the sound of it.
"You said you were lost," the voice said. Raven frowned but still did not turn to face the speaker.
"I am not," she replied and there was an empty chuckle to answer her. Her next shiver was not from the chilled air.
"Then I am sorry, for I fear your words have trapped you here. You are as lost as I am," the voice said and did sound truly apologetic, if equally numb with it. Then there was a low whistle and the robin in her hands fluttered away from her and over her shoulder, and now Raven turned.
She supposed it was silly of her to expect him to be ugly, but she had hoped. An ugly man she would not have feared as she feared this man. For he was beautiful, terrifyingly beautiful with eyes that glinted the same as his glass roses—somehow she knew they must be his now, just by looking at him—and ebony hair that fell unkempt over his eyes in jags.
"Am I enchanted then?" she asked, vaguely aware of how distant she felt from everything suddenly and how the world seemed to heave under her; she thought she lost her balance and she thought arms caught her gently, but she could not be certain.
"No," the stranger said and then added, "You are simply lost." Raven had a brief awareness of rolling her eyes at this before they closed to see nothing but whiteness, snow whiteness, all sparkling with the same curving light as a glass rose. "But I can allow you to leave for three days. Tell your family you will be safe and then, on the third day, come to this place," the voice said to her closed eyes. She shook her head slightly to show she heard him but did not want to obey, that surely this was a great misunderstanding. The man sighed. "If you come to me, all will be as it must; if you do not, I shall come and fetch you here, for truly, I have no other choice, lady." Raven tried to open her eyes, desperate and was shocked to find it as if some spell was laid on her to keep her in darkness. But she was stubborn and told herself she must look at him again to understand, told herself she must open her eyes even if she could no sooner avoid this fate than be beautiful.
A moment passed and with great difficulty, Raven shook her head again and forced her eyes to open, pleading though on the verge of unconsciousness as she gazed into the blue ones that looked down at her with a sinking feeling what she recognized as pity.
"I can't leave my sisters..." she said. Her throat was dry for no reason she could figure.
"They will be safe if you come to me, on my honor," he said with softness she had not heard so far in their exchange and she thought she saw incredulous hope in his face, but it was passing and she thought no more on its meaning as his next words were voiced. "We have a bond now, you and I and I cannot break it."
"Cannot?" she echoed.
"I shall die else you return," he confessed. She was appalled. Stranger or no, she could not let him die because of her own folly. "Lady, please try to understand as well as you might, but I am unable to speak further on this," her stranger said. A moment passed and Raven's heart was in her mouth as she nodded.
"I will return," Raven promised.
"I will not harm you," he said and she thought she sensed his gratitude more than saw it.
Three days was not a long time, she realized with a pang.
"Send me home please," she requested, only now noticing her hands were scrunched up, holding bunches of the man's shirt and she had the grace to blush slightly, and her hands dropped hastily into her lap though she herself was still cradled and held by the man. "You can set me down; I think I can stand," she said, meeker than ever but he didn't seem to hear her—or he ignored her; she couldn't be sure which.
"Three days," he both warned and asked.
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She wondered if he saw her nod before there were more ravens' wings and flurries of snow and the feeling as though she had been long submerged in water and only suddenly let up for air as she sat bolt upright near the edge of the woodland, gasping.
Had it been a dream?
"Beauty!"
She heard footsteps and looked up. It was Garth and she had been right; he looked positively furious.
"Now Garth, calm down, I—"
"Beauty!" he cut her off effectively and she thought he played dirty by using the name she loathed, even though it was customary at this point. He was shouting at her. "I told you, I told you about the mischief, now what are you doing here?" he demanded and dawn was breaking very slowly over them as he pulled her to her feet. Raven stared at him dumbly for a moment. "Beauty!" he all but roared and took her by her shoulders, shaking her.
"Nothing," she said. "I have done nothing."
"Then what is...all this?" Garth asked as he took her right hand in his and held it out so she could see what he meant. On her finger was a ring with a small rose at its plain band's center, clear as glass. Closer inspection of Raven's person also showed a small pouch that hung from a white silk cord around her neck; she took it off and opened it to find many, many small pods.
Rose seedlings, she recognized and decided that such a considerate man could not be all bad, even if he did plan to take her from her family...surely. And then she thought: so it really wasn't a dream, half-amazed, half-believing herself to be finally losing her mind.
"What is it?" Garth asked and the concern in his voice was skittish.
"I...I don't know," Raven said dolefully and then, "But I must leave three days hence." Garth's expression became further distressed, and he released her, running his hands through his hair somewhat anxiously.
"You went further than this, further than here, into the woods...after I told you..." he trailed to muttering to himself incoherently. "What mischief has contracted you?" His phrasing was more appropriate than he realized but Raven kept tactfully quiet on the facts. They needn't know more than was...well, needed. It would only worry them and she hardly knew all the realities of it herself anyway.
Suddenly all was a mystery to her and she felt herself a character in one of her beloved books, thrust into something horribly marvelous, though she knew not what made it exactly so horrible or marvel-worthy.
Shouldn't she be afraid? She had been at first, she remembered.
But was now the same? Well, she was still in the dark as ever about what was truly going to happen to her, but that aside, she found her feelings changing in regards to that uncertainty and the man behind it all.
Her mind's eye saw two blue irises fraught with pain, longing, loathing, darkness and loss; it felt his arms protectively catching her as she had collapsed; and she found she could not be frightened of this man. Magic or Mischief, she could not be certain, but she was, beyond all of that, unafraid and so being, she told a very worried Garth what he needed to hear to be less so.
"It is not Mischief, but I am bound to return to him," she sighed as one resigned.
"Not Mischief...Magic then, I take it," Garth said disbelievingly and in that sentence Raven knew his thinking to be much more akin to her own than she had ever known before and it dismayed her to only just now find this out. Garth began to shake his head as if to clear it and then stopped as if breaking from a trance, gazing at her miserably. "You are, aren't you, bound I mean? I'd heard stories you know, but I thought it foolish to tell you; I should have known better about you, Beauty, for you are like me," he smiled at her but it was vacant. "It's why I became a woodsman you know, so maybe I could catch a glimpse of the Magic or Mischief, either one, and make it back to a world I was familiar with still, but neither ever came to me. Perhaps they do not like men," he mused dryly.
"Perhaps," she nodded in mock-seriousness and added, "And yes, maybe you should have known." Now she sent him a charmingly oblivious smile she did not often use. It was the kind of smile that a lover might give, but she did not know it and she plodded on in her unknowing, of the wrench this caused in the young man's chest. "And yes, I am bonded to him," she said and he looked at her in a way that drew her to suspect something of his feelings for her from before Starfire enticed him—innocently, it should be clarified—to her affections entirely. Raven was pragmatic though when she felt it was helpful and so she pushed the notion away as he took her hand and led her completely out of the woodland.
"Come, we must tell your sisters," he sighed without looking back at her and she nodded as they walked back and into the house, closing the door behind them with a faint click. Outside, the pouch had fallen to the ground and scattered its contents in a comparatively widespread area of the yard, and the earth climbed over itself to cover the seeds in its depths, ice white roots spreading through the earthen core like Magic, which it was.
Reveiw and let me know what you think please. If you got all the way through this first chapter, I applaud you. I know it's a bit...much. And there's contradiction, but anyhow...Reviews are much appreciated and now I've homework to do and more of For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds, to write.Thank you castle in the air for your support on this; I wasn't going to post it, but you persuaded me. You give me courage!
-rei