In the Land of Fae ♔ (gxg)

4. land of the fae

The fireplace was always so warm.

"Mother," a younger Nyx murmured as her light brown eyes with golden flecks locked onto the flames before her that warmed her everywhere besides her bum which was pressed against the cold wooden flooring of their home.

"Yes, my darling?" her mother answered from behind her, one arm cast over her daughter who was leaning against her, her free hand stroking through Nyx's golden waves of soft, delicate hair. She gently pulled a strand of hair away from the girl's face, tucking it safely behind her ear.

Nyx's lips pursed together as she stared into the fire, a facial expression that her mother had memorized as hesitance. She stayed silent though, waiting patiently for her daughter who was rather expressive for an 8-year old to speak her articulate mind.

The girl chewed on her lower lip, another signal that her words were close to tumbling out. And so they did, quiet and curt. "Do I have a father?"

They had journeyed to town that early autumn morning, and it had been busy considering that families were stocking up on food and necessities for the oncoming winter. There were children and their parents all about, and when Valerie had been in line at the market to buy flour, she noticed Nyx staring out the window at a family that was passing by outside. There was a mother holding a baby bundled up in sheets, cradling it in her arms as she smiled up to her husband. On the shoulders of the man sat a girl around Nyx's age, holding his hands and steering them as if her father were a horse. They had laughed and giggled so cheerfully, and Nyx's observant young eyes had watched them all the way down the street.

Valerie exhaled breath through her nose, a faint cloud surrounding where her breath was released. She had avoided that question for eight whole years, but she knew her daughter and her analytical brain would question it at some point. Her father had been like that, too—a hawk's eyes with a mathematician's brain.

"You did," Valerie finally whispered, straightening out a wrinkle on the small shoulder of her daughter's faded blue dress.

Just as expected, the child sat up away from her mother, turning her upper body around to gaze up at her. "What happened to him?"

Of course Nyx knew that something must have happened to him. Most children her age could not draw a a line along the dots between life and death, of absence and presence. To most children, existence was linear and constant, only moving forward. But Nyx's mind somehow grasped the complicated circles of life, and she knew that since her father was not there, that something must have happened to him.

Valerie pursed her own lips, a habit which she could not tell was adopted from her daughter or vice versa, unsure of how to answer the question. Was she unsure of the truth? No, she knew good and well what had happened to Nyx's father, but she was a mother. She had to keep her child safe, and if that meant forfeiting the truth, so be it.

"He isn't with us anymore," she whispered, staring down into those sparkling, inquisitive orbs so bright and charming. Her daughter, even at her age, had charmed the candy out of merchants' hands just with those scintillating eyes many times. "But he was a good man," she quickly added.

She could see the dark blonde eyebrows of her daughter crease in a look of question. Her probing mind wanted to know every detail, as always, but Valerie could not give those details. Nyx, while full of rebellious life and challenging valor, or at least as much as an 8-year old could be filled with, was obedient in certain times. That was one of those times, when her mother's jaw clenched with silence, signaling that no more questions would be answered.