Brigits Flame Entry: Alfred, Future Unseelie, and the Pyrite Pirate

The seven years Alfred, Future Unseelie, had spent preparing for his longed-for fairyhood were not easy years. Imagine fairies bungling the election process thus: every year humans must get the fairies to recognize them, and that required being seen with the right fairy patrons and speaking the right fairy language so that they're generally approved. With luck, they have successfully imprinted on the minds of fairydom. Unfortunately, most humans weren't lucky, and every new year the fairies have forgotten everything they've said and accomplished from the year before. And so the humans must circulate again.

At Miriam's suggestion of associated notoriety, Alfred's second year of circulation was spent dating one of the infamous personalities within the fairy world.

The Pyretic Piriform Pyrite Pirate was shaped like candle flame or pear: tiny feet on the ends of short stout legs, with wide hips and shoulders, atop of which sat a pointed head, and much like a pumpkin seed, from the front she appeared fat in a strangely flat way, but from the side she seemed more filament than fairy. The Pyrite Pirate lacked physical dimensions. It was only from a three-quarters angle that she appeared solid. To give herself illusion of mass, she wore a wide-brim crowned hat strung with diamond-shaped glass and silver-painted beads that appeared, to Alfred, to be a crystal chandelier. Instead of a skirt, she wore a costume that made her look as if she sat astride a paper mache giraffe, and she held its braided reins loosely but firmly, as if it were real.

When Alfred met the Pyrite Pirate, she had controlled the giraffe head to take hold of his hat and jacket, like a crane, and carefully hung them on hooks by the door.

"I am a collector of the falsely sincere, of counterfeit value, of fakery and phony and forgery," said the fairy. "I am no longer so ruthless and I am no longer so thieving, but I am still passionate, still greedy, still the Pyretic Piriform Pyrite Pirate deep inside!" At this she pulled on the giraffe's reins so that it appeared to rear, pulled out her rusty cutlass and posed dramatically, just for a moment.

Alfred stared, wondering if it was worth being near this fairy just to become all-powerful. Then he told himself, yes, it was worth anything, even this, and he smiled coldly at her.

The Pyrite Pirate sheathed her weapon and extended her hand, thin and fragile as a fish eyelash, towards him for him to hold. Though the dangling crystals around her face veiled her expression, he saw deep dimples from a smile. "I am, of course, ever so fond of sham relationships," she said.

"And I, Mistress Pyretic Piriform Pyrite Pirate, am Alfred," Alfred replied, inclining his head slightly and doing his best to be charming. "However, may I call you Py, for short? For you are--" - he searched his thoughts for the most seductive thing he knew of - "delicious? Like a pie."

"I am amenable to this sweetheart name, Alfred," said the Pyrite Pirate.

And so began their year of courtship.

*

At best, Alfred tolerated women. There were women like Miriam, who were content not to seek out more knowledge than they had to, who giggled and seemed to enjoy the echoes of tittering in their empty heads. There were women like his mother, who enjoyed nothing, who had nothing interesting to give of themselves. Alfred thought of femininity as receptive, passive, gentle, delicate. None of these qualities were complimentary in people, or complementary to Alfred's personality.

But the Pyrite Pirate was none of those things.

After taking tea together, she had one of her servants - a blue stag beetle - show him to his wing of her house. He would have his own manservant, a half-blind wind-up rat, his own dining area where he would take his meals alone unless invited to join her in her wing, and his own bedroom. Although to the public they lived together and attended dances and fetes together, in private they saw each other rarely. In fact, it wasn't uncommon for Alfred to see her for the first time in days when they sat in her goat-drawn carriage.

At first Alfred was pleased with this arrangement. When Miriam had suggested this like some indenture, especially to someone who had no hand in fairy politics, he was offended. Subject his intellect to being bored by a fairy's whims and madness? Would he be required to converse with her? Would he have to hold her hand and compliment her complicated coiffure and hold her bag while she went to gossip in the powder rooms? He did not think he could ever learn to withstand the reek of perfume some fairies wore. When Miriam had off-handedly remarked about passion and embraces, Alfred was so shocked to his core that he had stared at her, his brown skin ashen, his eyes wide. So hardly seeing the Pyrite Pirate, his public beloved, his ticket to notoriety, suited him just fine. After all, this was just a sham.

Two months later, he realized that this arrangement was, perhaps, less satisfactory than he thought. After all, it was not a plan he had proposed to her, or one they had mutually agreed to implement. He was housed as far away as she could because she did not want to see him, that the fact that this kind of living was perfectly to his tastes was not a factor in her decision and, in fact, completely irrelevant. She didn't even know he would've wanted to be far from her, too! The outrage! The Pyrite Pirate, he had noticed, was far from receptive. If he said something she didn't like, she pretended he had never said anything, which was unusual for a fairy - most of them were too responsive, and heard everything and, honestly, often heard more than what was actually said.

Alfred stewed in silence for a while. For three months, he was terse with the Pyrite Pirate, and stared at her, communicating with just his eyes and scowl (he thought) that he wished to be asked his opinion on the state of their non-relationship. And he knew she noticed: several times, upon catching him staring, she'd pull out her cutlass so that he could stare, instead, at his reflection. If he spoke too little, she filled in the blanks, making her giraffe open and shut its mouth like a puppet. Then she'd laugh, maybe at him, maybe at her own behaviour, but maybe just because she was a fairy - fairies often laughed for no reason Alfred could interpret, so he never knew if it was serious. With the Pyrite Pirate, however, he learned the correct etiquette - laugh when they laugh, and if someone laughs more loudly and nasally, then the only thing to do was to laugh even harder, with more wheezing and snorting. The loser was the first one to suffocate from lack of breathing. Still, Alfred couldn't help wonder if perhaps Py was laughing at him.

Finally, when it appeared she would not kindly ask, with warm maternal concern, why he was so put out lately, Alfred decided to get her attention.

"Py, it has been six glorious months with you, and I want you to know it," he began.

She batted at some of her crystal tassels by her ears, the way some people played with their hair bashfully. "I am glad, Alfred! I am glad to know it, too."

Alfred had intended to tell her that, although their relationship wasn't real, he was not simply an object lacking agency for her to treat as if it had no feelings, and why hadn't she noticed his angry stares and moody pouting? Instead, he said, "But I have been so curious about why you... are like this."

"I am not sure what you mean." Her voice was suddenly devoid of inflection, flat.

"I know I am comparatively green when it comes to fairy quirks, but I have never, that is, you are..."

"I am too impatient for dithering, Alfry," she said, and turned her giraffe towards her side of the house.

"Dithering?!" cried Alfred angrily. She stopped, turning her head towards him so quickly that the chandelier on her head spun its tassels like a skirt. As the crystals swung, he thought he could see her face in fragments - thick brows lowered, eyes narrowed, lips pinched. She was annoyed with him, when he had every right to be annoyed with her? "And don't call me Alfry! Remember, this is just a sham, Py. I do not condone pet derivatives of my name!"

"I am the Pyretic Piriform Pyrite Pirate then!" she roared, stomping back to him, her hat shaking and jangling unmusically, like a chandelier in an earthquake. "I am the Pyretic Piriform Pyrite Pirate to you now, and forevermore, if you cannot be Alfry to me!"

And she unsheathed her cutlass to point at his face. It was not sharp, but Alfred had seen her use it to ruthlessly and efficiently beat two would-be Jaybird robbers who had jumped onto their carriage. At the time, Alfred had told himself he was disgusted by her easy savagery, but he knew he hadn't completely lied to her when he said, after the event was over, that he was impressed with her skill, the speed with which she had reacted, the way she had effortlessly unhanded the villains.

For a moment they stared at each other. Alfred caught himself breathing heavily, hands balling into fists, and forced himself to calm down. He cleared his throat and adjusted his necktie.

The Pyrite Pirate stepped closer, so that the blunt point of her sword touched his nose.

"I am waiting for an apology," she said. "I am, as I recently informed you, impatient."

Alfred said nothing. With any other fairy, he would placate their anger with honeyed words and a smile. With any other fairy, he would get down on one knee and act as if he was physically weakened, perhaps even dying without their forgiveness, for fairies loved grand gestures and rated sincerity with melodrama. With any other fairy, he would consider it worth the cost of some of his dignity for the continued approval of them. But not for this fairy. He had a feeling that she was unlike the other Good Folks of the Court, and would not truly be appeased with begging for clemency, for her to withdraw the spear of regret that he had accidentally thrust through his heart, although she would fake her acceptance of the performance. It might jeopardize his fairyhood, but for once his feelings mattered more.

"I am still waiting," said the Pyrite Pirate. He noticed she sounded calmer now.

"Why do you speak like that?" he asked. When she withdrew her weapon slightly, as if surprised, Alfred added, "That's all I wanted to know, before. You always say 'I am,' never anything else."

"I am like this and this is how I came to be me." She drew her giraffe up, affronted. "I am only being how I am."

"You don't find it... awkward for conversation?"

The Pyrite Pirate slammed her cutlass back in its sheath.

"I am not encumbered with my own being," she said, her tone indicating that she thought him silly for even thinking it would be an issue.

"Well, it must make your relationships more difficult," he insisted firmly, for Alfred despised being thought silly. He thought he had a point to make, one that was sensible and worth consideration. "When you speak of only yourself, it must be hard for others to know whether you've ever thought of them too. I know this is a sham, but, my gracious host, I must be blunt that I think you are very self-centered, and I do not wish to see you ignorant of that when I think there's more to you than what you merely deign to show others."

The Pyrite Pirate touched the hilt of her weapon and gripped it tightly. Alfred fought against his survival instinct to step back, to remember that fairies were malicious, cruel and without sensitivity to human feelings, to remember that he was doing this to become immortal and was risking that gift by criticizing her. Fairies, as a rule, overreacted to criticism.

But the Pyrite Pirate did not stab him or hit him or yell again. She said, very solemnly, "I am not the only one with those flaws."

And then she ran off, the giraffe legs and head wagging wildly, her hat dropping crystals that shattered on the floor.

Notes:

The phrase "pyrite pirate" came up in conversation one day. The giraffe was originally a unicorn, then a mule, before I settled on the perfect animal.

What happened two weeks later, the night of the Monochromatic Gala? Tune in for next week's BF submission and we'll both find out.