[one-shots]; The Shining Courts, 2/3, H/D, for savagesnakes, R, from hds_beltane

[lomonaaeren]

So far, Harry wasn't impressed with what he'd seen of the Court of Earth. He was more impressed with Malfoy, walking silently behind him and now and then shaking his head as if practicing speeches for the eventual king to himself.

And I'm not thinking about that.

So he thought about the slope in front of them instead, and the utter absence of any grass or trees or flowers, and the way that the ogre--Harry had decided to call him an ogre until proven otherwise--simply wouldn't stop walking stolidly ahead of them. They walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, until Harry's legs burned with the stretching of the stairs. Several times he started to open his mouth and call out to the ogre to stop until they managed to rest a bit, but he thought of the way Malfoy had said they took offence and shut his mouth each time.

He tried to slow the pace, but the ogre promptly began to disappear in front of them. Harry sighed and sped up again. The ogre glanced back at them as though wondering what was taking them so long, or as though he heard the sigh.

"Remember," Malfoy whispered beside him, voice low enough to make Harry shiver. "They will assume it’s something insulting."

Harry nodded, and looked at the next step, which looked wider than the rest, so that he could know how high he had to move his legs. The stairs seemed to be changing shape lately, which he took as a hopeful sign. Maybe they were finally coming to the end of their journey.

And then he cried out, and might have reeled all the way back down the staircase if Malfoy hadn't caught him. Harry grunted a thanks, and went on staring at the stair in front of him. Malfoy followed his gaze and stiffened, a motion that Harry could feel intimately through the grip that connected them.

Ahead and above them came the ogre's booming laughter.

The stair in front of them swarmed with tiny beings, some of them seated around a miniature version of the table that they'd seen in the Court of Water, some of them hunting through a forest of swaying brown trees, some of them dueling each other, some of them feasting. Harry caught a glimpse of what he suspected was the king, a man with antlers and grasping root-like feet stolen from an oak tree, laughing and holding up a cup to celebrate a victory.

Malfoy started to reach down and poke at the stair. Harry caught his hand. Malfoy visibly restrained himself with a grinding noise of his teeth, and then nodded at Harry and moved back, staring at the step as he went.

"You wished to visit the Court of Earth," said the ogre, which had trod a few stairs back down towards them. "You have been inside it all along. Our realm is as vast as the world it is named for. It is your own fault if you never looked." He had a low, dangerous, purring amusement in his voice. Harry didn't think they wanted him to laugh much more.

"Our fault, indeed," Malfoy murmured, and then looked up and smiled. "But wide as your realm is, it does not contain one thing."

The ogre stiffened and glared at Malfoy. "And what is that?" he demanded.

"The kappilarrakka," Malfoy said, or something like it. Harry thought he lost track of the word by the third syllable. He certainly couldn't have reproduced it if someone had asked him. "The creature that flits freely through the air and becomes a flower when it wishes to. It cannot be here, being of air and light that it is."

"The air bathes the earth and nourishes it," the ogre said, gnashing his tusks. "The light brings growths from it. Who says that it cannot be here?"

Malfoy shrugged. "We have not seen it since we crossed the border. We do not know where it is."

The ogre spent a moment staring at them with its arms folded. Harry wondered what kind of trick Malfoy was trying to pull, and whether it would work. A moment later, the ogre grunted in disgust and twitched its head to the side.

"For the honour of my Court, I shall prove it to you," he said. "That does not mean that you have won a victory."

Malfoy had learned to conceal his triumph, Harry thought, or at least he expressed it in a different way than he had when he was at Hogwarts. He inclined his head forwards and placed one hand over his heart as he bowed. "We would be in your debt."

The ogre pointed one thick finger on the end of an arm that seemed to start a great deal further back than it did. "I will be along someday to claim that debt, at a time when you might prefer that I did not," he rumbled. "See to it that you remember what you have said."

Malfoy's face whitened, but he nodded. "As you say."

The ogre clapped his hands, and the world swirled around them. As they began to shrink and grow smaller, Harry found himself thinking about the whiteness on Malfoy's face, and whether it meant more than he thought it did. What kind of risk was Malfoy taking, to owe a debt to Faerie? He knew, and he had taken it on anyway?

Harry licked his lips. The Malfoy he remembered would never have taken a risk like that, even to get someone else in trouble.

As they shrank, he managed to reach over, for a moment, and touch Malfoy's shoulder, hoping to convey that way a sense of silent admiration and support.

*

Potter had touched him, and not for the first time on this journey into Faerie.

As he landed in the Court of Earth and the noise exploded into being around them, Draco was still shuddering with the strangeness of that touch, more than with the strangeness of their transition.

He found himself in the middle of a hot, smoky cavern, with a table in front of them that looked like it was carved from the spine of a giant lizard. The vertebrae projecting off to the side formed seats for more creatures like the one who had brought them here, tangle-haired elves, satyrs, dryads, and what Draco thought must be more earth nymphs, with bark on their bodies and dirt in their eyes. Not many of them turned to look at Draco and Potter. Their voices raged up and down around them like a wind.

Draco's first, irreverent thought was, Mother would have thrown them out of the house for getting mud on the carpets.

His lips twitched, and of course that was when the King stood up and turned to them, his wooden crown bouncing in his crown of antlers.

He was bigger than the giant who had led them, bigger than anyone Draco had ever seen, even though he was shorter than the half-giant who used to work at Hogwarts, and of course shorter than the roof. It was just--there was something about him that loomed beyond the room, that had to do with who and how he was. Draco found himself holding still, holding his breath as though that would make him able to escape the King.

The King of Earth laughed at last, a laugh that stirred the dust to life under Draco's feet and made him want to run. He held still. He thought he knew what the King was, even though he had only heard of the Courts and not the particular monarchs who ruled them. There was a figure in Faerie legend who blew the horn for the hounds, who lived and died in their mouths, who stepped out of the trunks of trees. This was probably him, and Draco knew that he didn't want to run.

"Visitors," said the King. He added something in a high ringing tone like a horn to the giant who had brought them, and the giant gave a complicated gnashing with his tusks and withdrew. "We have not had visitors in a long time." He cocked his head to the side, and Draco thought his antlers would brush the walls. They didn't, but the shadow of them did. "What have you come here seeking?"

Draco winced when he remembered the boast that had won them entrance to the Court. The King would take it as bragging, and probably impale him.

"We're looking for a creature that can change shape," Potter said, taking over the conversation before Draco could convince his voice to come back. "It starts out as a flower, and it was a butterfly, and a scrap of cloth, and a strawberry tart in the Court of Water."

The King moved away from them, the wooden crown in the middle of his antlers clinking against them, the wreaths of ivy and leaves and berries around the tines hissing softly together. "What makes you think it is here?"

"It came this way," Draco said. "Through the pool, and up the white stones." He had no idea if the King would understand what he was talking about, or admit it if he did. But they were in the middle of this game now, and it had to be played out.

"Did it." The King turned back to the table he had risen from, and the games and the feast began again as if they had never stopped. Draco thought he could make out a gameboard like the one used in chess, but filled with sixty squares on a side and far too many different colours and kinds of pieces. Someone smashed an ivory horse into a horsehair elephant, and there was a brief cheer. The King turned back to them. "I have seen this thing."

"Then will you give it to us?" Harry asked, bolder than Draco would ever have dared.

"That, you will have to prove to me that you are worthy of." The King folded his arms. Massive talons gleamed on the end of his fingers, curving out from beneath ordinary human nails. "You came here invited, but not by me. You will have to prove yourselves in a test."

Draco grimaced and waited for Potter to say something stupid, but surprisingly, it didn't happen. He held his tongue and looked at Draco. Draco blinked, and then realised that Potter had evidently decided to trust his leadership and do whatever he suggested.

It was still unsettling and unbalancing for Draco, having Potter, of all people, do that.

He cleared his throat. "Will you assign the test, or can we choose what it is?" he asked, and the King bent down to look at him.

Being that close to the great face, stag and boar and other wild beasts hunting and turning at bay, made Draco bite his tongue. By the quiver of the King's delicate nostrils, he could sense the scent of the blood. He turned his head to the side, and Draco braced himself, not daring to reach for his wand until he saw those antlers actually coming at him to poke out his eyes.

"That you dare to stand there and ask me that," the King said.

The watchers turned away from the feast and the duel and even the game that they were playing in the centre of the table, which until that point had absorbed the attention of the greatest audience. The world went still. Draco stared at the King and wondered if there was a way that he could signal Potter to run without being obvious.

"Is the kind of daring I like!" the King said, and stepped back from Draco, stamping his root-feet on the floor, to roar at the roof. "Let our guests choose!"

The slamming of hands and hooves against each other was deafening all by itself, never mind the sounds of great voices cheering the generosity of their King. Draco waited until it had somewhat died, so that he wouldn't make himself ridiculous trying to shout over it. He couldn't count on pleasing the King like that a second time.

"Then I choose a contest of skill," he said. "Have you any objections to that, King?"

He felt Potter's elbow dig into his side, but he didn't turn around. He knew that Potter would want to argue, but Draco didn't want to listen. He knew what he was doing. He only had to hold to that, and they would come out of this intact, which they wouldn't if Potter started interfering, with all his political un-instincts.

At least, Draco thought he knew what he was doing.

But that way lay madness, trying to second-guess himself and play against the Faeries at the same time. He lifted his head and watched as the King's nostrils flared, this time for all the world as though he was sniffing for deficiencies in Draco's plan.

He wouldn't find them, Draco decided, and folded his arms to prevent himself from shivering, for what good it would do.

"No!" the King roared, and as before, his voice shook the Court of Earth. "Now. To business! I will choose two of my own to oppose you, and then you will name the contest!" He closed one eye in what Draco might have taken as a wink from someone other than a Faerie creature, and suddenly wondered if he shouldn't think of as one anyway. Which made him wonder about the King's sense of humor.

Which made him worry.

"We wouldn't want it to be unfair, after all!" the King boomed cheerfully off the walls. He turned back to the tables, where his courtiers had lined up in ranks and were watching him with large eyes and only a few waving hands from those eager to be chosen. Draco experienced a brief flash of the way that Master Polaris ran his classes, and wondered if Polaris hadn't picked up more from Faerie than some knowledge and some Potions ingredients.

"What the hell are we going to do?" Potter hissed into Draco's ear.

Draco patted Potter's elbow without looking at him. The King had chosen the ogre that led them here, probably as a punishment rather than a reward, and was now looking closely at a stag-headed man. "Don't worry about it. I know what I'm doing."

"Sure you do," Potter muttered, but just then the King touched his antlers gently to the stag-headed man's, and he got up and walked over to stand beside the ogre. The King nodded and turned to the two of them.

"Our guests choose the contest," he said. "Our guests choose the skill."

Draco stood up with his heart pounding crazily. Of course, the first thing he had thought of was a brewing competition, but he knew Potter had had no skill at that in school, and just because he knew something about collection vials didn't mean he had it now, either. And for all he knew, the Faerie creatures had techniques that might outlast his own.

"A battle potion creation contest," he said. "I am a brewer. My companion is a fighter. Together, we will create something that can be used in battle."

The King bent down to look at Draco, with a weirdly graceful elongation of his legs behind him. This time, Draco wondered too late if he had defied the King. He had chosen the best compromise he could think of between his skills and Potter's, but of course, in some ways, the King might see that as the most amount of cheek, picking a game the humans stood a chance of winning.

"So it shall be," the King said suddenly, solemnly, his words crashing to the ground around them like great bells, and making the hall vibrate with something more than sympathy. "I shall create the arena." And he lifted his hands and gestured with the fingernails above the talons, while the claws moved as gracefully as reeds.

Before Draco could take a breath or even gasp in awe at the sheer amount of magic this took, there they were, in a clearing with a stone altar in front of them and a river behind them. On the altar sat a conch shell that Draco assumed was meant to serve as a cauldron, a forked stick that might make a passable stirring rod if one was in the wilderness--or thinking from the wilderness, like the King--scooped-out turtle shells for vials, and a variety of flowers. Draco shivered.

When he glanced back across the river, there was another altar where their competition stood, and they had already started cutting flowers apart on the ogre's tusks as if they knew exactly what they were doing.

"I hate you. A battle potion. Really?"

Draco turned around and lifted a soothing hand to Potter, wondering if he should have done that earlier. Potter looked honestly ready to kill. "It was the only thing I could think of, and the only thing we both stood a chance at. Honestly, do you think that I could ordinarily survive a brewing contest with them, or you could survive a fight?"

*

Harry bit his tongue as he glared at Malfoy. Of course he wanted to argue that he could, that the best things Faerie could throw against him were no match for his skill.

But he didn't know that, and when he did fall too far into the fight and become intent only on winning the duel, not doing it with grace and honour, then things like destroying Tolben in the sparring room happened.

"Let's start brewing, then," he muttered, turning to the pitiful materials on the table. He knew nothing about Potions, really, and he could see they were pitiful. Why did Malfoy have to make what so many people were depending on the subject of a stupid bet? "What other ingredients do you need?"

Malfoy smiled thinly and stepped up. "Has it escaped your notice that other than water from the river, we have no ingredients? The grass is coarse and short, and I think we could walk over it for miles in either direction and find nothing else. No, we have to make do with what we have here."

"I really hate you," Harry said fervently. "What am I supposed to be? Your trusted advisor? I know nothing about battle potions, Malfoy! When you said that it would draw on my expertise--"

"You know nothing about Faerie, either," Malfoy interrupted smoothly, picking up one of the turtle-shells and tossing it to Harry. He caught it before he fumbled the catch, luckily. "We can use one other kind of ingredient. Fill that with water."

"What's that, then?" Harry muttered to himself, striding over to the river and bending down. It didn't smell or look any different from ordinary water as it gurgled into the shell, at least. Good. "Your arrogance, which is thick enough to sound out a choking cloud in all directions?"

"Harry."

Harry stiffened, and barely resisted the urge to turn his head around. It was the tone Malfoy used that did it. All that patience, all that stripped-down emotion that suddenly shone through like a bright stone underwater.

"We have to survive this," Malfoy said quietly. "The King might kill us if we don't. And he surely won't give us the ingredient that you need to cure this curse and that I need because Polaris wants it."

"I know we have to survive this," Harry told the river, and finally scooped up the tortoise-shell dripping full of water. He concentrated fiercely as he carried it back towards the table. He wasn't going to drop it and be forced to go back and get more. Not that Malfoy would force him, he would just tell him, and that was even worse. "That doesn't mean I know what to do."

"I do." Malfoy took the shell of water from him and poured it into the conch shell that Harry assumed he was using as a cauldron. The water seemed to light up from the inside. Harry took a careful step back, just in case Malfoy had put something in there that would explode. Or the King had. He was probably the likelier suspect, now that Harry thought about it.

"How?"

Malfoy looked up and gave him a small smile. "We can use ingredients that we imagine, Harry. Our willpower and our desires are our weapons here. The King would ordinarily think that Faerie creatures would have the advantage over us there, because that's the kind of magic they use all the time."

"He's right," Harry muttered.

Malfoy slammed his hands down on the table and leaned forwards. "Do you want to survive or not?" he snapped. "Because, at the moment, you're not acting much like someone who does!"

Harry gritted his teeth and said nothing for a moment. Then he muttered, "Fine. Say that I do. How in the world are we going to be better than two Faerie creatures at something that they've been doing all their--lives?" Since they were probably immortal, Harry didn't know if it was appropriate to speak of them as having lives, but he didn't know any better word, either.

"Because," Malfoy said, leaning forwards until it looked like he would fall onto the shells, "I have an imagination that the war exercised. And so do you. Not to mention our training. And the fact that our imaginations have always come alive around each other."

Harry stared at him. "What?"

Malfoy took a deep breath that would have been appropriate if he had been about to fling himself off a cliff and try to fly. Then he picked up Harry's hand and held it between his fingers as delicately as he held the edge of the cauldron.

"I know that you've felt it," he said, voice low and eyes burning. "The way that we keep responding to each other ever since we've come here. The temptation to call each other by our first names. The attempts to get along better than we ever have. The success we've had in getting along that way," he added dryly. "How else do you explain that than the effect we have on each other, the way that we can make the fires of our imaginations leap?"

Harry stared at him, lips slightly parted, wondering if that was real, if it was true--

And then he remembered something Jennings had said to him, and snorted, shaking his head. "You're mistaken," he said flatly. "We entered Faerie on Beltane. The Head Auror told me that we might feel inappropriate flares of emotion because of that. It doesn't mean that we really desire each other."

Malfoy didn't let his hand go. "We're far from those parts of Faerie we first entered," he said quietly. "And while it's true that in a sense all Faerie dances to Beltane, I don't think the Courts are susceptible to its influence as much as the human world is. No, this is happening to us because our minds and emotions burn around each other."

His hand tightened on Harry's.

Harry spent a moment wrestling with himself. He didn't want to give in and then have Malfoy laugh at him later for going along with the joke. On the other hand, he had no idea of how to make the battle potion or survive the predicament that it seemed Malfoy had got them into by choosing this as his contest of skill.

"All right," he said at last. "I'll grant that. Does that mean that we have to imagine the ingredients together?"

Malfoy's eyes shifted towards a lighter grey when he smiled, and Harry wished he hadn't noticed that. "That is one way to compensate for the greater power that the Faerie creatures hold because this is their native magic," he conceded.

Harry nodded, once. "All right. Then how are we going to do that, without some kind of mental bond?"

"For a potion like this, I think that it would be easiest to work with the Faerie water," Malfoy said. "Use it as a base." He moved Harry's hand towards the conch cauldron and held it there, above the water, and Harry was becoming more than a little paranoid that he showed no sign of letting go of it. "Now. What do you think of, when you think of battle?"

Harry shuddered. The image of the Forbidden Forest filled his mind, and the taste of his heartbeat echoed in his mouth. That was still the moment he thought of as the ultimate test of his courage, the time when he had felt most violently alive. "When I went to die to defeat Voldemort," he murmured.

Malfoy's fingers flexed on his, and Harry thought he was fighting the impulse to flinch at the name. He looked up, and sure enough, Malfoy's eyes had gone a darker grey. But he merely nodded, as if he had expected the answer. "Even if you didn't actually strike a blow in that battle? Your image of battle is surrender?"

"I had to make a choice, although I didn't know it at the time," Harry said, and thought of the misty world of King's Cross, the way he usually only did now on the edge of dreams. It was the only time he could permit himself to do it. "I could have chosen to stay where I was, and not come back. Voldemort wouldn't have--I don't know if he would have died, but someone else could have killed him, then. He was mortal."

"Mortal," Malfoy breathed, and this time, he sounded as if he had managed to successfully ignore the name. "That's it, then. That's what you think of when you think of battle. Mortality. That's the weapon we can use. It's the antithesis of Faerie."

Harry frowned and looked at Malfoy. He seemed confident in what he was saying, but then, he used to seem confident when he took Harry on in Quidditch, too. "Really? There were duels going on in the Court of Earth."

Malfoy nodded. "But the losers come back to life and get to relax while someone else takes a turn the next day. It's not as though they permanently die." He leaned forwards, almost confidingly. "But we can make them do that, if you want to."

Harry blinked. Then he said, "I--will we have to use this battle potion?"

"Perhaps only on something that the King creates," Malfoy conceded. "I don't know if he would want to risk one of his courtiers to it. But yes, we will have to use it. So think of mortality, and that journey you took to face him, and hold onto it as long as you can." He reached over with the hand that wasn't holding Harry's and began to slide his left sleeve up.

Harry knew what Malfoy's part in the potion would be, then. He half-lidded his eyes, to make Malfoy think he was concentrating as hard as he could, but in reality, he didn't need to concentrate. The memory of that walk would be with him always.

And he wanted to see.

Malfoy flinched a little as the sleeve came up above the Dark Mark, as though the cloth stung him when it rested on it, and it felt good to be moved, or maybe vice versa. Then he moved their joined hands towards the cauldron and closed his eyes.

"Don't we have to be thinking of the same thing?" Harry muttered, though he was almost loathe to disturb the warm silence that had fallen between them. Malfoy only shook his head.

"We are thinking of the same thing," he murmured. "Mortality. Death, and how close we came to it." He shut his eyes fully and bowed his head, his breathing becoming fast and shallow.

Harry thought of all the times that Malfoy must have almost died that year, and found himself squeezing Malfoy's hand comfortingly before he thought about it. Malfoy sucked in a deep, surprised breath, and when his breathing settled into a pattern again, it sounded slower and calmer.

Harry found himself walking through the Forest again, in mind, in memory. Dirt crushed beneath his feet. Leaves touched his hair. The night air seemed to pull itself in and out of his lungs, without him having to do anything.

The dead encircled him.

He didn't know if Malfoy knew about that part, or if he would have to tell him. If they were thinking of a concept instead of a thing, or just one general part of everything, then perhaps not. Harry let his head fall forwards and his breathing settle into its own pattern, his hand in Malfoy's swinging lightly back and forth.

He would never forget what his parents looked like, how they had looked at him. How Sirius and Remus had seemed young again, laughing. What it was like to be the Master of Death, if only for that one hour.

He could be it again, now. He could remember that, and send the memories into the water, concentrating harder and harder, with only the slender, pale fingers clasped in his that kept him grounded.

"Potter!"

Harry started, and jerked himself out of the headlong fall into memory. The cauldron was shining intensely now, red and feverish gold, like the colours in the Gryffindor common room when the firelight fell on them. It was almost overflowing, and Malfoy pulled his hand from Harry's with a jerk and began to tend to it, waving his wand and murmuring soothing words.

Harry opened and closed his fingers, not willing to admit that he missed the feeling of holding Malfoy's hand, and then turned his head to see what their counterparts across the river were doing.

Currently, staring at Harry and Malfoy. Their own potion shone in the cauldron like a star, but they seemed so stunned that two mortals had managed Faerie magic that they weren't attending to it, and the water bubbled up and out. The stag-headed man dived after it, and the ogre shook his head and turned his back.

"Concentrate!"

That was Malfoy again. Harry whipped back and started to think of the Forest again, but this time Malfoy caught both his hands and pressed them down on the conch shell. Harry flinched instinctively, but he didn't feel any heat beneath his fingers. He blinked and then looked at Malfoy, waiting for instructions.

Malfoy bent lower and nearer, his eyes brighter than anything. "Think of a time that we faced death together," he demanded, asked, cajoled, pleaded. "We've contributed to the potion as individuals, now we need to do it together."

Harry took a breath. "The Fiendfyre," he said, and of course it was the only reasonable choice, but maybe the potion's colour had suggested it to him, too.

Malfoy paused, and then hope dawned on his face. "Yes, of course," he whispered. "Good, Harry. Good. The Fiendfyre." He closed his eyes and began to speak, his voice a low, running commentary.

"The flames sprang up. I was so frightened that you would go on, that you would fly off and leave me there."

"I couldn't have left anyone there," Harry said simply. "I thought about it, but only in the part of my brain that hated you unconditionally. I never thought about it seriously. It wasn't something I could do. I would have saved Crabbe if I could."

Malfoy half-flinched, but then whispered back, "I know. And then I reached up to you, and you reached down for me. Held out your hand, that time."

Harry ignored the half-sneer in the back of Malfoy's voice, and the urge to argue with him, and he said, "Your hand was so sweaty when I touched it. And then when we were on the broom, I thought you were going to squeeze all the breath out of me, you were holding on so tight."

"The fire," Malfoy whispered. "The beasts. The leaping flames. There was only one place in the world for me to be safe, and that was with you. The fire was eating all the world."

"I was there."

"You were there."

"We were there." And they said it together, and Harry felt an enormous drag of magic leap out of them, into the air, and down into the potion, like leaping flame itself.

Malfoy opened his eyes first. Harry was somehow sure of that, later, even though he was occupied in the opening of his own eyes and the shining of the potion, so he didn't know how he knew.

But perhaps it didn't matter how he knew, not right then, not in the middle of Faerie, and the potion that blazed in front of them, with colours of red and gold woven through it, around touches of black like ash, blue like phoenix-flame, and green like the leaves that would spring up after the fire.

"It is time," Malfoy said quietly, and reached over to pick up the shell of potion--

And like that, they were back in the Court of Earth again, with the King striding towards them from the table, his root-legs digging into the ground and his hands reaching greedily for the conch shell.

*

Draco lifted his head and maintained his posture and his grace, although the strength the potion had taken from him made him want to sway on his feet. But you didn't sway on your feet in front of one of the Kings of Faerie, unless you liked not being able to do anything but sway your leaves in the breeze ever again.

Potter stood tall and strong beside him, as though he hadn't been affected at all. But the memory of the words they had whispered together stayed the usual jealous hatred that Draco might have felt.

That, and the fact that he had a hand on the conch shell, too, helping to brace it without looking at Draco, so taking the chance that the mere fact they both had to hold it wouldn't give anything away to the King.

"What does this battle potion do?" the King asked, and bent down so that his antlers ticked the edge of the conch shell. Draco's eyes locked on the wooden crown that sat among those antlers, only a few inches in front of his eyes now, and he sucked in his breath.

Harry, Potter, was the one who answered, his voice gentle and low, as though he was speaking to the walls of the cave or the other courtiers in the room just as much as the King. "Why not test it and see? Surely you have someone here you've created, or someone who's displeased you, that you want to test it on?"

"Yes!" the King roared, and took a step back, shaking his hands out as though he was trying to get an invisible chain off them. Draco watched as the stag-headed man and the ogre who had been across the river from them and failed to make a complementary battle-potion in time appeared in the middle of the Court, now decorated with very visible chains and kneeling down until their chins touched the earth.

Potter shifted, and Draco prayed that it wouldn't turn into a suicidal death-charge at the King. Potter ought to know that they couldn't get themselves out of this, and the deaths of two Faerie creatures were a small price to pay for getting the ingredient they needed and out of Faerie alive.

But Potter didn't protest. Instead, he just said, "Of course. Would you like us to dump the potion on them, or cast it on them, or do you need us to move back and then rush forwards and fling it out of the cauldron on them?"

"That last is the best option," the King said, in his voice like a deep horn booming through the woods of spring. He clapped his hands, and the claps had echoes, too, ones that made the Faerie creatures of his court hurriedly push the tables out of the way and stand back along the walls. That left them with a good, if not flat, stretch of floor to rush over and fling the cauldron's contents on the ogre and the stag-head.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Draco muttered to Potter out of the corner of his mouth as they walked backwards, cradling the conch shell between them.

"I have an idea about what this potion might do," Potter muttered back, in the same way, and then he turned his head and nodded regally at the King. "When you're ready to tell us we can, Your Majesty."

Draco nearly dropped the conch cauldron at the next clap of those huge hands, making the echoes dance around them like firelight. "Now!" the King roared.

Potter began to run, and Draco had to do the same thing. He heard some of their potion slop to the ground, but it didn't appear to harm anything. Perhaps this was like most battle potions that Draco had brewed in the past, then, and worked solely on living flesh. That was only sense. You didn't want your potions to damage the buildings or the artifacts that you might intend to occupy or take.

Of course, Potter thinks that he knows what it does, and I can't see him agreeing to dissolve other people into puddles of bloody foam, even if they're enemies.

What, then?

They were three steps from the failed Earth courtiers now. The roars of the creatures around them packed them and wrapped them in a solid wall of sound. Draco discovered that he was shuddering and could not seem to stop. He sucked in a deep breath and felt the weight of the cauldron drag at his arms.

Then Potter caught his eye and winked.

For some reason, that made Draco smile, and more widely still when they were two steps away, and then one, and Potter swung his arm first, drenching the courtiers with the shining potion from the mouth of the conch shell.

Flames leaped to life, swirling, and Draco's first suspicion was that the potion must have absorbed their memory of the Fiendfyre and it would be unleashed here. But then the flames closed around the ogre and the stag-headed man, and bowed to them, and leaped back and up and around and down, and Draco thought he could see their shapes flowing, changing, transforming. They didn't cry out in pain.

There was still some potion left inside the shell. Draco became aware of that at the same moment that Potter swung to the side, pulling Draco with him, and cast the potion out and around the walls and the tables and the watching courtiers and the King.

There were shrieks and cries and roars and the thunder of stamping, but above them all--although maybe he could only hear it because of what he had shared with Potter in the past half-hour--Draco heard Potter's laughter.

The tables burned with a merry light. The courtiers who reached out to them with weapons turned into butterflies and flew up towards the ceiling with phoenix feathers gleaming on their wings. Others became stately peacocks, darting fish, monkeys with fiery tails and pieces of stone gleaming in their hands, everything shining and new.

Draco didn't dare face the King until Harry completed their spin around and he had to. A Faerie King was powerful enough to resist wizarding magic, even the kind dressed up as Faerie magic, and Draco dreaded their punishment.

But he was melting and flowing with all the rest, perhaps because he wanted to, perhaps because there was no choice, and from his mouth came a fall of flaming flowers, and his crown leaped into the air and showed wings and a gaping mouth of its own like a baby bird.

What we came to track.

Draco didn't bother shouting the words out to Potter, who probably couldn't have heard him anyway. But he saw Draco's finger pointing, and his face changed, and he laughed and nodded, and then they followed the darting thing through the Court of Earth in the direction of a wall of dirt that burned into bright and lively dust as they watched.

Draco was braced for another fall as they escaped the Court, or another tedious staircase up a hill. But it seemed that Faerie didn't like to do the same thing twice, or perhaps they were simply emerging into another Court.

Because they hurtled through the dancing dust after the kappilarrakka, and they fell, and they fell, and there was no ending to the fall.

*

Harry gasped and blinked. He had thought there was dust in his eyes, but there was only fine and stinging wind, everywhere around him, blowing into his limbs, blowing along his heart, billowing his hair behind him.

He looked over, and found Malfoy falling beside him. He clasped his hand so they wouldn't get separated and looked ahead for the thing they had come to pursue.

It was far below them, a round stone now, marked with blue and red and green and violet. Harry reached for his wand, intending to Summon the bloody thing the way that had almost worked back in the Court of Water and have this be the end.

Malfoy caught his wrist and shook his head. Harry swung himself as close as he could, pulling his body up along Malfoy's arm, so that he could make out his words over the rush of the wind.

"You can't cast a spell like that here!" Malfoy yelled at him, and Harry flinched back despite himself from the volume of his voice, closer and clearer than he had known it would be in this kind of place. "You'll lose your wand!"

"Just from the pace of the fall?" Harry yelled back. If it was because of the environment of Faerie, he wasn't going to believe Malfoy. They had used Faerie magic before, but he had also used a few ordinary spells.

Malfoy shook his head, and threw his arm out in front of him. Harry began to look where he was pointing, and not just at the falling stone in front of them that had occupied all his attention up to this point.

The sky slanted in front of them, coming down, not like the usual curve that a sky made it when joined the horizon but like the roof of a house. The gulf was blue beneath them, black above, and filled with glittering stars and drifting leaves, as if they fell through the branches of a vast tree. And sometimes Harry caught a glimpse of a great bird, huge enough that he didn't want to get any closer, curving and soaring in pursuit of its shadow.

"This is the Court of Air, then?" he shouted to Malfoy.

Malfoy nodded, and the next moment they stood on solid air, and their fall was ended. There was no shock of landing; they passed smoothly from falling to stillness. Harry and Malfoy looked up.

In front of them was a hill of what Harry would have said was blue glass if he had seen it outside Faerie, but here it might be woven sunlight or more solid air or something else. On top of the hill was a house open to the wind, with pillars supporting a slanted roof like the one that had sloped down in front of them, and lazy, trailing ribbons and pieces of cloth springing from the base of the pillars.

Someone stepped out of the house and stood looking down on them. The house looked small, but the way this person looked made Harry decide that it was simply small with distance. The shadow they threw was certainly long.

Harry could make out a woman's face behind a bird's beak, but the body that appeared under them seemed taut and masculine. Long hair hung down around the giant, conical white wings that draped the body, sharp as a child's drawing of a hawk. The being beat the wings once and leaped upwards, and then flew towards them.

And then it was there in front of them, and yes, it was enormous. It landed on hands and feet, keeping the wings clear of the blue peninsula that Harry and Malfoy stood on, and then went on looking at them.

Harry swallowed and gave a little bow from the waist. He could feel Malfoy staring at him from the side, but, well, sometimes he learned. He had learned that courtesy was a good default in Faerie, for example. "What is your name, Your Majesty?" he asked. It was a good bet that this was the ruler of the Court of Air, since there was no one else in sight.

The being stared at them for several moments, and didn't answer. Harry heard Malfoy mutter beside him, "And do you have any other ideas for handling this situation, genius?"

"Only the ones that you taught me," Harry said out of the corner of his mouth, and then shook his head. It solved nothing for them to snap at each other. He focused on the bird-like being, which still stared at them, and took a deep breath.

"Can you tell us if we are welcome here?" he asked. He reckoned that his first question could be seen as a little rude, especially if it wasn't the ruler or if it didn't want to tell them its name. Harry thought he remembered a snippet of lore or legend about true names in Faerie being extremely powerful.

The being lowered its wings at last and said, in a voice whose shrillness or beauty--Harry couldn't decide which--brought tears to his eyes, "You have no idea what you have done, by coming here."

"Did we cross a border we should not have crossed?" Malfoy asked, his voice all smooth glass. "Did we touch something we should not have touched?"

"This is the Court of Air."

That was all the being seemed inclined to say, although they waited for several moments more to see if it was or not. Harry finally glanced at Malfoy and found that he was locking his eyes on the hawk-like ones in front of him as if that would tell them something that the lack of words had not. Maybe it would, for him, Harry had to admit. Malfoy had obviously received more training in the niceties of Faerie than he had.

Harry felt inclined to resent that for just a moment, that he was once again dependent on someone who knew more than he did, the way he had with Dumbledore, and then pushed the thought firmly to the back of his queue of concerns. His pride had to play a minor role in this situation. It was his survival that concerned him most.

The being, as if relenting, or explaining things to a small child, at last said, "And those who cannot fly are not welcome here."

"We can fly," Harry said, surprised into speech.

Malfoy turned on him and hissed, "Now you've done it!" But the being was examining Harry in the first really serious gaze that it had used so far, and he didn't have attention to spare for Malfoy's worries.

"Then where are your wings?" it asked at last.

"We fly on brooms, by means of magic," Harry said, and nodded at it. "Not by wings, like you. But it is nevertheless a form of flight. Do you want us to call up brooms and demonstrate?" he added, since it seemed that the being wasn't going to stop staring at them, or at least pass by, until they flew.

"Don't!" Malfoy said, this time in what wasn't even a hiss so much as a clamping on Harry's arm and face both at once. "You must never make a bargain with a creature of Faerie and allow them to set the terms of the bargain. It could be fatal for us both, and that means--"

"You will fly before me, now, or you will not fly," the creature announced, and the solid blue air beneath them trembled for a moment.

Harry caught his balance, and swallowed. He didn't want to look at Malfoy in case he had an expression of triumph on his face, because he couldn't deal with that right now and would punch the smug git in the mouth. Not the most productive thing to be concentrating on, when they had to meet the being's challenge.

"All right," he said. "All right."

This time, he was sure that Malfoy's fingernails left grooves in his arm. Harry took a deep breath and turned around to face him, wondering as he did so what solution they would come up with to get out of this one. Because fuck if he knew.

*

Draco wanted to say something to Potter about bargaining with Faerie creatures, and he wanted to say that he should have done this alone, and he wanted to say that Potter would have done all right if he had let Draco handle everything. Then they wouldn't stand a chance of dying in front of the enigmatic ruler--it must be the ruler, it couldn't be anything else--of the Court of Air.

He wanted to say those things. But he didn't.

So he bit his tongue, and thought instead of the immediate challenge. Of flight without brooms. Of the magic that lay in their wands, none of which, as far as he knew, could command the art of flight the way that the Dark Lord and Professor Snape had been able to, at the end of the war. He blinked and he thought, and at the end of that period of thought, he was still no nearer the answer than he had been.

The being rustled its wings once, opening and closing them.

Draco racked his brain frantically for any memories of what he might have heard about the Court of Air's inhabitants, the special traits they had, the ways to bargain with them. Unfortunately, he only remembered stories about people ravaged by giant rocs and trading their souls for a single night of true flying. No help there.

The solid air quivered beneath them again, and for a moment Draco thought he was falling through that first tremendous plunge into the Court again. He winced and opened his mouth to say something-what, he had no idea.

"I have a solution," Potter said.

Draco turned to gape at them. He was the one who had got them into this predicament in the first place, and he had a solution?

Potter seemed to feel Draco's incredulous stare, because he flushed red all along the side of his neck, but didn't turn his head to acknowledge Draco. He just kept staring at the being, which focused on him as intently as a hawk on prey. Not a bad comparison, given the parts that made it up, Draco thought, his mind running in circles so he didn't have to focus on the fact that they were going to die.

"You see that we have no wings," Potter told the being. "So that means we have to fly without them, and you acknowledge that, don't you?"

The being opened and closed its wings, and said nothing.

Potter evidently decided to take that as agreement--wise of him, Draco considered, when the alternatives were taken into consideration. "And part of flying is falling, the way we did when we first came into your Court. Then," Potter said, and reached out for Draco's hand as if he intended to die and would find it comforting to take Draco with him, "I'll show you a fall into the unknown, a plunge of the kind that I would never have dared to take before I came here."

Draco's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He found that he was suddenly more afraid to discover what Potter was talking about than he was of what the being might do to them, and he started to speak, to refuse.

Potter didn't give him the chance. He turned to face Draco, staring into his eyes, and then leaned forwards and kissed him.

Draco gasped. The kiss surged back and forth like an ocean wave in the Court of Water--he didn't know how, when he wasn't actively participating--and smothered Draco's protests like the Court of Earth. And yes, it was definitely a fall. All sorts of pieces of Draco cracked off him and plummeted into some unseen abyss, and only slowly rose back to the level of his conscious mind, where he could control them again.

Then the tide withdrew, and left him shaking, shuddering, spent, in the wake of what had happened.

Potter turned to the being and said, "You're stronger than us. You could sense how our heartbeats changed, I'm certain. You could sense the desires that curled through us, and the way they took flight just then. Or, well, my inhibitions certainly did." He chuckled, not looking at Draco. "You could sense it, couldn't you?"

Draco just stared at the side of Potter's face, and wondered how in the hell he could have known that Draco would agree to that, or that the being would approve.

The answer came to him in a flash like the lightning Potter had used to save them in the Court of Water.

He didn't know. He just had to go ahead and take the risk, and hope, by some crazy chance, that one of us would approve.

Draco shook his head. He didn't know how he felt about that, and he didn't know what he was going to say to Potter about the light that seemed to have been torn open in his mind, the rift blazing through sunlit clouds, the--

"It counted for you."

Draco looked up. The being had bent down so that its great beak was a few inches from his eyes. He practically stopped breathing, and hoped that he didn't look enough like a mouse to tempt the being to stab him. Or enough like a coward to convince Potter to abandon him, either. It was the first time he had ever worried about things like that.

Not true. You didn't want him to think you were a coward in the war, either, or before that, at Hogwarts, even though you were pretty certain that you were, even though you hated the way that you yearned for his eyes, for someone to look at you--

And thank you so much, Potter, Draco thought, grinding his teeth until he thought the enamel was on the point of fracturing, for bringing up those memories and letting them churn around in my head like dust floating in sunlight.

"It did not count for him," the being said, and inclined its head towards Draco. "He must face a different challenge. He must show me that he can fly in a different way."

Potter turned silently to face Draco. He had his head up, his mouth and chin set in that adorable stubborn way, his eyes full of fractured light like the memories in Draco's mind. At least the kiss hadn't unsettled only him. Draco didn't know for sure what it had done to Potter, but his eyes were enough to break the heart.

Draco reached out and wound one hand roughly through Potter's hair, intending only to drag him close enough for a kiss and be done with it.

"You must do something different," the being announced. There was a tiny crackle of interest in its voice for the first time, like distant thunder. "Something more than just the meeting of lips. Something that will unsettle you and make you dance through the air inside your mind." Its wings beat. "I can feel that. Very changeable, the flow and rise of your thoughts.'

Changeable, Draco thought, must be its term of praise. He had the weird feeling that thoughts like that could insulate him from other thoughts, namely the one of what he must do. He trembled, and shook, and his hands closed on Potter's shoulders.

"Words, then," he said. His voice was faint and far and foreign. He coughed until he could get the spit into his throat and bring the emotions to the surface. "My way of flying through the world is words."

"That will do," said the being, though the stretched quality of its voice didn't seem as though it would. Draco glared at the creature, his face feeling pale from the way that his heart throbbed.

"Good," Draco said, endeavoring to appear haughty though he felt as if he were already falling, and then turned and faced Potter. Potter held his gaze and jerked his head up a little, as though encouraging Draco to go on. He was pale about the lips, but he wasn't more nervous than Draco was, Draco was sure. It wasn't possible to be more nervous.

Time stretched and strained between them the way the being's voice had. Draco saw it chop its wings down and decided that he had best begin before it cut the air out from underneath them.

"You have no idea how involved you were in my life, when I was a child," he told Potter. "Part of that was because everyone made everything about you. My father raged that you had managed to overcome the Dark Lord when you were just a child. Mother was sure that someone with a Mud--sorry, Muggleborn mother didn't deserve such praise and attention." From the slight widening of Potter's eyes, he might understand, though the being probably wouldn't, how just changing the term he used to refer to non-pure-bloods was different and difficult for Draco. "And I started resenting you because everyone had heard of you. People had heard of my last name, of my family, but not of me. I started telling myself I would be famous someday."

"Sometimes I thought about that, too," Potter tentatively offered. "I would make up stories about how everyone would hear my name, and how I was really special, with special parents."

Draco snorted. "Why would you need to make up stories like that? For you, it was true."

Potter gave him a completely humorless smile, something that Draco would have said was an impossibility before this. "You never knew my relatives," he said.

The being made a warning clack with its beak, maybe because Potter was talking instead of Draco. Potter fell silent, and Draco nodded and plunged ahead into the stream of dangerous words that he might as well say now that he had begun them.

"Then I met you, and I saw it as my chance to be even more famous. You didn't know anything about the wizarding world. I thought I could be the one to guide you around, teach you. People would know they could only approach you through me."

Potter stared at him, then rolled his eyes, but he didn't say anything else that the being could take exception to. Draco was glad of that. He shivered, then raised his hands high and let them fall.

"But I muffed that. You'd already chosen Weasley as your friend, and instead of getting into your good graces, I managed to alienate you further." He felt his face burn, because he really hated to confess this next part, but if it was the one that would get him further along in the conversation they needed to have and then result in them being able to leave, he'd say it. "So I decided that I would become famous somehow. Your enemies had to be famous, too, didn't they? Everyone knew the Dark Lord's name--"

Potter made a little movement that Draco guessed would translate to And didn't say it if he was speaking it aloud.

"And didn't say it," Draco finished, and smiled, somewhat enjoying the way Potter's eyes flashed in amazement as he caught his gaze. "So. People would know of me as the rival to the Boy-Who-Lived, and maybe the one who destroyed him someday. That was what I thought. That was what I thought I was doing when I pranked you, or came up with that trick to use your fear of Dementors against you, or got you in trouble."

"When did you change your mind and decide that it wasn't worth doing that anymore?" Potter's voice was almost passionless, his head inclined and his eyes fastened on Draco's face as though he just wanted the recitation to be over with.

Draco paused, wanting to ask how Potter knew he had changed his mind at some point.

Because there would be no point in doing this if you didn't. Because you chose this as the means of showing that you can fly.

"The year of the war," Draco said, and he didn't mean to admit it in a whisper. It just came out that way. "When I saw that you cared about stopping me, but that I wasn't famous. And I wasn't going to get that way by becoming the one who let the Death Eaters into the school. Everyone cared about Professor Snape killing Dumbledore, they didn't care that I'd been the one to repair the Vanishing Cabinet, and the Death Eaters despised me so much by that point that they didn't care about my accomplishments, either."

Potter tossed his head up and then froze, tense and trembling. Draco knew he probably wanted to yell at Draco for his part in repairing the Vanishing Cabinet in the first place, but he bit his lips, first his bottom one and then his upper one, and kept silent, instead.

Draco was glad for that. It meant he could flow into the next, and even more embarrassing, words uninterrupted.

"And then--during the war itself, during the year when I spent my time under the Death Eaters in Hogwarts or in the Manor with V-Voldemort, all I wanted was someone to rescue me. Sometimes I thought about running away and taking my chances, but I couldn't get past the hope that someone would come up with a plan. Mum or Dad would have to fight their way out eventually, I thought. I'd been raised with the notion of the invincible Malfoys. They would talk him around, or they would find a way to kill him and come out the heroes. That was what I hoped."

Potter nodded. His eyes burned on Draco's face. Draco doubted that he had blinked once so far.

"That's when I realised how much had changed," Draco whispered, his body swaying a little with the memory of the shock that had swamped his younger self at the realization. "I used to think of wealth and fame and power, and now…now I was thinking of something else entirely. Hoping my parents would be the good ones. The heroes. The saviors." He laughed a little. "The ideals I used to despise were the only ones I looked forward to."

Potter shifted a step closer, cast a glance at the being that ruled the Court of Air, and stopped.

"And then I started dreaming about you, too," Draco said. "And realised--realised that it wasn't so much envy that had made me want you to look at me, or at least not envy of your fame. I wanted to be up there, acknowledged, but you were the one that I wanted to acknowledge me. It wouldn't do any good if the rest of the world did and you didn't."

Potter made a small noise, but only nodded when Draco looked at him again.

"So you were the one I hoped for," Draco said, low-voiced, restless, wishing he could look away from the burning green eyes locked on his. "The one that I wanted to see. And then, when you showed up at the Manor, you weren't in the position to rescue me after all."

"I was busy being tormented by Fenrir Greyback at the time, yes," Potter said lightly, but still his eyes never wavered.

"And then, in the Final Battle--" Draco hesitated. This part was hard to talk about not because it was so embarrassing, but because he still didn't understand why he'd made the decision that he did.

"After all that," he said finally, "after acknowledging that I just really wanted out, after thinking about you as my hero, I turned back to my old desires one last time. I decided to capture you and bring you to the Dark Lord, because if I did, then everyone would have to see that I was strong. Smart. Special."

Potter didn't nod or shrug or do anything else that would have made the confession of that moment easier for Draco. Just stared.

"When I got there," Draco said, and swallowed. The flames danced in his imagination, the way they had when he was getting ready to pour the memory into the battle potion in the Court of Earth, but different now, because of the words. "It turned out that I lost one of my best friends, and saw how even he despised me. And you rescued me once and for all, saying that it was my new dreams and not my old ones that I needed to trust."

"I don't know about that." Potter's voice was slow, hesitant, as though he wanted to reassure Draco and not reassure him at the same time. "I know--I know that I helped you. But you rescued me, too. At the Manor."

"And only made myself even further into someone I didn't recognise." Draco smiled mockingly, though by now he couldn't have said who he was mocking, Potter or himself. "Someone who could play the part of the hero sometimes. That was one reason I decided to go into Potions after the war. I knew it was a career you would never choose, and I thought that the further I isolated myself from you, the better it would be. The chance to recover some ground and learn who I really was."

He glanced off to the side, and shivered. He had always heard people speak of confession as though it was a relief to have the words out, but he didn't think so. It only made him ache and tremble further.

And he still had one more part to go.

"It didn't work," he whispered. "Everything around me reminded me of who I'd been. Some of my fellow apprentices despise me because I'm a Malfoy. Potions master Polaris doesn't hate me, but he doesn't care. I still have friends who remind me of the past every day. And here I am, working with you again, as if nothing has changed."

Potter gave him a tentative smile and reached out as though he would take Draco's hand, then paused with another glance at the being of the Court of Air. It didn't move, however, and Potter's hand crossed the last distance between them, his fingers closing so firmly around Draco's that Draco started and shivered again.

"Some things have changed," Potter whispered firmly. He sounded so certain that Draco opened his mouth to question how he could know, but Potter was rushing ahead, plunging, the way that Draco's words and his kiss had plunged them into new waters. New airs. Whatever. "That I heard those things means that I understand you a little better now, and the kinds of things that you were--sort of asking from me without realizing that you were asking them, you know."

Draco narrowed his eyes in spite of himself. "No, I don't know. I'm telling you the story of what I was, how pathetic I was. I was demanding things of myself. Not you."

"That's not what you said," Potter said instantly. "That you wanted my attention and for me to think of you as an equal, that's part of what you said. Well, that's what's going to happen, I promise. You've saved my life a couple of times here already, and we've saved each other's. I think that should count, don't you? Even if it is in Faerie."

"Time stands still in Faerie," Draco muttered. Or, at least, he had always heard it did, and he fervently hoped it did, right now, so that they might come back to the world and find nothing changed for their stupidity. "I have--there's no reason that we can't come back to our normal lives and totally ignore what happened."

"There's a very good reason," Potter said, staring at Draco in disbelief.

"What's the good reason, then?" Draco felt exactly as mulish as he had in fifth year, when not even Umbridge's noticing what an arse Potter was made up for all the shit Potter got away with.

"Because you said this, and I heard it," Potters said simply. "That changes things. And I kissed you, remember? That changes things, too."

Draco shook his head, pinching his lips shut. He wanted to say that there was nothing like that here, that it didn't count when they had only done those things to prevent the Court of Air's ruler from destroying them, and--

"You have flown," said the creature, and stretched out its wings so that Draco felt the scratch of feathers against his cheek. "You have changed. I accept."

Draco opened his mouth to yell, to tell the creature that there was nothing it could do to mark them as changed--

And then he and Potter stood somewhere else, under a different sky, and before a forest that glowed a dim red in the pale light before them, the light that shone like a setting sun.

*

Part Three.

This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/484497.html. Comment wherever you like.