WARNING: This is a long story, but it is unfinished, and likely to remain in that state.
Also, it contains:
-Low levels of erotic content
-Slow Pacing
-Annoying characters
-Unsatisfying events
Consider yourself forewarned, dear reader!
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RELUCTANTLY ROGUE:
The Indecent Adventures of Atyr Bracken
PART THREE
All To Make a Poet
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CHAPTER ONE
Setting Out
It was a long time of lips and laughs and whispers before Atyr slipped out through Kella's window. His feet hit the ground, and a great swell of Experience wound itself in a knot around his heart. For what it had been granted, he could not have said, unless it were that to see the starlit hint of her teeth just peeking from behind her soft, poet's smile, and then to lean in and wrap that smile in a kiss, and to pull it into him to save forevermore in memory, was an experience.
It was a long, starry dream of a walk back to the lodging house. It might have been shorter, but his mind was the mind of a young man in ecstasy, and it was concerned only with the smooth drape of silken hair, the soft warmth of full lips, and with dark eyes; it only infrequently reminded his feet of their destination. And so it was that he found himself fully outside of Woodstead, heading east on the road before he noticed his error.
With a loud laugh for the ears of the night breeze, he spun on his toes and strode back into town. Atyr had never learned to whistle, but he tried now, a squeaking, breathy sketch of a melody half-remembered.
She had kissed him so many times.
He missed Gant's door again on the second attempt, and caught himself halfway to the North End, before he managed to still his joyous thoughts enough to remind himself that he was on less than a quarter-night's drunken sleep, with a long journey to begin in the morning. On the third attempt, he remembered to stop at the inn door.
It was all shadow on the main floor, the patrons all home or in rooms upstairs. At times, Atyr had wondered if Gant ever slept, but even the sunken-eyed innkeep himself had retired.
He almost missed Cei, a slumped form at a table with his head on his arms. His brother's head lolled over to look at him as he approached.
"Been with your lady?" Exhaustion weighted the words. "With Kella?"
Atyr could only give him a grin, a grin which broke into a laugh. Cei pushed himself off the table and slouched back in the chair. A little smile worked its way into his weary features.
"Well, let's hope you don't come back from your Oldwood journey to a tiny Bracken in the oven." Cei gave a little huff of a laugh. "Might kick your ankles enough to get you to finish that cabin though. Think your lady love would live in the Brookwood?"
Atyr swatted at him. "You're a dog, Cei. We just talked."
The younger man squinted in the dark, unconvinced.
"Really, that's all we did! Well, and some kissing." The dumb, sloppy grin split his face again, unbidden.
"Must have been a lot of kissing. Feels like I've been down here all night."
Atyr nodded. "About that. What are you doing up?"
"You left me alone in a bed with a strange woman, Atty. Call me a dog if you like, but a dog that's learned some respect."
"She didn't seem like she minded. She was old enough to have raised us, you know."
Cei shrugged. "I minded." He stood up and stretched his neck, wincing. "C'mon. You can burn my ears with all your talk of kissing on the road tomorrow, but I'm a man half-dead. Bed."
Atyr, still grinning like a drunk, followed him up the stairs. Sleep hit him in the face with the full weight of two days and three trolls and a bottle of woodsman's wine before he even had a chance to yank off his boots.
They rose late and felt no guilt about it. Cei remarked that if the length of a morning's sleep was all that separated success from disaster, Atyr's quest was probably ill-fated to begin with. Pesky had arrived in the night, and was impatiently tapping at the window panes when Atyr opened his eyes. He tried for a moment, but felt no real guilt about that either. Practicing patience would do the little fae some good.
They ate swiftly and packed swiftly and left the town walking swiftly. Brackens might have their faults and limitations, but laziness was not a vice they countenanced.
Pesky and Cei pestered Atyr with questions about his evening with Kella. Both of them seemed incredulous that, given the length of time he had spent in the bedroom with her, nothing beyond kissing had occurred. Atyr wondered idly if his brother might not have been a better fit for Pesky's fae-touch, had circumstances been switched.
It was a confusing conversation, with Cei unable to hear or see Pesky, and Atyr relaying her remarks whenever they were relevant, or responding to things his brother couldn't hear when they weren't. But, while it was at least a relief not to have to ignore the little sprite's remarks in Cei's presence, it didn't ease Atyr's sense of being somehow alone now, unable to truly share this world of the fae with anyone.
It was tiring for Cei as well, it seemed, to have to rely on Atyr to repeat everything for him. Even Pesky grew frustrated, eventually. By mid afternoon, the three companions had drifted mostly into silence.
They camped that night under the boulder in the hollow, the same where Atyr had woken with his leg gone sour. A cheerful little fire was crackling, and all three of them were munching on the last of the bread and fresh vegetables from the Bracken home. Pesky was engrossed with prying peas free from a pod and devouring the little green balls with verve.
"I haven't forgotten how it is you and your lady love can see the sprite, you know."
Atyr stopped chewing as his brother broke the content quiet of their meal. Pesky's peas rolled away onto the ground, forgotten.
"Mhmm. Yeh." It wasn't a topic he was about to encourage, just now.
"Don't think I didn't put together how it was our parents could see her either."
Pesky couldn't resist adding commentary. "Oh, I doubt very much either of you could guess exactly how it was they could see me." She smiled beatifically at Atyr. "Your father is truly a gentleman."
"I am not repeating that to my little brother."
Cei pulled a face, eyes wide and mouth grimacing. "Please don't, whatever it was. Ignorance is a beautiful thing."
Atyr looked at him for a moment. "Look, when I'm not around, you two do whatever you want, if that's what you're getting at, but I don't want to know about it, alright?" He glanced at Pesky. She pretended she was looking for her peas.
"I'm not about to go step off into the brush to 'invite' her," Cei said. "It's just odd being the only one who can't see her. Especially once your lady love joins the family."
Atyr punched him in the shoulder. "Do it on your own time, brother. But personally, I wouldn't recommend inviting that chattering little sprite into your life. She's named Pesky for a reason."
Pesky had actually found a pea, and spoke now around a greedy mouthful. "It is his decision. Let him make it as he wishes."
The next morning the brothers managed an early start, strengthened and refreshed by their first solid sleep in three nights. The morning went swiftly by, as did the road, and the sun was barely halfway into the sky when Atyr led them off down the blaze-marked trail to his build site.
They reached the little, half-built cabin by the slow-swirling eddy around mid-afternoon, when the late-summer sun was baking their clothes to their skin. The clearing was much the same as he had left it nearly three weeks ago, though the grasses and other growth had begun to recover where he had trampled them as he built and lived in the space.
Cei was eager to leap into the pool and wash the heat and sweat away in its cool waters, but Atyr placed a hand on his arm, reminding him that this was the same pool in which he had encountered the Kelpie. Cei looked for a moment afraid, but then shrugged it off with a laugh, joking that the meeting with the Kelpie had certainly seemed to have come to a pleasant resolution for Atyr. But, Atyr noted, he did not go near the water.
They unpacked the heavy bags, and sorted through what would stay with Atyr, and what would be needed for Cei's journey home.
Atyr tried to convince the younger man to spend the night at the site, and to leave in the morning, but Cei was eager to return.
"Our parents are expecting three days travel each way. If I leave now, I can be back in Woodstead by dark tomorrow, spend all the next day there, and still be home without raising worry. I've got thirteen kips in my pocket and no idea when the next time I'll be able to spend them will be." He grinned. "I love you with all the love a brother could ever love with. But I'm also just eighteen summers and never get time in town by myself."
Pesky mimed some very crude actions in the air that Atyr was glad were visible only to him.
He met Cei's eyes and grinned. "I love you as well, and would never want to hold you from your merriment. Try not to get too drunk, but when you you do, avoid the brownish-red wine Gant has behind the counter. It's swill."
They joked and spoke of nothing much for as long as they could, in that sun-bright clearing by the pool, but it was dragging towards the time that Cei would either have to leave, or miss his chance at a day in Woodstead, and so he made ready to head back to the road. They said their goodbyes, laughing and taunting each other. Cei made Atyr promise to bring 'something fae' back for him from the Oldwood, embraced him and made to go. He took a few steps and stopped, turning slowly back around.
"Atty." He was still smiling, but it was that fake smile Atyr knew so well. "I've been trying to decide since that night we went swimming if I should ask you this. I decided I wouldn't, but now..."
