Clare-Dragonfly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clare_dragonfly) wrote2012-02-19 01:35 pm
clare_dragonfly) wrote2012-02-19 01:35 pm
Prosy: The Faerie Fountain
Title: The Faerie Fountain
Word count: 1,777
Rating: PG
Prompt:ysabetwordsmith's: on the night the full moon, the fairy fountain runs not with water but silver wine made of moonlight.
Notes: This is set in Chatoyant College, a couple of years before Corrie, Edie, and Dawn's time. The story features one new character and one character who is important in the main story, but under a different name.
Roslyn looked out the window. Then she put her coat on. Then she looked out the window. Then she played a game of Solitaire on her computer.
The third time she looked out the window, Daphne was there, standing outside in the snow. Roslyn waved happily. Daphne waved back. Roslyn tore out of the room (being careful to lock the door behind her, because there had been some thefts when girls forgot to do that) and ran down the steps as fast as she could.
When she reached the front door of the dorm, Daphne was, as always, standing there, instead of around the other side of the building where Roslyn’s window was. Her black clothes and bright red hair stood out brilliantly against the snow—it had only stopped falling half an hour ago, and was two inches deep, nearly untouched, and sparkling. The moon was full, and everything was bathed in a glow of white-silver from the snow and the moon.
Roslyn ran up to Daphne and hugged her. “I hate to disturb the snow,” she said breathlessly. “It’s so beautiful like this.”
Daphne kissed her on the forehead. “Not as beautiful as you are, my love,” she said, which as always made Roslyn laugh and blush. She had red hair, too, but instead of white skin that made her look porcelain and perfect like Daphne had, Roslyn’s skin was easily burnt and covered in freckles and showed blushes very, very nicely. She never looked as elegant as Daphne did on her worst days (not that Daphne had any bad days), and she was always astonished that somehow, out of all the girls Daphne could have dated, Roslyn had been chosen.
But Daphne always scolded her when she expressed that, and told her she was beautiful and perfect, so she just put her mittened hand in Daphne’s long, white, bare one and said, “So what’s the big surprise?”
Daphne laughed musically. “It would not be much of a surprise if I told you about it, would it?”
“I hope it’s not far,” Roslyn said as they began to walk, Daphne gently guiding their path—Roslyn couldn’t tell whether they were using the actual sidewalks the school had put in place, because the snow covered everything evenly, and it made her slightly uncomfortable, but she knew she could trust Daphne. “I didn’t bring a hat.” The temperature had dropped far more than she had expected.
“It is not far at all,” Daphne promised. “Just around here…”
“The administration building?” Roslyn asked, puzzled, as they walked around it. Everything did look extremely magical, covered in snow and moonlight, with all the lights off, but even all this couldn’t make the building where class selection and form-filling tasks took place look anything more than dingy and dull.
“No, around here,” said Daphne, and they came around, into the courtyard. It was even more smoothly covered in snow than everything else, and Roslyn had to shield her eyes for a moment at the brilliance of the moonlight’s reflection, so that at first she didn’t see what was different about it. When her eyes adjusted, she gasped.
“The fountain?” she asked, though it wasn’t a guess. If she had thought about it, she would have expected the fountain in the middle of the courtyard to be turned off or frozen. In fact, it seemed to her that the last time she’d seen it, it had been turned off, because they were afraid of the pipes freezing in the winter. But it was running now, and it was filled with beautiful silvery, light.
No, not light. As they came closer—walking slowly now through the softly crunching snow—Roslyn saw that the moonlight glimmered off the liquid in the fountain, but not the same way it shone off the snow. It was flowing, rushing, even bubbling softly, but whatever it was, it was definitely not water.
“What is it?” she said in a hushed voice as they stopped by the edge of the fountain. Even the structure itself, ordinarily a well-sculpted but still mundane concrete, now appeared to be made of marble. But when she touched the edge, it was as rough as it always was and caught at her mitten, so perhaps it was only a trick of the light.
“It is magic,” said Daphne, her voice filled with mirth.
Roslyn laughed and turned her face up to look at her girlfriend. “No, what is it really? And how did you do it? I know you’re friends with everybody, but none of the staff are even working at this time of night.”
Daphne shook her head. “What, you don’t believe that it could be magic?”
Roslyn rolled her eyes. “Please.” Yes, supposedly this college taught magic, and people had attempted to demonstrate it to Roslyn, but she’d always been able to catch the trick, even when they denied it. After all, she was a scientist. There were some things that were unexplainable, but a fountain filled with silver liquid wasn’t one of them. “Is it alcohol?” she guessed, turning back to the fountain. “That would explain why it isn’t frozen.”
“I always knew you were clever,” said Daphne. “It is wine.”
“Wine?” Roslyn frowned and reached one finger toward it, intending to taste it. It certainly didn’t look like wine. Of course, everything looked different with the light coming from all directions like this, but red wine should look black in the moonlight, and white wine would be easier to see through.
However, before she could taste it, Daphne had snatched her hand away. “Not like that,” she said. When Roslyn turned to her, prepared to argue, she had two silver champagne flutes in her free hand. She let go of Roslyn, took one flute in each hand, and deftly dipped them into the flowing liquid. She handed one full flute to Roslyn and kept one herself. “There, is that not much more appropriate?”
“It does seem so,” said Roslyn, smiling again, though champagne flutes seemed like a strange choice for what was supposedly wine. The wine didn’t look any less like liquid silver—or mercury, even—inside the flute, though it was hard to tell, since the flute itself was not transparent. She swirled the liquid around, but it didn’t seem to change any of its properties, or release any scent. Of course, she was only going by what she knew about wine tasting from television to figure out what to do with it—she’d only ever had the cheap boxed kind before, and it wasn’t exactly legal for her to be drinking.
“Taste it,” said Daphne, and put action to words by tipping her own flute up and drinking some of the wine. Roslyn followed suit, then widened her eyes as an array of impossible tastes exploded on her tongue.
It was like grapes, yes—the freshest, most perfect grapes—but it was also like snow, and rain, and maple syrup. There was only the tiniest bit of an alcohol burn. She took another sip, and it was like moss, and fever, and deepest dark chocolate. She didn’t even know how the names for these flavors were coming to her mind. She took a third sip, and it was like glory and remembrance and elderflower. Finally she managed to make herself stop drinking and gasped, “What is it made of?”
“Moonlight,” said Daphne serenely, sipping demurely at her wine.
“How—how did you know about this? Where did you get it? It must cost hundreds of dollars. Thousands of dollars. You can’t just let wine like this flow in the fountain.”
“There is no other way to acquire it.”
Roslyn wanted to argue, but she shook her head and took another sip. The flavors started over with grapes and snow and, now, hatred. It changed, and changed, and filled her to bursting. And she did not even seem to have gotten very far into her drink, while Daphne was calmly refilling her glass. Roslyn wanted to catch up with her, but she couldn’t bear to drain her flute and perhaps miss one of the complexities of flavors, so she just kept taking tiny sips.
The flute seemed to grow heavy in her hand. Was she getting tired already? She’d never been this much of a lightweight—she had plenty of fat to help absorb the alcohol. “I think it’s going to my head,” she said with a laugh, but the laugh felt forced.
“I do hope so,” said Daphne. “I mean to seduce you.” It was a joke, so Roslyn laughed again, but the glass seemed to be getting heavier and heavier. She couldn’t resist drinking more, though, and the flavors just seemed to get more complex and richer each time she sipped. Glass. Glitter. Joy. Heartbreak. Rosemary. Milk. Elegance.
The champagne flute dropped from her hand. She looked down at it with blurred vision and tried to pick it up again. There was wine spilled on the snow—she couldn’t waste the wine. But as she bent to pick it up, her legs gave way beneath her. She would have fallen into the cold snow had Daphne not caught her.
“Daphne,” she mumbled. It seemed to be hard to get her tongue to move. “Sorry. I don’t think you can… I mean…” She forgot her train of thought. Her tongue was heavy. She tried to stand, but her feet would not separate to find the ground.
“Hush,” Daphne soothed her. “It will be all right. I will take you into the forest.”
“But… surprise…” Roslyn was not sure if Daphne could understand her. She was not sure if she could understand herself.
“It will be all right,” Daphne repeated. Roslyn could feel herself bouncing gently, and the light changed; she realized that Daphne was carrying her out of the courtyard, a different way than they’d come in, back toward the forest, where Daphne’s tree was. Daphne’s tree? No, they weren’t allowed to go into the woods, she could get in trouble. But she couldn’t form the words, just little mumbles of discontent. Daphne kept hushing her, and she finally fell silent when they stepped into the forest, the trees rearing up darkly out of the white, glittering snow.
“This is where you belong now,” Daphne whispered, laying Roslyn down on rich, dark soil, the most comfortable bed Roslyn had ever felt. “You will be with me always.” She gently closed Roslyn’s eyelids. Roslyn did not mind. If she could be here, with Daphne, forever…
She fell asleep, and when she woke, she could not see; but she could feel the wind in her branches.
Did you enjoy this story? You can read more stories in this world or see all my fiction posted at Dreamwidth!
Word count: 1,777
Rating: PG
Prompt:
ysabetwordsmith's: on the night the full moon, the fairy fountain runs not with water but silver wine made of moonlight.Notes: This is set in Chatoyant College, a couple of years before Corrie, Edie, and Dawn's time. The story features one new character and one character who is important in the main story, but under a different name.
Roslyn looked out the window. Then she put her coat on. Then she looked out the window. Then she played a game of Solitaire on her computer.
The third time she looked out the window, Daphne was there, standing outside in the snow. Roslyn waved happily. Daphne waved back. Roslyn tore out of the room (being careful to lock the door behind her, because there had been some thefts when girls forgot to do that) and ran down the steps as fast as she could.
When she reached the front door of the dorm, Daphne was, as always, standing there, instead of around the other side of the building where Roslyn’s window was. Her black clothes and bright red hair stood out brilliantly against the snow—it had only stopped falling half an hour ago, and was two inches deep, nearly untouched, and sparkling. The moon was full, and everything was bathed in a glow of white-silver from the snow and the moon.
Roslyn ran up to Daphne and hugged her. “I hate to disturb the snow,” she said breathlessly. “It’s so beautiful like this.”
Daphne kissed her on the forehead. “Not as beautiful as you are, my love,” she said, which as always made Roslyn laugh and blush. She had red hair, too, but instead of white skin that made her look porcelain and perfect like Daphne had, Roslyn’s skin was easily burnt and covered in freckles and showed blushes very, very nicely. She never looked as elegant as Daphne did on her worst days (not that Daphne had any bad days), and she was always astonished that somehow, out of all the girls Daphne could have dated, Roslyn had been chosen.
But Daphne always scolded her when she expressed that, and told her she was beautiful and perfect, so she just put her mittened hand in Daphne’s long, white, bare one and said, “So what’s the big surprise?”
Daphne laughed musically. “It would not be much of a surprise if I told you about it, would it?”
“I hope it’s not far,” Roslyn said as they began to walk, Daphne gently guiding their path—Roslyn couldn’t tell whether they were using the actual sidewalks the school had put in place, because the snow covered everything evenly, and it made her slightly uncomfortable, but she knew she could trust Daphne. “I didn’t bring a hat.” The temperature had dropped far more than she had expected.
“It is not far at all,” Daphne promised. “Just around here…”
“The administration building?” Roslyn asked, puzzled, as they walked around it. Everything did look extremely magical, covered in snow and moonlight, with all the lights off, but even all this couldn’t make the building where class selection and form-filling tasks took place look anything more than dingy and dull.
“No, around here,” said Daphne, and they came around, into the courtyard. It was even more smoothly covered in snow than everything else, and Roslyn had to shield her eyes for a moment at the brilliance of the moonlight’s reflection, so that at first she didn’t see what was different about it. When her eyes adjusted, she gasped.
“The fountain?” she asked, though it wasn’t a guess. If she had thought about it, she would have expected the fountain in the middle of the courtyard to be turned off or frozen. In fact, it seemed to her that the last time she’d seen it, it had been turned off, because they were afraid of the pipes freezing in the winter. But it was running now, and it was filled with beautiful silvery, light.
No, not light. As they came closer—walking slowly now through the softly crunching snow—Roslyn saw that the moonlight glimmered off the liquid in the fountain, but not the same way it shone off the snow. It was flowing, rushing, even bubbling softly, but whatever it was, it was definitely not water.
“What is it?” she said in a hushed voice as they stopped by the edge of the fountain. Even the structure itself, ordinarily a well-sculpted but still mundane concrete, now appeared to be made of marble. But when she touched the edge, it was as rough as it always was and caught at her mitten, so perhaps it was only a trick of the light.
“It is magic,” said Daphne, her voice filled with mirth.
Roslyn laughed and turned her face up to look at her girlfriend. “No, what is it really? And how did you do it? I know you’re friends with everybody, but none of the staff are even working at this time of night.”
Daphne shook her head. “What, you don’t believe that it could be magic?”
Roslyn rolled her eyes. “Please.” Yes, supposedly this college taught magic, and people had attempted to demonstrate it to Roslyn, but she’d always been able to catch the trick, even when they denied it. After all, she was a scientist. There were some things that were unexplainable, but a fountain filled with silver liquid wasn’t one of them. “Is it alcohol?” she guessed, turning back to the fountain. “That would explain why it isn’t frozen.”
“I always knew you were clever,” said Daphne. “It is wine.”
“Wine?” Roslyn frowned and reached one finger toward it, intending to taste it. It certainly didn’t look like wine. Of course, everything looked different with the light coming from all directions like this, but red wine should look black in the moonlight, and white wine would be easier to see through.
However, before she could taste it, Daphne had snatched her hand away. “Not like that,” she said. When Roslyn turned to her, prepared to argue, she had two silver champagne flutes in her free hand. She let go of Roslyn, took one flute in each hand, and deftly dipped them into the flowing liquid. She handed one full flute to Roslyn and kept one herself. “There, is that not much more appropriate?”
“It does seem so,” said Roslyn, smiling again, though champagne flutes seemed like a strange choice for what was supposedly wine. The wine didn’t look any less like liquid silver—or mercury, even—inside the flute, though it was hard to tell, since the flute itself was not transparent. She swirled the liquid around, but it didn’t seem to change any of its properties, or release any scent. Of course, she was only going by what she knew about wine tasting from television to figure out what to do with it—she’d only ever had the cheap boxed kind before, and it wasn’t exactly legal for her to be drinking.
“Taste it,” said Daphne, and put action to words by tipping her own flute up and drinking some of the wine. Roslyn followed suit, then widened her eyes as an array of impossible tastes exploded on her tongue.
It was like grapes, yes—the freshest, most perfect grapes—but it was also like snow, and rain, and maple syrup. There was only the tiniest bit of an alcohol burn. She took another sip, and it was like moss, and fever, and deepest dark chocolate. She didn’t even know how the names for these flavors were coming to her mind. She took a third sip, and it was like glory and remembrance and elderflower. Finally she managed to make herself stop drinking and gasped, “What is it made of?”
“Moonlight,” said Daphne serenely, sipping demurely at her wine.
“How—how did you know about this? Where did you get it? It must cost hundreds of dollars. Thousands of dollars. You can’t just let wine like this flow in the fountain.”
“There is no other way to acquire it.”
Roslyn wanted to argue, but she shook her head and took another sip. The flavors started over with grapes and snow and, now, hatred. It changed, and changed, and filled her to bursting. And she did not even seem to have gotten very far into her drink, while Daphne was calmly refilling her glass. Roslyn wanted to catch up with her, but she couldn’t bear to drain her flute and perhaps miss one of the complexities of flavors, so she just kept taking tiny sips.
The flute seemed to grow heavy in her hand. Was she getting tired already? She’d never been this much of a lightweight—she had plenty of fat to help absorb the alcohol. “I think it’s going to my head,” she said with a laugh, but the laugh felt forced.
“I do hope so,” said Daphne. “I mean to seduce you.” It was a joke, so Roslyn laughed again, but the glass seemed to be getting heavier and heavier. She couldn’t resist drinking more, though, and the flavors just seemed to get more complex and richer each time she sipped. Glass. Glitter. Joy. Heartbreak. Rosemary. Milk. Elegance.
The champagne flute dropped from her hand. She looked down at it with blurred vision and tried to pick it up again. There was wine spilled on the snow—she couldn’t waste the wine. But as she bent to pick it up, her legs gave way beneath her. She would have fallen into the cold snow had Daphne not caught her.
“Daphne,” she mumbled. It seemed to be hard to get her tongue to move. “Sorry. I don’t think you can… I mean…” She forgot her train of thought. Her tongue was heavy. She tried to stand, but her feet would not separate to find the ground.
“Hush,” Daphne soothed her. “It will be all right. I will take you into the forest.”
“But… surprise…” Roslyn was not sure if Daphne could understand her. She was not sure if she could understand herself.
“It will be all right,” Daphne repeated. Roslyn could feel herself bouncing gently, and the light changed; she realized that Daphne was carrying her out of the courtyard, a different way than they’d come in, back toward the forest, where Daphne’s tree was. Daphne’s tree? No, they weren’t allowed to go into the woods, she could get in trouble. But she couldn’t form the words, just little mumbles of discontent. Daphne kept hushing her, and she finally fell silent when they stepped into the forest, the trees rearing up darkly out of the white, glittering snow.
“This is where you belong now,” Daphne whispered, laying Roslyn down on rich, dark soil, the most comfortable bed Roslyn had ever felt. “You will be with me always.” She gently closed Roslyn’s eyelids. Roslyn did not mind. If she could be here, with Daphne, forever…
She fell asleep, and when she woke, she could not see; but she could feel the wind in her branches.
Did you enjoy this story? You can read more stories in this world or see all my fiction posted at Dreamwidth!