Written: 7/31/23
Word Count: 1,348

"Beckett," Niall said, his voice deepening, chin tilted down, "answer me. Have you stopped taking your meds?"

"Of course I have!" Finally, I flung him away. Nearly tripping over those damn nails sticking out of the floor, I settled near the window, an appropriate amount of distance between us. I'd just cornered myself, but what did that even matter?

What did it all blazing matter?

"Why?" Niall tilted his head as if scrutinizing something ugly. A bug. A peasant. A murdering psychopath. His blond hair tipped again into his face, shadowing his eyes. It wasn't short, but it wasn't long. There was just enough to be taken by the wind, just enough for the front strands to rest at his cheeks if loosened from the up-sweep hairstyle on top of his head.

He looked like an utter cad, and that was being nice.

"I can't even control my instincts anymore!" Like a broken faucet, I found once the damage had been done, I could no longer hold it in. "It hurts! Hurts! You're the one who should be on meds if you're putting your hands on people who ask you a simple question. Let's see how you like not being able to control your hearing or your eyesight."

Niall humphed, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. His buttoned shirt was rolled up to his elbows, showing his burdensome arm muscles for all the world to see. The threat was in his existence. "You didn't ask a question, just started demanding things. You're the one who starts it, then you play the victim when your temper gets you into trouble. Maybe I'm sick of dealing with all your nonsense."

"Maybe I'm sick of being treated like a vile Elvaniac!" I sighed, loudly, the breath hot as it puffed out of me. "Maybe I'm sick of all this fake yewing garbage that everyone tries to convince me isn't garbage!"

Niall crossed the room, effortlessly moving around the nails sticking out of the ground, never once taking his eyes off of me. He stood on the other corner of the window's two-paned glass. "You're the one who needs to face reality. It's not healthy to be so disgusted with everything around you that you start losing your pride as a Swanmere. In the past couple years, the only thing that's changed is there have been fewer incidents of your temper tantrums in public. But you haven't changed at all. Why did you even come back here?"

The tears hadn't abated with the fading of my anger. Now, an emotion much worse than anger tore at my heart. It felt bruised, felt like something was clinging to it and slowly sucking the life out. Each heartbeat skittered, and I feared I was at risk of losing control over my senses again.

I really couldn't stand this. It was because of the pills. I knew it was. When will the aftereffects fade? It's been months since I've stopped taking those blazing capsules.

"Do you hate me that much, brother?" I couldn't really see the sharpness of Niall's face beneath the waterfall of my vision. Without all those hard edges, he looked nearly like an angel. Nearly like someone who I could believe in.

But that wasn't any more real than the existence of Dragon's Breath.

"I don't hate you, Beck," Niall said, grinning a toothsome smile, which probably looked more like a villain's smirk without the curtain of tears softening it. He placed one hand on my shoulder, squeezing it the exact same way Father used to, when he could bear to touch me. Niall got his looks from Mother but his mannerisms from Father. He was their perfect child. No life-threatening or debilitating addiction could change anyone's mind on that.

But if you throw a few chairs from a garden party into the far-off distant forest—not hurting anybody, I might add—suddenly other High Elves noticed how my hair was much lighter than my mother's and brother's. My eyes weren't orange, like Father's, nor blue-and-green-hazel like Mother's.

I no longer fit.

"Let's just be honest with each other, sis," Niall continued, his voice playful and lilting. Alarmed pings rained down my arms, and I knew I wasn't going to like this. No. Not one bit. "Maybe you tried to overcome your shortcomings, or maybe you didn't try too hard. The end result would have been the same no matter what. Do you see that now? Your life as a Swanmere is done. Take Father's graciousness in imparting Aunt Rosetta's estate to you. You should be ecstatic, really. Her practice is nowhere near the Palace, nowhere near all the nobles you hate so much. He's given you a fresh start, so take it, yeah?"

"That's a fancy way of saying you hate me and you can't stand me staining your pretend-perfect family for one second longer," I said, stubbornly.

I shrugged his hand off my shoulder, turning to look out the window at the wild lawn below. Untamed, untrimmed, uncared for. So, so different from the other High Elf estates in the Eastern Sector, but I'd never minded. It looked more natural this way. More lived in, even if it wasn't more lived in. It was all just another facade, another lie.

It was hard to tell where the bullshit began and ended over here. Would the Western Sector be all that different? Weren't elves essentially the same everywhere?

Where did Aunt Rosetta live, again? On the other side of the volcano...but in the mountains... She lived in a mining city, near the edge of the last fringes of elf-tamed wilds. Near dragon territory. The thought was almost enough to make me shiver on the spot.

Dark Elves. Dark Elves worked the mines, didn't they?

I swallowed, trying to tamp down on all the thickness silently choking me. Then, I drew a clear breath.

"I've made my decision." I turned away from my brother. "Apologies for making your life so difficult. I'm sure it was all my fault, the whole time. I don't fit here. You're right. But maybe I don't fit anywhere. At least not on the Goddess's Femur. Maybe I'll save up to build a boat and just sail off into the distance for however far I can go until I die."

"There we go." Niall clapped his hands behind me. "Now, that's a goal."

I passed the nails on the ground, eyeing them with more than a little sentiment. This would be the last time I carefully navigated around the little suckers. The simple fact had my heart tearing up a bit.

At the doorway, I ignored the servants hiding in the eaves, not bothering to meet Cauline's eyes as she stood plain as day, about three feet away from the doorway. Her dark green eyes were wide, the wrinkles donning her face stuck, frozen. How long had she been standing like that, anyway?

"Can't you just admit that you hate me, now that we'll never see each other again?"

I'm not even sure why I needed Niall to say it. It's not like he was the same person as Father. Niall telling me the truth wasn't the same as Father telling it to my face.

I knew that...I think.

"I've told you, Beck," Niall sighed, but the sigh was more like one from a rose-struck lad with a bountiful, joyous spirit, "I don't hate you. It's more like...I just don't care about you at all." He clapped his hands together, leaning against my open doorway, beaming full dimples at me as I took the dangerous stairs down. "Have a safe trip! Don't forget to make your death boat pink and yellow. Might as well die in the style of your favorite things, am I right?"

Shutting my eyes for one bracing second, two, I didn't bother responding, didn't bother meeting the eyes of any of my family's servants. I'd walked in burdened with a sack of homework in a deer-skin satchel.

When I walked out of the mansion where I'd grown up, I'd taken not a single thing more.