"Ashton!" Keelie demanded impatiently. "Show me how you do that trick again! You know, the one where you dive into the water to catch a frog."

"Again?" Ashton asked in disbelief. "Kels, I've already shown you, like, twenty times this week!"

She scowled and crossed her arms over her chest, and Raine, Ashton's other sprite brother, mimicked her.

Ashton knew exactly what she was talking about. It was an aerial trick he had modified for the water, one completely foreign to sprite hunting strategies. Sprites hunted in the water, using their sense of touch to feel out the vibrations from their prey. Ashton had sprite sensitivity to touch, too, but he still had a woodlands eyesight and instincts, and that's what he was most familiar with using during a hunt.

Back when he was an airborne hunter, he would often wait on a tree branch or in a bush until he spotted prey. Then, he would tuck his wings in and swoop down on them from above. It was a neat trick, one he had learned from watching birds, and it had taken his winged brother Gale forever to learn how to mimic him. Now though... without his wings, Ashton was forced to get... creative.

It had taken a while to figure out how to adapt his hunting strategies to the water. His sprite relatives taught him their own methods, of course, but those all involved being underwater. Ashton had picked up those tactics just fine, but a part of him longed for the old, familiar woodlands way of doing things. Hence his adaptation of hunting techniques.

He laughed and ruffled Keelie's choppy green hair. The little thing had taken to cutting it herself, and it was always in disarray.

"Fine," he responded, grabbing hold of the rock above them to climb to a higher vantage point. "Just watch me, ok? Then you can try."

She nodded determinedly, staring up at him with excited adoration.

Ashton crouched down on the edge of the rock, gazing intently at the water below. 

Catching a slight twitch of movement out of the corner of his eye, he dove into the water, streamlining his body and snatching up the surprised frog in his talons before it could burrow itself deeper into the mud.

Up on the surface, he could just hear Keelie's and Raine's muffled cheers, and he swam back up, lugging the struggling frog behind him.

"Ashton, that was so cool!" Keelie gushed as soon as Ashton reached the surface. "I want to try!"

"Me, too! Me, too!" Raine echoed, holding his arms out for the frog.

Ashton handed it over, and Raine hugged it for a bit before letting it plop back into the water with a splash. The little frog disappeared into the reeds in an instant, speckled back legs kicking out powerfully behind it.

Ashton sat down on the bank, watching the littlest sprites take turns racing to the top of the rock and diving off it. They seemed to have completely forgotten that they had wanted to practice hunting.

Ashton watched them with a faint smile on his lips, though his mind was elsewhere. Three years had passed since he had finally returned home. Three years of tears, disorientation, and finally, peace. A lot of his old, confused feelings had faded away as he carved out a new life for himself. What had once been a struggle for identity was now a place of acceptance and even contentment. He no longer felt an out of place emptiness, of feeling like he didn't belong in either world, and he had come to really connect with his sprite heritage.

In fact, it was actually a bit of a relief to disappear underwater with the sprites. For the longest time, his clan would whisper about him behind his back, only to quickly fall silent whenever he turned to look at them. His cousins murmured about how weird he had gotten, like how he kept flinching at sudden sounds or staring off into space or touching the strands of hair that were woven into a braid at his neck. The elders were always talking about how worried they were and wondering if he was adjusting well to life as a water sprite.

The sprites weren't as nosy as his mother's clan. They were too busy dealing with day-to-day living and figuring out the best way to help Ashton adjust to life underwater. Sprites were faeries of few words, and Ashton found himself feeling immensely grateful to them and the way they overlooked his new, reserved personality.

Even with this support, it had taken a long time to regain a sense of normalcy. He had to actively stop himself from shying away or startling at things around him. He got used to keeping ahold of his wrist to prevent his fingers from flying up to his hair every time he felt himself forgetting the people he had left behind. He forced himself to smile, to laugh, to talk to his clan as he always had back... before.

And... it worked. For the most part. Ashton felt the timid, broken part of himself slip away as he was surrounded by family, surrounded by home and purpose. Soon, he could laugh and mean it. Soon, he could join his family in regular life again, from hunting to making supplies to exploring.

So what if he still had to sleep with a rag clenched between his teeth in case he had a nightmare? So what if he had to learn how to live anew as a water sprite? So what if he caught himself staring longingly at the mother tree and the way his cousins dropped out of it in flight? He was home. He was safe. He was happy.

Yes, he was content with his current life. He had worked hard over the past three years to carve out a niche for himself. Yet in the back of his mind, he always felt like there was a piece missing, that he wasn't truly home. He always brushed it off, but it rose up from time to time, whispering to him that he wasn't where he needed to be.

His littlest sibling and the only girl, Keelie, had shot up like a weed over the last three years. Now a stringy six-year-old, she was sneaking up in height to their second brother, Gale, who seemed to have purely woodlands genes. When Ashton had first come home, she had been fascinated to learn that Ashton had been with humans. She was too little to be told what had really happened to him, so he did his best to give her edited versions when answering her endless questions.

"Some humans will do bad things, like steal your wings," he had explained when he first got back. "But other humans are really kind and will help you get better if you are sick."

Keelie had looked up at him in wonder and nodded her head vigorously. "Did you meet any nice humans?" she asked eagerly.

Ashton paused. "Umm, I did," he said. Niles' pretty, narrow face popped into his mind, and he waved it away. "I lived with a human doctor named Niles for a long time," he continued. "He was very nice."

"What was he like?" Keelie pressed. Her black eyes were bright with curiosity, and Ashton felt a deep sadness that he didn't understand.

Should I be indulging her curiosity like this? he wondered. Am I doing her a disservice by only telling her about good humans? What if she goes through life believing that all humans are kind like Niles, and then she approaches a dangerous human, thinking they're trustworthy? He felt sick just thinking about it.

"He lives in a house with a pink garden faerie named Lucy," he finally managed to get out. "He works a lot, but he'll drop everything for you if you need him. I've never seen him angry, and he's very gentle and patient. You'd like him a lot."

He holds you when you're scared, Ashton wanted to add. His hands drive nightmares away. He smiles like he means it, and he smells like a garden and sunshine. Everything that is good in this world can be felt in his calm, quiet voice.

"What else?" Keelie demanded.

Ashton couldn't help but laugh at her eagerness. Talking about Niles had lightened his mood, so he pressed on, catching Keelie's enthusiasm.

"Let's see," he mused. "He likes the color green, and he only ever drinks from one mug, even though he has at least ten. He's addicted to a drink called coffee, but he would never let me try some. Said it was bad for faeries. He can speak a couple faerie languages, too. Both woodlands and gardens."

Keelie raised a finger in the air. "But is he handsome?" she wanted to know.

Ashton paused and then nodded hesitantly. "Very handsome," Ashton said, trying to capture every detail of Niles' face in his mind. His black hair and deep brown eyes. The round glasses he wore when reading or working on his computer. The way he'd impatiently tie his hair back when it'd fall into his face, forgetting that the front strands were too short to pull back anyway.

Keelie sighed. "He sounds perfect," she gushed. "Do you think he'll say yes if I ask him to be my hokla?"

Ashton snapped back to reality and frowned at her. "What? No, you can't do that."

I want to do that, he thought, and then he blinked, surprised at his own thought.

"Yes, I can!" Keelie argued back, scowling. "I can just ask him in my head!"

And Ashton was left trying to not roll his eyes and hurt his littlest sibling's feelings while simultaneously wondering why he felt so jealous and possessive after Keelie's innocent remarks.

Now, three years later, Keelie had mostly forgotten about her fascination with Niles. But Ashton hadn't forgotten his.

Not a day went by when he didn't think of the human, but the sharp sense of longing he used to feel had eased up over the years. His thoughts nowadays were fond and pleasant, vague memories rather than an intense storm of emotions that he didn't understand.

Did he miss Niles? Sure. But the ache that accompanied the missing him had faded, and Ashton just tucked Niles away in the corner of his mind, to take out and think about whenever he was especially scared or lonely.

His soft voice. His gentle hands. The way that he looked at him, like he was precious and his. Ashton knew that the human had never harbored the same feelings for him that he had for Niles. If anything, Niles was affectionate with him because Ashton had needed it— needed the close contact, needed the warm reminder that he was safe. And that was fine. Just knowing that Niles was there for him had been enough. Having such a wonderful person in his memories was... enough. Usually.

But even now, after so many years apart, Ashton still caught himself wondering... what if?

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Hello, hi, welcome back! After a short break, I'm excited to continue the rest of this story. It is a very pleasant, chill romance story, so if that's your cup of tea, then enjoy!

Thanks for reading and see you in the next part. Feel free to comment what you hope will happen next!