Ashton woke up early a few weeks later. This wasn't unusual, as he was an early riser. He used to go on a flight to stretch his wings as soon as he woke up. But that wasn't possible anymore, so he settled for a walk around the pond's edge.

It was quiet this early in the morning. Mist rose from the surface of the pond, and the first rays of morning sun caught on the dew in the grass and turned everything a golden orange. He blinked, and he saw Niles' pond, the garden pixies flitting over it to chase the dragonflies. He blinked again, and it was back to normal.

Reaching the other side of the pond, he was glad to find that his favorite rock formation was still there. It resembled a stone bench, complete with a backing to sit against. He sat down and leaned his head against the back, staring up at the tree canopies that towered far, far above him.

A lump caught in his throat. I don't think I will ever get used to the view from down here, he thought.

Gone were the days when he could fly to the top of the mother tree and survey the forest around him. How did his sprite relatives bear to live life on the ground, when life up above was so much better, so much freer? 

When you were above the world, you could forget that you were smaller than everything in it. But on the ground, even a blade of grass was taller than you. That had never bothered Ashton before, but after spending so much time with humans, he was struck by how insignificant and puny he felt.

Ashton lay down on the bench and sighed, throwing one arm over his eyes. Unbidden, an image of Niles' face flashed into his mind, and he turned it over in his head carefully. The straight slope of his nose, the high arch of his brow. His soft smile and gentle hands.

He's probably just waking up, Ashton thought. I'm sure Mara and Lucy reached him already, and they're all back home now. Without me.

A longing rose up in his chest, an empty kind of pain that frustrated and confused him. I'm already back home, he reminded himself. This is where I want to be.

But he couldn't shake the sick feeling in his stomach when he thought about how Niles was gone forever. Mara and Lucy had left weeks ago. It only took about a week of flying to reach the edge of Westburg. Niles was sure to have already picked them up and taken them home. Lucy and Mara had been his last chance to get back to Niles, and now they were completely lost to him, too.

Niles lived hours away by car. There was no way that Ashton could get to him without his wings, even just to visit. And Niles didn't know where he lived, so it's not like the human could come see him.

Ashton turned onto his side to stare at the pond. The last few weeks had been... a much harder adjustment than he had ever expected. Nothing seemed to go right, and everything made him miss Niles.

Like when the clan elders had him lie down to inspect the scars on his back for the first time, he had cried and begged for Niles. He had cried harder still when he realized that Niles wasn't coming to get him.

His family had all frozen and stared at him in shock. No one had ever seen him react that way. He knew that his clan was trying to help, but only Niles had ever touched his scars before. His human's hands were the only place that felt safe.

Or when he woke up from yet another nightmare, calling out for Niles, it was his mother or his brother who came to him instead. None of them understood why Ashton cried at the sight of them, himself included, but he desperately wished that Niles was there to hold him and chase the bad memories away.

His mother offered to use magic to erase his dreams, but Ashton always refused. Doing so would stop the nightmares temporarily, but it might also stop the dreams about Niles. That was not a tradeoff he was willing to make. At least he could see Niles in his dreams.

***

Months passed, and Ashton did his best to settle back into this new version of his old life. It was a strange transition period, and he found himself struggling. So many things about home were the same: the mother tree, his father's pond, the rabbit's nest in the roots of the blackberry bushes— but he had changed.

He knew his surroundings like the back of his hand, but he barely recognized himself. He didn't know what part his new self played in his old world. He also wasn't sure which felt more like a dream: his time spent with Niles or his return to his life here.

Every morning, he would go for a run in lieu of his usual morning flight. Then he would visit his dad's family underwater, to swim and continue getting used to the feeling of his gills. He spent a lot of his time with his siblings, especially the youngest two, who hadn't been born with wings at all.

They were ecstatic to be able to teach him everything they knew about being a sprite, and while he was enjoying their funny little lessons, he couldn't help but feel a deep sadness that his life had changed so much that he had no other option but to learn how to live like them. It was nice to learn about his sprite heritage, but at what cost? He no longer had the choice to be a sprite or a woodlands. Without his wings, he was a sprite by default. Or so it felt, anyway.

His younger brother, Gale, the one he had been closest to before everything happened, hovered a lot whenever Ashton wasn't in the pond with their father's family. Ashton noticed he didn't fly off with their cousins as much as he used to, choosing instead to spend time on the ground with Ashton and their youngest brother and sister.

Sometimes, Ashton would catch Gale looking at him, only to look away quickly after having been caught. Ashton wondered if he was feeling guilty for still having his wings while Ashton didn't, and that's why he kept them closed when he was around Ashton. There wasn't much they could do together now that he was flightless, but Ashton was grateful that Gale was trying.

And almost every night, he dreamed about Niles. He'd wake up from those dreams and look around eagerly, only to realize that Niles wasn't there at all. It was hard to wake up feeling happy to see someone, only to have that feeling dashed to pieces.

The dreams about Niles were infinitely better than the nightmares that he still had from time to time. But after a while, even they began to wear at him, and he sometimes woke up wondering if he'd made the right choice after all.

And then he'd feel crazy for even questioning if he should've come home, and he'd spend the rest of the day feeling gloomy and missing Niles. So, while he was grateful to at least see Niles in his dreams, he thought that maybe it would be better if he forgot his human altogether. He both wanted the dreams to stop and dreaded the day when they finally did. 

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A/N: One more to go and then an afterword!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment and see you in the next part!