Discovering Fae

“Welcome to your mindscape. I have a few things to say to you about the state of things,” a familiar voice said, and I frowned as I looked at a window that had a tree growing right through the middle of the glass.

I looked like me, but also not me. I wasn’t so tired looking and the worried look I seemed to have now was gone. I looked healthy, too, not like I was still trying to regain the weight and overall health I’d lost over the past year.

“I’m Spirit,” my reflection smiled widely then scowled, the expressions switching in a blink. “And you have given me enough trouble. Look at this place! It used to be beautiful here!”

“I’m sorry?” I said slowly as my reflection walked through the window, that was an open space with no glass at all and poked me in the chest.

“You better be. I’m supposed to be in here, you farking idiot,” she said then flicked me in the forehead between my eyes. “Not in here. Not anymore.”

“I don’t understand,” I rubbed my forehead.

“Ugh! Of course, you don’t,” she threw up her hands and walked away so she could start pacing. “Look, Vessel, I’m supposed to be a gift, but you are very unaccepting and it’s causing some very big problems.”

“Uh... Sorry?” I said again.

“No!” she snapped, her voice echoing around us like a thunderclap. She huffed and threw up her hands again. “Fate created your destiny before you were born. Destiny chose me to be your spirit. We are not on the same page here at all. How am I supposed to help you if you keep me locked out like this?”

“Locked out?” I asked slowly, still very confused.

“This place?” she gestured around us with her arms. “This is in your head. I’m not supposed to be here, Vessel. Once we were judged worthy, we should have merged.”

She put her hand in the center of my chest and scowled at me.

“We’re supposed to be one, in here,” she said firmly then pointed to our surroundings again. “I am you and you are me. Look at this mess you’ve caused! You know how? By keeping me, who is you, out. I need to be able to act and I can’t do that in here. You can’t deny me, Vessel. I’ll force my way out if you keep this up.”

“I can’t just let you run around all willy-nilly,” I glared at her. “You don’t help anything; you just cause problems.”

“I cause problems because of you,” she poked me in the chest again. “I’m fudging Spirit, Vessel. I can’t be tamed. I’m supposed to be wild and free, and you are getting in the way of that.”

“The free part...” I looked around and grimaced. “I can work with that, but it’s the ‘wild’ where we have issues. You can’t go about however you want, doing whatever you want to whoever you chose. That’s called chaos and look around you. It’s not a pretty sight and that is on you.”

“It’s not me who’s supposed to be in charge, idiot,” she huffed. “I’m your Spirit. But this is just getting silly. You worry and stress and freak out over every. Little. Thing. No wonder your head looks like this.”

“If I’m supposed to be in charge, why the heck are you not listening to me?” I snapped back at her.

“I’ll listen when you have something worth listening to,” she snorted.

“You are lucky Nulls can’t get rid of you,” I pointed at her. “You would be someone’s snack right now.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Vessel. I’m no snack. I’m a full five-course meal,” she grinned wickedly. “I suggest you get with the program or there’s no telling what might come out of my kitchen next.”

“Look here, you little tumor,” I got in her face. “Act like a brat all you want to, but if you hurt people when I don’t allow it, I swear, I’ll not rest until I have you locked down with bindings and thrown into the deepest, darkest, most screwed up parts of me for the rest of my life. Without you causing trouble, that will be a very, very long time of peace for me.

“I may not be able to tame you, but Spirit can be broken. Do not. Test. Me.”

“Try it and we’ll see who ends up broken, Vessel,” Spirit lifted her lip, but I saw it tremble slightly before she did.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked her.

“I’m afraid of nothing,” she snapped.

“Lie.”

“You tell me, then. Since we are the same, tell me what we’re afraid of the most,” she crossed her arms and looked at me with a haughty look on her face.

“Loss,” I answered quickly, but honestly. Out of every conversation I’ve had, I could afford to be honest with myself, right? “I have something to lose now and the thought of losing all of it makes me want to pee myself, it’s so terrifying. We already lost part of it and there’s nothing we can do to get it back because he’s dead.”

“I don’t want to go back to the darkness,” Spirit whispered, looking at the shadows that hung over parts of my mindscape. “I like being awake.”

“We aren’t good at this, are we? You being me and me being you?” I sighed.

Spirit giggled and shook her head.

“Okay. Well, the first step to fixing something is identifying the problem,” I gave her a small smile.

“There is so much more than one problem here,” she looked around pointedly. “I mean, I don’t care, because this isn’t where I’m supposed to be in the first place, but... this is supposed to look like your mind.”

“Well, if you are me, you can understand why,” I looked around and saw part of the dungeon Rex kept me in fused with a cave with a bit of the crevasse and plains mixed in.

“You were a lot stronger than you think, Vessel,” Spirit put her hand on my shoulder. “I was breaking and you did everything you could to keep me whole. You might not have known it, but you were protecting me. Thank you, for that.”

“I know you want to help and protect,” I sighed and looked at her. “I know you’re trying and I’m not doing a good job of letting you. I’m sorry. And thank you for wanting to help.”

“You are very stubborn.”

“Says the thing responsible for that characteristic,” I rolled my eyes.

“Guilty, but not at all sorry,” she giggled.

“I think we need to find some kind of middle ground,” I suggested. “I know you want to help, but you can’t go jumping into the mix whenever you want because it causes a lot of problems for me. And makes this worse.”

“You won’t ask me for help,” she looked at me angrily. “And you’ll never accept me as part of you.”

“I’m scared of you and what you do to the magic I’ve been given,” I admitted. “Just like you are afraid of me putting you in the dark again. We don’t trust each other, which is stupid because we’re the same, right?”

“We’re the same,” she nodded.

“Stop making messes and let me clean this up. I’ll get you where you belong, but you have to behave, Spirit. I can’t keep doing this to myself,” I looked around sadly. “This is going to lead me into insanity if we don’t get on the same page. I don’t want to break you.”

“And I don’t want to break you either, Vessel,” she sighed. “I’ll behave, but not for long. And you can trust me around my Bond. I’ll never hurt him.”

“Hey,” I pointed at her. “Mal is mine. You only get him in secondhand doses, understand?”

“Jealous,” she scoffed, and I raised an eyebrow at her. She rolled her eyes and shoved me backwards, hard, speaking as I fell and fell then, I fell some more. “Again, not sorry.”

-----

I jolted when I came to. I felt heavy, unaware that had been missing the whole time I had spoken with Spirit until I felt the weight of my body again. Mentally, though, I felt much lighter than before.

I smiled to myself; my eyes still closed. I’d have to thank Rollie later, but right now, I felt like I needed Mal.

I frowned as I felt the ache in my chest, then gasped and sat up, my wing hitting something metal. I looked around in equal parts confused and terrified as I noticed I was in a small square cage in a cave. I checked the ceiling, breathing out a sigh of relief that there were no freakish bats up there, and slowly stood up, using the bars to help, since my wings were in between the bars. Once they were tucked against my back again, I noticed a moldy looking mattress with a sheet that had faint pink stains on them.

What caught my attention the most, however, was the heavy metal ring bolted to the floor with an equally heavy looking chain attached to it that lead to a pair of open cuffs that were hanging on the wall not far from me.

I shook as the memories of Rex came back, but I pushed them back when I noticed movement in the shadows on the other side of the cave. It took me a moment, as he stepped out of the darkness and gasped at how different he looked now.

His eyes were completely black now, his face was elongated into a human version of a muzzle with gently pointed teeth. He was scruffy, which I expected after so long, but some of that scruff was actually fur and not the healthy kind. It looked matted and filthy, and parts were bald, leaving behind angry red sores.

“You’ve been looking for me,” Zane smiled.