Changeling

“What are you saying? You can’t take her from me.”

“She doesn’t belong here, Marie, you know it as well as I.”

“I’ve raised her for six years. She has friends, family—”

“She has family in the other world, too. We would take care of her.”

“Not like I can. Please, let her stay. This is where she belongs, with me.”

“She isn’t going to be here much longer either way. I suggest—”

“I know damn well what you suggest, Peadar. But I won’t have it. If you take her away from me, my connections will see to it that your life becomes hell.”

“I think the entire court knows about your...connections. Why do you think he’ll care about one changeling left in your care? And what makes you so sure she won’t die here, suffocating as your mortal air slowly destroys her life, just like all the others who have stayed beyond their term? ”

“She would be different. This is her home as much as it is mine, maybe even more so.”

“What do you mean, she would be different? The girl isn’t human, Marie. Changelings cannot stay here. That is our law, and she is bound to it. Her family in the other world—”

“She has none, none that know of her. She’s not...”

“Not what? Marie, what have you done?”

Silence.

“She’s yours?”

“Please leave. Leave us now, Peadar.”

“Marie, I didn’t mean—”

“No. You lot never do. He didn’t either. He didn’t mean any of it.”

Crying.

“I— I believe this would give her a few more years in this world, Marie. She can stay for now. The equinox after she turns sixteen, I’ll be back.”


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This is a very dramatic, maybe even overly dramatic scene from Changeling. Not a very creative title, I know, but I'm working on it. It's almost all dialogue, because the POV is an eavesdropper who can't see the Marie and Peadar. Please comment

Note to self: never double-click when sending something, it looks idiotic.

Since people aren't posting, I'm guessing you're all confused. Peadar is a fey, and it's his job to go around and bring changelings home to the other world. He can only sense their presence, which means that he has no clue about their backgrounds. He senses a young fey presence in his friend Marie's household, and goes to fetch the child.
The problem is that the child is only half fey, Marie's daughter from a time when she stupidly fell in love with a royal fey.

If this makes a bit more sense now, please post

What's a Fey?

Also -- liked the dialogue. Very suspenseful, rapid-fire. Tense.
Yumm.

Yaay!! a comment!!!
A fey is a sort of sidhe-type thing. I was going to call them faeries, but faeries only represent a small portion of the Fey, which I think is going to include selkies, shifters, nixies, etc.

I seee...
Now what are selkies and shifters and nixies...?
Is this explained somewhere?

sorry, I keep assuming that other people are just as obsessed with fey creatures as I am.

Umm, a selkie is a seal-fey that can turn into a human by taking its skin off like a coat. If a mortal of the opposite sex touches the coat while it's not attached to the selkie, they have to hide it and are officially married to the selkie until the selkie finds the skin and turns back into a seal... (also written "silkie")

a nixie is similar to a pixie, but a little bigger, and they like marshes and ponds

shifter=shape-shifter, describes any creature with the ability to change its shape, not just lycanthropes.(includes selkies)

I wasn't planning to explain it, but I guess I'll have to now that you've pointed this out

Yeah... I think you should. Explain it a little...

I think I should have introduced my main character somewhere in that initial excerpt, so here she is, her side of this scene starting from Peadar's last line. Because the POV is a child, and both adults are trying to keep any kind of sadness away from her, the scene has become significantly lighter.

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“I— I believe this would give her a few more years in this world, Marie. She can stay for now. The year she turns sixteen, I’ll be back.”

The kitchen door opened. I was sitting on the hall floor, and I looked up into the shocked face of the most strangely dressed man I had ever seen. He looked like he had walked out of a storybook. He turned, and behind him I saw Mama. She tried to smile when she saw me, but it looked more like she was hurting. Hurting inside where I couldn’t see. “Baby, what are you doing down here? It’s way past your bedtime.”

I said nothing. Mama needed a hug. I raised my arms in the air, so she could see. Up? But it wasn’t Mama who picked me up, it was the man.

“Peadar, what do you think you’re doing?” Mama came over, tried to take me away.

“I have to wipe her memories, Marie. She probably overheard us.” The man, Peadar, smelled nice. His hair was white, like an old man’s hair. I wound my fingers through it. It didn’t feel like an old man’s hair. It was soft, like mine. I giggled, and tugged on it. Peadar laughed in surprise, and it sounded like a bark. He pulled my hands out of his hair. Mama looked annoyed, the way she got when someone else was right.

“Keelie, right?” I blinked at Peadar. He knew my name. Had they been talking about me? “Tell me about yourself.” He sat me on the kitchen table, and Mama held my hand. Peadar looked right into my face, and I couldn’t look away.

“Your hair is pretty.”

“Thank you. How do you feel?”

“Sleepy...”

A little bit later, Mama tucked me in to bed quietly, careful not to wake my big brother. I remembered nothing of that night. Until now.

I finally have some concrete chapter-type things for this, so the whole piece is packing up and moving to Novels.