Somehow, last night’s conversation about dessert made everything better for Reese. He felt more secure, somehow, knowing this place still held some little hint of home, knowing Glais would do whatever he could to bring Reese a little comfort. Despite the bitter cold of the nights spent alone in the woods, this alien place still held a little warmth for him, and somehow that was all he needed.

“Reese!” Glais called through the forest, rounding a bend in the trees and approaching swiftly with a smile on his face. Today he’d brought smoked venison, which Reese had proven to be at least decently fond of in place of the foods from back home. It reminded him a little bit of brisket, but leaner and earthier. At the sound of his voice, the auburn-haired man quickly snapped shut the book he was reading and ran to go meet the towering Fae.

Pallid arms quickly and gently caught Reese the second he barreled forwards towards his companion, though it was less than graceful. The fact that the food didn’t drop at all was a near miracle. Glais found himself struggling to keep upright as the evidently famished Reese ran him down like an overexcited hound.

It was wonderful. A whole flock of butterflies seemed to erupt like a colorful volcano in his stomach and chest. It was all nothing but pure, wordless joy for several heartbeats.

“What’d you bring this time?” Reese inquired with a curious grin as he pulled gently away from the embrace, looking up into Glais’ shining ruby eyes.

Glais chuckled. “Venison and pear slices,” he replied as he strode into the clearing with Reese in tow. “Though I also brought some oranges, too.”

Reese hoped his smile would tell Glais everything he needed to know about his gratitude this time around as he dug into the food he’d been offered. “After this, we should take a walk together,” he suggested, not at all interested in beating around the bush. He was finally going stir-crazy and his increased energy just couldn’t take it anymore. After days on end of sitting around doing almost nothing, he was ready for some exercise as an outlet.

Glais, who had set to work daintily ripping apart a piece of meat with his freakishly sharp teeth, paused at that. “A walk? Like, to show you around?” he asked after swallowing what he was eating while tilting his head to one side. Reese nodded, taking a bite of pear, and the other man beamed. “Oh, aye! I’ll show you all the best spots I know. You’ll love ‘em, I swear it.”

Reese did his best to hide a beaming smile at that, not sure why his face suddenly felt a little warm.

His accent gets stronger when he gets excited! That’s kinda… cute.

It was true, really. Glais was warm and friendly and frankly adorable, lilting accent picking up in strength the more and more emotionally invested in something he was. Just like with Scottish humans, Reese suspected his dialect would eventually become unintelligible if he got too into it. He’d have to piece whatever he did understand together with context clues, just like his 3rd grade ELA teacher had told him to do countless times.

This whole place was a mystery to unravel.

---

A breathtaking white equine rocketed down a hillside with its rider clinging tightly to its back. Reese had been nowhere near prepared to watch Glais turn into a horse, much less be offered a ride instead of just a walk, but he’d obliged, which honestly might have been a mistake. It wasn’t that Reese felt uncomfortable with Glais himself, of course – Glais was truly his only rock in these uncharted waters – but he did feel a certain level of concern about the velocity at which they were careening across the highlands together. Almost embarrassingly, he had his knuckles as white as the Fae’s pristine mane, which he just so happened to be desperately gripping onto for dear life. Glais was nimble but shockingly strong, and Reese had yet to discern whether or not that made high speeds like this more or less dangerous.

That said, he was quickly starting to get attuned to the feeling of Glais’ body and speeding gait under him. They were a blur of ivory, green, and auburn racing across the landscape in a marathon against the wind, melded together by speed and a sense of trust. Reese had really had no choice but to put his life in Glais’ hands ever since he arrived here, and so far the other young man had yet to let him down. He could feel his horse-friend’s heartbeat in every step and did what he could to time their breathing together.

“You doing okay back there?” Glais spoke over the wind in something that wasn’t a shout, but was also far from an indoors voice. “I promise you can sit up a little, you won’t fall off. This is a safe speed”

“As much as I appreciate the offer, you and I seem to have very different definitions of a safe speed!” Reese replied, the sentence turning into an exclamation at the end when Glais surged between two massive rocks. It was like being on a sentient roller coaster.

“Just a wee bit longer,” Glais promised, voice falling into the rhythm of his hoofbeats. “I’ll slow down when we get to the river and let you off, aye?”

Wrapping his arms around the pale Fae’s sturdy neck, Reese simply nodded his head and buried his face in Glais’ silken mane, listening as he made a series of chitters that Reese had come to associate with happiness and contentment, almost like the purr of a cat. It was still a fairly alien sound to the auburn-haired human, but it had come to hold a comforting connotation. Eating dinner, telling stories, giving and receiving hugs… Glais made the sound just about anywhere Reese could think of. It was associated with such warm and wonderful things, just like everything else about Glais’ mannerisms.

God, this boy is like a literal fairytale, Reese thought to himself, closing his mossy green eyes for a moment. The breeze out on the moors was cold and bracing, but Glais was as warm as a furnace, like a living heating pad. For a moment, Reese considered what it would be like to press his lips into that warmth and offer his companion a kiss.

No. Not an option.

What was wrong with him? Glais was just a friend, and Reese would be back home in no time anyways. He shouldn’t be getting caught up on things that could be done in an alternate timeline. He didn’t want to break Glais’ heart by accident, especially after how much he’d helped him. It was the least Reese could do in return. Besides, they were slowing down now to the sound of rushing water. The ride was over. They had reached their destination.

Reese slipped from Glais’ back onto soft grass, being gently stabilized by the larger man’s claws as he did. The river was nothing short of breathtaking, rushing crystalline across rocks and winding through the fields like some kind of glass snake. Automatically, the young man sank to his knees and got comfortable on the bank, listening as Glais took his place next to him. “This,” he breathed, windswept auburn hair framing his face like the mane of a lion who had just gone head-to-head with a hairdryer, “Is beautiful.”

“Told you you’d like it. Keep an eye on the water to see if you can spot any fish. We tend to get a lot of trout and eels. Some nights we catch and cook them.”

“Are they any good?”

Glais laughed, tail flicking happily back and forth in the air behind him, brushing across the nearby reeds. “Oh, absolutely! Mam’s fish recipes are the best. I’ll see if I can bring some to you.”

The smaller man smiled in return, filled with a sort of warmth at the sound of Glais’ chortling. Carefully, so as not to startle his pallid companion, he did his best to lay his head on the Fae’s shoulder, soft and warm even through the fabric of his clothes. Instantly, Glais shifted to give Reese’s head a more comfortable place to rest, cautiously seating him in his lap. A quiet bid for closeness. The human made no move to protest, soft fabric against his cheek and a sturdy torso pressed gently to his as they embraced. Glais was athletic but not very muscular, as Reese discovered. Closer to a dancer or runner than a bodybuilder or football player – built for leaping and dancing and racing through the highlands and the forests like they had today. Wordlessly, Reese let his form fit against the litheness of the body holding him, just like two pieces of a puzzle.

“There’s so much out here I want to show ye,” Glais murmured after a stretch of silence, his face buried in the fluff of Reese’s hair. “So many things to teach you, so many important traditions you need to know…”

Pale fingers gently rubbed up and down Reese’s back, followed by more mutterings from Glais, who Reese suspected was starting to fret.

“What’re the most important bits? Will it help you feel better if you just summarize the big ones?”

Glais paused, movements and expression coming across as conflicted for a moment. “I… I mean, I can try. There’s just a lot of it, and it’s hard to pick the important bits,” he admitted, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re familiar with the old legends, aye? Just… try to follow those. Be polite so you don’t get cursed, keep rowan berries on your person so you can’t be enchanted…” he bit his lip, thinking of more, “Don’t follow any strange lights in the woods, wear your socks inside out so nothing can lead you astray, always be specific and avoid opening loopholes when you make a Faerie swear to something… And I think that’s about it.”

Reese raised an eyebrow. He’d heard quite a few of these already, but a few stood out. “Inside out socks?”

“Aye. We teach it to our wains, too. Just because the Fae won’t lead you out into the darkness never to be seen again disnae mean the realm itself won’t,” Glais replied, pausing for a second. “We don’t control it, just like how most Faerie fire just… happens. Not everything here is manual. Tír Na Neart has a mind of its own, even if we can harness some of its powers.”

“Harness its powers?” Reese repeated quizzically, pulling his head away to look at Glais. “How so?”

Glais thought for a moment. “Well… it has extra magic that some of us learn to command, and some of us are born connected to specific phenomena. My uncle used to know someone who could will those weird little floating lights to do her bidding.”

“Will-O’-The-Wisps?”

“I think so? We just call them Faerie fires or Faerie lights,” the other young man explained, looking up at the sky in thought. “They’re sentient, supposedly, but they’re like animals. We get Fae that are like them but more complicated, though. You’ll find that what’s a person and what’s just a creature walk a really fine line here. The only thing that makes some of us different from an animal of the same shape is just being able to talk.”

Reese was about to respond. Really, truly, he was! He just got… interrupted. Very suddenly. Very quickly.

The shape that shot out of a nearby stand of bushes and reeds was that of a young woman. Shaped like Glais, she bore piercing blue eyes and her black fur was marked here and there by white specks like stars against the night sky. Her hair, long and tied back into a single braid, whipped behind her as she moved.

“Hah!” She triumphantly exclaimed, stopping a few feet from the pair. Almost proudly, she adjusted the corset she wore over a simple blue tunic and brown pants. “I knew you were up to something, Glais!”

Glais startled back, pushing Reese from his lap and shoving the human protectively behind him. “Aisling! Did you fucking follow me out here?!”

The newcomer, Aisling, snorted. “And? So what if I did? You’ve been sneaking out and I’m sick of being the only one who thinks it’s strange. When I tell Mam and Dad you’ve been hiding a human, you are gonna be so busted.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a human!” Glais protested, beginning to emit a series of strange, displeased clicks from within his throat. “He’s just lost, that’s all! I’m taking care of him so he doesn’t starve!”

“What would Uncle Lachlan think? What about Aunt Muir? Humans aren’t supposed to be here!”

“He needs help!”

“Don’t you understand what his kind did to our people?! Have you ever been paying attention in history class, you dolt?! You’re gonna come back home with me and you’re gonna bring him and you are gonna tell our parents exactly why you keep disappearing all the time!”

Ears pinned, tail lashing, Glais was obviously seething. “Oh my gods, can’t you just let me have one secret in my life?! Honestly, fuck you!”

Aisling crossed her arms, snarling at her brother. “This isn’t the kind of shit we can just hide, Glais! Either you make the trip back home with him right now and explain what’s going on, or I’ll do it for you.”

Pure silence for a moment. Reese could hear his heart beating furiously in anticipatory terror. Oh fuck oh shit oh fuck-

“Fine.”

Glais sounded like ice on a window pane.

“Fine, I’ll tell Mam and Dad, but you have to swear by ash and oak and rowan to do him no harm of any kind or I will kick your arse.”

Aisling sighed, reciting the oath in return with an eyeroll, seemingly shuddering as it bound her. Reese used this time to grab onto his friend’s hand, watching as the taller man tried not to cry. The accent thickened with distress, too.

“Reese… Reese, I’m so sorry… Tha thu foirfe agus tha mi duilich.”