NotM Bounty 13 - Smuggled Gifts [edit]

A young boy, barely thirteen summers old but small and gaunt for his age, hugged his knees close to his chest in the cold between two dilapidated buildings. Snow had started to fall just hours earlier, leaving his already thin clothes damp and freezing against his skin. His fingers, long since numb, clutched at his shirt, his breath hanging almost mockingly about him.
People, dressed warmly to hold back the cold, walked quickly past him, without sparing a glance. It was as if he was no more than a statue, something to avoid walking into. He expected nothing of them. Their apathy wasn’t quite so simple - true, they would easily pretend he didn’t exist under normal circumstances, but Brenys law itself prevented them from helping him. Those who could not care for themselves could leave the city or perish. Those that helped were persecuted and punished, sometimes just as harshly. No, none would help him. None dared. And so the boy sat silently, hoping only that if he was destined to die, he could do so quickly and maybe even peacefully.
He had just started to drift off to sleep when a shadow fell over him and didn’t move on. After a moment, he forced his stiff body to shift, to turn his face toward whoever wanted him to move. However, his pale gaze fell on the face of an elderly woman looking down at him with an odd look in her eyes. She looked up the street, then down the street, and back to him. Without a word, she raised and arm and opened her shawl. When he did not move, she gave a little wave of her hand, motioning him to her side.
The boy did not move, looking upon the woman with with no small amount of distrust and confusion. Who was this woman, offering him help? What did she plan to do with him? He sat rooted to the spot, unsure whether he should do as she wanted and too cold to do so even if he should. She did not wait long, however, before she frowned and pulled her shawl back about her. Turning away, she left him sitting there, making her way calmly down the street without a second glance back to him.
Strangely, the boy felt a brief flutter of panic in his chest. Something nameless whispered that he should go after her, catch her before she got out of sight. Before he could even question what made him decide to, he was pushing to his feet, his body aching and cursing with the sudden movement. He’d been sat for so long that he nearly fell over as he stumbled after the woman, limping through the throngs of people to catch up with her.
A minute later, he was close enough to reach out and grab her. Instinct told him to draw back into the shadows, to find somewhere to lay low, maybe find food and something close to warmth, to get away from everybody on the streets. But that same quiet voice urge him to reach out, to grab her sleeve and accept whatever offer she had. Without knowing why, he listened to that second voice and reached out, wrapping numb fingers in the cloth of her shawl.
The woman slowed and glanced back at him, her dark green eyes expressionless. He met her gaze and when she opened her shawl again, he stepped up to her side and ignored the voice of reason that told him to run when she pulled the cloth over him. Immediately, he felt a strange surge of warmth radiating off her body, something much more than just body heat. Still, he stayed with her as she stated forward, leading him gently through the crowded streets, undisturbed by any around them. The boy was nervous, convinced someone would stop them, chastise the old woman and beat him. But none approached. They were not stopped, not even approached, even as they passed out of the city long after curfew.
He wasn’t sure how long they walked, only that they left the paved streets of the city, and then the well-worn path of the roads outside the walls, taking what was little more than a deer-path through the pine forests that surrounded Brenys. Finally, the woman stopped and raised her arm, letting the boy see where they were and letting the cold embrace him again. But whatever it was he’d been expecting, he was instead surprised to find they stood outside of a small house on stilts, with a ladder leading up to the wrap-around porch.
She nudged the boy forward, up the ladder and then inside the house. Within, it was far warmer, the air fresh with the smell of pine and lilac. Shelves were lined with bottles of every imaginable substance, each neatly labled, with books stacked on nearly every available surface. A fire crackled in the hearth across the room and more candles were placed all about the place for more light, set carefully to avoid the bundles of dried herbs hanging along the walls.
The boy came to a silver-edged mirror in which he first saw himself - small and thin, with a shock of dark hair against pale skin, clothes hanging from his bony frame. But then he saw the woman closing the door behind him, removing her shawl and revealing not the old woman that had lead him to the house but instead a middle-aged woman. Where her hair had been silver before, it was now black as pitch, curling about her dark shoulders. Around her neck, like a colar, was a pair of slender antlers, white as bone. He didn’t understand, even when she turned to face him, looking to him with the same odd look in her eyes, green like fresh spring leaves.
Facing her, he felt his heart start to race. Why had he followed her? What did she want to do with him? Was she a witch and she only needed someone to practice her magic against? If he tried to stand against her, even if he wasn’t starving, surely he’d be no hope against her. He’d never seen eyes so green, could barely even remember the color.
Silently, she moved past him, deeper into the house. He considered making an escape, but he didn’t know if he could make it back to the city, if they’d even let him back in. But then she reappeared, tray in hand laden with food. Approaching the boy, she set it on the table before him before easing into the chair across from him, tucking her legs beneath her.
“What do you want from me?” The question slipped out, his voice hoarse from both the cold and disuse. A small part of him was surprised he could still speak.
The woman watched him curiously, her brows furrowing in a look he wasn’t sure he liked. Then, finally, she spoke. “Do you have a name, child?” Her voice startled him - simultaneously soft and powerful, a voice you’d be a fool to not pay careful heed.
Looking down, he shook his head. To have a name, you had to be someone and he was nobody.
Instead of answering, the woman stood and went over to the window, peering out for a long while. When he began to wonder if she wasn’t going to answer him, she threw open the window and a great white mass flew inside, landing on the back of the chair she’d just been sitting in. Blinking at him with black eyes was a huge white owl, it’s face round and pale as the moon. It stared at the boy for quite a while, until he began to figit.
“What do you think, Ara?” She was watching the owl, a smile playing on her lips.
“You’re right, but he doesn’t seem to know it himself.” The voice seemed to come from the owl, though it made no move to speak at all.
“What don’t I know?” He didn’t know how to feel - panicked, intrigued or if maybe he was just dreaming or even dead.
“My boy, you belong in that cursed city as much as I do. Why else would I have smuggled you out?” She looked sad when she spoke, like she pitied him.
“But I - I’m nobody. I’m-”
“Stop that!” She frowned at him angrily, crossing her arms over her chest. Her expression softened and she sat back down in the chair, the owl perched behind her shoulder. “Dear boy, who made you forget what you are?”
“What are you talking about? Who are you?” The boy felt his head spinning. He needed to sit down, to eat. He wanted to wake up from this dream.
“You’re fey,” said the owl.
“N-No, I’m - I’m human,” the words came automatically, but they felt hollow. “I’m human!” Was he trying to convince them, or himself?
“You’re as human as I am,” the owl said, its voice softer than before.
“You’re fey, child,” the woman repeated, looking to him intently. “Specifically, you’re a changeling.”
He began to shake - first his head, then his body shook with an emotion he couldn’t name. Who was this woman, saying he was not human? What right did she have to trick him like this? His hands curled into fists and he stepped back from her, his back pressing against the mirror. His head was still spinning. “Who are you?” He spoke softly, barely able to get the words out.
“My name is Jian, and this is Ara. Do you have something you’d like to be called?”
He shook his head. He’d never needed a name, hadn’t given it any thought.
“He looks like a hawk,” the owl suggested.
“How about Hawke, child?”
He looked up at the woman - at Jian, and her owl. He could accept what she had said, that he was not human and did not belong in their cities, or deny her. If he chose the latter, what would she do? Let him return to Brenys and act as if nothing had changed? There was nothing for him to return to, though, nothing for him to do but find a place to lay down and wait to die. Here, perhaps, he could survive. And so, he nodded, accepting the offer of a new life.