The Billough War

There weren't always dragons in the valley.

I remember the day they arrived in all their pompous and supposed glory. Caravan after caravan came floating in the sky in every conceivable color and adorned with gold embellishments that wove from the edges to the center and culminated in various family crests. As if any of the Fae would have recognized them. Us "blue flies" as the upper-class kin so kindly refer to us don't care for stores of valuables; in our experience, riches like that are a curse. I've never met a wealthy kin who wasn't miserable with paranoia or pride. Still, seeing so many vibrant colors flying overhead our little corner of the Billoughs was a captivating experience. Like a flock of huge exotic birds. If that had been the only experience of Dragonkin I'd had, I'd have held them in a much more gracious view. Unfortunately, those beautiful caravans carried hundreds of entitled, powerful kin who were no doubt looking down at us and speculating about how we could best be put to use in their service.

Attitudes like that are exactly what got them cursed to mortal form by the Motherkin to begin with. If only she'd have stripped them of their wealth, that would have humbled them a lot quicker in my opinion, but it's not for me to know the Motherkin's mind. She sees all the threads of time, is allowed to see the Weaver's plans, and I don't envy her that knowledge. If I could have seen how miserably populated our peaceful valley would become, I'd have wept everyday until the Dragonkin arrived, and then wept harder every day after.

They settled here, in the Billoughs, for reasons I still don't understand. Historically, from what I've gathered among the last eight years of town gossip and overhearing Master Gideon's conversations with his fellow businessmen or dreadful relatives, they kept to the northeastern lands. This was the furthest West they'd ever ventured, much to the entire valley's deep regret. Whatever brought them here, it didn't seem any of them found it worthy of leaving their prestigious homeland, and they took out their bitter disappointment on us lowly Fae.

Our lush, green valley, peppered with wildflowers and home to thousands of gentle fauna was now a bustling city. They landed and immediately cast their will upon the land, bidding it to raise their townhomes for business and further back, their manors and estates and other such foolish shows of wealth and thereby power in their strange and disconnected society. The poor creatures who had inhabited those vast stretches of wilderness had been instantly displaced to some random patch of land probably a hundred miles away, far from their familiar dens and stashes and daily paths. I still get vengeful thinking of it now. Not that we faired much better. As the Dragonkin see it, they're doing us a favor by introducing us to modern luxuries and giving us opportunities to go up in the world. Their world.

A world I want nothing to do with.

Seeing as the Great Hart hasn't answered any of my prayers to purge its land of these ungrateful and uninvited guests, and worse-has cut off all connection to his stewards, eliminating the role I was born into, the only one I'd ever been suited for with my wild magic- I don't have any other options than to accept the fancy shackles of service to our lords the Dragonkin. The disappearance of my would be boon-giver, the Great Spirit Yasen, landed me in the employ of one Gideon Kengsen. It could be worse, Master Gideon is disdainful of me, and his temper has definitely left its mark a time or two, but there are few masters who would tolerate my flare ups. I'd have thought Yasen's abandonment would have cost me my magic, but it seems even stronger without him, and definitely more unpredictable. I was relieved at first, but the more time passes, I'm wondering if it's the start of a curse. My fellow Fae would never turn me out or discourage my ability, that's not our way, but it can't quite be called a blessing. Sure, everyone's happy when it bursts out and our foragers come back threefold more bountiful, but just as often a nearby meadow will spontaneously catch fire, or a wild minau will spawn in the woods.

To be able to have a role in the house of a master in the highest echelons of Dragon society like Kengsen is rare for any magical Fae, let alone my sorry self. I should be grateful, that's what Mema says. Easy for her to say, she has an affinity for healing magic, not even the Dragonkin would mistreat her with such a rare and valuable blessing. Come to think of it, being her son might be the only reason I ended up with the Kengsen's. Dragons might be swollen with greed and snobbery, but they know a useful ally when they see one, and powerplays are their pass time. So yeah, having the son of the only healer in the known region in your pocket is a good move.

Today, however, Master Gideon was going to regret it. Not by any intention of mine, at least, not a conscious one. Like I said, I was lucky to have a place in his house, and he didn't pay poorly, though I doubt that was out of any sense of generosity or even fairness, it just looks bad if someone as high up as that is paying a pittance to their staff. If he pays us as well as their own lower class, it shows some kind of disregard for money that only the unimaginably wealthy can get away with.

It would be stupid of me to throw away my job as his glorified dog. Today must have just been fated to unravel the way it did.

First of all, a storm was coming in, a big one, the kind you feel hours before it hits. The sky was dark and grey, the clouds seemed to hang low enough to kiss the hilltops and thunder could be not just heard, but if you were standing still, a tiny quake could be felt as it rumbled across the ground, like some massive ripple of negative energy. Just such the negative energy that spurs my beastlike magic to act out. To make matters worse, even if the land wasn't full of negative mana, I was having no problem building my own. I overslept, realized it immediately upon waking and in an instant frenzy, leapt out of bed, tripped over my sheets, banged my chin on the floor, leaving what would surely be a bruise if not a scrape, and kicked the sheets off. Irrationally and against my better judgement, knowing that allowing myself to be angry at my own sheets was going to build bad mana that I would need to counteract, I gritted my teeth and gathered the bedding off the floor in a huff before tossing it back on the bed. Buying myself no time, I had to rummage through a basket of clothes to find my uniform, which I had forgotten to wash, and had thus become a wrinkled and slightly smelly mess. That was not going to go over well, but it would go over better than showing up in plain clothes. If I was lucky, I could avoid the master long enough to generate enough positive mana that I could chance a cleansing ritual without risking setting the whole ensemble ablaze. That would have to wait, if I tried in this state, it wouldn't just be the clothes on fire. I hopped into my trousers and donned the hideous jacket, the crest of the Kengsens embroidered in golden thread on the back as if to overcome my very person and transform me into a faceless representative of the house.

I sped out of my room and passed through the kitchen, stretching my hand over the bowl of rolls on the table, unlooking, I clenched as many rolls as my fingers could encompass and continued out the door. I made it about fifteen feet before I realized I didn't have my shoes. Horrid things. I rolled my eyes, feeding that bad mana, and turned back to the house. Tempting fate, I did use a bit of magic to call them out. They came, but to my chagrin, had fashioned rabbit feet with matching ears, and as they approached, a fluffy little tail could be made out at their heels. Saying a quick prayer to Yasen, however futile that was these days, I snatched them as they tried to hop passed, shoving the rolls into my mouth and dropping one into the dirt to free my hands. I jerked my foot into the first and could feel it still trying to hop under my weight. It wasn't going to be a good day. After the second foot was imprisoned in the stupid shoe, not at all helped by my magical enhancement, I raced to the manor.

To me, it may as well have been a castle. It sat off an access road from the main street. No other houses went back that way, however it had been claimed, the other Dragons seemed to recognize a wide expanse of land as belonging with the manor. It was a twenty minute walk from the business sector to the master's home, and a forty minute walk from the Hobbs, which is what the Fae sector had been dubbed, to the outskirts of town. I didn't have time for that. My uniform was already going to be a point of admonishment, so I saw no disadvantage to cutting through the woods. I'm sure the master likes to think of himself as far away from us lowly Fae as he can be, but truthfully if you cut through the sparse wilderness there is left, it's only about fifteen minutes to walk, I can run it in ten. These woods would have been my responsibility if the Dragonkin had never come. They would have been as good as home. Now they were a strange mix of bitterness and respite, both precious and wasted. The bit that had been untouched was everything I lived for, but I couldn't dwell there and not miss the far greater region that I would never walk through again.

Today, I did not have time for that train of thought, or the feelings that inevitably accompanied it. I ran through in these quite literally cursed shoes, struggling to maintain my footing as they fought to bound away with me still in them. I swore at them, out loud, and put extra weight into each landing, which inhibited my usual fluidity through this area but helped master the shoes. I made it, a minute slower than I could have, but still much faster than the usual route. Only slightly winded, I broke from my beloved trees and into the massacred land of the manor. Grand oaks and maples had been traded for a desolate and over cut lawn. The lawn itself was interrupted once you got close to the manor by a circumference of stone about 30 feet long going right up to the house, which was also made of stone and towered so high and wide, it rivaled the hills it was nestled between. Flat, bleak and grey, the manor was a thorn to the eyes. Leaving the greenery and song of the forest to be trapped inside this hideous block of misplaced stone all day made my heart tighten and just as I tugged on the massive golden door pull to enter the servants quarters, a bolt of lightening struck the Manor's entry gates. I couldn't have asked for a clearer mana check, and yet, at that moment, it was the last thing on my mind, because as soon as I entered the hall, Lady Brinna Kengsen was standing before me, the master's daughter, his pride and joy, and my chief adversary.

I stood, a little dumbfounded, in the doorway. Brinna had no business in the servants quarters. It was an embarrassment for her to be seen with us, and of all days, she was there to catch me coming in late, looking like a bog. Mema always warns how negative mana attracts more negative mana, and here was the proof.

Usually Brinna doesn't even deign to look at me, at least not directly. She'll keep me in her peripheral, in case there's some lowly task she can order me to take care of in her passing tone, as if I exist purely to cater to her, which is not actually my role. I am her father's dog, not hers. Though, it would hardly serve me well in Master Gideon's eyes to ever dare voice that fact to her, his first heir, the golden child. I was at her mercy, today especially, as she took a moment to thoroughly absorb every error I'd made on my way to work. It dawned on me, suddenly, that I had not even combed my hair. The unruly, coiled mop on the top of my head had no doubt collected some of the forest on my trek, which Brinna seemed to note as her nose flared back a bit and her lips curved in obvious disgust. That would have been enough for her to recommend once again to her father that there were surely better errand boys than me, but she wasn't done yet, her eyes continued to travel down, past the wrinkled and dirtied coat and trousers, until at last they arrived at the shoes. And there her eyes stayed. She looked longer at the shoes than she ever had my face, and her expression morphed from the typical utter disdain to an impish and hateful delight.

Not taking her eyes off my bespoke footwear, she finally broke the silence, "Pippan, I see you've made some improvements to your uniform. I'm sure Father will be most interested to see them." At the mention of her father, she finally met my eyes, surely to enjoy the dread that was certainly apparent on my face before driving the knife in deeper. "He's been waiting for you upstairs. Since nine."

There would be no counteracting the bad mana today.