Drunk and Stupid
Torryn’s POV
Day two on the wrong side of the veil, venturing around the fay streets alone. I thought about putting my mask on, but I try to avoid doing so unless I’m pursuing a target. There are plenty of humans on the enchanted side anyway, so I don’t think I stand out in particular.
The sun is on its way to set. I’ve passed a few portals labeled with outposts I recognize, but I’m hoping to find a waypoint that puts me near Yaling, which is where I was heading before the ambush. Travel on the enchanted side equates to double the distance beyond the veil, since this side is multiplanar, connected largely by portals and tears. As I head further into North Haven, I should be heading South on the other side.
That’s what Lennox told me, anyway.
The younger fairy woke me up by accident yesterday morning, stubbing her toe on the door. She yelped something about rosemary in her distress, and I groggily breached consciousness, calling her the wrong name by mistake.
“Can I ask who Fiona is?” she later asked as we shared morning coffee.
I tore my hair out of its ponytail to comb my fingers through it. “My younger sister. When I lived at home, she came into my room a lot in the middle of the night.” She’s plagued by this recurring nightmare that often used to keep her from sleeping. I’d take her for a walk by the river whenever she had it to calm her down. “Sometimes she’d bump into my nightstand on accident and wake me up.”
“Is that where you were headed on your journey? Home?”
“No, I was looking for a city I’ve never been before. Yaling.”
That’s when she gave me a hybrid map for both sides of the veil, and showed me how the cardinal directions exist opposite one another. According to it now, I won’t make it to the right waypoint by nightfall. I should probably post up somewhere until morning. There’s an inn marked a few streets away. I can make my way there.
I hate being in places I don’t know. Well, I love it and I hate it. I hate having to watch my own six, mainly because I get so distracted and end up lost, but I love seeing the places and people that are so different from home. Fay tend to collapse their wings on the other side to blend in with humans, but here, there are so many in one spot, sparkling in a way they only do beyond the veil, using their wings to hover above the ground. It all looks magical… which makes sense, since their bodies rely on magick to function.
Magick…
“You there!” a street merchant calls out to me. “Would it be you’re lost?”
What was my tell? The map, or me walking by his stand three times now? I guess I’m an open book. “Looking for somewhere to spend the night, actually. Headed to outpost 37 south.”
“37 south? That's a ways more to go. Aye, you’d best take up a room at the inn the ‘round the corner there, on your left.”
I was this close... Well, I’d surely have found it eventually.
“There’s a cracking bar next door there, too, if you fancy yourself a bevvy.”
It’d do me no good to get tanked in a city I’ve never been, on the wrong side of the veil, but a little alcohol sounds like a good means of taking the edge of the last week’s chaos.
The inn has a bright, lit-up sign even a foolish mortal could spot if he’d walked down the right street. The receptionist is a young fay by the name of Quillan, so says his name plate. He sets me up with a room for the night before I even get the chance to tell him that it’s Torryn with a y, not an i.
Quillan also recommends the bar next door. It’s bustling with less-than-passionate older couples, more-than-passionate en-sports fans, and moderately-passionate drunkards, humans and fay alike. I order some roast beast sliders and a half pint of ale, able to secure a seat at a little table near the door I came in. The TVs are covering competitions for exerwing and celerwing, which are almost comparable to human gymnastics and cross country... but with flying. I guess it’s a bit like the pub back home, in that they both serve alcohol.
I don’t know that I’ll be back in these parts anytime soon.
“Oh, come on! Tell him he can visit,” Lennox urged Sitara when I left.
Her mouth twisted to the side. “I’d prefer not to. Human doctors are much more equipped to manage human wounds.”
She wasn’t wrong, but I had to laugh. Doctors on my side always badger me about my profession when I need to be seen. I try to avoid it, if possible. With injuries notably fay related, some have refused to see me at all. Sitara though? She wouldn’t even accept payment after everything, since I was technically… well, entirely… brought in against my will. I still left behind some mortal and enchanted kroner, because I wasn’t too sure what they’d prefer. One of them has probably found the sachets I hid beneath a bunch of herbs.
The mage looked at me with a small smile before I walked away. The roots of her hair were starting to turn black when I last saw her.
Will I see her again?
No. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back in these parts.
A wine-soaked voice cuts through my personal space as a woman takes the seat in front of me. “Hey there, cowboy!” Co… cowboy? Oh, right. Fay use that as a term of endearment for human men, don’t they? “Haven’t seen yous ‘round here before!” Her slender hand walks onto my thigh.
She's bold, that’s for sure, but her makeup is quite nice. Much better than Fiona’s has ever been, though she is sixteen and half blind. Last time I was home, she used me as a practice mannequin.
“I’m just passing through.” I put as much space between us as the tight corner allows.
“Got a name, stranger?”
“I’m Torryn. What about yo—”
“Torry! Hi there!”
Oh... well... my mom’s the only one who still calls me that at twenty-five. Unless you count Willem, who calls me Dowwy, since he’s not yet three and doesn’t exactly grasp how letters work.
“My, we don’t get too many handsome fella around here!” She draws her syllables out twofold, playing with the ends of her blonde hair.
This is one of those encounters, isn’t it? Where a man is sitting by himself, and it makes him vulnerable, an easy target, and a kind lady seduces him, because she has such a charitable soft spot for lonely men, only to wake up next to him at dawn and make off with whatever he has that’ll turn a quick kroner. Totally haven’t been kicked by that pony before.
It’s either that, or this fay is just… remarkably way off the mark.
“Do you live here in New Haven?” I prepare a swift retreat to my room.
“Just a bit west, actually.” She nods, pointing east. “I’ve got a little place of my own.”
“Ah, well, this is my first time here. I just rented a room next door.”
“Oooh, neats!” She leans in close enough to lodge her noxious perfume between my sinuses. “Well then, what do you say, cowboy? Why don’t we hurry up and take this some place private?”
“Sorry, miss...”
She traces my hand.
“I’ve got to head out early tomorrow. Best to get some rest. Nice talking with you. Enjoy your evening.”
My room back at the inn is peaceful. The bed is a bed, and the room is a room, but it’s peaceful.
What in the fiddle was that fairy on about? She didn’t even tell me her name!
I pull the pillow over my face as I collapse onto the mattress and shake off the lingering exchange. How exhausting. If I were five years younger, I probably would’ve stayed to talk. Maybe we would’ve gotten drunk and stupid together, but that’s just not fun for me anymore.
It used to be my scene, when I was young, and getting used to new legs from recently joining the Enchanted Forces Unit. Bounty hunting has never been naturally conducive to long term commitments and, between my shiny new soldier status and prior experience traveling solo, I wasn’t a stranger to one-night stands. An EFU assignment I got a few months into the gig brought me to the east side of a rural town called Caphia. I met a girl at a tavern, which is where I would meet most girls. Her name was Ananke. She was gorgeous, and witty, and good at cards. Very good at cards. Maybe I should’ve taken the five lost games in a row as a red flag.
Even though I wasn’t a stranger to one-night stands, that’s not what we were. I let her call me Torry, and “I was the only one” who called her Nan. She wore my shirts, and spent every night with me in my hotel room in Caphia… and Itagus, and so on. A number of our evenings were spent getting drunk and stupid, and it was fun.
Then I was tasked with taking down a trio of rogue fay in a big city. It was a case of human child trafficking that required I set up in Acadon for a month. I used most of my monthly EFU allowance to rent us an apartment from a sweet old man who ran a pharmacy down the street, throwing in extra kroner for the inconvenience, since we weren’t staying long. It was tough job, because it reminded me of Fiona’s accident.
Ananke was the type of girl who liked taverns and cards and drinking games so much she hardly ever left. She always seemed to be between jobs. When she needed money, she could find it, but we always gambled with mine.
I quickly discovered I wasn’t built for her lifestyle. I didn’t take kindly to being hungover, and I liked remembering the night before in the morning. More than that, though, I felt guilty about the example I was setting for my siblings, even if they weren’t around to see it. That’s when it started, I guess. The beginning of the end, for me, anyway. She’d get drunk on her own more often, while I ate three trays too many of nachos, or mozzarella sticks, or fried pickles.
The closer I got to taking out the trio, the faster they started working. The disappearance rate was climbing, and I was losing my sanity. Fiona. This could’ve been Fiona, I kept thinking. This could’ve been my family. But Ananke didn’t get along with her family, who lived in whatever town she never told me the name of. She gave advice about my stress as good as a brick wall, though I bet the wall wouldn’t have told me that family is just a toxic, patriarchal construct, and I should go AWOL, and just have a beer already, Torry… but I wasn’t talking to many brick walls back then.
I killed the traffickers, and found a dozen terrified kids with them. After desperate mothers and fathers hugged me, thanking me for bringing back their children, I threw up outside the Caphia sheriff’s department. Missing posters with photos of tiny faces had to remain around town still. Too many for me to stomach.
That night? I wanted to drink.
So I sauntered into the tavern with a bit of pocket kroner, travelling light because of the mission, and the girl who liked taverns and cards and drinking games wasn’t there.
I took a bottle back to my room, found the note, and got drunk. I was already stupid... had been the whole time.
All’s fair in love and war, she wrote.
She took a military issued blaster I was reamed for losing, a watch my parents had gifted me, and all the kroner from my bag, not to mention the cast iron skillet Fiona saved her chore funds to get me for my birthday the year before. Strange child, asking me to carry around a whole pan when I traveled, but I’d have said yes even if it were a whole trunk of them.
Would Ananke have taken it if she was sober enough to hear me when I'd told her it was from my little sister?
I try not to wonder.
There aren’t too many people I’d share a drink with now. Hmm... maybe… no. Best bet is Fiona when she turns twenty-one, though she insists she doesn’t care about “that kind of stuff.”
Although... maybe Sitara.
Sitara…?
Fiddle, where’s that coming from?
Can I ask what happened?
I’m sure the explanation you come up with will be better than the truth.
The fairy mage…
Something about her isn’t adding up.
I’ve never heard of a fairy getting sick from a lack of magick. Why so many candles, then? Why the cherry blossom tree?
She said she was fine. The tree is magickal enough to sustain fay without the candles. Well, their magick is regenerative! A normal fay wouldn’t need to rely on either! Let alone a fairy mage...
I don’t understand.
I mean, her hand has a bunch of rods attached to it, and wires leading beneath her skin. She somehow recognized my F3. Tons of fairy mages fought in the war… just… not many fought on our side... and it was over twenty five years ago. She looks like she's my age.
I only knew her for two days.
But there’s something about her laugh… Maybe…
Makes me want to get drunk with her.
Someday.
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