Another journal

You can find all the sections here.

Her throat was sore and she lay on cool sheets, a woman standing over her. Emily didn’t try to sit up. The pillow felt damp and cool, like going to bed with wet hair. She tried her voice, “So I coughed all that shit up?” Her voice was weak, but the soreness didn’t get worse. “How’s Dry-Eyes?”

The woman moved to the side, revealing the sprite perched in the windowsill.

“I’m fine, all dried out.” She fluttered her wings. “We’ll stop here for a couple of days before moving on.”

The strange woman smiled and left. Emily caught a glimpse of a bird’s backward-jointed legs and delicate claws moving beneath her dress, before the door shut behind her. She hadn’t said a word.

Raising herself to her elbows, Emily looked around the room. The furniture was low-slung and simple, the bed a padded pallet like a futon. There were no touches of home or personal items, Emily’s backpack seemed aggressively out of place sitting in the corner. The overall impression was monastic.

“Do fairies have monasteries?” Emily looked over at Dry-Eyes, “I mean, is that where here is?” She sat up easily, for someone who’d nearly drowned, she didn’t feel too terrible. Her wet clothes had been replaced by a soft sort of shift and she tucked it modestly around her as she brought her knees up.

Dry-Eyes stretched, then flew to the end of the bed. “I suppose monastery is a good word for it. There isn’t really any religion here, but in places like this, the Folk,” she emphasised the word and tucked her feet beneath her primly, “study magic and theory, write histories, that sort of thing.”

“Are they vowed to silence or something?”

“It depends. If you’re a siren, like the woman who was here, then I suppose you’d be more judicious of when you speak.” Dry-Eyes thought a moment before adding, “if you want, we can take a tour—start at the kitchen if you’re hungry. Do you need to eat?”

Emily wrinkled her nose, thinking. Dry-Eyes’ voice held a weird emphasis. “I’m not that hungry actually, probably those things that came out of the dead-whatever-it-was put me off.” She stretched her legs back out, careful not to kick Dry-Eyes. “Food does sound good, but I’m not—”

“You’re not hungry.” Dry-Eyes looked out the window. “How long do you thing we were walking down that tower?”

“A while?” Emily kept her eyes on the sprite.

“It was about two days.”

“What?!” Her voice was brittle. “That’s nonsense, I know it took a long time and I think I drifted off some, but come on.”

Dry-Eyes kept her gaze averted. “You went into a fugue for some of it, yes, but you didn’t sleep, you didn’t eat—”

“I didn’t want to open my pack in the water!”

“—and you didn’t need to take care of the, ah, baser processes of nature.”

Emily stopped fidgeting. The eating and the sleeping thing she could more or less explain away. But she hadn’t used the bathroom since Dry-Eye’s village and she didn’t feel like she needed to now.

“Okay. So, why?” Emily’s stomach churned as she guessed the answer.

“For the same reason any of the Folk only eat when we want to or when it amuses us.” Dry-Eyes turned back from the window and leaned forward to put her tiny hand on Emily’s. “You’re not mortal, Amelia.”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.