Lady Alethea was among the few faeries of Shaman that did not regard the “return of magic” with desperate approval. In fact, she would not have been surprised if someone had told her she was the only one (although she wasn’t), based on the degree of revelry she seemed to encounter everywhere she went. Most had plenty to celebrate.
Alethea, however, did not.
It was a beautiful Autumn day – the kind with crisp, scented air that flirts in little gusts over your skin, and a sky as blue as a painting, and the sweet sound of fallen leaves scuttling over the earth – and Thea lay on her back in the grass, gazing forlornly at nothing. In the distance, she could hear the animated chatter of the orchardists, tending Arthur’s grove. More closely, she could hear her black stallion’s slow chewing as he grazed, and Leto’s intermittent huff of frustration. She sighed.
“You might as well give up,” she said, turning onto her side to fix the wolf with a defeated look, “It’ll either come back or it won’t, and there’s nothing either of us can do to rush it.”
“I am not giving up,” Leto answered with a huff, her sweet, low voice incongruous with the fierceness of her lupine eyes. Thea sighed again – she was a fountain of sighs – and rolled again onto her back. Her honey-colored hair spread like a cloud around her head.
If only her telepathic link with Leto had been immediately restored, the young Lady would not have troubled herself with the loss of that temporary magic she had gotten to experience so fleetingly. To be an interloper in their world...the normal, magical faerie world...had opened her eyes to what she lacked. Before that, she had never been disturbed by the fact that she had no magical talent of her own; she was a gifted draftswoman, and very smart, and (if she were to be honest with herself and not hide behind modesty) one of the most beautiful girls her age in all the land. What more could she have asked for?
Elemental magic, it turned out. Fire and Water, Earth and Air.
She thought of Thoth, and Mordred, and Tristan, with their myriad gifts. Thoth she could forgive for his abilities – the poor boy was at a disadvantage in every other respect, and needed his wits and his magic to survive the bullying of his peers – but the prince? His uncle? “It’s just so unfair,” she muttered to no one, and sighed. Misunderstanding her, Leto nosed the girl's hand, and stretched out beside her. The wolf's fur was warm and soft against her riding coat, clinging with faint static electricity. “It will be alright,” her familiar murmured gently, trying to reassure her, but Alethea found that this only made her feel worse. It was not going to be alright, and if Leto had been able to hear her thoughts, like everyone else’s familiars could by now, she would know that.
Life was terribly cruel.
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