Raven Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Raven Nightshade shared a hollow oak with eleven cousins, and tonight, like every night, someone was always awake. She lay on her moss pallet with her hand pressed flat against her thigh, waiting for the small ones to stop giggling above her. They didn't. They never did. In Florwaii, a fairy's nest was a public thing: open rings, shared lofts, sisters who borrowed your soap and your secrets. Raven wanted one secret badly enough to ache. She wanted someone to sit still and watch her touch herself, and she could not even begin the wanting here, where an aunt might drift through the curtain to ask about breakfast. She had tried the bathing pool at dusk and been interrupted twice. She had tried the reading alcove and heard footsteps before her hand moved. Tonight she thought of the quiet water past the mushroom ridge, the one the older fairies avoided because the fish were gone and the dock had rotted. She dressed, folded her wings tight, and slipped out while her youngest cousin snored. The path was longer than she remembered. When she reached the shore, the surface lay flat as a plate, and the little boathouse on the far bank sat dark. No lanterns. No voices. She walked the whole rim to be certain. Empty. She sat on a flat stone at the water's edge and let her shoulders drop. Then a shimmer moved above the reeds, and another fairy landed three paces from her, barefoot, wings still trembling from flight. Raven knew her by sight only, Luna Fernwing, a courier who flew night routes and slept through the day. Luna looked at the stone, at Raven's bare legs, at Raven's face, and did not pretend confusion. "You picked my landing spot," Luna said. "I come here after every run. Nobody else does." Raven's throat closed. She had found her private place, and it already belonged to someone. She could leave and lose the only silence she had found in years, or she could stay and ask the stranger for something she had never said out loud. Raven pulled her knees up, met Luna's eyes, and stayed on the stone.