All in Good Fun

POV: Lucas Berthelot

I knew she was growing annoyed with me, but my curiosity only got the better of me. This entity, this thing before me, claiming to be one of the true creators of the world. A lofty name granted to her by those of this place, Queen of the Fae. I'm told she had another name, but refused to tell it me. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, I wouldn't have wanted to every random person to know everything about me either.
But, after seeing what had been happening inside my own kingdom, Galus fighting on all fronts, threats from within, on distant horizons. Wolves at the gates, the scratching at the door, the whispers in the dark, to awaken from the dream to see it starring back at your from the corner of the bed. Being told, that this not-woman before me, was the Mother to our species, I wanted to know more.
"Enough, Child." Her voice echoed through me, a tired look on her ever-shut eyes. "What more do you want to see? Why must I prove everything to you? I have no obligation to prove my divinity to you, I will not make you believe."
That...creature. That Faerie Lord beside her gave his cuation to me. "We are not accustomed to having, your genera amongst us. The Queen has been paitent with you, you may be Fae born, Lucas Berthelot, but you are not Fae. Related yet distant."
"I understand that, I have had this 'Shadow touched' condition explained to me, proven to me on several occations since being whisked away to this place. What I suppose I don't understand is this, the gods on the Tree...changed. I don't understand them any longer, what you told me is they took on the forms that you fought so long ago. But, I also hear this rhetoric that your original four did something similar. To walk among your Children, you took this form I see now. That emaciated thing that follows Ilgor around did so to walk among her children. So what are you?" I ranted, not even knowing exactly where I was going.
I felt a hand under my chin keeping my mouth shut, softly but firm. She hadn't moved, just was mere fractions away from my own face. Something not quite human about her, it wasn't the pointed ears, it wasn't the fact that her clothing seemed to be part of her skin. It wasn't that her eyes were now open, burning softly inside her sockets. No, it was something strange, like seeing a version of yourself in a mirror, but moving on its own. "Are you afraid."
It wasn't a question, more of an observation. She was taller than me, bending down slightly to meet my gaze, how was she standing in front of me when I could see her sitting over there? My mind struggling to place the two entities in the same place, "I took this form for the benefit of my Children. What am I?" She faded away, her hair like smoke filling my vision. I was alone, the room around me having disolved away.
Teeth, the sound of a rising sun, the flash of light. The scent of sweat, the floor below me engulfing me in a sea of too salty water. I tried to piece it together, what was this? A sting of eyes, looking through me, at me, past present and future. Ever willed, always was, never had been. A juxtaposition between here and now, then and what if.
"Your mind, as I built you. Piece it together, Fae blood. To always try and see the logic of the world." Her voice warped, coming from everywhere and nowhere. From my own mouth, from lips that where on my body yet not mine. Reaching my hand out, I could feel the surface of the water above, yet soild. The warm feeling of my own finger tips touching themselves in that reflection.
"That's not right." I thought, ringing out as if I had spoken in an echo chamber. I was seated in a field, the grass moving wrong. Breeze or no, it should not have moved like that. The sky above, watchful, an intelligence ever watchful. That's not right, the world shifting.
"Listless, formless, ever-present. That's what we were called." A thought in the back of my mind spoke, as I watched the sun rise, across the sky, and set. On repeat, day after day having gone by, the trees grow, fall and die. To be replaced with new forest, new field, to watch as new stars formed in the night. The sun shifting from northern skies to southern horizon in a gentle wobble. "Cycles, patterns."
The pull of gravity against my feet, an endless void. Planted firm against a black mass, nothing around me. The feeling of heat and cold, ice growing across my skin. Melting away to boil away without so much as pain, my mind still struggling to place these forces where they belonged. Like a hand keeping the scales of the universe in balance, everything had a cycle, rules to follow. Something to learn.
In my mind, I thought back to the dusty old professors I learned from about the many subjects my own father had hired to teach me everything from mathmaitics, economics, physics, art, history, political theory. Was what I was watching meant to be a teacher? The world delved back into nonesense, the air moving wrong. Billowing against me, yet in the wrong direction.
A song without sound, the sun appearing in the wrong spots each day, the movement of the stars different each night. Life and death, birth and regrowth in the wrong order. I felt it down to the chemicals of the plants, deep into their being, as cells divided and reformed cancerous consuming it whole. Photosythetic energy being made in the darkness, it was all wrong. "A teacher, they also called me that."
Like a hand righting a toppled table, correcting the path of the sun. Shifting the stars back in line, there were rules to follow. Correcting the plants beneath my feet, dormant in this strange dark. I could almost see the teacher behind the universe. I could almost see the attention to detail through an artists eyes, I could almost. The swirl of smoke changing into listless form.
I could see the hands, kind as it righted the world around me. Somewhere, hidden deep beneith thought and feeling, was the truth. Doing so just to soothe my mind, doing so for me to comprehend. A teacher indeed, a force, forces in the world. The rules to abide, to function, to perpetuate. A sun formed in hand, shifting from real to not. To a face with no eyes, to a ring of eyes as she shifted from deer to stone, to light, to flesh before my eyes could see.
An apocryphal tide, nameless. Unfathomable. A truth in the world that could not be denied. Meant to teach, to nurture, to grow. Set deep in my bones, a knowledge, to feel that I was made to understand. A hopeful seed to grow into my own forest, to expand my own skies, to fill my own seas. A force, kind and stern.
I was lying on my back, The Queen kneeling next to me, her eyes closed again. Yet that uncanny feeling that she could see me anyway. "I need not explain what you know in your soul. Generation after generation of my children having watched me without knowing I was me. I am, therefore are you."
I sat up, head throbbing from the pain in my skull. Each pulse sending a new wave of pain as my mind slowly put piece together. "I have been called physics, I have been called the laws of nature, I have been called absolutes and conjecture. My children struggled to understand, but I was proud of the progress they had made. Enough to feel in my heart a longing to be with them. So I took their form, the form I gave them, to walk among them without tearing their minds apart before they were ready."
"I don't..."
"Understand, you are far from ascention, I know you are not ready. You will be given time, given the conditions, given the patience to learn. Like my unruly toddlers of old, sometimes you need to be shown what is around me."
"So you just break my mind by what? Showing me what you are?" I yelled at her.
The crowd around us laughed, a feeling of comeradrie filled me. Annoyed, yet I couldn't stay mad. I supposed I deserved it with my constant questioning. She looked more human to me now, smirking at me. A self-satified look I couldn't blame her for. "All in good fun, no?"