Princess Starlet & The Icon | Part One | Chapter One
a novel in four parts
Princess Starlet & The Icon
Part One | Chapter One
by Ophelia Everfall
Warning - Active Construction Zone Worth a Peak
To Mae in everyone I love
To Mary who showed me what that means
For Logan of my own heart
For Goddess’s spirit within everything
Fists tore earth as a toil for the fellow who was lost in sleep to sights of darkest places kept stowed beside their frame. Posting in Hearthwood was penance for lineage and especially aptitude. Mae was less of part than most with the whole of their people and didn’t care to stop trying.
They knew themself of meddle and would not relent on their search for some place to make a breadth of peace. It seemed to be through work and suffering all would earn space to breathe in this life Mae found themself mottled. They’d suffered as hard they could.
Mae had taken a late shift in their community’s garden. These forestlands were abundant, surrounding, and a meadow had been made fortress through expansion done with proposed honor for the land these people presumed to shepherd. Hearthlanders were joyous and welcoming to their chosen fellows. They were of hope to some connection with the land. They’d also been xenophobic to implausible degrees from their isolation.
Mae themself was lost to their cause of familial togetherness that people found with eachother for how they’d not fit in with all the other’s thought.
Everything here was split down the middle. It was decreed how to exist. Dictations didn’t serve those needing more or less for becoming balanced within the whole—especially those who’d flow about all expressions with speed of bliss. Splitshot and rundown these soldiers of fate would often rise to fall amongst the Hearthlanders. Mae was the only one of their time in that town.
He’d feel different every day. Sometimes they were of hope. Sometimes they were of dreary disregard for life itself in this place. She had dreams and would see them to be wholesome by times end.
Honored vestige of Hearthwood was Hometree. It was within its own grove carved by time-worn path. People who listened would be one with the woods. Spirit could nurture an elf to its bosom by spreading its energy through all natural means, but only when the way in which they chose to live and harvest was through balance.
Elroth was a man who oversaw the garden and made himself its emperor. He’d been looking to bring Mae in and sit them down for a talk. She’d been his least favorite posting since she began overseeing municipally as a decidedly proven and competent organizer of harvesting and foresting operations. This virulent and petulant young man thought himself to own the garden. He saw Mae most wrongly of all.
He was a competent fellow in many respects but foolhardy in estimations of judgement in character, including his own. Elroth saw the worst in people but thought it around the other way. He’d throw them to wolves if it fed himself and pretend that not some horrid thing to do. Inventing up facsimiles of truth in his mind didn’t prove a problem.
“Where are you, tool!”
Mae cringed. Obscured by nearby stalks of yeat she’d left to find the man behind. It felt neat and tidy to leave the scene in haste. Elroth didn’t deserve the right to torture her so with his proclamations of failure laid crassly upon their work.
Hearthwood was cramped and streets were cobbled in partiality. Grass around would grow in summer until mud was again bought to freeze and thaw before its return.
“Can you come help me, Mae!”
It was Eloene and she had a basket to carry home. She’d been this way for such time, alone, fighting tides of age so long, it didn’t take but the sight of a youthful soul for her to demand a hand. There was no loss of pride to some discovered rightness of her understanding in how she ought receive that help. Boys and girls would relent with reluctance most often for times, changing weather forcing motifs to display in attitude of all. Night and day would hold that sway the same.
Mae would help with a smile and a hand placed on Eloene’s shoulder. They would mean all they’d do.
Eloene was a hero of heart and a champion in the eyes of Mae for how long she’d held some stand against the resulting immorality from her own people’s ignorance. These purest folk were few and far between in the world of Rochar, though Mae would think it only their fellows. It took but a glance for recognition and understanding of companionship quite innate to emplace truest connection with self and spirit within another made by these kinds of bond.
Shared words would form a bond, proving things true for the other by reflections in differences, chosen for each in how to move amongst the folly of their land. These two humans had been the closest companions in that way, no matter the distance of time, no matter when either became aware.
“Honey. Take care of yourself.” Is what Eloene told Mae with all she’d ever chosen to offer a helper. She’d given a warmest hug.
Home was a nook through a trail made roughly. It saw that hand-built, patch-work driftwood paneled, latched passage proving entrance to the cave Mae made home, lit by the fading light of sun splaying through highest gradients of orange and the treetops. It was earthen and rough, but warm and dark how they’d liked it. Nothing more natural would be felt than the way Mae chose to accumulate from travels and stow those most precious keepings into their adult years. There was a single chamber inside.
Mae left their coat on. It would take some time to warm and they’d not had a pair of resting britches to switch into for supper. The single chamber entryway accumulated to bestow sight upon most of the dwelling once lit by flame to torch. Family had been a thought of dream for who they were and how they came into the world.
Crushing folac would be their choice for meal preparation. They were a simple human at the task of sustenance and without surrounding presence to provide would relent them towards shameful private becoming of laziest embarrassment known only to their closest in full. There were few who’d seen the completeness of their secret ways.
Broken coals would flicker to flame. The pot boiled. Mae’s folac was porridged.
Spoken whispers of the townsfolk were on mind. Something dark in the woods was looming through the tree lines. A specter of darkness from the outside world felt the tale to Mae but all would think it raiders from some place unknown or a monster of the deep.
They all knew the black of fateful understanding seen around would take Hometree first somehow. They sought not to act out of a cowardice to face the parts of themselves gone wrong. The darkness they saw was true. It was a part of them too.
Homelander’s had been isolated so long and felt it right to their sensibilities. They found their tribe to be unique and alone in ways of rightness through how the wind would whisper to their dreams by the rattling and breaking of darkwood branches.
Dreams tonight were something he looked forward to. Mae was a diver into places unknown within themself which would show of how they might feel as another, with another. Their meal had been had.
She laid down in her coziest place and brought the covers to bear over breast and heart. Something in Mae would remember their bed as home the most—time spent here at night was holy. Connection to soul was known as real by dream. For some greatest time it was not that way, their visions were long hidden by chemical enjoyments utilized into their suppression. When without—what they saw hurt too much. Everything was too bright with horror of themself but mostly others.
One day it would be known right to fight through, to carve space for self alone, to make for what might be necessary to carry on in rightness. Mae would choose to rest in some wholeness of intention and mind alike by relenting the habits which tore her from home’s greatest gifts. Dreams would be remembered. She’d begun keeping a journal.
It wasn’t easy but lit her path. Within were signs no one would know but her. They were unique and bespoke, both for and by her subconscious; a providing divine to see her pointed straight by all its makings therein. They would not understand—none would at that task, but it would point their path the same to try.
This voice would prove the one. Their self had come undone. Some path to play would shine the way. Its name was Fae and she would stay.
They awoke in the morning to find themself strangely absent of memory.
Oliver was hoarsely chiding his horse. He’d been late for something but saw Mae coming and decided it plausible to earn energy from her reserves by force of insult. He was about the game always and it seemed to make him feel right inside.
“Why do you look like a boy—but not? What are you?”
Slivers into her finger were things of the past. Something about the woods had taken Mae in the nights to become more with what they were around. They’d not be of fret to hold ground against a blatant ignorant.
“Whore yourself by mind all you like, Oliver.”
She’d leave it at that and knew it would stick some place inside to be pondered for time, or not and simply damage. Whatever the consequence it seemed most correct to bestow for the truthful reaction known which it would bear in brunt of axe to rotted tree. Her vicious jabs of wit were acts of mercy.
Mae was seeing to some purpose found from one arisen and uncovered vision of remembrance within dreams passed the night before. They’d skipped work for how it would bleed them of power, for that day at least.
One more delaying of Elroth’s furious and lamenting disgust of her presence in community prevented from dropping its hammer of delusional smithing would prove Mae’s joy.
That man imagined himself the same as Oliver, and both would seek to treat Mae as something made wrong within Hearthwood. They were callous and incorrect about all assumptions because they’d never taken the chance to know her while she’d still it as an offer. They’d been projectors worst for these elves of humankind gone left unseen.
Hometree had been Mae’s bonded mate in depths of Hearthwood Forest. They knew it as mother and father, sister and brother, son and daughter, along with those means by which they might release their angsty ways for how people saw them. Something felt witnessed there in Mae.
It made everything better to make way into that grove. She’d let anxiety pour out each time—containments of that held would fade. Mae would find again who and why she was. Hearthwood was more theirs than anyone’s because she had less of all than each other. It was balance Mae would’ve struck more evenly by choice and pined them most deeply to share with a companion in some way. The sight, smell, and womb of her home and heart’s truest hearth’s energetic sheathe felt slipped into like a finger-fitting mitten, like a warm bath, like a newfound trail.
Io was the soul of the tree. Some Goddess they were. Mae saw themself and would return always with knowledge for sharing with others or to cherish their own. Io provided and Mae was most apt of the Hearthlanders to receive for how they suffered.
Pain molded people. Resilience grafted heart. Courage made the warrior.
Kneeling before its cravenly betrayed splendor had been a continued gift of self they found most completely appealing. They’d not indulge adornments made or ritual spaces seen fit to exploit built within nature’s grace. Mae came here each day. Only darkest happenings of fate had drawn them from spending time by Io.
“Today my child. In haste.”
Wind’s words were rare. Mae knew them true. She’d seen the signs. He felt a presence in the dark. They would take the advice from the great elder of their lifetime—something in Mae knowing it would be the other way around in some time, in some way, in some space.
Context was borne from all which came before. Everything passed would be made concrete within Mae here to hear with earnestness at last. Seeing reflection of failure in others so long by all Hometree’s spirit had whispered would prove Mae to finally know its great tellings of past coefficient with some harmony to fate.
“You must go,” Io had once whispered.
“You must make your own home of the world.”
Leaving was of tears. Mae knew they would seek nothing harder than to return. They’d not wish to leave this giant in a place struck by lightning in that meadow made Hearthwood. Those giants of malice which saw themselves nobles that tore from its bounty by thought of their own respect while wailing it all the same at each other’s detriment, unknowing they had it wrong, unseeing the truth, unbelieving what they all knew in their own home of tree.
It was each other Io wanted the Hearthlanders to treat best. That was where they failed each other worst. Mae was where they’d let them down the most. His leaving would prove them all to know. She wouldn’t stop there. Hometree would be with them every step. Their spirit within was a part inside both. Mae could never lose connection with who they were with and from whence they’d come. They wouldn’t ever forget Io.
Gratitude for Hometree’s grove was pounding their heart as they’d cut back towards Hearthwood for the very last time while it was alive. Her township would never be the same. The darkness coming would take them. His absence would save him. The way Mae would walk with Io in voice of spirit through some unique visage of light a boon despite its lack of propriety.
Mae would be discovering a lifetime’s truest home very soon. They would make change for what was right by those means which she’d always felt the call from pits of dreamful gaze. They’d be going on the road.
Thoughts were swirling feelings in Mae as they made their way home in haste, as spoken, digesting what they chose to understand as their mother on high. Io themself was one with something. The tree’s spirit was of that physicality it spoke through itself. Suffering at what had been done to its roots by these people so seeking to maim and call their ways of peace had damaged the vestige of some spirit in the land shared with all of Rochar.
Their cave was strange to feel. That was where it was first realized. Struck they would be by an urge. Mae would hold back tears. Instinct bore deep within would know of a coming in life which would mark their presence here an end. Their pouring was held back, gripped inside, forged to grit by all the trauma of their life in body, yet felt all the stronger for it. Inside the closed door had been such a moment spent of realization marking an end of that home Mae made.
They’d felt her crying then. They would come to hear them clearly last. She’d spoken well after.
“I’m going to be with you always, Mae.”
Frozen over cot with hands full of hastefully packed bags, Mae would stare afar. They’d heard and known it found—some truth of what was hidden but told by depths of dream the night before. Timing proved of divinity. They would’ve forgotten their journal.
Shaking it off, thinking it madness, feeling a choice to break or hold in some lie they chose, the ladder of hope it would graft to some rightness in their movement about the world, around which had only proven to lack of that magic felt in their heart—Mae denied that voice’s presence to succumb their thought of weakness. They’d denied a gut borne knowing of the voice’s lineage being the same as Io’s—of family. Until that softest musical tone in her whispered song of voice had spoken again.
“Mae. I need you to listen. I’m here with you now—always. We’re together. We always have been. You’re safe in this world. We will cradle you always. My name is Fae and I’m here to help.”
Pathways through township proper were numerous and bountiful of sights to growth and warmth. Mae would seek to stay at home in the night. She would feel left out to not have one with another as did most everyone else. The sounds of laughter would sting. Their favorite people’s homes would be avoided most plainly always in these times for fear of sight at who they’d chosen to allow in that space.
Tonight was different. With pack on back and purpose found the sights would prove to please. Mae felt right to leave and do it how they were. They’d not be talking to a soul—not one. Even Eloene would be left out—especially her. They knew she would understand in the end.
Placing a package on her doorstep was for Mae. Its contents would prove to Eloene at last who she’d seen in them throughout. They would know each other again through time and the absence forthcoming would be felt as right by both for how it ended. Their last hug had been of greatest peace. Eloene would no doubt feel in wholeness with that fact in retrospect—some perfect stanza for a beautiful paragraph of a tome which had been their friendship had been writ. It felt perfect.
Everyone else would get a zeroed-out glimpse of where that one they thought a girl confused had gone. They would face the darkness in woods of their own without them at all. Mae would prove themself of something more to the land of Rochar and its strangest beings of make which they had studied in readings by latest nights.
Their dreams showed them—darkest places of torchlit corridor, men of meanness unwitnessed in Hearthwood, destruction and death they’d not understood, people in need of help, and some woman Mae would hope to know. It all made him curious. The way their path felt carved by fate and Io was hopeful, speaking of hardening to faith they’d sought through life but failed to grasp despite best effort. Adventure was coming and that was all Mae ever wanted.
Crossing boundary out of Hearthwood’s county line, some place of within remained behind, the trees were of sway and breeze beyond that planned—they’d rejected thought for undoing their pack to swap the heavier coat into play. Sweat would do the trick.
Lack of light would not have them fail to chase their heart. Fear was a joke once understood of those powers each person held. Mae found it themself at last to believe most blatantly. Proof would be had for them to grasp in time—on their journey ahead. Thinking to burn a torch but wishing some way they not deface a forest’s gifts decaying into soil had been all Mae was consumed with when it lit. The spark of mote—some fairy’s light had brightened the way.
They’d not recognized Fae until she’d spoken again, this time her voice apart from body and small but vicious.
“Mae! Where are we going! What’s up first?”
Smiles shared would be unknown but to the smallest fae-form human ever gracing a continent of Rochar. She saw Mae’s and gleamed her own. Fae’s light would only grow that little bit brighter.
Mae’s heart grew a little bit lighter.
