...Orin's Swallow.

[dreamwitch]

So, um...
It's longer than I usually do these days. Ha. It's been years. And... it's not really anything. I mean, it's just a story, I write fanfic this long all the time, but... still. It sort of has a plot. It's sort of Sleeping Beauty, but not really. *sigh* As usual, I want to get it as far away from me as possible so I'm not tempted to actually work on it more :>



ORIN'S SWALLOW.


Once there was a princess born in the Isle of Briar, and she was anything but ordinary. She was beauty.

Her father loved her and told her so when he let her sit on his knee when she was a little girl. He'd smiled at her and petted her fly-away hair, and he told her that she was a princess and that meant she was better and brighter and more wonderful than any other girl in the land.

He was an important man, her father. He was the most important man anyone knew, but he was hers to play with. His shoulders were hers to ride on, his wild curly hair was hers to tangle her little fingers in, and his mouth was hers to stretch into an indulgent smile.

"You're the most beautiful princess in the island," he told her solemnly, and she believed him because he was always right. "I'm never letting you go, do you understand?" he whispered in her ear just as she fell asleep. But the little girl was too sleepy to ask why she'd ever be in danger of going anywhere, so she didn't think about that at all.

It was true, what her father said; or perhaps, as true as he could make it.

The girl was indeed so beautiful, the wild roses that grew all around her father's castle whispered in jealousy. Her mouth was plump as strawberries, and her eyes glittered in the sunlight, darker and more mysterious than deepest green of the forests which spread across most of the land. There was a way she could look at you that would steal your breath, and a smile she kept well hidden, one that could make you fall in love. It was both sweet and knowing, dancing with mischief and shimmering with barely contained affection. Her skin was vanilla-smooth and blushed daintily rose.

She changed clothes with her best friend in the warmer months, putting on a simple girl's dress and running out to the fields outside the walls, darting from one wildflower to the next. She'd come home smelling of violets and moss and her wooden shoes would be splattered with mud, but her face would be still and her mouth now ordinary somehow; tranquil with contentment, she was just a girl, then.

Even so, she was a princess.

There was something melancholy and soft about her voice, as if there were flowers in the attic she'd never been allowed to see, and all she could do was dream about those flowers. All she could do, even having everything in the world her heart desired, was dream about all the things that remained locked away just as she was, just beyond her reach. All the distant, unimaginable treasures that hid themselves behind closed doors and underneath dusty cobwebs and beyond the far off waves at the horizon.

When she made her way to the attic in her high-heeled shoes, making small, precise ladylike noises on her way up the stairs, she thought she was daring to live, and that was what mattered. It was dark and damp and she was feeling somehow more lost than ever, but that was unimportant. Even here, in the familiar confines of her home, there were secrets, and she was determined to know them all.

The only secrets she knew were those of her lady's maid, but Fiona's secrets were like dandelion seeds, carried by the wind. Still, she was grateful. When she'd go out, dressed in the girl's best Sunday finery, she'd notice Nick smiling at her sweetly before he saw she wasn't Fiona after all. Nick was tall and strong and broad, and the princess thought he could lift her up and carry her away without a second thought if he wanted. There was something she thought she saw in his eyes, perhaps. Something distant and secret, like flowers in the attic.

"I love him," Fiona would giggle, pressing a single white rose to her breast. "He sure knows how to make a girl's dreams come true." Fiona never elaborated on those kinds of statements, and her mistress found she didn't really want to know.

The princess chewed on a strand of fine strawberry-blond hair, her eyelashes lowered so as to keep her own secrets safe. She needed to find more, she thought. She needed to know something that would be hers alone, and she didn't have much time.

Her father frowned at her, parading young man after young man in front of her as if they were prize colts, swaying and whinnying for her pleasure. Their eyes were glassy and dull, and none of them looked her in the eye. Eventually, she learned to look away first, feeling a prickle of something she couldn't name. Perhaps, she thought, this could be the thing she wasn't supposed to feel at all. Maybe it was loneliness.

The day of her sixteenth birthday, she resolved to do something on her own. Something that would make her happy even while she was alone.

The air in the attic was stifling and hot, and no flowers would have survived even if they'd been there at all. The only thing the princess noticed was the wide, narrow window straight ahead of her, thrown wide open. There were faint, melodious chirps coming from right below it, and as she came closer, she could peer down over the edge and finally see the nest. The mother swallow was gone, and there were five tiny, fluffy chicks with huge pink beaks wide open, making those sweet squeaking noises.

Suddenly, the princess looked down, realized she was several stories high, and felt quite dizzy. She stumbled backwards, fumbling in her haste and unexpectedly finding herself seated on a low chair, facing a strange, dusty wooden contraption she'd never seen before in her life. Her head was still spinning and so was a large, spoked wheel. Her hands shook for no reason she could see. All she'd seen down below had been an endless sheet of grass.

She reached out blindly to steady herself and gasped. Something sharp had prickled her skin; something invisible and hard to investigate because she was feeling increasingly more ill. Taking a single, shuddering breath of fresh air, she crumpled to the dusty floor, the thin circlet of her crown rolling off her fair head to land in a secret corner beneath a cobweb.

The princess dreamt a long, strange dream after that. When she woke a long, long time later, she never knew if it was real or not, and besides, soon enough she'd forgotten it completely. By that time, the world was a different place indeed. Nothing at all was familiar and instead of a few corners, the whole world was suddenly bursting at the seams with mysteries. No one was around to remember her or tell her where to stay, and the castle itself all but crumbled into ruins as soon as she'd passed the old wall. She was free, then, her head light and unfettered with gold circlets or even memories of who she'd once been.

The one especially odd thing had been a vaguely familiar boy waiting for her when she'd stumbled down the stairs to her parents' Hall, a boy with strange, distant eyes of a vivid blue who spoke a foreign tongue she couldn't begin to understand and carried a long, fearsome sword at his hip. He gave her a single, mysterious glance and asked her a single question.

"Who are you?" he might've said, but she could never be sure.

The princess blinked her beautiful dark eyes at him, at a loss for words. The boy looked away, as if she was no longer beautiful enough to notice. And perhaps, indeed, she wasn't.

But that is a different girl, and a different story.

The old princess had a dream, and in the dream she had wings.

Indeed, she was a swallow. Her sisters and brothers were close by her side, and she felt a curious burst of sheer joy. The princess had been alone but for her lady's maid all her life, and having such a wealth of siblings was almost more than she could bear of happiness. She'd only had a few moments to acclimate herself to her newfound happiness before she fell.

The baby bird fell quickly and in a straight line towards the grass, though she didn't know enough to feel fear, only exhilaration. She had never gone anywhere that fast.

Before she knew it, she'd landed. It took her a few blinks of barely-open eyes to realize she wasn't on the ground but rather cradled in the wide, gentle hands of the Boy. It took a few seconds to remember him, but finally she could see his eyes-- a dark, smoldering blue like the last glimpse of sky before nightfall. Her little bird's heart beat frantically in her chest, and she hoped he'd hold her until she was well enough to fly, though she knew he wasn't hers, and it was only foolish wishing.

The boy held her up to his face, whispering at her. She couldn't quite understand what he said anymore, but his voice was low and intimate, and she thought he must be telling her of his dreams. He must want to go on great adventures, explore distant lands and conquer untold monsters to prove himself worthy and brave. He must be about to go on a distant sea-journey where he'd need the fast wings of a swallow to help navigate. He must be about to sneak off from his family's poor hut near the wall and go to apprentice himself to a great magician, someone who would really use a smart winged familiar. A dozen and more ideas crowded in together all at once, and she waited, unable to move if she'd wanted to.

"Nick," she sang with her small, thin voice, and his eyes opened wide.

"Who are you?" he whispered, as if he really saw her. As if he understood.

"I am no one," she sang happily at him. "I am yours."

The boy's lips twitched into a smile, and he started walking, looking at her all the while. She wasn't a girl and she wasn't beautiful and she wasn't his Fiona, but he was looking at her all the same. He looked as if he believed her.

"I'd never had a bird all to myself before, I reckon," he said, almost to himself. He still started when the bird-princess replied to him, singing in his ear. Though naturally, he was more aware of the bird than the princess bits.

"I've never had a boy all to myself before either," she told him, thinking that maybe this was a secret.

"Are you a magic bird?" he said finally, having sat down by some reeds near a stream beyond the wall. He looked thoughtful and strong and perfect, and the sun was setting. "Are you one of those tricky creatures from the tales, the ones with the gown of feathers that I ought to steal? Though you're a chicklet yet, I dunno what I'd do with a little girl like that, though...." He smirked. "I always wanted a little sister, I suppose."

The princess gave it some thought. She didn't know, of course. "I'm only what I am," she sang sweetly. "I am what gods above made me and I cannot say what secrets bind me. Do you want me as I am, Nick?"

The boy's eyes got wider yet. "How d'ya know my name, little swallow? Do you have one of your own, then?"

"You can give me one if you like," she sang, because she didn't think it was proper for a bird to have the name of a princess.

"Are you a magic bird, though? Seeing as how you can talk and all." Nick smiled at her, and the princess thought she'd never smiled so sweetly herself in all her life. It was impossible, because this was the most brilliant smile it was humanly possible to have.

"I don't know," she tweeted, shivering in his hand. "Will you rescue me?" she added timidly, as an afterthought. "I think maybe I wasn't always a swallow, but I'm forgetting. Will you tell me who I am?"

There was a long silence where Nick looked fixedly at the setting sun, lowering his open palms to rest on his knees gently. The former princess hopped slightly from one hand to the other, chirping happily all the while.

"I have a twin brother," he said finally, his pupils slowly dilating until his eyes were nearly black with some untold emotion. "He can probably help you if he wanted. Wouldn't count on it, though. Haven't seen 'im in five summers, too. Who knows what's happened since then? I've heard some awful things from back home lately. People whispering that he's not right in the head since birth, you know how it is. Some even say he'd been possessed by the spirit of an evil sorcerer and cannot die." Nick laughed, albeit harshly. "No magic in our family, so they just invented a scapegoat out of thin air, I suppose.... Can't believe I'm telling all this to a swallow. Must be going crackers as well, eh?"

"It's all right," she sang without thinking. "I love you anyway, my Nick."

Nick laughed rather loudly at that. "You can't love me, silly. You're a bird, aren't you? Some things are just plain impossible."

"Do you really think you know what's possible?"

"Well...." He smiled a little secret smile, nodding briskly. "What do I have to lose? My brother can't get away with it forever, can he? I can't hide here my whole life, I'd guess. What do you say? Want to see the distant east, little swallow?"

She tweeted. It didn't matter if he never did give her a name, really, did it? She might be forgetting the one she'd had, but then, she'd always had nearly ten or so. She wasn't very attached to any one in particular. She was attached to Nick though, and grew ever more so with each passing day they spent in each other's company.

Soon enough, she could fly next to the boat as they sailed east, and sleep on a low branch above his head as he slept in the dark wood once they'd reached the kingdom of Pell, frowning as he dreamt. The princess who was a swallow forgot more and more of who she was and where they were going every day, but she remembered Nick. When he cried out, calling for his lady love in his sleep, she'd fly down to perch on his shoulder, ruffling a gentle wing against his cheek. He'd never wake, but sometimes he'd sigh as if he knew she was there; neither bird nor princess, but there all the same.

He'd given her her own name, she thought, but she couldn't remember it all the time. Mostly, he got into the habit of calling her Fiona on a slip of the tongue, and a part of her felt a twinge of jealousy, but the name did fit. He must miss Fiona terribly, she thought, but I'm the one who's flying at his side. She was his fair Fiona now.

By the time they reached his brother's kingdom, Fiona could fly faster and higher than she had even a week before. It was easy to see the far-off mountains and the smudge that she thought looked just like the castle Nick described. It was of dark stone that blended into the face of the mountain itself, but the many towers were narrow and pointed, and the light didn't reflect off it like it did off the snow that accumulated on the peaks behind it. They were almost there, she knew, but for some reason her feeling of wrongness and hollowness only grew as they approached. Something was ending, it seemed, and there was nothing she could do to slow it down.

"Stay on my shoulder," he called, hardly raising his voice because Fiona always heard him. "Don't talk to me when he's around. You're a pretty pet swallow, do you understand? That's all you are until I say otherwise."

Fiona gave a sad little chirp, but said nothing, only nestled her small beak into his shoulder gently. Nick sighed and continued on, though slower than before. He tried to hide it, but she knew he was afraid, and she also knew neither of them could stop now.

Everything seemed slower here, as if they were walking through a thick fog, though the mountain air was crisp and there was little enough water besides the tiny streams and shallow pools here and there. Nature appeared strangely still, almost as if time itself was holding its breath, waiting for something.

The boy appeared in their path long before they reached the castle. They'd stopped in the small valley before the final ascent up the mountain path. There were numerous tall, leafy trees lining the valley in the foothills, and some small bushes with enough edible berries to last them several days. Fiona didn't leave Nick's shoulder to explore anymore, and used this time to rest.

It was almost nightfall when the boy simply appeared, sitting cross-legged in front of Nick as he leaned against their chosen tree for the night, drifting in and out of sleep.

"Why, hello brother," the boy said in a lilting, melodious tone. He was smirking cruelly, but his eyes were untroubled, almost serene. "What an unexpected surprise this is. We'd thought you were gone for good, did you know? Mother simply wasted away these past years, missing you. Barely a shadow of a woman, now. Such a pity."

Nick gasped, his hand going to his side as if to clutch the hilt of his sword, but of course there was nothing there but a pouch full of dry, crumbling cheese and the remains of equally dry fruit. They'd had no extra money to acquire any weapons, and Nick had been self-confident enough to insist they didn't need them.

Fiona's delicate wings fluttered, and she almost took off to the sky. This boy was nothing like his brother though they looked almost exactly alike in a way, and his bright, glassy eyes made her need for immediate flight almost painfully intense. She chirped mournfully, then quieted.

The boy's attention was now fully upon her. He said nothing, only looked at her until she felt as if she would disappear into dewy mist on the spot. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to smile.

"And what's this?" he said sleepily, cocking his head to the side. His smile was as sharp as his eyes, and much less friendly. "Have you brought me a present, dear Nico?"

"She's not yours," Nick growled, quickly abandoning any pretense at reasonableness or civility. "She'll never be yours-- Orin."

The princeling's eyes narrowed at the sudden naming, and the air around them got even more motionless and still than it had been already.

"Oh my, right back where we started, then. Shall I get to the point?" Orin smiled even more broadly, his silky ink-black hair rustling innocently in the breeze. Fiona felt frozen in place. He licked his lips, looking at her instead of Nick. It felt as if he knew everything she was or had ever been, and he was pleased. Fiona was certain this pleasure had nothing of aesthetic appreciation in it, however.

"Can't very well stop you now, can I?"

"You brought this on yourself, Nico. If only you'd stayed away like we agreed.... Well, too late for all that. I assume you think you have something to bargain with, am I right? Perhaps your little-- pet there, hmm?"

Nick gasped.

"Oh yes, did you think you could hide her from me? Me?" He chuckled mirthlessly. "Don't make me laugh, Nico. It's painful enough looking at your foul face as it is without having to put up with your boring little fictions."

"I've changed my mind," Nick said suddenly, getting up. "I don't need your kind of-- help. You'll not see me again, Brother."

"Oh no," Orin laughed. Fiona was starting to hate that sound. "Too late in the game for that, I'm afraid. Much too late."

"Spare me, Orin. You sound like a second-rate villain. Is this what you've been reduced to?"

The glare finally emerged, icy-blue and sharper than daggers. "You have no idea. None. You cannot know what it's been like, living here, virtually alone, with a raving madwoman for a mother and two dozen remaining servants who think I'm a demon fresh from the fifth circle of hell!"

Nick took a single, lurching step toward him. "Don't you speak of her that way or I'll--"

"Or you'll what?" he sneered. "You got out, Nico," Orin hissed, voice deceptively soft once more. "You were out there in the bloody sunshine with the bright blue thrice-cursed skies while I've been rotting here as the High Prince of fucking nothing at all!"

Orin snarled, face turning dark and ugly in a heartbeat. Nick didn't blink, having apparently expected this, but Fiona gave a tiny squeak and took off, ending up on as high of a branch as possible while remaining directly in Nick's line of vision.

"You wanted this," Nick said quietly. "Isn't that what you told me? This was going to be the beginning, wasn't it? What of your huge empire, the naked bloody harem girls, the fawning kings and queens licking at your feet? What of glorious battles and demons at your beck and call, hmmm?"

"You never knew what I wanted! None of you did! None of you had any earthly idea, brother!" Orin shouted, and Fiona flew up several more branches. "Now look what you did," he whispered softly. "You made me frighten your pet swallow, hmmm? Don't you feel ashamed, little Nico?"

Nick's eyes were darker and sharper than Fiona had ever seen them. She flew down and leaned slightly against his neck, but it brought her no comfort. "We're twin-born, brother. Equal in mind, body and spirit, or have you forgotten?"

Orin barked something that might have been a laugh. "You've gotten much better at lying to my face, little brother. I haven't been your so-called equal since we were barely a month old, or have -you- forgotten?"

Nick said nothing, looking away and letting the silence grow more and more taut between them.

"Tell me the truth," the prince said silkily after a while. "If you answer correctly, I will let you both go. If you're wrong, you're both mine forever. Fair is fair, is it not? And I grow tired of my solitude. By the by, did you know that our people would rather die of fear than serve me in honest battle? Cowards! All of them!"

"Now see here--" Nick started heatedly, but Orin merely waved a careless hand in his direction.

"How can I trust you?" Fiona sang, breaking her promise.

Orin's eyes glinted brighter than ever, and he looked away from them for the first time, staring up the mountain in the direction in which she'd seen the castle. "How can you trust anyone at all, little bird? Tell me that and I will thank you." He laughed one of his empty, ringing laughs. "But no matter. What I really meant to ask you was a simpler thing. Only this: are you awake or are you asleep? Tell me this and I'll set you both free, because I'm a fair man, you see. A fair man indeed, for a demon." He smirked at his own joke.

"We are already free," Fiona said, not even having to think about it. It was almost like someone else was speaking through her, though she knew that was a silly fantasy. "We've always been free, and so have you been if you'd allow yourself to be."

"Your bird speaks prettily, Nico. You've trained her well. Alas, women are deceitful and cruel." Orin spat on the ground, his mouth twisting. "Men are no better, but at least they rarely bother putting their filth in pretty packages, eh?" The prince's delicate, long-fingered hands began to glow with a pale blue light, and Nick took an instinctive, lurching step backward. "Scared, little brother? You should be! I could kill you with a thought, did you know that? A glance! I'd barely have to waste any effort on you two! Did you think the likes of you were a threat to me? Did you?!"

"I am awake and I'm asleep sometimes," Fiona chirped calmly. "So are you. Aren't all living things this way? Sometimes we dream, and sometimes we see truly, and we're cursed to never quite know the difference afterwards."

Orin sputtered shortly, but he recovered quickly enough. "A riddle for a riddle, eh? I see your game, then. Want to play a game with me, bird-girl? Is that it?" There was a new, almost calculating light in his eyes all of a sudden. "Not that it'll be a challenge, but I'll admit to being bored."

"Calm down, Orin," Nick said softly. "She's no threat. You said it yourself. We can talk about all this later, all right? Just... calm down. This isn't a good time, I'm thinking."

"A good time?!" Orin shouted. "It'll never be a good time! It has never -been- a good time! I'm-- I'm--" His mouth opened, but no words escaped, and the once-frightening prince looked quite a bit like a fish out of water. "You! This is your fault! All of it! If you hadn't left I'd still--" He clamped his mouth shut and staggered backwards, looking horrified.

"You told me to go yourself, Orin." Nick sighed. "Remember? You broke our oath yourself. You'd let the magic taint you. There was nothing any of us could do."

"Some brother you are!" Orin hissed viciously, finally ignoring Fiona altogether. He held his arms tightly around himself, as if he thought a wound on his chest would open if he let go. "Just as things get a little dicey, off you go, eh? Goodbye and good riddance!" Orin wiggled his slim fingers in a manic parody of a wave, soon dissolving in a fit of manic giggles and coughing. "Couldn't wait to get off this blasted devil's mountain, could you?!"

Nick groaned. "You were always like this, you know. Blowing everything out of proportion. You're right. I don't know what I was thinking, coming back." He closed his eyes for several moments and Fiona cheeped with some concern in his ear. Orin looked torn between a number of opposing impulses for now.

"He's here for me," Fiona put in abruptly, unable to stand the insane tension one more second. "I have a problem you might be of help with, your Highness." Might as well be polite, she thought, though the impulse didn't last long.

"She's right, we just wanted--"

"Oh, I know what you want, all right," Orin said, jeering. "It's what they always want. You want my power and you want the throne. And you know what? You can have it! You can have your precious throne, but she's mine. She has to be mine willingly, and she has to be mine indefinitely. What do you say? I'll give you a day to decide," he said.

Before either of them could react, Orin had disappeared as instantaneously as he'd come.

There was a short, charged silence, and then Nick sighed, knocking his head back against the tree. "Well, that went right splendidly."

"It could've been worse," Fiona offered.

"What, you mean he could've tried to kill us without taunting and ranting and raving first?"

Fiona gave it some thought. "I think he's just lonely," she chirped softly.

Nick laughed. "You're just a soft-hearted lass, aren'tcha?"

She flew off his shoulder to land on the nearest branch, slightly stung. "He's your twin brother, isn't he?"

"He's a power-obsessed asshole," Nick said flatly.

Fiona sang sadly, circling above his head, rising higher and higher before settling down for the night in a large abandoned nest.

He loves him, she thought fuzzily, comfortable and relaxed after finding a surprising number of juicy insects hovering around all the slightly unusual plants and flowers in their valley. He loves him, and he loves -her-. He doesn't love me.

They hadn't really talked about it all day. Nick kept trying to get a view of his castle, but the heavy foliage obscured any easy glimpse of home. She could tell that was why he'd really come, left his sweetheart and his whole cozily familiar life to help her. This is where he'd always wanted to be. He must've been as homesick as she was.

The next night, her decision was made without her even having realized it.

"I'll go with him, I--"

"No!" Nick cried, refusing to let her finish. "You can't, you don't know what he-- you don't know what he really wants. You don't know what he's like! Fiona, please! Think about this! You can't want that-- that--"

"I don't need to know," she sang quietly. "I can see his eyes, and I know what I want."

For some reason, Orin looked away, his face expressionless. He looked suddenly almost painfully beautiful, and Fiona's heart raced in a way it hadn't before, not even for Nick. She was rather panicked by now, but it didn't matter. She'd made her choice and cast her lot, and there was nowhere she could go but onwards.

Nick looked torn, his eyes pleading with her to give him a way out, some solution that even he didn't believe existed.

"I love her," he said finally. "You understand, don't you? I'll go back one day, I will. It's just not the same, even though you-- I do care about you, you know that don't you? I just can't lie to you, lass. It's her. It's always been her."

Fiona couldn't see well enough in the dark to tell if there were tears in his eyes as there were in his voice, but that wasn't important anymore. "Go," she sang as sweetly as she knew how. "Be happy, Nicolas." Now there was definitely a sound which was unmistakably a sob, but Nick did turn.

Orin's eyes burned into her, suddenly, hotter than flying into the sun.

"I know you can't fix this, but promise me," Fiona chirped, digging her feet where she'd landed on Orin's finger. Nick had finally turned around and began the long trek up the mountain side to the castle of his forefathers. He never looked back. "Promise me you'll be there when I wake."

It hurt her to say it, but there it was. She couldn't help the stab of panic she felt at the thought of all this being nothing but a dream.

"I'll be there," Orin said softly. "I won't promise you any more than that. I'll be there when you wake, princess."

Fiona didn't reply for a long time. "Do you think I died? I've been thinking.... It's possible, isn't it? I could've died that day, and my soul dropped into a swallow to fly away. There are stories, I think...."

Orin's eyes pierced her, with their blue so unlike his brother's, with their heat and their many secrets. "You're alive," he said simply. "You're a swallow and swallows always return in the spring. Isn't that the story?" And then he just started walking away from the mountain without saying where or looking back, heading towards the horizon.

Fiona kept singing until dark, and she still sang even as he said the spell to turn her human for the first time that nightfall. She was afraid, but she trusted him not to hurt her for reasons she couldn't have described. Maybe it was the way his eyes were lost and gentle when she found him alone and off-guard for a moment. Maybe it was the way he cried silently at night, his whole body shaking but no sound escaping. Perhaps she was becoming more bird than girl.

Whatever the case, at night, she looked nothing like her either self, she knew that. She was neither bird nor woman, now. She was a shadow of Orin.

The first time he'd turned her, his eyes had been wide and defenseless, and his breath caught. The prince who'd always distrusted everyone, even his twin brother, couldn't bring himself to do so now, and for a long minute, Fiona had been at a complete loss as to why. Slowly, her hands had traveled across her chest, down her sides and between her legs, until she'd gasped in shock.

Orin said nothing, but his wide, crimson mouth parted softly and he reached across the small space between them, cradling the boy's cheek in one palm.

"Do you love me?" he'd whispered then.

"No," he whispered back, beginning to feel the first tendrils of fear.

"You will." He'd grinned, slowly, and kissed the mouth he'd made, moaning as his tongue found its counterpart.

The boy was frozen with something that wasn't fear or hatred or any other emotion he could've named. His body was his own, yes, but at the same time it was definitely -his-. The power was his, though at the same time he started to realize that it was also his own.

If he could have looked into the glassy surface of a lake, he'd have seen a slender dark-haired boy that looked like Orin and Nick's long-lost third brother. His eyes were a dark, magic-tinged indigo, and the boy didn't recognize himself at all.

It was weeks later that he stood on a lakeshore at last; perhaps months. Neither of them cared by then. They'd been wandering for so long, and they'd wander for much longer still; always together. Orin never left his side.

"I won't love you, do you understand?" Orin's soft voice sounded. It was at the back of his shoulder now, and he was whispering the words into his skin. They sunk in without a sound, making him shiver. Orin's arms had wound themselves around his middle, and Orin's chin was tucked against his shoulder. The boy still thought of himself as female, and he guessed he always would, even though Orin's proximity was sending jolts of shivery pleasure down his body, beginning to have an effect he still hadn't gotten used to.

"Please... stop...," he whispered hopelessly.

Orin laughed gently into his ear, starting to nibble gently on an earlobe. The boy shuddered, starting to forget what little of himself remained at the surface of his awareness. "You won't remember me. This would have been a dream, and that's how I want it, really. Clean and simple, just like that." Orin's fingers began to creep downwards, and the boy's eyes rolled back in his head as Orin finally reached his destination. He was no longer listening, but the other continued his soft litany. "No ugly complications. No growing old together and living to hate each other's guts. No betraying me and telling the world my deepest secrets. We'll have years and years together and you'll barely notice, my little swallow."

He kissed the back of his neck, and the boy shivered. He felt chilled and the cold sweat tickled the insides of his thighs, but his skin was burning up wherever Orin touched it. His new body showed its desperation without his active participation, and he could only shudder as Orin began to lick and suck at the skin of his neck and shoulder.

"It's better this way, you'll see," he repeated, squeezing his stiff flesh for emphasis, and he almost believed him.

"Aaah-- m-more--"

Orin obliged him, looking over his naked shoulder, studying the boy's flushed reflection in the water without either approval or disapproval. He was neither beautiful nor ugly to him. He was merely his.

He curled his own naked body tightly against its mirror, pushing only enough to tease but not enough to penetrate. The boy grunted, his hips jerking back helplessly. Orin wanted-- needed-- to thrust against him, to find his own release, but he remained still. He wanted this, sure enough, but he wanted the other to be his more. Orin rolled his hips in place firmly, claiming without any words being necessary. Even so, he said it. "Mine," he growled.

"Y-yes!" the boy cried, voice breaking up as his body shook, and the voice was male enough, but it wasn't an echo of Orin's.

"You'll need your own name, my prince," he whispered with a touch of humor, his voice almost inaudible just as the other boy was about to fall asleep in his arms after the pleasure had come and gone.

He didn't answer him, his eyes heavy with coming dreams.

"I'll name you Ororo," he spoke into the curve of his shoulder, never having turned around. "It means beauty."