The Trickster

The Trickster's leather slippers pattered blithely throughout the Deer King's hall.

Tall trees rose on both sides to make up the walls with their bulky, rough, wide trunks, and bent forward in an embrace of branches to form a green patchwork of a ceiling. Gooseberries and foxgloves and honeysuckles slithered up and clung to their bark, permeating the air with their heady, sweet fragrance. The Trickster extended one hand with too long, too sharp nails - one flex and capricious whim away from turning into claws that could rent through flesh - and racked them along the flowers. Their intoxicating aroma embraced her like a fine silk cloak, coated the back of her throat like syrupy wine. Pollen rained down upon the earthy floor among fallen petals.

Many years ago there had been a castle similar to this. Smaller, yes, but no less impressive. The Deer King built it by sprouting mighty trees out of the earth and bending their boughs to his will, securing its foundations with deep-running roots and decorating its walls, both inside and out, with the most vibrant and redolent of wildflowers. That castle had stood closer to human settlements. A dare, an invitation for them to come and knock on the hall's door and lose themselves in the revelry within. To dance till the sole of their shoes wore off and their feet bled, to drink till they forgot their names and fell under the tables, and to gorge themselves on food the likes they've never seen.

The Trickster kept her gaze ahead, steadfastly pinned on the Deer King like a predator's eyes locked on their prey. 

The King himself stood on his throne woven of intertwining thick roots and branches, intricate yet sturdy in its design. Bees and butterflies buzzed, needling through the holes peeping out of the braiding. The throne was of birch wood, startling in its whiteness and a stark, intentional contrast to the fae, lest the King was eclipsed by its majesty. It was not a becoming thing of a monarch.

As still as he stood, were the throne made of the same bark as his horns he would have looked part of it, an impassive face carved in wood.

"Oh deer," she intoned as if it was an endearment, forgoing kneeling or any other royal greeting. They did not need to play these sort of games - it quite frankly bore the Trickster. She'd toed the line of their intimacy from the day they stumbled upon each other. "Do I have a story."

The Deer King smiled wistfully. All his expressions were tinged with melancholy by virtue of his doleful doe eyes. He tilted his head and his enormous, fluffy brown ears quivered ever so slightly, preparing to hear whatever tale there was to recount. The Trickster let the silence drag on like the shadows elongating at sunset, rendering the woods such a mysterious place, fraught with tension - for the humans, at least. "Tell me, my mischievous friend. What trouble did you yet cause?" It was the prompt she was waiting for. 

The Trickster grabbed a gossamer tablecloth from the nearest bench and wrapped it around her head as you would a cloak, her fox ears flattening under the fabric. She would have looked human, where it not for the amber, slit-pupil eyes peering out from the shadows of the hood.

"I met a human boy." A sunny visage was conjured to her mind's eye. A flop of dark brown hair, eyes like hazelnuts and a wide smile that reached them, lending them such a warm gleam. "I pretended I was weary and dreary and he offered me water and food and talked my ears off." At that she snatched the cloth off to reveal said twitching ears. "Gawain Alistair." She repeated the name of the boy, tasting the syllables as if they were nectar.

Gawain Alistair. Oh, how easily humans shared their names. Giving them away so carelessly. What did they care? Their names held no power. Weightless words to be stolen by the wind, empty sounds to be drowned in the sea. The only power they had behind them was symbolic, of their own design. That of which they convinced themselves, by setting rules and quietly agreeing to abide by them. They took it so seriously, it had breathed meaning and gravity into the names. Hard to gain, easy to lose with one's fall from grace. But perhaps there was power to be had in disgrace too.

"He called himself a bard knight or knight bard or something to that end." The boy surely was a knight, that much was clear, by the red and gold tunic and armor he wore. She let the cloth pool on the floor in a heap of green gauze as she waved her hand carelessly. The cloth disappeared in the blink of an eye, retrieved by unseen, unheard servants. "I promised I'd repay him, but he said I needn't." Ah, the generosity of some humans. But the fair folk always required a trade. "Regardless, I will."

The Deer King's black, round eyes watched her intently. Many humans have called that unblinking, intense stare of his unnerving, but the Trickster found it soothing. "How?"

A dangerous smirk curled her lips, making her look every inch the fox she was. "By giving him something worthy of a ballad."