beware the touch (pendulum sun | ariel/cathy, cathy/mab)

[fiachairecht]

beware the touch. under the pendulum sun - jeannette ng, cathy/mab, ariel/cathy. nights along the road to pivot. 1.1k words, rated m. for RussetFiredrake in rarefemslashexchange 2023.

Mab visited me every night during our journey to Pivot. I tracked her coming by the arc of the pendulum sun, making a game of it with myself as the light ticked away minute by minute: which owl-eyed attendant would she be tonight? Which lizard catching the fading rays of clockwork light would stand to reveal itself a queen? Which far-off howl was carried on a voice that was no more animal than human?

I was never right, but that did not stop me from greeting every creature with more care than I had previously ever used. I could see in Laon's glances that he thought I was taking his preached care for God's creatures too far, but I knew that Catherine Helstone or not, changeling or not, Arcadia was to be my home, and I would not lose Mab's protection over something like this.

I did not know then, any more than I do now, whether I slept while Mab and I were together. Certainly I did not feel haunted by any sort of lack of rest, but the quality of the time we spent, and of the memories of that time, more closely resembled a dream than anything else, except that they did not fade. She was clever, and easy to talk to, and did not demand anything I was not willing to give then. That, I told myself, I would have remembered. She was no Ariel, but she was company; she was not kind, but she was a companion.

We talked, those nights. I would say I hadn't expected that, except I was no longer sure what I expected from Mab, or from Arcadia itself — to the extent that the two could be split apart. Under her hands I could feel the shape of myself changing, never permanently: feathers blooming into life down my arm as her hand stroked over the bare skin, the tips of my ears sharpening into talons. I was reminded of Kasdaye, of the courtiers, but she let nothing stay, not even the faint sting that sometimes pierced the nights when she kissed my eyelids. My skin was always unblemished, come the morning.

I knew, though, that it could not last forever. Nothing Mab loved lasted forever, and it had taken me a shorter time than I once would have expected to understand that Mab loved me, in the way that only a creature like her could love. It came along with the acknowledgement of my own changeling state, I suppose — because I had loved, before and after Ariel had given me the truth of myself, and it seemed wrong in a way I couldn't articulate to deny her the same capability.

Whether I wanted to be loved by her, well, I didn't have a choice. But I never turned away. I never stopped looking for her, or raised a hand to her, or turned away from her. And as the pendulum sun drew the days and nights out ahead of us on the road, I counted the things I knew: that I liked being wanted, that I liked the knowledge she gave me, that I no longer would fight if she changed my body, that the abscence of dreams every night that she came to me was a gift.

It might have added up to love. I knew enough to know I was avoiding asking myself the question, much less answering.

The night before we arrived in Pivot, when the city's bronze skyline took up the entirety of the curved horizon and threatened to take my breath as well, Mab came to me wearing Ariel Davenport's face.

If she had expected me to believe my friend returned, she underestimated me, and for that reason, I think all she expected was my shock. Perhaps she even expected the slap across the face I gave her, she certainly laughed lightly enough even before my hand connected.

"Do you want her back?" Mab asked, and I didn't quite believe her curiosity was genuine — Mab wanted, more than anyone else in Arcadia, and I suspected she was unable to conceive of anyone wanting less than her. But I did believe she wanted an answer, a truthful one, and I hesitated, observing the shadows cast across her stolen face. And I never doubted for a second that she was capable of bringing me Ariel, blasphemy though it may have been. I no longer knew what death meant for a changeling, and though it may have been more hope than anything else that drove that belief, my time in Arcadia had left me more predisposed to cling to hope even in its void.

To say no would be to refuse her gift, and likely to put Laon and myself in untenable danger, despite Mab's earlier promise. To say yes would be to accept a gift without knowing its price, and perhaps to doom Ariel to a sort of half-life, with me or with Mab or perhaps cruelly all alone until I stumbled upon her during a celebration Mab mandated my attendance at, a half-life that could last a second or an eternity according to Mab's (or my?) whims.

I was not sure which she expected from me — yes, no, a canny clarifying question of the sort Ariel herself might have once come up with. So instead I took advantage of that which I knew she did not expect: how well I knew Ariel's body, and easy I found it to undress her — even knowing it was Mab beneath the clothes, beneath the skin. I didn't expect how easy it would be to kiss her, to slide my fingers inside her and realise that in this form, she was just as vulnerable as Ariel was.

She felt like Ariel too, slick and yielding under my hand. Trembled like Ariel, though she and I had not spent enough nights together for me to memorise her body and the way it moved. I saw Ariel in the curve of her open mouth, the berry-pink flesh of her insides, and as the night wore on and the shape dissolved I learned the parts that were Mab alone, at least on this night: the way my bones ground together in her grip, the way her teeth pierced and mended skin all at once.

Neither of us were capable of gentleness, but then, neither of us wanted it. That night made it clear to both of us that we would always be matched.

We didn't have a choice.

And when the pendulum sun swung back above our still-entwined bodies, I gave her my answer.