word count

solastalgia.

“Morning Pon!” Chanda yelled down to him.

Pon looked up in surprise, as if Chanda didn’t always came this way and they didn’t always see each other on their way to work. He was walking slowly down the stairs that hugged the trunk of the tall maple tree, making his way down to the forest floor when Chanda whizzed by.

Normally, he would have taken the lift. A couple of weeks ago, there was a sudden snow storm. Fall had barely begun, the leaves just turning a green-ish yellow. The weight of the snow snapped branches and caused them to fall onto the buildings below. A good number of lives were lost.

Which is why Pon felt like he could not complain about taking the stairs to work. He was the only one who used the lift anyway. To get to work, Pon would have to take the Grey Eagle along with the morning’s mail. The village had to pay extra to get the Grey Eagle to accept Pon’s additional weight.

Glenda greeted Pon once he made it to the bottom. The large eagle, surprisingly not grey but a rich and full brown, had a satchel around her neck, containing the few letters to the city that Dottering had generated.

“Still on your way to the mines?” Glenda chirped as Pon saddled up on her back. “They should have given you a break, now the lift’s broken.”

Pon gave a grunt. He didn’t like it when they sent Glenda. She talked too much. If he tuned her out in the right way, he could just hear her bird-like squabbles which were much more relaxing than hearing her actual words. But Glenda was fast. Birds in general were faster than faeries so it didn’t matter if Pon took an eternity taking the stairs.

“Fair warning,” Glenda began. She shimmied her body and spread her wings, getting ready to take off. “My feathers have been getting slicker these days, I don’t know why! Better hang on tight.”

Putting a hand to Glenda’s body, Pon immediately recoiled. She was right, it was extremely slick. And sludgy. A dark thick residue was left on his palm. He attempted to wipe his hand onto his pants. It just smeared all over his hand, refusing to let go.

Glenda pushed her feet off the ground and beat her wings. “They say that something called soap is supposed to be able to clean it off,” Glenda continued as they soared through the sky. “It’s something the elves brought back from the other side.”

Pon let Glenda babble on, letting her words melding into chirps and caws. As they sped through the air, Pon closed his eyes. This was one of the only good things about taking the Grey Eagle. He could just be absorbed in the feeling of flying. He was acutely aware of the weightlessness he felt, the way the wind whipped through his shaggy head of hair, and the rhythmic beat of Glenda flapping her wings. No other faerie could close their eyes and fly at the same time.

The moment was gone all too soon. Glenda slowly descended to the base of the mountain. Pon thanked her and hopped off.

The line was long today. He noticed that a lot of younger faeries started showing up lately. Maybe it was because of the storm. There wasn’t enough in the treasury to rebuild everyone’s homes. Pon knew that much. He had received threats in the mail because of it. No one believed that the council should spend a single ore on his condition, not when families were out there, homeless.

But Pon had to make his own living too. Nothing was ever free.

He slowly made his way to join the others. His joints were already aching from the descent down the tree.

“You made it,” Chanda beamed as she looked behind her. “I beat you for once.”

Pon tried to smile. He was in too much pain. He couldn’t understand how Chanda had so much energy in her to continue working, especially since she was burning up fuel for two. Pon discreetly tried to look down. Her stomach was slowly growing. Surely she was getting exhausted.

Noticing his gaze, Chanda patted her stomach. “It’ll be out in a month or two. I think I have a week or two before I’m completely bedridden. Might as well make some ore, right?”

They had made it to the front of the line. They both looked up at the hobbit who was guarding the mine entrance. Although he only stood four feet tall, the hobbit towered over them. He was dressed quite shabbily, in stiff woven clothes. Pon couldn’t judge, they weren’t dressed any better. “Chandy and Pon,” he nodded, stepping aside for them.

As they walked in, some teenagers on the side booed at them. “Elf-loving freaks!” one of them yelled. Pon looked away to avoid their sneers.

“Ignore them,” Chanda whispered, even though they were out of earshot. “They’re just marbled that we have jobs and they don’t.”

Pon nodded. He didn’t understand teenagers nowadays. The elves had provided them with these jobs. It wasn’t until they had moved into The Grange years ago that their little village started innovating. They had been content with their wooden huts, portal faerie rings, and slug coops. But now that the elves were here, they had electricity, running water, and a seemingly endless supply of food. Food that elves weren’t so willing to part with, even though faeries ate barely a hundredth of what the elves did. So really, those teenagers should be grateful.

He and Chanda eached picked up a basket that leaned against the carved out wall. It was beautiful in the mines. The rocks all sparkled a brilliant green due to the luminescent light that the faerie wings produced. There were no need for the elves and their fancy lamps. They were light themselves.

The days in the mines were grueling, however. Pon was getting old and he didn’t have wings. He wasn’t able to pick out the bits of ore that were stuck in the ceiling. All he could do was the women’s work and pick up the ore particles and dust that the men picked out of the rocks. Every single scrap of iron ore, no matter how tiny, was valuable. It was the only thing that elves accepted. True, it took a lot more work for the small faeries to accumulate enough to barter with, but it was worth the commission they earned on it.

Pon watched Chanda as she beat her wings. Her wings were a solid colour of matte burgundy. Chanda complained that she looked like a moth. Pon thought it didn’t suit her well, considering she herself was quite dark already. But she had wings. That had to be enough.

“Alright. Catch you later!” Chanda attempted to wave but instead coughed into her hand instead. It had already started getting quite dusty in the tunnels.

Chanda flew off. He watched her hover near the male faeries, ready to catch whatever ore fell from their axes. He didn’t have that advantage. He had to wait patiently on the ground, hoping that no one would snatch the crumbs that fell to him.

He was used to this, getting the short end of the stick. No one had ever seen a faerie without wings. He was the only one in all of The Grange. No other village except for his had someone like him.

The early years were tough. No one knew how to handle a faerie who couldn’t fly. Many of the sports, the professions, the traditions all assumed that one could fly. Child faeries were malicious enough but throw a minority into the mix and things could get extremely heated. As they did for Pon.

Eventually, most people began to see the error of their ways and gratefully accomodated him. Most. Pon thought back to the threatening letters. He was earning his keep, doing his best to give back to the village that raised him. Wasn’t that enough?

True to her word, Chanda stopped showing up to work the next week. Pon kept tabs on her during the month through the grapevine, silently listening to people document their visits to her home. The thought of visiting her himself never crossed his mind. Not when everyone else had already gone and reported back.

One day after work, he thought about the little faerie that was germinating inside her as he handed over his basket of ore dust to the hobbit,. When did a faerie start growing its wings?

He never had wings.

His mother would always tell him about how she would visit him in the maternity ward right after he was born. The room was filled with little mounds of bare flesh that were itching against the bedding, eager to shed the thin layer of skin that trapped their wings. Their discomfort was made known to all who came by, with their screaming and incessant wriggling in their little pods. Except for Pon, who was surprisingly content, sound asleep in his shedding pod. There was no skin to shed and no wings waiting to burst out from his back.

Upon leaving the mines, Pon started. He had expected Glenda waiting for him but there stood an unfamiliar eagle with the letter satchel around its neck.

“Hello,” the eagle bobbed his head. “Glenda won’t be attending to you today. Got into a terrible accident. Not sure if she’ll make it.”

“What happened?” Pon blinked.

“Her wings just stopped working. Dropped straight out of the sky.” He seemed to shrug, if a bird could do such a thing.

Thankfully, the eagle didn’t seem too interested in talking. The flight home was quiet. Pon looked down at The Grange below. At first, he tried to imagine what it was like to fall from this height. But Pon was distracted by the shape of the forest. He could see the elven enclave near the village. It had consumed almost a quarter of the forest now. Smoke billowed from the enclave and faded into the air in front of them. He didn’t think the elves would have expanded so quickly.

Pon kept his eyes on the enclave as they neared the village.

“Alright,” the eagle said as he descended. Pon scrambled off and hurried up the stairs. Each step sent a searing pain up his calves. There was a lot on his mind. He kept picturing Glenda, spiraling down from the sky.

As he opened the door to his small building, Pon paused. He saw Chanda sitting there, a bundle in her arms, talking to his mother. They both had a deadpan look on their faces, something that Pon was not used to for either of them.

“Pon,” Chanda stood up with the baby in her arms. “She’s just like you.”