Blue

“Lead?” Herman repeated as he inspected the thin strip of hardened ink Jayden Forst handed him. Both guys’ hands were smothered with black powder but none of them seemed to take notice of it. 

“I have not heard of such material in our land. Though it does look familiar…could this be of the coals dwarves mine?”  Herman asked, brows furrowed to a tight eleven as he continued to inspect the dark object.

Jayden Forst rubbed his chin thoughtfully before nodding, “I suppose so. If you can carve them to the size of a pencil, they would be useful.” 

Somewhere along the Reader-laughing-hysterically-and-us-trying-to-stay-calm cycle, the two oddballs had grown to each other. A little too fast too, I would say. They were both just too engrossed in their discussions that it wasn’t until a puff of chortle escaped my throat that they finally turned to me. 

Herman gave me a what-is-wrong-with-you face before his eyes fell on Jayden Forst’s newly painted beard. An inaudible ‘oh’ left his lips just as Jayden Forst took a glance at his own hands and groaned. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeves—only to make the stain spread further on his pale skin. 

Definitely a Main. Only Mains can destroy their own faces without trying hard to.

With a sigh, I whipped out my wand and waved it over him. The stain on his face and both of their hands instantly spotless. Herman nodded his thanks while Jayden Forst stared at me, wide-eyed for the hundredth times. “How did you do that?” 

Another trait of Mains checked; they always ask this particular question. 

It was akin to asking a fish how it swims. It wouldn’t know how, it just does. Who am I to know why the combination of a wand and fae dust could do things mortals can’t? Even Merlin wouldn’t have the answer to that.

“It’s like the magic in your world, tec…technology is it? Just the way it works in yours and ours is slightly different,” Herman explained, mother hen mode activated. 

For a moment, only silence lingered between the duo. 

“Correct me if I am wrong, did you just say technology?” the shock of reality finally found its way to Jayden Forst’s paled face. 

If Herman noticed it (and he should have noticed it), he ignored it completely. 

“Yes I did,” was his only answer but I bet my best dress he had half the idea of what he had just said. Welcome on board, I mentally whispered to Jayden Forst. Having a bright but bored mind will always result in an Author who speaks in riddles. 

“We read about your world as Tales just as the children of your world read about ours. Though we’ve always thought Readers were myths until you came along,” I added, silently sending my condolences to the ever confused Reader. 

With Herman looking as if he had found a new playmate, Jayden Forst was in for a time of his life. Poor fella.

Jayden Forst mumbled to himself something about a ‘holy crab’, eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. “When they say aliens are watching us, they meant you guys.”

I didn’t know why anyone would consider a crab holy or what form of creature an ‘alien’ was but Jayden Forst did not appear to be in the state to explain himself.

“Seems like our Main this time is a little…eccentric,” Herman grinned beside me after putting a little distance with a still-in-trance Jayden Forst. 

So said the eccentric one, I thought. Who would be this elated to have a weird addition to the group? One was more than I could handle.

“No joke,” I whispered back. “Have you seen the rags he dresses himself in? No wonder the Star sent him to us.” Trait number two of Mains; they always arrive in rags, in dire need of a fae mom’s magic touch. 

Herman laughed a little too obviously for me to steer the conversation to another direction when Jayden Forst fell in stride with us again. 

“It’s not ‘rags’. Black is like the standard dress code for fine arts majors,” he explained, breathless from jogging the short distance to catch up with us. Readers must not do much other than reading on their butts all day. 

“You can’t expect us to buy a new shirt after each class. Nothing can get rid of those pigments once they get on you. Takes days to fade from the skin alone.”

Pigments? 

I scrutinized my eyes at his hands. His middle finger was crooked slightly at an odd angle, the way Herman’s did from long periods of wielding the pen. What I thought was dirt stuck between his fingernails turned out to be the accumulation of different colour pigments. 

Definitely not what I expected of a Reader’s hands. 

“So you are an Artist?” I asked, still studying his hands. These are the hands of those who had worked hard throughout their lives. Very unlikely for a possible Main of a new Tale. Normally those casted barely know how to groom themselves without the help of their servants (or mice). 

He broke our gaze and turned towards the sky, a hint of blush danced over his cheeks as he rubbed the tip of his nose with a finger. “Kind of. I am still in training though.”

“An apprentice?”

He nodded and I bobbed my head along only because my consciousness was already fluttering between a dreamless dream and the uneven path in front of me. 

No thanks to the royalties for holding their ball at night and the Star for our endless and untimely tasks. I can no longer remember the last time we have had a proper off day without having to rush from one kingdom to another in a single day.

“Remind me to introduce you to Rapunzel one day,” I said through a stifled yawn. “She’s one of our best Artist in the entire realm. And that’s saying a lot because most of the princesses are klutz with their hands.” 

Jayden Forst mouthed an inaudible ‘wow’ as he stared into the distance. At first, I imagined Rapunzel, with her braid of long sunlight blond and now sun-kissed cheeks, had somehow appeared between Cendrillon’s barks. But when I traced the line of his gaze, I found our cottage not far from view. 

I have been so absorbed in listening to the Reader to realize how far we had ventured away from the Blue Forest.

“Welcome to our humble home,” Herman introduced with a flourish of his hand. The wordsmith used the word ‘humble’ while the smug look on his face was saying anything but. 

It was devastating at first since we lived in the part of the kingdom where it was night all day and year long. Nothing grows except for some wild flowers and weeds that thrived on moonlight, all whites against teal. The land was just gloomy to look at. 

But with the help of magic (and a year’s worth of fae dust), we transformed the place.

Crowded by shrubs of blueberries and raspberries, our wooden cottage was formed entirely from branches of two trees that grew in a circle and intertwined in the middle like lovers reaching out for one another. 

Out on the front porch, a sea of violets and moonflowers stretched into the foliage of bluish shades beyond. Their leaves bowed from condensed night dew but their stalks were still extended in a welcoming curl. The comforting scent of the flowers enhanced by the cold night breeze caressed my tired senses and lifted my heavy eyelids again. 

The smell of home. 

One of the few things I loved about Herman’s unpredictable ink was the way it could conjure life from thin air. Though it’s definitely troublesome to repaint it all when it rains and flushes everything clean.

“Wait, you guys are living together?” Jayden Forst asked the most untimely question and cut through my moment of peace. 

I pried my eyes open to meet his. Herman was already halfway through the low hanging archway of berries. Jayden Forst stood rigidly in front of the door, his jaws slacked as if he had stumbled upon a very embarrassing secret.

The corners of Herman’s lips twitched ever so slightly before he disappeared into the room. Whatever he pranked the Reader about, fae mom’s hunch told me it was something worth cursing him for.

“Is there a problem with that, Reader?” I asked, trying to sound as fae motherly as I could. Where else would an Author and a fae mom stay if not together? Think about the poor unicorn that has to fetch us both if we were to live separately.

Mains and their logic.

He shook his head immediately in response. “No, ma’am.”

“Good.” I whirled around and headed straight for my room at the back. For all he should know, I am not the White Fairy and that means, like the rest of the tired fae moms, I turn ballistic if not fed or given ample rest after an assignment. 

Luckily for him, I was too drained to bite.