milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There are petals floating down from one of the rafter beams in Milliways. Thin, bright yellow dandelion petals, to be exact, and coming from the same rafter where perches one fae with bare ankles and toes and a lapful of the same flower, stringing the blossoms together in a chain whose end sways and undulates with the movements from above.

As it gets longer, the tail stretches closer and closer to the heads of passersby; maybe you'll be the lucky one who gets caught with the end to tickle their shoulder.

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Teja looks up, astonished, when the flowers touch his hair in passing.

It is not the season for flowers, after all.

To the contrary; for Finvarra it's mid spring and the little things are popping up everywhere. He may as well cut them in bunches and do something to amuse himself, after all.

"Hello, little king."

"Hello, little fairy," Teja answers, reaching up to touch the flowers with pale, curious fingers.

"Have you come steal my flowers?" he asks, the dandelion heads just barely brushing Teja's fingertips as the fae king pulls them out of reach.

"Indeed, I have come to fetch food for my cats," Teja says, "but I might steal some unseasonable flowers, if there were any in my path."

"They're hardly unseasonable," Finn teases, dangling them back down again to leave bright yellow petals in the mortal's black hair. "For me, anyway. 'Tis spring for me, only winter for you here, little king."

"For me, they are indeed, and for all else in this place," Teja says, reaching up for the flowers once more.

He only laughs, and pulls the flower chain up and away from Teja, finishing the dense woven crown of blooms before he tosses it back.

Such a kingly statement, a crown from nature itself! Finvarra is grinning from the rafters, clearly in a joking mood.

Teja catches it, and turns it in his hand. "Very well made," he says, "and such a wonderful reminder that spring shall come again, eventually."

"Spring shall come as it always does, little king, and neither you nor I can stop that," says the fae with a wink, dropping down out of his perch witht he flowers still in hand.

"Indeed, so it shall," Teja agrees, looking at Finvarra with a rise of his eyebrows.

He holds out a hand for the flowers.

He goes a step farther and fits the crown on Teja's head.

"Fitting, don't you think?"

"I wore a crown upon my helmet," Teja muses, "but never one of flowers, or another that was an ornament."

"Should not every little boy wear a crown of flowers once? Perhaps as a token from a friend."

Teja sighs, remembering. "Those were ever for Totila, not for me," he says.

"And now the roles are reversed. Why must it be such torture to accept a flower, little king?"

"Because I am ever the one that gets iron, not gold; cypress, not flowers!" Teja says.

"And now you are not," Finn chuckles. "Be not so grim, little man! 'Tis past midwinter here and the sun returns on its usual course."

"And so it will, little fairy," Teja says, with almost a smile.

Finvarra laughs and gives Teja a short bow, not mocking but amused. "Have I changed your heart then, mortal king?"

"I need no change of heart to know that the sun will return," Teja says. "And it is even likely that I shall be here for it. That was not always so."

"Perhaps your mortal impermanence has left you with a surplus of this dour attitude."

"My mortal impermanence," Teja says, "was very apt to teach me just such an attitude; for no other conclusion was feasible, observing the world as it showed itself to me."

"But now you need not worry over mortality."

"But the world," Teja says, gesturing towards the door, "is still the same."

Elrond feels a fain touch to the tip of his left ears and looks up.

First at the bright yellow flower and then up and behind it to the person fashioning the flower chain.

"That is well-wrought," he calls up to the rafters with a smile.

It takes an elf to appreciate a really well-made flower chain.

Finn just smiles down at the elf and twirls the dandelion chain, dropping a few more petals on Elrond. He's fashioning a dense crown of the bright yellow flowers for a pretty girl he knows who'd appreciate it.

"Aye. 'Tis."

The petals shine bright in his dark hair and in his dark-clad shoulders. He seems to consider them an adornment and doesn't move to brush them away.

"Of course, dandelion's tend to stain somewhat fierce," Elrond remarks conversationally.

Finn, seeming to take this in consideration, crushes a few in his hand and lets them go; they don't turn his hand yellow with their pigment when he releases them.

"Do they?"

"Not the petals; the stems," Elrond answers. "Clothes especially."

"'Tis a good thing then that it isn't designed to be worn on clothes," Finvarra agrees, finishing the crown and spinning it around his fingertips. "I know a little girl who will enjoy the color and the flowers for what they are."

"I am sure she will be very pleased," Elrond says agreeably. "It is well-made and far prettier than headbands of gold."

He has made plenty of flower crowns for his own offspring.

"As I understand it, she's more likely to be accepting of flowers from a being like myself, Since she knows about my kind, you know.

"Your kind?" Elrond asks, curiously.

"Faerie," he answers succinctly, grinning.

"Faërie?" Elrtond repeats. "I have heard of those. The halflings believe that some of their kind have intermarried with that folk in that past. I myself have never met one before though."

"Well, now," says Finn as he disappears, reappearing on Elrond's other side, "You have."

He doesn't start - but it takes an effort.

"Now I have," he agrees. "My name is Elrond Half-elven."

He is dressed in dark linen and wool and his long hair is braided and adorned with small, silver stars.

"Only half-elven?" he asks, bowing as is befitting another fey creature, rather than a handshake.

"The name of my line," Elrond replies. "We are alone of all given a choice between elven life and mortal death. I count both Men and Elves among my ancestors."

"And I count neither among mine," he answers. "I have no father nor mother, but am a singular creature, though I count the others of my kind as cousins."

That fascinates Elrond. "Your kind does not beget children?" he asks.

"Nay, we can," he says. "But I haven't."

Elrond nods. "Many among us do not bear children and those who do tend to have few."

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