Her luminescent wings shone more brightly in the moonlight than in the light of the morn, they'd always say. She liked to go flitter around at night just to show off. Many man-faeries have asked for her hand, but she had haughtily declined all of them. She was not the stuff for a wife of a lowly man-faerie. She was born of elf and faerie. She was special.
Her father, she would always boast in her high enchanting voice, was a great fighter in the war. He was a dark elf, the kind that excelled in the dark mystics, and her father was the greatest of them. At this point she would conjure up a small mage light, dark blue in flame, brilliant cyan in the middle, and her audience would be enchanted, all of them usually lowly forest-folk who had never seen magic, nor the likes of the beauty of Moonwings.
With her dark blue skin lit up by the mage light, which she would always place to her left, her good side, she would continue on to describe her mother, a great faerie who associated with the dark elf contingent, who rose above her lowly forest-folk status by contributing to the war. Her mother, in her words, was a handsome lady even in her nine hundred years, and it was no wonder she caught the eye of the leader of the contingent. Moonwings' light blue hair, cut to just above her shoulder, and curly in a becoming manner, would be tossed from side to side as she grew more and more engrossed in telling her story.
And her audience would always shout for more, ask for encores, and she would always smile her enigmatic smile, and refuse with the utmost politeness, and more man-faeries would be charmed, each fighting with each other to escort the lady back home. And she would refuse these too, the same haughty way she refused her suitors, despite the lavish presents they would shower on her. And she would fly off into the night, her translucent wings glowing a seductive pattern as she travelled through the early hours of the breaking day.
She never got escorted back home for a reason.
Her mother would always lie in the same position whenever she arrived back at their tattered bough. In the corner, in front of the mirror, weeping. Moonwings would drop off the same presents her suitors have given her to their landlord below, in lieu of payment of rent. Her cheery expression would all but change the moment she opened the door to her home, and she would avoid making eye contact with her mother for as long as possible, retiring to her room as fast as possible. She really didn't relish listening to her mother talk about her father again. She really didn't want to listen to her mother's fate, sold off to the contingent as a war "woman", ravished and left to fend for herself, bringing up Moonwings all by her own hands, and how her handsome features had all but disappeared the moment the dark elf had taken her. It was enough for Moonwings to go out every agonising night to earn her keep; she didn't have to put up with the old lady nagging.
It was only at night in front of her audience did she enjoy true happiness. She can never be married, for in her blood flowed a dangerous time bomb, the blood of a dark elf and a faerie were never meant to be mixed. Nobody knew what would happen if it was allowed to mix again. Moonwings knew she could never love, never have children. But in front of her enchanted audience, she could forget all that. She could forget she would go back to her home with no warmth and no food, she could even fool herself into believing her stories.
But when she's at home, in her threadbare bed, nursing her glowing wings, staring into the little mage light, the only one in her room, she would allow her sadness to take over her. And she would sniffle in her pillow. But the tears were not allowed to fall. The tears of a faerie were dangerous, and nobody knew what would happen if a bastard child of a dark elf and a faerie cried.
So she wasn't even allowed the liberty to cry.
chiiyo's comments :
This was inspired mostly from MoonWings (pop-up), a roleplaying message board that I used to participate in. The name itself, Moonwings, sparked off so much thought that I started writing this little piece. When I first started writing it, it was more of a vehicle to describe the appearance of a character I had envisioned having the name Moonwings: a small haughty faery, with dark blue shimmery skin, an impish grin, and a short styled curled bob of light blue hair. As I wrote more and more though, I started to envision a twist. And that twist would inevitably lead to Moonwings becoming one of my most poignant characters.