>>5840918You traveled to the hill where the old maple and its bound spriggan held court. By <Faerie Fire>, you beheld it, and when dusk descended the nobility of that unseen people formed ranks around you again… And with <free Movement>, you danced with them almost as an equal.
“You have finally abandoned your humanity, then?” asked the Spirit of the Old Maple, approvingly. “Good, no-longer-just-half-an-elf. It was holding you back.”
“That isn’t it,” you said. “I’m not here to stay. I’m actually here to… Inetrcede, on their behalf.”
“What?” the spriggan laughed, bitterly. “A bad harvest, is it? Or they need a blessing for a short winter, a long spring, so they sent you?”
“Not exactly, and they didn’t SEND me. I came because they’re in trouble, and they’re my friends… My family.”
“Not ours!” chirped one little fairy, and with tinkling, sharp little giggles, a dozen more joined in, turning it into a little song: “Not our family! Not our kin! Not our blood, and they’ve never been!”
“Family of family is family, is it not so?” you protested, in elventongue. “The wife of your brother is your sister; the brother of your brother’s wife is your brother. If I am your kin, so is my father, and his sister, and her children!”
“…And so, too, will be YOUR wife, someday?”
The old spriggan’s canny insight set your face—however immaterial and ethereal, to blushing all the same. The sprites titters and poked and pinched you in response.
“The girl you brought here?” the spriggan asked.
You nodded. The old spriggan's face, such as you could read his emotions upon its gnarled and knotted visage, seemed sympathetic.
