Saturday morning was cold, as expected, but given my familiar species, the cold really didn’t bother me much. I could sit perfectly still for hours in below freezing temperatures without feeling cold.
We communicated some via text while we waited. Beatrice was patrolling the area – deliberately not too close – while Ren and Knox were pretending to be surveyors and Sophie and Riven were hiding in an old farming building – a small barn of some sort.
I’d deliberately worn clothes that would make me as invisible as possible today, but different from what I’d worn when I was out with Sorrel a couple weeks ago, as a precaution – I didn’t want the witch to recognize me. I tried not to get too close, so the witch wouldn’t be suspicious, but stayed in the area at the edge of the fairy community and did my best to melt into the background.
Sorrel, I noticed, was antsy today.
Sorrel: I hate this, I hate not being able to do something.
Me: You know you can’t come.
Sorrel: I do know, I just hate it. I know if I showed up, I couldn’t help and I’d just be a liability. I could lose my magic permanently and possibly my life. I couldn’t even help since it’s built to deal with fairy magic. Same with Dad and Mom and Honey. We’re all on edge here, waiting. We know you and Drew have been training Ren and Knox as much as possible, but it’s been two weeks. How is that possibly enough time? What if it wasn’t enough? I can’t believe we agreed to let Ren do this!
Me: It’s probably the only way. There’s no other good way to get a dark magic user close to the construct.
Sorrel: I know, I know, I just hate it, okay? He’s my baby brother, he’s already been changed by this thing, he’s nearly died a couple times in the past year or so, and I hate that we’re deliberately sending him into danger – and there’s nothing we can do about it. You’re right, we have to let him. Because he might be the only option to save other fairies. But meanwhile we’re just sitting here, doing nothing, and it really, really sucks.
I considered for a moment. Sorrel knew reality, maybe he just needed to vent rather than listen to reasons why his concerns were unfounded. Because, well, they weren’t. This thing was dangerous, I couldn’t deny that.
Me: I’m sorry you’re not able to be here to help him.
Sorrel: Thanks, I…yeah. I wish I could.
Me: For what it’s worth, he is trained, and so is Knox. Sophie is there to undo the spell, Beatrice and I are nearby and will come to help as soon as we know it’s there, and Riven is there, too. He can make impossible things happen and you know he will do that if it comes to Ren’s safety.
Sorrel: True. Ha, that’s kind of funny, actually.
Sorrel: Riven is a non-combatant and I was concerned in the past about sending him with Ren into a potentially dangerous situation because I thought he might be a liability since he can’t defend himself. But now, well, it’s actually kind of comforting to know he’s there. Even if he can’t fight, I am convinced he’d do anything in his power to protect Ren, and that power is actually a lot more than I can claim, even.
Me: See, he’ll be fine. Now, what about Claire? Is she distracting you yet?
Sorrel: No, my parents have her. Mom is taking turns dressing her up in every cute outfit she bought for her – I’m thinking she might have bought out an entire store – while Dad is entertaining her by making flowers grow.
Typical fairy, using flowers to entertain a baby. Although, given that said baby was also a fairy, it probably worked better than most.
Sorrel: But Claire keeps trying to escape and crawl over to Honey and pull on her hair. Honey’s trying to text Kade, but she gets all mushy for Claire, even if Claire is pulling her hair.
It sounded to me like Claire actually might be helping distract the family, after all. That was probably good. It wasn’t any fun to sit around and wait all day to find out if your family was okay.
Sorrel took a while to text again, and he sounded almost out of breath – weird though that was since it was just texting – when he did.
Sorrel: Sorry, Sapphire stole my phone. She’s still my favorite dog-niece but she thinks everything is a stick. I now have doggy teethmarks on my phone.
Me: A badge of honor for a vet.
Me: Also, isn’t she your only dog niece?
Sorrel: Technicality. And yeah, I guess they are.
Sorrel: Oh no. She just started licking Claire’s face.
Me: This is a problem?
Sorrel: Only because Claire thinks she should respond in kind and tries to teethe on Sapphire’s fur in response. She’s going to have a mouthful of dog fluff.
Sorrel: Oh – too late.
Distracted as I was, I hadn’t noticed how late it was getting. Frowning to myself, I made a quick tour of the perimeter of the area, but I could see Ren and Knox still standing in the middle of the field, talking, with no signs of the construct.
By the time the sun set, it was pretty clear the construct wasn’t coming today. I tried to sound calm when relaying this information to the others and sending them home for the day, but I wasn’t actually quite as calm as I hoped I portrayed. Yes, stuff like this didn’t always go perfectly the first time through. Yes, we were basically just hoping the witch would see Ren and Knox and send the construct after them – and were trying to make them look as easy targets as possible and the other fairies in the area as difficult as possible – but we couldn’t actually be sure the witch saw them. The problem was, we couldn’t keep up the ruse forever. If she saw the same people going back day after day to the same place, without actually building or something like their cover story was currently suggesting, she’d realize it was a trap. If this didn’t work tomorrow, we might have to find a new place to set a trap and potentially disguise Ren and Knox so she wouldn’t realize they were the same people. Presuming she even saw them today at all.
All in all, if she didn’t attack tomorrow, it was going to make things complicated. I had to hope the plan would work and she would attack on Sunday.
Otherwise, there was a possibility all our hard work would be for nothing.
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