Rasp was having the most lovely dream of charred snake on a stick, with skin so crispy it shattered in his mouth. There was hot capsicum dipping sauce and serpent bones so tender they disintegrated to gelatinous goop after the third chew. Rasp was preparing to sink his teeth into another when the snake reared back and struck its fangs into his face. He screamed, throwing up his hands to ward it off as a second and third strike rained down upon his unprotected head.

Croak!

A fourth strike came with the realization that it was not a serpent attacking him, but a creature far more annoying. Rasp rolled away from his feathery assailant, pulling his blanket over his head. “Oh come on, old man! I hadn’t gotten to the dessert yet.”

Father yanked Rasp’s covers away, tsking his irritation

“Yes, I’m awake,” Rasp assured him, heavy eyelids already drooping.

The large raven spoke in hushed gurgles and clicks, upsetting the loose piles of curled leaves heaped around them between nervous hops and flutters.

Rasp nodded along, absentmindedly, as his consciousness slipped back into another confusing dream. A harsh peck to the scalp startled him awake again. “Ah!” He clutched the top of his head, grateful he didn’t feel the warm trickle of blood. “Will you stop that? There was a noise in the night and you’re going to go investigate, I heard you.”

Father was an independent spirit. He didn’t normally share such details unless they were pertinent. Try as he might, Rasp simply couldn’t muster the tone that demonstrated both his appreciation and attentiveness to the seriousness at hand. The trouble with relying too heavily on sarcasm was that, after a certain point, his responses all started to sound the same, regardless of his better intentions. “Yeah, I get it. It’s important. I doubt you would have stabbed me awake if it wasn’t.”

Coming off like an asshole here, buddy.

Rasp dropped his head with a sigh. Unfortunately, the only alternative to sarcasm he could come up with was to speak slowly, with great, methodical care. To Rasp’s annoyance, his efforts sounded somehow more sarcastic. “Thank you for telling me this super important information so early in the morning, Father. Go. Do what you must. I will eagerly await your return.”

Father snapped his beak, unamused.

“Try not to get eaten by a bear while you’re at it, alright?”

With an exasperated croak, Father’s clawed feet pitter-pattered against the cold ground as he hopped away.

“I was being serious!” Rasp rose into a sitting position, rubbing his weary eyelids with the back of his hand. As usual, the most important sentiments to say were also the most difficult to put words to. “You’re the last family I have. I never thought I would say this, but I think I might actually be sad if something happened to you.”

Unlike that time Rasp accidentally killed him. No sense in dredging up the past, of course.

With the raven equivalent of a gag, Father took to the crisp air with several mighty flaps of his powerful wings. Naturally, the bastard waited to screech his heartfelt goodbyes until he was soaring off between the trees, already at a distance too far to catch Rasp’s ensuing response, had he chose to make one.

Stupid, mushy bird, Rasp thought as a slow smile split across his clammy face. The afterlife has made you soft.

So good to see the two of you not at each other’s throats for a change.

Rasp’s shoulders went rigid as the smile slipped from his face. Gods, Whisper! Were you eavesdropping on our private conversation this whole time?

Private would imply you had learned the art of whispered conversation, little bird. I assure you, what I overheard was not that.

Rasp closed his eyes and challenged his concentration inward. His magic responded faster than usual. Stronger, too. A detail he attributed to the supposed healing properties of the harmony stone as he was too groggy to come up with an alternative explanation. He opened his eyes, wincing as his vision filled with the ghostly glow of the charmed rune symbols. The ripples of magic were there as they had been the night before, currently clustered around the small, hazy blue shape seated against the stone pillar at the center of the decrepit courtyard.

Perhaps it was the fae’s slumped posture, or the way their words lacked their usual prickliness, but, whatever the case, Rasp found himself doing the unthinkable. Instead of flopping back down to catch a few more hours of precious sleep, he gathered his bedding and rose onto stiff, aching legs. He followed the veins of pulsing magic, feet barely lifting from the ground as he dragged them along, one in front of the other, until he reached the pillar.

It could not have been more than several yards at most, but he dropped down beside Whisper, grateful to not have to use his legs any more, nonetheless. Rasp pressed his shoulders against the solid stone and eased his eyes shut. The phantom images disappeared from his vision as the haze of darkness assumed its customary place.

For someone so lonely, Whisper certainly had an odd way of expressing their gratitude for Rasp’s generous company. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m not supposed to feel sorry for you, either. But you know what they say, delirium works in mysterious ways.”

“No one says that. It doesn’t even make sense.”

“Neither does feeling sorry for you.”

“Ugh,” Whisper shuddered, quills rattling from the effort. “Spare me your misplaced sympathies.”

“You know, I’m used to you being a prickly bastard,” Rasp said, resisting the urge to jab the fae in the ribs with the tip of his elbow for fear of getting spined by Whisper’s toxic quills. He settled for a shit-eating grin instead. “But you seem sadder than usual. You were all taunts last night. What changed? Did the harmony stone stop working its magic on you?”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“On the contrary, I feel better than I have in many moons.” Several seconds of uninterrupted staring convinced the fae to be more forthcoming. Whisper relented with a sigh, “You were not wrong about ghosts existing in places such as this. It is memories, not spirits, however, that haunt me.”

Rasp gnawed the edge of his lip as he considered Whisper’s answer. “Memories of what?”

“The before.” Whisper’s clawed fingertips tapped against the stone, producing faint clicks. “The world has changed so much since the second generation of magic, that sometimes I barely recognize it. Time works differently in places like this. It gets trapped, straddling the line between past and present, preserving a sliver of what once was.”

Rasp wondered if his mentor purposely said things he had no way of understanding as a means to get him to ask questions. Which, upon greater reflection, could not possibly have been the case. Whisper hated answering questions nearly as much as they loathed providing non-vague answers.

“The second generation of magic refers to the emergence of fae, little bird.”

Rasp frowned, vowing to start picturing everyone naked if only to keep the meddlesome fae from gleaning his thoughts.

You do that already. It has yet to stop me.

“Moving on,” Rasp announced, deciding this wasn’t a topic either of them wanted to dwell on any longer than necessary. He trawled the limited depths of past history lessons as to why this term sounded familiar. “The second generation of magic was around the time you popped into existence then, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Gods, you’re old. Like really old. It’s got to be tough, though. I can’t imagine living all those years, thousands upon thousands, just to waste the precious few you have left lugging around the mortal equivalent of a newborn fae.”

Whisper did the sensible thing and ignored the dig. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but yes. I was there to witness it all. The death of the old ones, the time of fae, the emergence of mortal-kind, and the poor decisions that led to them becoming the dominant lifeforms.”

Rasp tucked the edges of the blanket beneath him as he slumped lower. He rested his head against the mossy stone and closed his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

“Since when do you care to learn anything?”

“It’s this place,” Rasp explained. “Too spooky to sleep. I need something really tedious to put me out.”

“In that case, I had better start at the very beginning. The birth of magic.”

Rasp nodded his approval, stifling a yawn with his hand. “Perfect. I can feel the boredom already setting in.”

Whisper’s words flowed over Rasp’s mind like water across silk. “There have been three generations since the birth of magic. The old ones, great beings of unimaginable might, were the first. When the magic of the new world dwindled, so too did the old ones, giving way to the time of fae. As our corporeal forms were smaller, we did not require as much magic to sustain life, thus allowing us to exist far longer than our predecessors.

“Mortal-kind was the third generation. But, by the time the first elves walked the land, the spark of the new world had dimmed. Mortals were cursed to live an existence without magic. For many millennia, we fae existed beside our non-magical brethren, watching as they struggled to carve out an existence built upon unimaginable hardship. My people took pity on them and bestowed the first mortal with magic. The others of my kind saw it as a gift meant to be passed down from one generation to the next and were happy to share.”

Whisper paused before saying, “The first mortal ever gifted magic was a human. Did you know that?”

Rasp spoke with his eyes closed. “Of course. They put it in the manual we humans are issued at birth. It’s right up there with the meaning of life and how to flip a bloody pancake.”

“Humans were the most pitiful of all mortals.”

“Thanks.”

“They were not strong like orcs, skilled like dwarfs, nor clever like elves. Their meager lives were short, even by mortal standards. Destined to spend the few years they had clinging to survival and barely managing that.”

“Okay, now you’re just being insulting.”

“That’s just it. I was insulted,” Whisper said, their melodic voice taking on an unusually hollow ring. “My people were stewards of the land, gifted with abilities beyond imagination. I didn’t understand why anyone would risk surrendering the most important piece of themselves for another, especially not to a species I considered inferior.”

Rasp waited for the eventual ‘but’. For whatever reason, it never came. “I’m starting to get the feeling you didn’t have a change of mind.”

“My views on mortals may have softened since then, but I abide by my original stance. It was a fool’s errand, insisting that mortal-kind would take advantage. But my people were too blinded with their own good intentions to realize their folly. They gave anyway, selflessly, teaching the humans how to harness magic in order to enrich their meager lives. All was well at first. The humans were grateful for the gift they had been granted and treated it with great reverence, passing their magic on from one generation to the next. Their numbers increased, as a result, and it was not long before the human population swept across the land, spreading tales of the gift of magic as they went.

“Others species learned of the gift and grew envious of the favor bestowed upon humankind. They sought us out, asking for similar treatment. My people were accommodating, at first. But it was only a matter of time before the asking turned to demanding. Soon, what power the mortals had been granted was no longer enough. In their quest for might, the ungrateful mortals turned on the fae, stealing their magic by any means necessary.”

It was Rasp’s turn to voice his displeasure through the use of unintelligible sound. “Ugh.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“I honestly don’t know what to say to any of that.”

“Then say nothing. Sit in the uncomfortability of truth, and vow to remember. There is nothing we can do to change the past. We can only strive to do better.”

Rasp placed his hand on what he hoped was Whisper’s shoulder, realizing he had something to contribute after all. “I vow to find a way to give you the happy ending you deserve.”

And, in a mere matter of words, they were right back where they’d started. To his credit, Rasp hadn't meant to make an inappropriate joke. Words just had a funny way of coming out of his mouth and arranging themselves in the worst way possible. Worse yet, judging from the weird numbness spreading within his hand, Rasp now realized he must have accidentally pricked himself on one of Whisper’s quills.

Heat flooded up his arm as his bones turned weightless. Drool dribbled from his bottom lip as he managed a single word of regret. “Shit.”

“Rest well, little bird.” Whisper’s voice sounded far away, nearly lost to the distance. “You will undoubtedly need it.”

The muscles propping Rasp up against the harmony stone went slack. Slowly, as if caught in slow motion, he listed to the side and struck the ground, too numb to feel the resulting pain. Reality disintegrated piece by piece before his mind went dark completely. A warmth flooded his bones, pulsing in time to the magic thrumming from the harmony stone beside him.

When his heavy eyes opened again, still steadily crossing from one plane of reality into the next, Rasp found himself slumped over a familiar table, in a familiar room, with sunlight pouring in from the kitchen window. The heavenly aroma of sweet plums, buttery crust, and thyme clouded the balmy air. Happiness erupted within his rapidly beating chest when Rasp recognized where the dream had delivered him.

An unfamiliar voice beckoned. It was tender and soft, as inviting as a mother’s embrace. All of Rasp’s troubles faded as the soothing words, pulsing in time to the magic from the harmony stone, rippled across his weary mind. Hello, little one. I’ve waited for you for so long. Hurry now. It’s not far. You’re almost home.