The Adelind-Aeron

“Buh?”

I woke with a start, immediately aware of the twangs of pain in my head and back. I rolled my head to the side and took in my surroundings. A line of mushrooms greeted my vision, and further out was a cabin surrounded by pines. With great effort, I stood up into a circle of perfect, white mushrooms. A fairy circle. What the f**k did I do last night?

“Hey, stranger. Need some help?” A far-off voice shouted. I squinted in its direction to find a woman standing on the cabin’s porch with her hands on her hips.

“I’m fine, thanks, just give me a minute!” I stepped over the circle’s boundary, stumbling towards the cabin.  

“Took you long enough,” the voice quipped as I stepped onto the cabin’s porch. The voice belonged to a woman in a plaid shirt and blue jeans. She stood with perfect posture, rising almost a head above me. She was striking with her platinum blonde hair against her tanned skin. Her features were thin and elongated- almond-shaped green eyes, a bird-like nose, and a thin pink mouth. And her arms- Jeez, she looks like she could chop down a tree with them! And living out here, she probably did.

“I’ve had quite a night. Quite a few months, actually.” I braced myself against the porch column.

“You need to come inside. I’ll make you some tea.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I sat in her parlor in a cozy leather armchair, lavender tea in hand. The kind woman sat across from me, her feet on a handmade wooden table.

“So,” she began, “what in the world brought you here?”

“Well, Carlyn, it’s a very long story. I don’t actually know how I got here. The last thing I remember is deciding to get blackout drunk. And then I woke up in a fairy circle, which is honestly not the worst thing to happen to me recently.” Was I really going to tell her my traumas minutes after meeting her? I had my anxieties and doubts, but something in her eyes made me trust her implicitly. I glanced out the window to think- and then I noticed it.

A thick, tall, baby pink penis. A prosthetic one at that, I noticed, since it was placed in its base next to a matching pink harness. I hadn’t seen from the outside because of the sun glare, and I guess I was too hungover to notice it right next to me.

“Wait a minute. Can we talk about the elephant dick in the room?” I pointed to the d***o display beside me.  Carlyn laughed the most musical laugh I’d ever heard before, like bells in the wind.

“Of course. But you’re not going to believe-” I couldn’t listen to the rest of her sentence as a wave of nausea overwhelmed me. I jumped up, frantic. Carlyn pointed to her left.

“First door on the left!”

After my ordeal, I sat down wearily.

“I’m very sorry you had to see that,” I muttered.

“It’s okay, sweetie. Have some more lavender tea, and I’ll tell you about the dick in my window.”

I sipped my tea and eagerly waited for her to continue.

“That,” she pointed, “is the Adelind-Aeron. It was a gift from the fae. It’s very powerful, and not at all for the reason you think.” She stopped, obviously catching the confusion in my eyes. I was too much in shock to utter any of my many questions. Does she mean real fairies gave it to her? Fairies are real? Did the fairy circle work and transport me to their homeland? What did she ever do to earn a prize from the most complicated mythical beings around? I simply gestured for her to continue.

“Yes, the fae are real. They live in secrecy in a world incredibly close to ours. I really don’t want to get into the intricacies of fairy society, for there are many, and that isn’t relevant to my story. The fairy people gave the Adelind-Aeron to me as a gift for doing them the greatest favor they ever experienced. I still do them favors from time to time, and in return they give me practically whatever I want. Just the other day, I wished for some company, and today you appeared. I suppose when you fell into the fairy circle, a fairy must have sent you here instead of their realm so my wish would be fulfilled. In a way, you’re my dream come true!”

She laughed again, a jingling sound. Her voice after a while took on an indescribable accent that made her consonants lighter and her vowels lilt. Somehow she made me believe in all the children’s fairy tales. My mother had been an expert in fairy lore, and she told me almost everything she knew. Being with Carlyn only seemed to confirm my mother’s work.

“So what kind of favor did you do for the fae?” I asked.

“I kind of deposed their entire corrupt monarchy.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope, I’m doing nothing of the sort! I got the prince to trust me as his squire, then when he gave me information about his parents, I stabbed all of them with the prince’s sword. But the family was really, really awful. They changed the laws of the realm all willy-nilly, which totally upturned fairy business, and then placed cruel punishments on those who didn’t obey. They were the most stringent, oppressive, and repulsive monarchs ever! And they needed gone. So they’re gone.”

“I...congratulations?” The way she told her story so nonchalantly, even cheerfully, cast her in a whole new light. I glanced at her arms again, now muscled from battle instead of outdoors work. She was kind to me, sure, and looked trustworthy, sure, but now I sat scared in my seat.

“The Adelind-Aeron was given to me because the fae thought the former rulers were dicks,” she babbled, “and it is fully functional. But look at it. It’s too beautiful to use.”  

I looked at the penis again, partly to distract myself from thinking too hard about Carlyn’s past. Indeed, it was beautiful. It was carved from rose quartz and engraved with a pattern of a vines and flowers. The vines were filled with gold, and the flowers had pearls and emeralds inlaid. Every detail was perfectly made so there were no rough edges. It was also uncomfortably anatomically correct.

“But the fae don’t do uneven deals. What about this d***o makes it a good enough gift for freeing the fae?”

“That’s the thing, I haven’t even told you the best part! The Adelind-Aeron can time travel!”

What the f**k? What the f**k? My jaw dropped. A million thoughts ran through my head, most prominently my mother. But I shouldn’t ask a favor of Carlyn, not when she’s been so hospitable. And especially not when she could be so dangerous.

“But enough about me.” In her fervor, Carlyn had stood up and paced around the room. She plopped back down on her upholstered armchair. “What about you? You never finished your story. You barely started it!”

I took a breath, and then a sip of now tepid lavender tea, and began.

“A few months ago, my mother died. She was the core of my support system. She and I were very close, so close that we could read each other’s minds sometimes. Since then, everything has gone downhill. My hellish job became even more satanic and stressful, which cut down on my free time. Then my friends started abandoning me, saying I’d changed and I never had time for them. It was true, but that was only because I had to deal with my mother’s estate and go to work for most of my day. Finally, I had a boyfriend, who was my rock and seemed like the only person left to trust. But I came home last week to find him in bed with one of my ex-friends. After that I was destroyed. I don’t even know how everything got so bad. I guess my choices in friends weren’t that strong.” I weeped a little and sighed again, happy to get it off my chest, but anxious at what she might say next. To my surprise, she had gotten up from her seat to wipe the tears from my cheek.

“Sweetie…”she whispered, then trailed off. She knelt by my side, looking at me sympathetically.

“Augh, Carlyn, I know we just met, but this is too much for me. Can you pity me from afar?”

Carlyn stood up.

“No, I can’t. Because I’m not pitying you, and I have an idea to help you!” She grabbed the prosthetic penis from its base.

“Time travel with me,” She insisted.

“Why?”

“Because I need to help you. You came here for a reason, and it wasn’t just to keep me company. Come on, grab the pink penis and let’s go!”

I chuckled through my tears and grabbed on. Carlyn closed her eyes tightly and mumbled something I couldn’t catch. Everything spun around me, and then I was back in my apartment, sitting on my couch with the d***o in hand. Carlyn had missed the couch and fell between it and the coffee table.

“Why am I back here? What day is it?” I looked around my apartment for signs of the month.

“I took you back to the day before your mother died.” She looked bashful. I teared up again, not knowing how to react to the news.

“You told me she meant a lot to you,” she continued, “so I wanted you to have her be there for you one last time. I can’t change what happened to her, and I can’t change the choices anyone made, but I can make sure you say what you have to say to her. Go to her. Come back here when you’re done, because I’ll need to take you back.” She lifted herself on my couch and made herself comfortable.

“Thank you,” I said as I stood up to leave.

“And sweetie? I hope you get everything you wish for.”

Reviews

[theachaeanheel]

This was a lot of fun to read! The name "Adelind Aeron" is badass, like an ancient fantasy world ending weapon. I read "I really don’t want to get into the intricacies of fairy society, for there are many, and that isn’t relevant to my story." in your voice, and chuckled. The description of the prosthetic penis was captivating, and the phrase "baby pink penis" made me suitably uncomfortable.

I think you did a really good job with the dialogue and making it sound natural and humorous. The inner thoughts of the protagonist were hilarious. I enjoyed how you glibly glossed over important events like the corrupt fae monarchy, it reminded me of Kvothe in "The Name of the Wind", which is a book that I think you'd really enjoy.

One note---it's "wept" not "weeped". You'd generally only use "weeped" for drainage of a wound or pustule--"the suppurating boil weeped pus".