Nuada of the Silverarm was born on a quarter waning moon.

  His cry was a choked and quiet thing. He was pale, and small, and his mother beamed down at him with love while the half-moon smiled on them both.

  The druids of the grove lined with willows had sensed something powerful coming, but they had not expected their leader - their former leader; kidnapped and forced to marry the local barbarian that called himself a king - to return to them to bear his child.

  At first they refused… but for barely a breath really. In response to their audacity, she needed only to stare them down to put them in their places. They understood at once she had risked her life to get here in this state to deliver them on sacred ground.

  When the king stormed into the peaceful grove, surrounded by armed men, harsh morning sunlight casting long shadows, she didn’t even look up.

  “That child is mine, as are you.” He said with cruelty, waking Nuada from a peaceful sleep.

  Her voice was as powerful as it was soft. “We shall return with you, but we are not yours. Neither him, nor I.”

  He spat insults at her as she rose gracefully and walked past him without heed, bowing to the midwives in thanks, and walking back to her imprisonment called Queenhood.

  She bore no children after Nuada, and she showed him as much love as the king did ownership. She was determined to instill hope and kindness in him, and in that way, defeat the king through his own lineage. He had forced marriage upon her from a culture she didn’t even follow, to control her people, not understanding that she didn’t lead them the same way he led his, and their loyalty was not to her, but the spirits she communed with, and the land that bore them all.

  “It’s witchcraft.” He decried it. “And you’re a queen now, and he’s a prince. So stop with all this heresy, before I kill you for it myself.”

  He was a quiet and thoughtful child. He preferred the company of animals to other children, and even then he chose to gather berries and mushrooms with the girls his age, than to roughhousing with other boys. Nuada wasn’t particularly strong, nor naturally skilled, but his mother instilled gentle tenacity in him. “When you take to something, do it wholly, and for yourself. Not for anyone else.”

  “What about when someone asks you to do something you don’t want to?”

  She was pensive before answering. “That can be difficult.” She said, “I think whether you choose to do something, do it with your whole-heart, and if you choose not to, then be free of it entirely.”

  “How will I know whether to do something or not?” He asked in worry.

  “Sometimes you will just know, others you will have to sit with it, and those are the moments that make you you, Nuada.”

  He was five when his father first put a sword in his hand, and Nuada dropped it immediately.

  “What are you doing, you brat?” The king shouted down at him.

  “Swords kill. I won’t kill.”

  His father laughed. “You will.”

  He struck him with a closed fist, and Nuada fell to the ground, but he still didn’t pick up the sword. He was kicked, and hit again, and he cried, and the king just beat him harder.

  His mother tended to him afterwards with trembling hands. She felt the guilt of her lesson gone awry, but she didn’t hold it.

  “Sometimes people take our choices from us. It’s not right… but it can’t always be changed. In those times, we have to make choices where we can. Let him teach you the sword, Nuada. Let him teach you to hunt, and ride for speed, but choose how you use all of it.” She dabbed his face, wiping away tears and blood at the same time.

  So he did.

  Nothing really came easy to him, but he would practice, commit, and work towards his own satisfaction, not perfection. Some things came with less resistance, like writing, and tracking, and at these he truly excelled, the combination of the latent ability and his work ethic pushing him to scholarly levels unheard of in those times, but other things he could even be described as clumsy, like fighting. He didn’t let talent be his guide, however, and he went from fumbling spears and tripping through stances to a renowned warrior… with time. His first fight in a tournament was at twelve, and he lost so badly that his father beat him in front of the other kings while they laughed. In his fourth tournament, he advanced twice. At his seventh, he won.

  He applied his principle the other way as well; he was exceedingly fast on a horse, but he never raced. Not once.

  It was the first time his father tried to force him to do something that he adamantly refused, because he saw no smaller choice in the act that could justify it.

  It wasn’t the races that marked the king's decision. It was the refusal. The no.

  “His mothers’ influence has gone on long enough. If she refuses to change, but also take my heir down her rotten path, my hand is forced.”

  On a cold spring day, in his fourteenth year, he returned from a morning and afternoon of exploring the wilderness. He liked to learn the land that had perhaps been traversed, but not yet mapped.

  The blood was already washed away when he arrived.

  “Your mother was a traitor. Consorting with a king of the south, sharing his bed, and secrets of our borders.” There was no remorse or comfort in his words. “I felled the axe myself.”

  Nuada was silent as the tears seemed to fall endlessly.

  He ran away. Was brought back. Beaten.

  Six times.

  By the seventh, he had finally learned to out manoeuvre his fathers men, but the king knew no bedrock of depravity, and he simply had his men capture a druid instead.

  Nuada returned before another life was lost.

  His father continued trying to force him into his idea of what power looked like, and every lesson he passed down, Nuada received in wisdom, and used against him.

  He taught the Creideamh Sí followers within his borders to better conceal their sacred spaces. The ones that had no relevance in place, he convinced them to abandon. “If it’s not the place you’re protecting, protect yourselves, and in doing so, you protect your practice, and your stories.” Some of them took more convincing than others, and some refused to listen at all.

  Those were the ones that burned.

  He mourned his losses, and turned his grief to conviction.

  With time, he grew into a man who was unknowingly carrying a myth, though perhaps he could feel the weight of it.

  By his twentieth year, he earned a title passed in secret places in hushed tones;

  Nuada Flaith Druí;

  …Nuada, the Prince Druid.

  It was some time before the title reached his own ears, and when it did… it sat in the shadow of something else; wild, new, and unfamiliar to Nuada at the time.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Love.

  One of his people came to him with the rumour of singing coming from the forest bordering the village to the southwest of the dún. She had come to him specifically, because she still followed the ways of the Creideamh Sí… his mothers way.

  He chose not to tell his father or the court, but to investigate alone.

  There were countless tales of creatures and shadows that longed to seduce men to their death within those woods, but he’d always preferred the stories his mother had told him, from the times before love stories became seduction warnings, and adventure a thing for vagabonds.

  The brush was thick but he knew how to manoeuvre through it. The glade itself was quite plain, really. He couldn’t deny the distinct sensation though… like the stir in the air before a thunderclap. Taking it in a second time, he saw it anew, and it was beautiful. A small still water pond, the decaying log of a tree that had fallen at its edge covered in moss. A cluster of stones covered in lichen. Brambles, ugly, but wild, strong, and tenacious, grew along the thrush on the other side of the clearing. The glade was large enough that the rare blue sky of the day stretched overhead. The trees were ancient it seemed to Nuada, one in particular was gnarled and twisting, and he was drawn to it.

  “Hello! Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  A voice like bright harmony and laughter startled and eased Nuada at once. He searched, and found them in the boughs of the tree he’d been admiring.

  His legs were dangling below, hands braced into the branch that supported him. He beamed down at Nuada with a mixture of joy and curiosity… not a trace of fear visible to Nuada's eye. He squared himself to the being and smiled. It was barely visible, but it was there, and his eyes brightened. “You’re not afraid of me.”

  He cocked his head, legs ever kicking. “I don’t think I am. Should I be?” He dropped from the branch and landed softly, and stepped forward, barefoot and unarmed, his copper hair blazing in the late-day sun.

  “I don’t know,” said Nuada. “The rumours are of a hateful spirit dwelling here, and hate usually comes from fear.”

  “Hateful?” They responded in confusion. “I don’t understand! I’ve only just started visiting, and all I do is sing.” Then they looked away, sad, and Nuada didn’t know why, but he felt sad, too.

  “People think you’re trying to seduce them.” Nuada explained.

  He scrunched up his face and reached a hand lazily above him to hang casually from the branch he had dropped from. “What does that mean? I was just hoping to meet some mortals now that the prince has made things safe again.” As suddenly as the frown came, it left him again. “You’re the first to come!”

  Nuada's mouth quirked, and his eyes widened in a childish grin… a rare sight. “You’re one of the sídhe!” He looked closer now.

  Other than his height, he was entirely ordinary looking… until he noticed his eyes. His pupils… were gold.

  They didn’t seem to notice Nuada's awe. “Mm.” They responded absentmindedly. “I’m Lasair Tarraingthe.” Lasair swayed from the branch with his feet still on the ground.

  “That’s not really a name.”

  “Of course it is!” He said unoffended. “It’s what I’m called! That makes it a name!” He was impossibly tall, and thin. His face was bright, his eyes wide with wonder. His wild copper hair curled and spiked in nearly every direction, and there were bits of leaves and twigs caught in it. He seemed to Nuada like… a child. A child with ancient eyes whose very name made his heart ache to hear.

  He gripped his sword just slightly, but he didn’t draw. It was a show of respect, not a threat. “I’m called Nuada,” he offered, slowly.

  Lasair blinked. “You’re him.” There was no hiding the awe in his voice.

  “I am.” He said coolly. “Though I didn't know my reputation preceded me amongst the sídhe.”

  “The Prince Druid?” He said as though it was common sense. “Of course it does! You’ve given us hope again!”

  “Hope for what?”

  “Hope for mortals! To rejoin you! To meet you.”

  “Well.” Nuada opened his hands in a gesture open to assessment. “You’ve met me.”

  He cocked his head, again, and said without a single note of cruelty. “You’re short. Are you short?”

  Nuada laughed, and it felt like sunlight cast on cobwebs after too long in the shadows. “A little, yes. You are… tall.”

  They stood there for a long moment, trust stretching between them, taut and fragile like new thread.

  “Why is it that the sídhe know me?”

  “Your ancestors on one side have destroyed our thresholds and shared spaces. Your ancestors on the other tended those places, and even communed with some of our own leaders. You had a choice,” Lasair's eyes brimmed with tears when he said it, “and you chose hope.” Lasair looked at him then… truly looked. He saw Nuada's quiet sincerity, his will… the pulse at his throat. Steady and alive.

  This one will end. That was the first thought. And I will feel it. But still… he stepped closer, and Nuada stiffened but not out of fear, and was surprised to feel the tips of his ears grow hot. He had never blushed before, but he guessed he was.

  Their meetings were never arranged, but they became a rhythm.

  The glade and surrounding wood became familiar to them both with the time they spent there. The brook where Nuada caught a fish with his bare hands and looked stupidly proud while Lasair laughed joyfully. The rock cluster where Lasair hopped barefoot from stone to stone while reciting poetry in a language not of this world. The low oak with the hollow where they kept a few secret things… the Brighid’s crosses they’d weaved together, a beltane ribbon, a poem Lasair wrote on birch bark.

  Nuada made sure to always travel a different path when he met him, and he kept the visits as scarce as possible.. Or he tried to. But he hadn’t known laughter before, or comfort, and even on the days he didn’t visit, he gravitated to the forest's edge, and would watch its border from a distance. In vigilance, but in something else. He could name it, but had never felt before, and was afraid to… so he protected it like something too precious and holy to utter. Too pure to be made real.

  “Can you tell me another story, please?” Nuada asked on his next visit, the new moon stars reflecting brightly in his grey eyes.

  They were sharing constellations, lying in the grass, heads next to each other, bodies spread out in opposite directions.

  “Sure!” Lasair replied happily, tapping his hands idly on his chest. “What kind of story do you want to hear?”

  “I don’t think I mind.” Nuada said. It was so easy to be open in Lasairs’ company. “I just like it when you tell stories.

  Lasair did tell stories, often, and with grandeur, and once Nuada found he could see the stories painted in streaks of light as Lasair spoke them.

  “That’s wondrous…” Nuada said in awe, “...but, terrifying.”

  Lasair frowned. “Why? How?”

  “It’s beautiful how you’re using it… but you could really confuse and hurt someone with that.”

  “I would never!”

  “But mightn’t other sídhe?”

  “What about your swords and fires?”

  Nuada was pensive. “Some wield weapons to harm, others to defend, and a torch can burn as well as illuminate.” His eyes were distant as he worked through it. He tilted his head to look at Lasair. “Thank you.”

  He said it simply, but Lasair blushed, and Nuada's pulse stumbled. His throat went tight and he couldn’t keep Lasair's gaze. “I should probably go.” He said, rising suddenly. “It’s getting late even for me to excuse wandering alone.”

  “Okay!” Lasair said unbothered.