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aph-honk-kong · 3 years

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Sylfiden - Akt I

Alastair should be grateful that his future is secure - he has a large house, bountiful crops and will soon be married to the prettiest girl in the village. But on the morning of his wedding day, a sylph appears in his living room and dismantles every aspect of his perfectly-planned life.

[Written for day three of @aphrarepairweek2021 with the prompt “culture” - granted, this is kind of inaccurate since the source this was based on was produced by a Dane in 1836, but I guess it still kind of shows Scottish culture]

This fic was based on the Romantic ballet Sylfiden, choreographed by August Bournonville of the Royal Danish Ballet.

Here’s what Alastair should look like:

(This is Jon Axel Fransson, photographed by Per Morten Abrahamsen)

And here is the sylph, though you can always imagine them wearing something else:

(This is Ida Praetorius, also photographed by Per Morten Abrahamsen)

...

Alastair awoke to whiteness.

At first he thought it was another of Dillon’s pranks, and there was cotton over his face again, but he looked longer and found the tint before his eyes resembling fabric a little more. Had he somehow fallen asleep over Marianne’s wedding dress? No, that couldn’t be, for was it not bad luck to see the bride’s gown before the ceremony? Then Alastair looked up and saw a face.

He was as regal as he was pale, snowy cheeks dusted with the faintest pink that mirrored the shade of his lips. He was not smiling, at least not with his mouth, but his eyes — blue eyes, Alastair noticed — held laughter. And he was so close that his white-gold hair was tickling his cheek.

He jolted to his feet. The man moved backwards, too, and stopped by the living room window with his arms poised delicately. “Good morning.”

“I — ” Alastair looked him up and down again. The white he saw turned out to not be from a gown, but a thin white blouse that floated whenever he moved. “What are you doing here?”

“To visit you,” he replied. Then he turned around, and he saw on his back a pair of small, translucent wings. A sylph, he realised. A wind spirit was in his house. “I hear you are getting married today, and I wanted to wish you luck.”

“Oh.” The sylph moved away when he tried to get close; well, “moved” was hardly the right word for it. He glided across the floor, it seemed, wings fluttering softly each time he evaded Alastair’s grasp. “Thank you, er…?”

“Stellan.” The sylph leapt away once more. “That is my name.”

And a peculiar one too, Alastair was tempted to say. But he kept his mouth shut and merely watched, entranced, as Stellan drifted past the chair he had fallen asleep on. He did not seem entirely real.

“I wanted to look at you, I suppose,” he sing-songed, “before you got married. Some say that the hours before a wedding are a man’s last moments of freedom. Do you agree?”

For some reason, the question made his ears prickle with heat. Was he implying that he did not want to get married? Indignantly, Alastair opened his mouth to reply when Stellan elegantly hopped away from the chair. “I must go now. I will see you again soon.”

He stepped backwards into the fireplace, and the flames rose higher. When they faded, Stellan was gone.

Not a minute after Stellan disappeared, Dillon stamped into the room with a grin. “My, you’re already awake!” He exclaimed. “After all the planning last night I expected you to be out ‘til noon.” He lowered his voice. “Best look presentable, now. Marianne will be here to get ready soon.”

“Wait, really?” His hands flew to his head and began trying to flatten his hair, which was probably a rat’s nest after just waking up. “Goodness, I’m still in my clothes from yesterday.” Something white flashed in his vision, and he started. Had Stellan returned?

“You alright there?”

“Just thought I saw something,” Alastair said tiredly. “Did you see a sylph last night? I swore one came to visit me when I first awoke.”

Dillon stared at him as though he had grown another head. “Have you been drinking already?”

“No?”

“Of course I haven’t seen a sylph!” With a bark of laughter, he clapped Alastair on the back. “And neither should you. It’s probably just cold feet. Have some breakfast and warm yourself up, and you ought to be alright.”

He glanced at the window once more. Nothing. “Yes,” he settled, “I was probably just a bit delirious.”

His cottage door opened again and in flowed distant giggles. Breaking away from her mother, Marianne swept into the living room and into his arms. “Good morning, dear.”

“Good morning.” Alastair kissed her forehead. She smelled like heather. “How did you sleep?”

“Very well.” Marianne rested her head against his chest, smiling contentedly. “Dreamt of you all night long.”

He leant down, ready to kiss her, when a shadow moved near the fireplace. He broke away and ran towards it, ignoring his bride-to-be’s indignant huff, and bent down. Had Stellan returned to offer more blessings? Would he wish him luck again with his soft, sweet voice? Alastair searched the figure, ready to look into blue eyes —

They were green.

“What the Hell are you doing here?”

Dressed slightly less odiously, scowling as usual, Arthur glared back at him. “Ah, it’s the inattentive groom. Are you leaving lovely Marianne for me?”

Dillon snorted behind him.

“I am not, and I find it insulting that you would even think I would,” he replied furiously. “And you are not attending my wedding. I don’t need somebody to perform magic tricks.”

Arthur scowled even deeper in response. He was constantly trying to convince the village that he was, in fact, a witch with the ability to do magic, but everyone had come to the conclusion that he was probably a raving fool who had been exiled from England for some reason, hence his name. “I wouldn’t disrespect my craft, if I were you.”

“It isn’t disrespectful if it’s true.” Alastair rolled his eyes. “As if you can really cast spells. Will you leave, please?”

Now he looked positively murderous. “Don’t you dare talk to — ”

Marianne reached the fireplace before Arthur could finish his sentence. “Why don’t you predict our fortunes?” She asked with a pacifying smile. “If your predictions are good enough, we’ll let you stay.“

Arthur stared at her for a moment, then rolled his eyes. “All right. Gather your ladies.”

The first of Marianne’s friends came forward, and the witch took her hand roughly. After peering at her palm for a moment, he proclaimed, “you will find love soon.”

“You will lose something dear to you,” he informed another.

The third fortune he whispered in the girl’s ear, and when she turned away she had tears in her eyes. Arthur watched her leave with a smug smile forming.

“Hey!” A little boy Alastair recognised as Dillon’s nephew ran forward. “Look at mine next!”

He had barely touched the boy’s hand when Dillon reached them, scooping him cleanly off his feet and carrying him away. “Don’t you talk to him, Peter! You will take part in none of this nonsense!”

Marianne went to Arthur next. He took one look at her palm, and his smile grew. “There is love in your future.”

She stretched her other hand to hold Alastair’s, and he leant down to kiss her once more. “I already know that.”

“But!” And now he looked positively gleeful. “That love will have nought to do with your dear fiancé. He will leave you for someone else!”

He frowned. “That isn’t true, and you know it.”

“Say, look at my palm.” Dillon strode forward, having deposited Peter as far away from Arthur as possible. He winked at Alastair. “Maybe I’ll turn into a frog tomorrow.”

Arthur took one look at his hand and gave a short laugh. “You will find love very soon, too,” he cackled. “In fact, you will marry lovely Marianne!”

Irritation flickered deep within him, only growing as Dillon stared at Marianne in shock, pink creeping across his cheeks. “I will what?”

“You will not fall for Marianne, that’s what you’ll do.” Alastair pulled her into his arms, glowering first at Arthur then at Dillon. “I’m the one getting married to her.”

“Or so it is now,” Arthur mused. “Who knows what will happen at the end of today?”

The tiny sparks of annoyance turned into mild anger and he left Marianne’s side, leaning down to grab Arthur by the arm. “You are going to get out,” he retorted, voice growing in volume, “and you are going to stay out. First for slandering me by implying that I am — that I am attracted to men, and more so for accusing my best friend of stealing my bride!” He ignored his yelp of pain, dragged him out of the living room, opened the door and quite literally threw him out of the house.

He slammed the door before he could get back in, and stamped back into the living room. “Well then.” He announced, trying to sound cheerful, “shall we continue preparing?”

…

Once Marianne had left to get dressed and her bridesmaids had finished preparing, Alastair was once again left alone. He stared at his wedding suit, which he had yet to change into, and sighed. Today was supposed to be the happiest day of his life, the day he had been poised for since childhood, and that wretched witch had to try and ruin it.

The whole village had known that he and Marianne would be wed for practically a decade. She was one of his closest, dearest friends, and he couldn’t imagine himself getting married to anyone else. Alastair ran his thumb over his engagement ring. This was his duty, and he would stick to it, no matter what Arthur’s idiotic palm-reading had predicted.

The window creaked open.

Feather-light, Stellan hopped from his perch on the windowsill onto the floor. He was smiling now, if one could call that tiny curve of his lips a smile. “Nervous?”

“A little bit.”

“I hope you considered my question.”

He sighed; why were these strange magical fellows so determined to aggravate him on his wedding day? “I find it rather insulting that you think I’m being forcibly chained to Marianne.”

Soft eyelashes fluttered. Stellan leapt again; he seemed incapable of staying in one place for long. “That was not what I meant. I simply want you to consider this question: are you getting married because you truly love the lady, or because you feel obligated to?”

“Are you accusing me of not loving her?”

His eyes flashed; his wings fluttered. Something about him, ethereal and soft, made Alastair feel warm. “No, not at all. I can see that Marianne is very dear to you, as a friend. But is she really somebody you wish to be wed to?”

“Y-Yes,” he said instinctively.

Stellan raised an eyebrow. “Can you imagine yourself kissing her in the years to come? Waking up every morning next to her? Raising children with her? With her?”

With her?

And suddenly Alastair was six years old again, playing family with Dillon. “I’m going to marry you when we grow up,” he’d declared. “I’ll put a ring on your finger and we’ll have lots of children!”

He had not understood why his mother had run to shush him, informing him with a tight smile that he ought to marry a lady instead.

Then he was fourteen, learning to dance for a festival. His friend had laughed, watching him blunder, and grabbed his hands to place them in the right positions. His skin had tingled, and his heart raced in a way that had nothing to do with his performance.

And then he was nineteen, running to the market to sell the week’s produce when he bowled into somebody — a newcomer to the village, supposedly an Englishman. He’d looked into grass-green eyes and pouting lips and pushed him away with a shout, but his gaze burned into him forevermore.

“No!” Alastair said aloud, a strange heat pricking at his eyes. “That is not the man I am anymore. This marriage is proof of that.”

Stellan was quiet for a while, and he saw a tear roll down his cheek.

His heart sank. “Why are you crying?”

He breathed out shakily; a delicate white hand moved to wipe the tear away. “I am reminded, once again, how little freedom humans have,” he whispered. “How can you live knowing that you cannot truly be yourself?”

“I am myself,” Alastair insisted. “I know who I want to be, and it is not —” He could not even say that word — “Not whatever you think I am.”

Those lovely blue eyes glimmered, as though there were more tears to shed. Stellan blinked hard, approaching a chair and scooping up a scarf that was resting upon it. “Will you be truly happy hiding who you are for the rest of your life?” He unfolded the scarf and draped it over himself, blue tartan over ghostly pale tulle. Alastair realised that it was Marianne’s scarf, which made it a strange sight indeed — here was a beautiful, knowing man who had fluttered his way into his life just this morning dressed in his betrothed’s clothing.

“Today’s marriage is my duty.” He could not tear his eyes away from Stellan, who was pacing around the room, snuggling into the scarf. “I have known this would happen for many years now.”

Those beguiling eyes caught him then; triumph shimmered in them. “So it is something you must do, but not something you want to do.”

“Why do you care?” Alastair questioned brusquely. “It is not as though you are jealous of Marianne, and would marry her instead.”

Stellan glided towards him once more. His cheeks were slightly more flushed now, making him look more like an actual human being rather than a fleeting spirit. “Because, as the winds blow past the fields you work in, I have watched you. Day in, day out, you live as dictated.” Stellan’s blush deepened more so, and he pursed his lips. “And I came to grow fond of you.” He gently twisted the scarf. “Very fond.

“How could I bear to see somebody I am fond of so caged in?”

Suddenly, Alastair’s ears felt rather warm. So that was why Stellan was so against all of this. “So you have that sort of feeling for me. What makes you so sure that I am like you?”

Stellan neared Alastair, though he dodged playfully when he reached out to try and touch him. “Because,” he said, voice much lighter now, “I saw your face when you first laid eyes on me. I doubt you have ever looked at Marianne that way. At the very least, I have never seen you do so.”

His breath caught. “Did I really look… lovestruck, or something-or-other?”

“Yes, you did.”

Now the heat had spread from his ears to his entire face, and Alastair prayed that his cheeks were not as red as his hair. “I don’t think I meant it.” Then Stellan neared, and he leant forward to try and catch him once more, suddenly wondering what his touch felt like.

The door creaked open, and from the doorway came, “Alastair?”

The shock cut through the rest of his battling thoughts, and he ran towards Stellan. “You have to go.”

He tugged the scarf off himself, glancing at the door. “What is happening?”

“They cannot see you!” Alastair nudged him to the window. “Go now, please, I will meet you again soon.”

Dillon burst into the room, seeing Stellan in all his beauty by the window, and froze.

Before he could stop him, he rushed out of the room, and Alastair whirled to Stellan. “Please. I don’t know what they will do to you, I don’t want you to get hurt — ”

“There!”

He spun to see Dillon back in the room, alongside Marianne and her mother. “I saw him there, with a man in white.”

“Don’t be silly now.” Marianne sailed to the window. “All I see is my scarf. I think you’re just taking Arthur’s fortunes a bit too seriously.”

Alastair’s shoulders sagged in relief, realising that Stellan had flown away just in time. “I do hope you do not actually believe that lunatic’s words.”

Marianne’s mother laughed. “I think he’s just jealous that his best friend got the loveliest girl in the village.”

“Mother!” She laughed, high and sweet, though it did not warm Alastair’s heart the way he thought it would. “Dillon will find a wife of his own soon, I just know it. There is no need to fight over me.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Dillon said gruffly.

Marianne wrapped her scarf around her neck and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. “Come on, now. Let Alastair get changed. Go outside and wait for everyone else to show up.”

Bride-to-be and mother-in-law watched him like a hawk as he changed into his wedding suit, then led him outside where the many wedding guests were assembled. Standing aside was a cluster of bards, bagpipes at the ready. Dillon came up to him, all shock and envy from before gone, and grabbed his shoulder. “It’s your last hour as an unmarried man. We ought to celebrate!”

The bards began their playing, Marianne pulled him into the crowd and he began to dance.

It was freeing, for a while, to lose himself in the wild blur of limbs and laughter and simply move without thinking. Alastair had danced this way before, and it would never stop being exciting to him. He laughed, hooking an arm around Marianne’s waist and spinning her ‘round. Little Peter danced in front of him and nearly tripped over his uncle’s shoes.

They danced, carefree and jolly, and Alastair nearly felt ready for the wedding. But then he saw white again.

Once more he released her, searching the crowd of people for the one man he knew would stand out. He saw nothing. She took hold of him again, and they continued dancing.

The next time he slipped away, it was a pair of gossamer wings he saw. Stellan glanced back at him, cheeks pink once more as he sailed elegantly past the partygoers. Unthinking, Alastair reached a hand out, a part of him perhaps hoping to touch his soft hair, but Marianne grabbed his wrist and he was tugged back.

Throughout the song they played their silent, musical game of cat-and-mouse. Stellan wove in between the dancers, somehow evading notice, while Alastair tried to catch glimpses of him without arousing any more suspicion. Occasionally, when he got bored of spinning and gliding, Stellan flapped his wings a few times to make his jumps higher. His slender arms stretched out in front of him, flowing like a scarf in the wind. In his white clothes, dancing something entirely different, Alastair had never seen someone so graceful.

When the dancing ended, and Stellan had vanished once more, he was given the ring that would adorn Marianne’s fingers during the ceremony and left alone once more. Alastair ran his fingers over the bronze band, watching it glint in the faint sunlight. Less than an hour later, he would slip this ring on her fourth finger, and she would do the same to him, and that would be it. They would be bound to each other for as long as they lived, and what was left of his nameless, forbidden love would be stamped out for good. But that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? For his desire to finally be suppressed? In that case, the rings would be less like rings and more like shackles.

Dillon and Marianne’s mother were keeping an eye on him from his spot by the hedges, though they didn’t know he could see them. With his parents no longer with him and her father gone too, her mother was the one who had held fast to the arranged marriage. She wanted security for her daughter, and how better to achieve that than marrying a young, well-off farmer? Alastair clenched his fist around the ring, Stellan’s words were really getting to him.

A white-clothed figure was lingering behind a tree, peering out at him.

Speak of the devil.

Stellan poked his head out, looking so sweet and curious that Alastair nearly laughed. He had woven himself a circlet of white heather, as though fancying himself the one to marry him. He nodded at his hand and tilted his head.

Oh. Alastair pinched the ring between his thumb and index finger and lifted it up. The sylph raised an eyebrow and pointed at his ring finger in question.

He nodded.

Quicker than he had ever seen him before, Stellan leapt out from behind his tree towards him, wings spurring him forward so he was nearly a blur. He grabbed the ring, admired it for a moment, then swiftly fled before he could catch him. “Hey!”

He slipped the ring on his own finger, glanced back at him and smiled teasingly. Hopping lithely onto his garden fence, he perched on top of it for a moment, winked, then tumbled off and made his escape. Alastair could hear someone yelling at him from behind, but did not turn back. Before he could stop himself, he raced after Stellan into the forest beyond.

#aph scotnor #aph scotland #aph norway #aphrarepairweek2021 #aph fanfiction #my writing

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