Celyn’s Adolescene II

The three of them were settled in the dappled shade of the foothills, not up into spaces the fey claimed, but looking over the pasture. Not that any of them were looking that way; Ellis was leaning up against a tree, with Celyn sprawled into his lap. Llew had claimed a different tree and was mirroring Ellis’s pose, long legs spread out, though he was thoughtfully drilling holes into a new pipe.

Of course, having Celyn in his lap meant that Ellis had to set the crwth aside, which he had done, propping it up on Celyn’s drum. He was idly running his fingers through Celyn’s hair.

“Is my hair getting too long? I can’t tell.”

“One,” said Ellis, “if you can’t tell if it’s too long it’s obviously not too long. And two, your decision about when it’s too long comes about through some process that is absolutely invisible to anyone else, and which appears to be completely random.”

Llew snorted and ran his thumb over the edge of the hole he had been drilling.

“You all right, Llew? You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“Pa’s grumpy with me, so I’m grumpy,” Llew said. “We should go down to Nefyn and see if anyone wants to pay musicians for a few evenings, maybe it’ll make him less grumpy. Celyn can come too if he wants.”

Celyn wriggled enough to be able to peer at his boyfriend’s brother. “Why’s he mad at you?”

“They wanted me to apprentice with the temple administrator,” Llew said, audibly grouchy. “Because I’m good with stories I guess, I don’t know. I don’t want it. I don’t want to be pinned down, I don’t want to feel like we can’t go play somewhere, or even go to Tafolwern and seek our fortune, or, or whatever else. We had a massive row about it and I’m going to spend the night with Luned rather than go home.”

“Temples are weird,” Celyn said, supportively.

Ellis poked him in the ribs, low enough that he didn’t twitch with it the way happened sometimes if Ellis touched his chest. Ellis paid attention to that sort of thing. “You spent most of a year in a temple, you,” he said.

Celyn shrugged cheerfully. “Doesn’t mean it’s not weird. And I wasn’t doing temple stuff, aside from the sort of odd jobs that anyone might do. I was learning different things. Clothes and herbs and things, for healing being out of season so badly.”

Llew grunted again. “Your voice has mostly stopped cracking.”

“I’m never going to be the singer Ellis is anyway,” Celyn said, with a grin upwards.

“I don’t like to sing either,” Llew said. “That’s why I learned pipes.” He measured with his fingers and started on another hole. “Do you feel less out of season now?” he asked, after a little pause in which he appeared to judiciously debate whether it was an invasive question.

“That’s complicated.” It touched on a number of things Celyn was not at all sure how to talk about. “My voice dropping is good. I’m a bit stronger than I was, which is nice.”

“You’re still tiny though,” Ellis said, with fondness.

“I fit in your lap that way. Anyway most of us take after Mama.”

“It’s true. She’s also tiny.”

“And the rest of it?” Llew prompted, before Celyn could get too distracted.

It made for another shrug. “Mostly I just—” It was hard to talk about. At least it was hard with people who couldn’t understand with a gesture. “The herbal potions and things help a lot. I’m so much less short-tempered now.”

“For which we are all grateful,” Ellis said, nabbing Celyn’s hand to kiss the back of it, which also neatly saved him from being poked in the ribs in retaliation.

“But there’s things… There’s things I’m not happy with, that’d take a miracle to fix. Or magic, I guess. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I asked the fey to help.”

Llew carefully put the pipe and drill down and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Celyn.”

“What?”

“You can’t go asking the fey that sort of thing.”

“Why not? They like me.” Celyn was only half serious about it, anyway, but this seemed an amusing way to needle Llew.

“Oh sure, they like you, so they won’t be offended and leave you elf-shot or whatever.” Llew straightened so he could gesture with one hand. “But asking them to turn you into something else? That’s a gamble.”

“I gamble,” Celyn retorted, because Llew had made that one too easy.

He rolled his eyes. “No seriously. You find a fey powerful enough to do it and you’re not going to get a man’s shape out of it, they’ll turn you into, I don’t know. An elk. That’d solve the whole ‘girl body’ problem for you all right but not the way you wanted.”

Ellis cleared his throat. “I kissed you as a girl. I kiss you as a boy. I will not, however, kiss you as an elk.” He clearly thought that Llew had been tweaked enough.

Celyn laughed and wriggled more into his lap to snuggle, tucking his head in on Ellis’s shoulder. “All right, I won’t ask a fey to turn me into something. To spare Ellis having to decide what to do with an elk.” It was, instead, time to tweak Ellis; he put one hand up, thumb against his temple, fingers spread. “But wouldn’t I be fine with horns?”

“Antlers,” Llew corrected.

“Horns, antlers, whatever.” Celyn grinned.

Llew sighed heavily and picked up his pipe again.

“Are you intending to grow horns - or antlers, hush, Llew - without turning into an elk?” Ellis asked, cautiously.

“I might, who knows.” He kissed Ellis’s jaw. “If you wouldn’t have a problem with it.”

Ellis put on a show of giving the question serious consideration. “I would consider kissing you if you had antlers.”

“I’d be taller,” Celyn said contemplatively. “With antlers.”

“Not in a way that made any difference!” Eliis was laughing now. He stroked down Celyn’s side, again carefully, and settled the hand on his hip. “You’d still have to look up at me. And it would make leaning down to kiss you even more awkward so I didn’t poke my eye out.”

“You two,” said Llew, with mock weariness.

“We’re not kissing right now!” Celyn objected, before saying to Ellis, “All right, maybe antlers wouldn’t be fun either.” He closed his eyes and sighed.

“Do you think you’ll get another miracle, dearest?” Ellis asked, his voice very quiet.

Celyn shrugged slightly. “If the Wyrdling wanted to change my body they would have,” he said. “They gave me enough understanding to manage. I’m not expecting another miracle.”

“But are you hoping for one?”

That was a far more complicated question, and Celyn had to think about it ferociously. He did not like to think about that sort of thing, to think about his body and the ways he would like it to be different. But also, hope was also the Wyrdling’s, and he couldn’t deny that. “I think,” he said, after a long while, “I think I hope for something, but know that a lot would have to change for it to actually come to pass, so I’m not, I’m not expecting it.”

“So long as you can hope,” Ellis said, with a ferocity that was rather unlike him, more like Celyn than himself. “I hate it that you hurt.”

Celyn fumbled for Ellis’s other hand and squeezed it. “It’s okay. It’s what it is.”

“I still don’t like it.” He let his head thunk back against the trunk of the tree. “Okay, not asking a fey to change you. Not expecting the Wyrdling to finish the job. What else might do?”

“Wizard,” said Llew blandly.

Ellis wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Celyn said, to change the subject, “There’s probably people who have the miracle, you know? Who learned some specific magic and share it with the people they meet who need it. Like me learning herbs.”

“So it would be finding that person.” Ellis sighed. “And we have no idea where they might be.”

Llew looked up. “When we go to Tafolwern to seek our fortune,” he said, the way one or the other of the brothers said, more conversations than not, “we can ask around for any miracle-workers who know that sort of thing.”

Ellis sighed again. “We can. So we’ll do that. When we do.” He had the weary edge in his voice that Celyn found entirely familiar; it was the one that touched on the brothers’ longing to leave, and weighed it against Celyn’s love of the hills, and his own actual work, and the chattering of their elders who assumed that someday there would be a marriage and even children - Grandfather Trefor had borne one, after all - and was quietly in conflict with himself, and the future too.

Celyn did not think it was good for him to get to brooding about that, so he kissed him.

“Ugh, you two,” Llew said, and threw some wood shavings at them.

Ellis raised a hand to wiggle fingers at him, escaped the kiss briefly, and said, “Go find Luned and do your own canoodling, then,” before closing his eyes and leaning in for more.

“I will,” Llew said, playing at being offended as he gathered his things and stood, making a show of stomping away in a rustle of fallen leaves.

They let him get almost out of earshot before they dissolved into laughter.