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Willow looks at the tomato faerie. “That’s one for you, Pila.”
Pila lifts a bare shoulder. “Oh, half a dozen humans or so. But he relied a lot on his own glamour previously.” The woman descends into a subtle fit of giggles. “This is the first time he’s eaten dog food.”
Willow catches the laughter. “Oh. Oh my word. That’s right. He came by when you first adopted him just utterly despondent. I guess you were worried that he wasn’t eating?”
I do seem to remember that.
Cold washes into my veins as flashes of the first week with Oxford come to mind. “I… Dogs are supposed to eat their food right when you give it to them. I tried so many different brands until finally he…”
“He felt so dang bad he ate the dog food.”
“I feel terrible,” I whisper.
“Don’t.” Pila composes herself and puts the heaviest tomato ever on my lap right beside the cucumber Willow gave me. “He made his choices. You were just trying to take care of him.”
I stare at the tomato. “He was just trying to take care of me.”
Willow touches my shoulder. “Trying to take care of one another in ways that neither person really needs is exactly what happens when love exists without adequate communication.”
Pila lies back in the greenery, and the stems around her turn more vibrant shades. “Some faeries are hard to talk to. We exist in a state of truth. In a state of right and wrong. It’s easy to misconstrue our beliefs as truth. And it is very difficult to convince us that something we know to be true isn’t.”
I think Pila just described my entire relationship with my mother. I wince. “How do I get through to him?”
“Well,” Pila murmurs, “first, what do you want? If you have to choose between your family—”
“Hold on,” Willow interrupts.
“Hm?” Pila cocks her head.
“You can still text and write letters to your family or show up in a canine form. You’re not completely abandoning the people who love you enough to understand the situation. You’d be, what? Probably fully abandoning your job?” Willow crosses her arms, a look of pure disdain on her face. “It’s not choosing between Ollie or your family—because Ollie is your family, that’s how husband and wife relationships work, almost positive—it’s choosing between Ollie and your job.”
“Sapling.” Pila covers her smile.
“What? I like that better. Quit your job, Brit. Easy choice.”
“But it’s not an easy choice, is it?” Pila says, and her brilliant green eyes meet mine for half a second.
Texting and writing letters to my family just isn’t the same as being there with them. I don’t even know how I’d explain any of this to my parents. And Alana…I know what she’d say to my face. She’d be all for it. She’d wax poetic about hero’s journeys or something. But after she was done being strong for me, I don’t know how badly she’d collapse in on herself.
“Ah heck,” Willow mutters. “It’s been like, what? A week since you’ve known he’s a real boy? Do you even know if you love him enough to be thinking about all of this yet?”
“That is a fair point,” Pila notes. “The soul bond may match two people together in ways that perfectly sustain each other, but you…can’t make a horse drink?”
My brow furrows. “What?”
“Sorry. My fault.” Willow raises a hand. “We’ve been making fun of human proverbs, idioms, and aphorisms lately… ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ Basically, the soul bond matches two people, but you still have to choose to trust it. It can lead you to your mate, but it can’t make you accept them. It won’t even try.”
“Magic birthed from a place of love isn’t malicious in the sorts of ways that would take something as important as your family from you. The hard part is having enough faith to trust it.”
It hurts a tiny bit to swallow. “So, what you’re saying is, I should just accept giving up my humanity? I don’t know if I can do that to my family. Regardless of what I figure out I want.”
“If you decide that you love Ollie, trust that everything else will fall into place.” Pila cups a flower that begins forming into a squash.
“Pila,” Willow quips. “I am already making pies out of zucchini. Could you calm down?”
“I have friends who like zucchini pie.” Entirely chill, the woman continues growing the flower into the fruit. “They taste similar to apple.”
Willow sighs. “Hey, Brit, if Ollie’s lucid enough to respond coherently, see how many zucchinis you both want to take home. And, I don’t know. I get that it’s hard to feel like you’re good enough when you’ve been told otherwise or when you have a lot of regrets or when you’ve spent your entire life living in the wrong world, but there’s a reason you’ve ended up in this story. And it’s not so either of you wind up with a bad ending. Focus on what you want.” She hefts the tomato off my lap and puts it on the stone wall. “Love is stronger than fear.” She stands. “And now I’m going to go wash my mouth out with creek water, because I feel like a fortune cookie. Excuse me.”
