Secrets and Lies

"I assume you're going to do the talking again, while I stand around looking pretty?" Phoebe asked as the two of us reached the designated location post.

We hadn't actually passed this one during our hike the day before, but we weren't far off. It was another junction, where the path we were on ended and the only options were to turn left or right. I couldn't see anyone in the area when we arrived, but we'd managed to get there a few minutes before three so I figured Seren would be along shortly.

"You're a natural when it comes to looking pretty Feebs," I replied with a smirk. "You don't have to stay quiet though. Especially when it comes to talking about the supernatural. After all, you're the expert on that subject."

She rolled her eyes, "You know what I mean. You're still the lead agent, I'm just your assistant."

I was about to point out I only had her word for that, when I noticed two people heading our way along the path. They were coming up behind us on the same trail Phoebe and I had taken a few moments earlier. And while our witness hadn't said anything about bringing someone with them, I felt fairly certain they were the young person on the left. And the one on the right was probably their sister.

Assuming it was them, Seren was about a hundred and seventy-five centimetres tall, which was just slightly taller than myself. Age-wise they looked to be an older teen, which matched what we knew about them. They looked rather skinny, although at least part of that could be attributed to their loose dark clothing. Which consisted of black trousers, black boots, and a large black hoodie. Their dark brown hair hung down just past their shoulders and looked a bit messy, and as they approached their brown eyes flicked back and forth between Feebs and myself.

Walking alongside them was a young woman I'd guess was in her early twenties. She was a little shorter than the teen, which put her much closer to my own height. Her auburn hair was styled in waves that stopped just above her shoulders, and she had hazel eyes. Her outfit was a lot more colourful too, she wore brown ankle boots, tight blue jeans, and a bright red winter jacket.

The pair slowed to a stop a few paces away from my partner and I, then the four of us quietly regarded each other for a couple awkward seconds.

The teen finally broke the silence. They spoke with a distinct Welsh accent when they asked, "I'm looking for a 'Trillium-42'. Is that one of you?"

"You can just call me Trillium," I replied with a friendly smile. "And my pronouns are she / her."

My partner introduced herself as well, "I'm Phoebe. Same pronouns, she / her for me as well."

Then I asked the teen, "I take it you're Seren?"

"Yeah that's me," they replied with a slight blush. Then they gestured to the young woman next to them, "And this is my sister, Carys."

Rather than greet us the young woman was looking at our witness with a raised eyebrow and an amused look on her face. Speaking in Welsh she asked her sibling, "You're calling yourself Seren now? Is that a new name? Should I start calling you that too?"

Although I'd already learned I could read Welsh thanks to Miss Talbot's magic, I was still mildly surprised to note I could understand the spoken language just as well. For that matter I could probably even speak it, although I hadn't tried yet. And for now I opted to remain quiet and let the siblings think I didn't know what they were saying.

Meanwhile Seren's cheeks grew a tad warmer thanks to their sister's questions. They mumbled their reply in Welsh, "It's not a new name or anything, just an alias I use online. I um, didn't want to say my real name."

Carys was still smiling as she commented in Welsh again, "But you didn't have a problem telling them my name? Interesting."

The exchange left me wondering if big sis perhaps had the same suspicions about her sibling as Alys and I. The knowing smile on her face certainly made it seem that way.

The young woman finally addressed my partner and I in English, "Hello Trillium and Phoebe. I gather you're here to see some fairies as well?"

"Aye," Feebs nodded. "Seren agreed to take us to them."

The teen sounded a little defensive as they insisted, "I said I'd try. I can take you to their favourite hang-outs, but I can't promise they'll show up. They're really shy, especially around new people."

"We understand," I responded. "And we really appreciate you doing this."

Seren nodded once then gestured to the right-hand path, "We'll visit the ruins first. They usually hang out there during the daytime, I think."

The four of us set off in that direction, which was vaguely to the north-east. The trail was wide enough we could all walk side by side, and I ended up in the middle next to Carys. Phoebe was next to me on the far left, and Seren was on the far right opposite their sister.

After a few seconds Carys glanced at Feebs and I then asked, "So I understand you two are some sort of supernatural investigators? What does that mean exactly? Do you have a podcast or a vlog or something? I'm assuming this is just a hobby, not your actual jobs."

Phoebe and I exchanged a quick glance, but once again I decided honesty was the best way to handle things. So I shook my head, "This is our job. Like I told Seren, we're here to document the fairies and ensure they don't pose any threat to public safety."

Seren came to a sudden stop as they gave me a worried look, "You're not going to try and hurt them though, right? Or get rid of them? You said you just wanted to see them, that's all."

"We're not here to hurt them," I stated in what I hoped was a convincing but friendly tone. "And we're not here to take them away, or cause any trouble. We just need to make sure there's nothing dangerous going on."

Feebs added, "We're also here to learn what we can about them. Like why they're here, where'd they come from, and how'd they get here."

Carys responded, "I can tell you how they got here. They came with me on the train from Oxford, back in June."

"What?!" Seren gasped as they stared wide-eyed at their sister. "You already know them? Why didn't you tell me?!"

"Sorry," the young woman grimaced. "I wanted to tell you, but I didn't think they'd reveal themselves to you. And I didn't want to tell you I could see fairies only to have them vanish whenever you were around. You'd have thought I was crazy."

Then she admitted, "At first I almost thought I was crazy. Seeing actual fairies flitting about? Nobody sees that."

I asked, "So they're originally from Oxford?"

"Not quite," she responded with a shrug. "I assume you want the whole story? I first encountered them while doing field work with one of my profs and a couple other students. We were out on a little island in the Thames, running some water quality tests just up-river from the Sandford Lock. I was sent to get some samples from near a weir, and that's where I found them."

"When was this exactly?" Feebs interjected. "When did you first encounter them?"

Carys replied, "That was near the end of April. Two of them came out of a copse of trees and flew a few loops around my head then vanished again. It was quick enough that I thought maybe I'd imagined the whole thing? My classmate James joined me a moment later, and he hadn't seen anything. It wasn't until he'd left again when they re-appeared."

"It took a few more rounds of that before I realized that was the pattern," she added. "They only appeared when I was alone. If the other guys or our prof were anywhere nearby then they were nowhere to be found."

Seren sounded a bit grumpy as they chimed in, "Like I said, they're really shy around new people."

"I'm pretty sure there's a little more to it than that, 'Seren'," their sister responded with another little smile, but she didn't elaborate.

Instead she looked to Feebs and I and commented, "I'm sure you'd like to hear more of my story, but I have a question for you two first. If this is your full-time job then who do you work for? Who's paying you to research fairy sightings in rural Wales?"

I hesitated as I glanced at Phoebe to see if she wanted to answer. I knew she and the other ex-Brotherhood people liked to keep their secrets, but neither Owen or Grace or even Cindy herself had ever actually told me not to divulge anything about LIES.

"Is this some sort of secret government thing?" Carys added a moment later, after noting how neither Feebs or I were forthcoming with an answer.

Phoebe shook her head, "We're not with the government. I suppose you could call us an NGO? We're a non-governmental organization, based in Cardiff."

"I honestly don't know if it's supposed to be a secret or not," I admitted. "Neither of my managers or our boss has told me not to talk about it, so... Our group was founded by Cindy. The same Cindy who created those spells you've probably heard about."

Apparently that news was so surprising our two witnesses both stopped in their tracks to stare wide-eyed at me, while Feebs made a face about me sharing potentially sensitive information. It actually took the two siblings a few seconds to process that news, before Seren broke the silence with a question.

"You uh, mentioned that spell in your texts," the teen mumbled, while their cheeks started heating up again. "Is that because you work for the person who created it? Or uh, have you actually used it?"

I couldn't help smiling as I replied, "I've used it. Two months ago, I was part of the sixth wave."

"Oh wow," they responded quietly, while their eyes widened a little more. "What's it like?"

A moment later their cheeks flushed to bright red as they seemed to realize how they'd reacted or what they'd just asked. Or maybe they'd just noticed the way their sister was regarding them with curiosity and possibly suspicion.

Meanwhile I answered their question, "The magic doesn't really feel like anything. But when it was over? Honestly that was the best thing ever. I still have to pinch myself sometimes, to remind myself it's real. After a lifetime of feeling awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin, I've finally got a body that actually fits, that's comfortable. I'm finally the real me, the person I always was inside. Instead of having to pretend to be the person everyone else thought I was."

Seren ended up staring wide-eyed at me again as they quietly mumbled another "Wow..."

That led to another couple seconds of silence, which was broken this time by their sister.

"Hey b- I mean um, Seren?" she addressed her younger sibling in a soft compassionate voice. "Have you been thinking of using that spell yourself?"

Just like that the teen's cheeks were on fire as they shook their head, "What? No! I'm just curious, same as everyone else. It's magic, right? It's fascinating. But I'm not going to try it myself. You know what our ma and da are like, they'd flip."

"Anyways," the teen added as they suddenly started walking again, "We need to leave the path just up ahead. We're almost there."

Carys sighed as she watched her sibling move on ahead. Then she glanced at me and whispered, "The egg doth protest too much, methinks."

Hearing one of the bard's famous lines quoted like that caught me so off-guard I had to cough or I would have laughed. Although it also confirmed the young woman had the same suspicions as me, regarding her sibling. And she didn't seem to have a problem with that either, which was good to know.

Meanwhile Phoebe just nodded, "Aye."

"You were telling us how you first met the fairies," the redhead added as the three of us moved to catch up to Seren. "And how you came to bring them here?"

Carys nodded, "That first time I saw them, they kept disappearing any time my prof or one of the other students came near. I tried to talk to them each time they appeared, but I didn't get the chance for any real communication with them before we all had to pack up and head back to Oxford."

"I couldn't stop thinking about them though," she admitted. "I searched online to see if anyone else had seen them or knew anything about them, but I didn't find anything. Nothing current or relevant at least."

"The following weekend I ended up going back there on my own, to see if they were still around. They were, and there were four of them instead of just two. So I tried again to talk to them, I thought being on my own without the guys would give us some privacy, more time to communicate. But there were still interruptions. We were very close to the Thames Path, and it was a nice spring weekend with plenty of people out and about."

Then she sighed, "It also crossed my mind that maybe they just didn't understand English. Or Welsh. I kept trying though. I went back the following weekend to see them again, and the one after that."

The four of us were carefully picking our way through the underbrush at that point. We'd reached a spot where the trail turned to the left, but Seren led us to the right, sort of north-east again. I was pretty sure we were heading back towards the farms and cottages in fact, unless we found those ruins fairly soon.

Meanwhile Carys continued her story, "After that last visit they suddenly turned up at my flat in Oxford. None of my flatmates ever saw them, but they somehow followed me back there. That was towards the end of May. That's also when they finally began to speak with me."

"Unfortunately it wasn't long after we started communicating that I had to break the news to them," she sighed again. "I told them I'd soon be going away for a couple months, back home to Wales. They asked what it was like here, and after I described it they decided to tag along. Then once we arrived they quickly discovered the nature reserve and forest, and liked it enough they chose to stay."

Just then Seren came to another stop, and I realized we'd finally arrived. And it was immediately obvious why the location was so hard to find. The ruins were little more than a row of stones that barely made up part of a single wall. There was no break in the woods, no clearing, it was completely surrounded by the same trees and underbrush we'd been walking through.

"This is the place," the teen stated softly. "I don't know what it was exactly, but I think it was probably connected to Llys Rhosyr? That's an archaeological site just outside the forest."

I nodded slowly then asked, "How old do you figure this is?"

"Llys Rhosyr dates to before Edward the First," Carys responded. "So it's about eight hundred to a thousand years old."

"And this is where your fairy friends hang out?" Feebs asked.

Seren sounded a little defensive again as they answered, "It might take them a few minutes to appear. If they show up at all. Like I keep saying, they don't usually like strangers."

"Except I guess you're not a stranger," they added as they frowned at their sister. "I still don't understand why you didn't tell me about them back in June."

Carys grimaced, "I'm sorry. I didn't think they'd show themselves to you because they told me they don't trust -"

Suddenly a pair of bright golden lights shot out from somewhere near the ruins. The pair were moving almost too fast to follow as they flew straight at Carys, then did a couple tight loops around her head. They finally slowed down, and as they did they resolved from blurry points of light into tiny winged people, just like in Seren's pictures.

They both appeared female, one had long brown hair while the other was blonde. They were fair-skinned and slightly built, almost waif-like, and both were dressed in what I could only describe as fine white gossamer gowns. They were barefoot, and their gowns had open backs so as not to interfere with their dragonfly wings.

"Carys!" the blonde exclaimed. "You're back!"

The brunette added, "We've missed you!"

Both were speaking English, and I noted their voices were high-pitched without sounding squeaky. They were definitely sopranos, if not a little higher, but nowhere near as high as their tiny size would suggest.

The young woman smiled at them as they continued slowly circling her head, "Hello Sirona, Treasa, I missed you too. Where are Brighid and Derdriu?"

"Hey Treasa, Sirona," Seren added with frown. "Don't I get a hello too? Why didn't you ever tell me you knew my sister?"

The brunette fairy stayed next to Carys as she replied, "Derdriu's being shy about the strangers. Brighid's trying to convince her they're ok."

"Sorry Morwenna!" the blonde fairy added as she flew over to the suddenly blushing teen. "We didn't realize your sister was the same Carys we already knew!"

There was a wide excited smile on the brunette's face as she flitted over to join the blonde fairy. Then she asked the brightly-blushing teen, "Have you told her the big news yet? Or do we get to watch?"

Before anyone could react a third golden streak shot out from near the ruins to circle Carys once before joining the other two next to Seren. That one quickly resolved into another blonde fairy who exclaimed, "Carys is back! And Morwenna is here! Does that mean it's time for the big announcement?"

By that point our teen guide looked like they were about to die of embarrassment, while their sister was staring at them with another little smile on her face.

"So if 'Seren' is just an online alias does that mean 'Morwenna' is your new name?" Carys asked her blushing sibling. "And what's this big announcement all about?"