Name: Greenling
Story: Unnamed Mosaic AU #1
Colors: Barbados Blue #11 (Bird of Paradise)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas, Eraser (Crackpairing AU), Mosaic (Exalted), Graffiti (Lilith Fair 2), Stain (Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything. Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845))
Word Count: 1,051
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: Peace grew up apart from most people, escaping his past and preparing for his future. As a teenager, he begins to learn the part he's missing.

This is set in a very different time from the previous fic, but it's still within the same canon. It'll make somewhat more sense in a couple of chapters. Also there's a giant hole in the middle, but hey, I wrote over 1k words in on day, that's a lot for me. Comments, criticism, and questions are all appreciated.


When Peace was about twelve, he and his Sifu moved into a city in the Haslanti League, the great Northern empire. She had what she called "long-term business" there, a thing she'd largely sat aside when she took him in: something that involved the Fate of nations, or other important and delicate things. Something that involved masquerading as a mortal.

She had taught him the gist of how these things worked. There were five Maidens and therefore five great influences in Fate: Journeys, Serenity, Battles, Secrets, and Endings. As a priest of the Maiden of Serenity, she worked to keep Creation intact and functioning, promote the Maiden's interests, learn awesome tricks and mystic martial arts, and generally make life better and happier for everyone. This apparently meant a great deal of esoteric training, old books, paperwork, astrological charts, and other things he didn't understand much of, but because it made her happy, he tried. It was then, in his twelfth year, that she told him that one day he would do the same.

One day when he was fifteen, she called him into the sitting room to have a talk.

"You're getting older," she said. "It was tradition among my family to have a great celebration when a child turned sixteen. You are as close as a son to me, and I'd like to have a party for you and your friends."

He was startled by the way she said it, and leaned back in his seat uncomfortably. "Uhm... I'd love a party, but you know I don't have any friends."

The townhouse they lived in was old by the standards of the North, perhaps a hundred years or so. His Sifu, when she did her business, claimed the identity of an old widowed woman from a wealthy family, both wealth and family having been written retroactively into the tapestry of Fate. In theory, Peace supposed, the townspeople knew he existed, but he never went out except with her and under a hooded cloak that covered most of his features, and even then rarely. The looks people gave him were sad, seeming to imagine he was sickly or deformed- and maybe that wasn't entirely false. Being sad was much better than what would happen if they knew where he came from.

"Oh? Well, I'm afraid they're very much required. Perhaps you should make some?" She had a light look on her face and a small smile; he frowned, a touch of bitterness in his heart.

And so, slowly but with all the hope he could muster, Peace began to wander.

*

(...)

*

Rika ducked into a back alley between a pair of half-standing buildings, still holding Peace's arm tightly. There was a pile of lumber and trash, and it looked like a dead end- then he finally let go.

"Wh-why did you bring me here? They're coming!" he hissed nervously. Rika just yanked a couple of boards out of place on one wall, revealing a hole. He waved a hand at it.

"Go in!"

Peace didn't hesitate.

The hole was small and cramped, and even on the inside, there were piles of old, broken things and trash. In the half-light, Peace thought he spotted what looked like mechanical parts, and he definitely smelled rats. Had this been the site of some kind of crash? There was a path through the clutter, and he took it as far as he could.

Finally, he came to a more-or-less open room. Here, light leaked through the ceiling and a half-boarded window, enough to see the place had been quite deliberately cleaned. Piles of blankets lay in a corner next to an old rotten nightstand and a candle; there was furniture, sparse and rat-eaten but present, and neatly-folded clothing in one corner.

He turned to Rika, and realized he was nervous too.

"Thank you," said Peace, not knowing what else to say.

"No worries. Now why was an angry mob chasing a rich boy like you?"

"Mmh..."

"I'm taking you into my home. I should at least know if this is going to bite me in the ass."

Peace shook his head vigorously and walked over towards the window. "No. It won't. My grandmother will be back, and she'll fix it. You don't have to worry."

Rika followed him. "That's good, if it's true... but you can't tell me what it is?"

"Uhm." Peace curled in on himself a bit, sitting on the old couch, which protested with a loud creak. "Someone saw me."

"Saw you?"

"My hood blew off..."

On some level, Peace wanted to tell him more than anything in the world. Since his Sifu had found him, cold and lost in the woods, he had never even spoken to someone his own age. All he knew was Yu-Shan, with its gods and glittering Manses and all the grand workings of the celestial hierarchy- and then this place. But he knew what he was, and why people were rightly afraid of him. Everything he knew told him that it would be deeply unwise to...

He wasn't even sure.

"C'mon... I'm your friend, aren't I? You've seen my dark secret, what can an ugly face be to that?" Rika said finally.

That broke his reverie, though Peace hesitated, as much because he didn't know how to feel as because he wasn't sure if it was a good idea. Carefully, he took down the hood of his robe. Underneath, growing just above his pointed ears, were two curled ram's horns made of translucent crystal. Inside them, tiny sparkles in a thousand bright colors shone in the moonlight.

The other boy stared at him for a while, wide-eyed; Peace could barely move, he was so nervous.

"Are you... Fae-Blooded?" Rika finally said.

He couldn't help but look away. "My... father was a raksha of the Opal Court in the East. But I'm nothing like him. These... my horns were a punishment. A..."

He trailed off as Rika reached forward to touch one of them. Peace blushed.

"Well I can't fault you for that, can I? My Dad's a bastard himself. He's the reason I'm out here. And you know, you're... not ugly at all."

He grinned at Peace with a strange look in his face, and something rose up in Peace's heart like a shower of tiny bubbles.