FAMILYR, Chapter 7
Brightest Unbound
Quick note before we dive in: I’ve learned many writers include content warnings, so I’ll be doing the same. I never want to blindside or trigger anyone, so from now on, you’ll always know what’s ahead.
*Content warnings: body horror, references to infant harm (off-page), mild gore/unsettling imagery, and coarse language/crude humor.
Welcome to FAMILYR (Pronounced Familiar). Previous chapters are linked below if you missed them…
Table of Contents
Chapter 2 - On the Edge of Two Worlds
Chapter 3 - Where the Hearth Divides
Chapter 4 - Through Shimmer’s Eyes
"I'm overdue for my second breakfast," Grissel grumbled, shoving aside a fern like it was a tribute-dodger. "Third, if you count the one I didn’t get thanks to your little tantrum." He scuttled ahead, cloak snagging on every twig. His hooves clicked on roots, thudding dully where moss thinned; he winced at every sound as if the forest nursed a personal vendetta against him.
“Where in the Hollow are we going?” he grumbled, batting branches aside as he barged ahead. The answer caught in my throat as one snapped back with merciless precision, smacking across my face and snagging in my hair. I hissed through my teeth, tugging free and plucking the leaves from my unruly locks. “You rot-chewed, moss-brained bark-bucker,” I spat, curses sharp enough to make a high priestess weep. “You pull bogrot like that again, and I’ll… I’ll…”
Grissel cut in smugly. “Oooo, very nice. That one’s going on the list, little-lady. If you’re taking requests, I’d like something with toad-wrangler next.”
Heat surged to my face as I armed myself with a tirade of curses sharp enough to flay bark. Before I could skewer him where he stood, Vaira drifted into view a few steps off the trail.
“Hush,” Vaira murmured, and even the brambles agreed.
She tilted her head, listening to music only she could hear. Her once deep green hair stirred without wind, seed-silk soft, now streaked with bronze and ember, the gold of bark at sunset. The hues shifted as if still growing, caught between summer’s life and autumn’s fall. She turned just enough for me to glimpse the edge of her faint smile.
Pausing beside a slender birch, she brushed its bark like an old friend, her palm lingering there in wordless communion. “No wonder the leaf-kin rustle with unease,” she murmured. “You clamour louder than any cider-soaked troll at festival’s end.” As she turned, the barest lift of her brow said everything she didn’t.
I bristled beneath her calm. “I’m doing my best.” The words rang thin, even to me. What I wanted to say? I was done. Done with Grissel… done with my family… done with anyone who dared try to define or measure me.
Grissel snorted. “Your best just crushed a fairy ring.”
I froze, breath catching. “What?”
He jabbed a stubby finger at the ground by my heel. Sure enough, I’d stomped straight through a delicate ring of mushrooms… pale caps now flattened, their fragile stems oozing greenish pulp.
Vaira stepped lightly around me, crouching to brush her fingers across the ruined mushrooms. “Unfortunate.”
“That’s... bad, isn’t it?” The words stuck in my throat like a splinter.
“Depends,” Vaira said, still studying the crushed ring. Do you still remember anything from before you were three? Any sudden urges to speak in riddles?”
Grissel broke into a wheezing cackle. “Or sprout goat horns? Shed your teeth like acorns? Maybe you’ll be speaking mushroom and whistling spores by supper!”
I backed away, brushing at my sleeves like invisible curses were already crawling up my arms. “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t even see them.”
Vaira stood so smoothly it felt like the air shifting. “Of course you didn’t. In the forest, you’re still just a baby.”
Heat betrayed me, blooming scarlet hotter than my temper. “That’s absurd. Vaira, we’re practically the same age.”
“Wisdom keeps no clock, dear...” She wagged a finger at me, eyes soft. “And out here, you’re the age of sap in spring. Still sweet. Still sticky. Still unaware of everything about to eat you.”
Before I could argue, Grissel gave a triumphant grunt and pulled something from his back pocket. It looked like cheese… if cheese were a crime against nature.
The smell hit first. Sharp. Rotten. Oh so feral.
“No,” I said flatly.
“Yes,” he said, smirking. “Been aging this beauty for weeks. Pocket-fermented. Sweat’s where the flavor lives!”
He took a bite. Vaira blinked once, and in the same breath, she swept backward, scattering like leaves on a gust. She reformed several paces away. Gaze fixed on the cheese in wide, quiet horror. “Stars, that should be illegal.”
“You’re all just uncultured,” Grissel mumbled around his chewing.
Vaira’s gaze slid past us. She sifted her fingers through unseen currents, then licked their tips. Her eyes sharpened. “Something passed this way recently,” she murmured.
I straightened. “What kind of something?”
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“A foulness that sickens the air. Breath seared with iron and rot. Sea-stench where no salt belongs… The hooved skinless shadow, perhaps.” She shrugged.
Grissel froze mid-chew. Slowly, he lowered the cheese. “No … Nope. Absolutely not. That’s it, your blasted fit’s over. Damned spectacle’s done. We’re leaving. Preferably yesterday.”
I glanced between them. “The what now?”
Vaira lingered at the undergrowth, stroking a leaf as though it might be soothed. “You don’t see it until you do. Then it’s real. And the more you notice, the more it notices you. By then, it’s too late.”
I blinked, completely lost.
She glanced back at me, catching my confusion. A sigh nearly touched her lips. Instead, she turned, her voice dipping into a lilting, uncanny cadence.
"Speak not the name that steals your breath,
It soon takes shape and hastens death."
The words tightened something in my chest. I knew them, half-remembered, like a splinter pressing from beneath the skin.
Vaira’s eyes flicked to me, measuring, before she went on in a voice soft enough for the forest itself to lean in and listen.
"Dark glens don’t step, nor shadow’s line,
Nor follow hooves that leave no sign."…
"When naught is heard and cold grows near..."
A sudden chill laced my spine, cold as river melt. The rest spilled from me before I could stop it, memory blooming like a bruise.
"Be stone. Be still. Be never here."
Aunt Lydia used to whisper that rhyme when I was small, when fever had me shivering and half-mad. She claimed it was nonsense, just something old folk said to hush scared children. But when I was twelve, I had a dream that felt more real than dreamlike.
I’d been sick for days; sweat-slick and gasping, and somewhere in the haze, I saw it. It stood in a hollow between two dead trees. Skinless. Tall. Its sinews gleamed like raw cords. Steam curled from joints that shouldn’t move. Its breath burned the air. Its eyes were holes.
I drew it afterward, hands shaking. When Aunt Lydia found the sketch, she went quiet in a way that made my skin crawl. She burned the paper and salted the corners of my bedroom, then brewed valerian tea so strong it stained my teeth. I never spoke of it again. Not because I forgot, but because some part of me feared it was real. And that it remembered me, too.
Grissel looked like he’d swallowed a cold frog. “That thing eats regrets and peels memory. I’d rather wrestle a pissed-off kelpie in my skivvies.”
I gagged. “Grissel—gross.”
“For what it’s worth, Grissel,” Vaira said serenely, a hint of amusement in her voice, “I imagine you’d fare just fine. The poor thing might be too stunned to defend itself after glimpsing you in your private linens.”
A beat passed. Grissel looked faintly wounded, calculating, and smug all at once. He smoothed back a few wiry hairs that didn’t need smoothing, then gave her a look full of deadpan charm. “Flattery wrapped in horror. I’m not swooning yet Unborn… but do keep at it.”
I had to ask. “What’s an Unborn?”
Grissel flashed a wicked smile, sharp as daggers. “Elemental creatures aren’t born. They’re manifested. No real spark of their own. She’s just a magick-wielding husk.”
Vaira tilted her head, completely unbothered, still turning over whatever he’d said before. “Mmm, no. I’m only drawn to fruit-bearing leafkin. I prefer stability. Deep roots. A reliable bloom cycle.” She smiled dreamily, like she was picturing a slow, romantic courtship with a radiant plum tree.
Grissel made a choking sound, part cough, part protest. I stepped past him, refusing to meet his eye. “Enough. Vaira… you know these woods better than any of us. Would you guide me through safely, without any more cursed surprises?”
Vaira studied me, curiously. “Why not just leave? It’s dangerous here for someone with your... limited capacities.”
A laugh, hollow and edged like a snarl, escaped me. “Limited capacities? Lovely. Shall I sprout moss and be done with it, since I’m so useless?”
Vaira’s gaze softened. “I meant no wound. But magick bound is no shield. Until you wield it, the forest will only see you as something to devour.” She blinked, slow and steady. A weighted silence hung between us… thick with patience and the quiet disapproval of someone waiting for me to understand.
Grissel harrumphed behind me, like that settled it.
Heat tightened my chest. If I wanted her help, I’d have to give more than this show of fire. “I’ve decided,” I said, seizing the moment before it slipped away. “When the Veil Tide peaks, I’ll unbind myself. The old crone said it was possible, the only way. To shore up my magick, to never be bound again.” My voice faltered, the edge slipping. “She knows things, Vaira. About my mother… about what’s locked in me. I need to find her. Do you… do you know anyone who might know where she lives?”
From behind, Grissel erupted with a squawk fit for a strangled crow, arms flailing like he was calling down the stars themselves. He thrust a finger at me, eyes gleaming with triumph. “I knew it! I knew you’d been chattering with that damned witch again! Stars above, Mirelle, are you trying to get yourself hexed six ways ’til seedfall?”
Grissel was still flapping and sputtering, but Vaira only blinked past him as if his noise belonged to the trees. Her gaze turned inward, caught on the edge of memory. Then she nodded slowly. “The Magickfolk tavern, perhaps. Toward the forest’s heart.”
My heart leapt, snaring my voice. “Would you take me there?”
She offered a faint smile. “Only if we go now. I’d rather not watch the skinless shadow make ribbons of you.”
Grissel elbowed his way forward like a goat through someone’s herb rack. “And what about me?!” he snapped. “You think I can just waltz back alone? Hollow, no. I’m oathbound to protect that ungrateful toadling, and I sure as troll snot can’t show up without her. And I’m not tagging along with you just to decorate some beast’s molars!”
Vaira gave a feather-light shrug, amused and unbothered. “Well, Grissel... the forest takes what it pleases. I’d hope it finds you… chewy.” Her gaze drifted skyward, as if she’d already forgotten him. Then, almost idly, it slid back with the faintest quirk of a smile. “Anyway, you’ve had a good run, haven’t you?”
Grissel opened his mouth, gearing up for a rant. Likely something involving indignation, riots, and at least one implied curse.
But Vaira lifted a finger, serene as a drifting leaf. “No time,” she said, cutting him off like wind through a door crack. Before he could argue, she unraveled like leaves on a breeze, reforming several paces down the trail. Moon-pale, waiting. A faint smile curved at her lips. She raised one arm in the vaguest hint of a beckon. “Come along,” she called, like wind coaxing through branches. “The forest doesn’t wait.”
We set off.
Vaira slipped through the brush like wind made flesh. Grissel trudged behind, muttering obscenities every few steps. And me? I just tried not to crush anything else… cursed. Half my gaze stayed on the ground, searching for large hoofprints. Signs the skinless shadow had followed. Stars help me, what was it called?
A sudden rustle split the canopy and seized my attention. Something leapt, small and swift, vaulting branch to branch with impossible grace. Mid-arc, its form unraveled into shadow, then burst into feathers; wings unfurled, radiant and fierce, carrying it skyward. My breath caught, not in fear this time, but wonder. For a heartbeat, even the forest held still.
“Wild Familyr,” Vaira said, glancing up. “They’re brightest unbound. But to hexing covens, nothing is sacred.” Her words lost their usual softness, each one clipped as though carved from stone. “Blight-witches bind them, rot them hollow, until all that’s left is a sliver of shadow.”
After a beat, her gaze slid back to me, her expression tight. “No offense...”
“None taken,” I lied, too quickly. Not me, I told myself. She meant other witches, the ones who carve through infants’ hearts to wring out the faintest trace of magick. Still, the word clung like pitch, reminding me what I’m kin to, and what she’d never quite forgive.
I tried to shove it down, but the thought of creatures drained to husks gnawed at me. Every rustle in the underbrush whispered of something chained, hollowed, forgotten. I swallowed hard and pressed on.
The forest closed in. We’d been walking for hours. Long enough for my feet to throb and Grissel to mourn his cheese supply while launching tragic monologues about starvation. But the longer we went, the safer I felt. Safer, and foolishly relieved.
Just when I began to think we were lost, maybe walking in circles, a strange sound carried through the trees. Soft and distant, like glass clinking underwater. The air shifted. A thread of laughter drifted by, low and faint. It was tangled with the scent of smoke and spiced cider. The forest felt different now, charged... expectant.
My aching feet quickened; at least this meant we weren’t lost.
A tiny thing skittered across the path ahead, a bright-eyed scrap of fur with wings like petals. The sudden gentleness of it broke the coil in my chest, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The release worked like a key in a lock. The words bubbled up unbidden.
The skinless shadow, hooved… half-formed. Nuckelavee. The old rhyme. The fever dream. Aunt Lydia’s terror. Stars help me, that was its name.
“Maybe the Nuckelavee never followed us at all,” I muttered, gazing at the small creature in quiet relief.
I lingered on its delicate wings, my expression still soft — until I realized neither of them was smiling. Both Vaira and Grissel had frozen. Horror widened their eyes, and it wasn’t aimed at the creature. It was fixed on me.
More to come. Until next week… ᛟ
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Some paths are best walked with kin.
The imagery of how Vaira breaks and reforms further along is really cool! Grissel just won't ever shut up will he? 🤣 I'd imagine that when he's quiet, that when things are going wrong...