Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 17 Rest Stop By Amethyst

Despite how eager we all were to leave Nhekar, I was a little bit nervous about seeing our troupe again. Don’t get me wrong, I had missed them a lot and I was looking forward to seeing them again but there were a few things that had me a bit nervous. First, I was really hoping that the fertility artefact would still work as advertised on a different Plane from Nhekar so those Faery who wanted children could have them. I didn’t see why it wouldn’t since it was an artefact but I didn’t want to get their hopes up only for it to not work.

Secondly, I was a bit worried about how the troupe would react to Rebecca and our pseudo Succubus situation. I knew that they all trusted and cared for me and that I had earned that, but all of the Faery in our troupe had some form of trauma involving Demons and I didn’t want to make any of them uncomfortable or inadvertently trigger someone. I was also worried that while they knew me well enough that they might accept this part of me, they might just reject Rebecca outright.

It was mid-morning in Tír na nÓg when we stepped through the gate into the small village square. Most everyone in the troupe was going about their daily business and they were used to our comings and goings by now, so we made our way to the Chieftain’s hut to find Yanisse. I could feel her familiar magick as we approached her hut, so I wasn’t surprised to find the strawberry blonde Faery fashioning something out of metal.

Since we didn’t want to distract her we decided to wait until she was finished before stepping inside her hut. Rebecca had been looking around in rapt fascination as we made our way through the village. She pointed at one of the huts and asked, “There are no walls, is that normal here?”

The hut in question was normal, for the Faery at least. A metal frame had been grown from the earth with magick and thick vines with large leaves grew up along the supports to completely cover the roof and keep the rain out. Ziralin answered Rebecca with a smile, obviously glad to be back in Tír na nÓg, or away from Nhekar. “Yup, we’re in a tropical area and shelters are only to keep one dry when it rains. The Faery don’t really care about privacy and modesty anyway though. Nudity and sex aren’t something that should be ashamed of or hidden from those that care about you. There is only one hut in the village that has walls but Jaenara is a special case.”

“Yeah, Shannon told me about that,” Rebecca replied with a blush, “I just wasn’t expecting to see it. Why is this Jaenara person a special case?”

“She’s a spirit healer,” Sarah explained. “She’s strongly empathic and sometimes the feelings that she picks up from looking at other people can be overwhelming so her mind needs a break sometimes. She’s also sort of like a psychic counselor, she uses her abilities to help people who have suffered trauma to distance themselves from it and put it in perspective. Because of that, those who need her help sometimes don’t feel comfortable discussing their trauma where others might see, even other Faery.”

“She’s good at what she does too,” I added. “Annie, Ziralin, Ellie, and I have all seen her and she helped us a lot. I think you should probably talk to her, Beks. She doesn’t speak English well but we can try to find a way to make it work if you were to trust me to translate.”

“I don’t know… I…” Rebecca stumbled hesitantly over her words.

“Beks, I’m saying this as a friend,” I said, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. “You had issues from the bullying and stuff even before we all got on your mom’s plane. Since then you’ve witnessed your mother being violently murdered by a Demon, not to mention all of the other crap that we went through in Nhekar. And you weren’t used to this kind of stuff like the rest of us. Please, just think about it, Beks.”

“I’ll… think about it,” she reluctantly conceded as she looked away.

Things were quiet then for a few minutes until Yanisse finished the silver and gold bracelet that she was working on. It was gorgeous, Yanisse was truly a master of her craft. She looked up from her finished work and turned her golden eyes and her smile toward us. “Thank you for not interrupting, it is good to see you all again. We weren’t expecting to see you all again so soon.”

“We had to leave for Nhekar earlier than we thought and things didn’t take as long there as we thought either,” Sarah offered.

“Thank the Goddess for that,” Michelle muttered, “it was still too long though.”

“You found Jalael’s spirit then?”

“Ziralin and I found Jalael like four days after we got there,” Ellie said, changing to her Celestial form to display her new wings. “I haven’t had much chance to use my abilities much yet but I guess that I use some sort of holy magick to heal people. I’m hoping that since it’s holy magick it will hurt Demons too.”

Yanisse’s smile brightened and her eyebrows rose in interest. “Congratulations, Elsaishe. Having a healer available for the troupe would be wonderful.”

“So, yeah, we probably would have been back a bit sooner but there were some problems and magick energy wasn’t readily available so we were stuck there for almost a month,” Annie explained.

“Says the one who was vacationing with Sarah on a tropical island the entire time,” Lisa grumbled. “You didn’t have to deal with sea monsters, people kidnapping you, and all the other stuff we went through before getting to you.”

“That’s why all of you get to take a break now while Annie and I go home and try to figure out if people are searching for us yet, and where, so we can arrange to be found,” Sarah offered apologetically. “I’ve filled up on magick energy so we should be good to go. You girls and Mason can relax a bit and introduce Rebecca around.”

“But, Sarah, I need to… umm…” I started to mumble while sending her an imploring look.

Sarah reached out to hug me and whispered in my ear, “Introduce Rebecca to Yanisse? Yes, you do, and you have other things to show her too. I love you, Sis, and I will always support you but I have never babied you. You don’t need me to hold your hand, you haven’t for a while now, and you proved that on Nhekar. So woman up and just tell them. They’re our troupe and they aren’t going to hate you for something beyond your control.”

Yanisse’s gaze was focused on Rebecca as Sarah released me. “Rebecca is it?”

With the attention on Rebecca now, Sarah dragged Annie off so that she could cast a gate to Earth and they could get to work. That left me to make a somewhat awkward introduction. “Rebecca, this is our troupe’s Chieftain, Yanisse. Yanisse, this is Rebecca. She lost her only family, and it’s kinda our fault. She was traveling with me in Nhekar and… well, there’s something about her… both of us that you should know.”

The strawberry blonde Faery looked at me and Rebecca in interest, as if trying to figure out what secrets we held. “It is nice to meet you, Rebecca, welcome to our humble village. Shannon, please calm down and tell me whatever it is that you need to.”

It took a while, and I was nervous as hell the entire time, but I told Yanisse everything. I started by telling her about Xuriel, her story, how the Sentinel was actually the first Cailleach Dearg, and how she had given me her Mark and hidden it away on my birthday. That was a bit of a shock for her but not as much as when I went on to tell her about the curse in more detail and now I had shared it with Rebecca so we could both survive.

When I was finally done, Rebecca and I nervously switched to our Succubus forms, though only briefly. We also made sure to get to keep our distance from Yanisse when we did it so she wouldn’t turn into a lust zombie since most Fae are pansexual or bisexual to some degree. “So, you… uhh... see. We’re not really Succubae, we can just kinda copy their forms and abilities,” I finished while wringing my hands nervously once we had changed back into our human forms.

Yanisse’s shocked expression faded as a thoughtful one took its place. “Shannon, calm yourself. You have no demonic aura and, as I understand it, you had this mark even before you, Elsaishe, and Ziralin saved our people. You are the same kind and caring person, just with a new ability. It will take us a while to get used to this but you are still one of us, even more so than before now that we know that you are truly a descendant of the Cailleach Dearg and that she has entrusted you with her powers. Our people knew Brighid for a long time and she was no Demon either, she was a scared young woman when our people found her and she became family, just as you have.”

“But I used a curse on Rebecca,” I pointed out.

“To make her dream come true, give her a body that she is comfortable with, and help her to survive in a hostile world. You showed mercy and compassion by doing something that you weren’t comfortable with for her sake, even though the two of you didn’t get along,” the Chieftain countered before turning to Rebecca. “You truly have nobody to turn to, child?”

I let out a sigh of relief as Ziralin took my hand in hers and squeezed it. Rebecca seemed to shrink a bit as Yanisse’s gaze fell upon her. She gritted her teeth, a pained expression on her face as she replied, “Only my ‘father’ but he’s an abusive dick who wants to force me to be a boy. I… can’t go back to that.”

“She has me,” I quickly interjected. “Her mom died because Khinara was after me and that makes her my responsibility.”

“She is not an orphaned animal, Shannon, she is a child, despite her mature appearance, and you are not much older than she is. You are too hard on yourself. I will not send her back to an abusive parent but I cannot be sure if she will be a good fit for our troupe until we have gotten to know her better, just as we did the others who you, Ziralin, and Elsaishe have brought into the troupe,” Yanisse said with a sigh.

“Technically, she’s already a part of the troupe,” Ellie pointed out.

“How so, Elsaishe?” Yanisse asked, tilting her head like a curious kitten.

“Well, Shannon turned her into a Succubus and helped her to learn to control her abilities. Even if they aren’t real Succubae, that makes her Rebecca’s Succubus-mama. And if she’s Shannon’s Succubus-baby, then she should be a member of the troupe by default,” my cousin pointed out with a playful grin.

Rebecca was gaping at Ellie and then looked at me briefly before suddenly finding her feet much less awkward to stare at. Her face was bright red but I could completely understand since I was flabbergasted by Ellie’s logic too. I knew that as much as she was trying to help, my cousin had pointed that out to make us both squirm as well. What was worse was that the others all seemed to find it as funny as Ellie did.

Well, Yanisse didn’t find it funny, or maybe she did since she was trying to cover a smile after seeing the looks on our faces. She did relent though. “Alright, Rebecca is technically a member of the troupe but we will only induct her officially once we have gotten to know her better. As her ‘mother’ she will be your responsibility, Shannon, just as your apprentice has been.”

As grateful as I was to my cousin for easing things somewhat, I also resolved to get her back for this later. Maybe I would get Rebecca to help me, she looked perfectly willing. If Ellie complained, then we would just rub it in her pretty elven face by saying that it was a mother-daughter bonding activity.

By the time we finished talking with Yanisse, it was already time for the midday meal. As we were all eating, Yanisse brought attention to our return and our tentative new member of the troupe. She told everyone that we had gotten the last Sentinel and that once we were ready we would be leaving for Heil to take the fight to the Demons. She also had me address everyone to tell them everything that I had told her earlier and to introduce Rebecca.

I was a bit nervous about coming out as a pseudo Succubus to the whole troupe at once but Ziralin stood up with me for support and held my hand the entire time. The Faery of the troupe were uncertain at first, especially once Rebecca and I changed forms and accidentally zombified the Faery sitting close to us. They mostly settled down and seemed to somewhat accept the situation once Yanisse pointed out that neither of us had a demonic aura, we were fighting against the Demons, and that I was not only a descendant of the Cailleach Dearg but that Brighid had entrusted me with her powers.

Once things had settled down, I decided to bring up something that I had forgotten to mention to Yanisse earlier. “Rebecca and I will try not to use our abilities in the village for now, at least until I can give you some immunity to them. We can’t really control the charm aspect of our Succubus forms but I’ve created a spell that will help people resist it. It may be a while before Sarah, Lisa, and I can cast it on everyone in the troupe though.”

“The spell works really well,” Michelle added. “None of us have had any problems being around them when they’re doing the Succubus thing since she cast it on us.”

There was some obvious relief at Michelle’s assurance that the spell worked. The lust thing wouldn’t bother any of the Faery much but I doubted that anyone was comfortable with the thought of mind control, even if they could be sure that we wouldn’t abuse the ability. I couldn’t really blame them for that since I had been on the receiving end of a Succubus whammy and would feel the same in their place.

Jennifer managed to guide everyone’s thoughts away from that kind of thing though as she exclaimed, “Oh! Tell them about the thing you got from the magical mad scientist!” I silently thanked my BFF for providing a distraction in that awkward moment and reminding me of another thing that I had forgotten in my nervousness.

“We came across a magical device that some jerk was going to use on Elsaishe and Ziralin,” I explained to stave off the widespread confusion at Jen’s exclamation. “He wanted to breed them like farm animals and I guess this device is supposed to allow the user to… uhh… impregnate a female by taking genetic information from someone else. It doesn’t matter if the person donating the DNA is male or female. We haven’t tested it ourselves, of course, and we can’t be absolutely sure that it will work but if it does this could allow those of you who want children to have them.”

A hush fell over the Faery gathered as they all gaped at me. Finally, Yanisse spoke for everyone. “You are certain about this, Shannon?”

I felt bad that we were getting their hopes up for something that I wasn’t one hundred percent sure was going to work so I shook my head. “As I said, I can’t be absolutely certain. It might not even work here, though there is plenty of ambient mana to keep the okka crystal fully charged. We’ll have to get some volunteers to test it though, I guess.”

“The asshole that we got it from said that they had successfully used it on a variety of creatures, they even managed it with two females when there were no males available. Those ones only had female children though,” Lisa contributed. “It’s a hell of a lot better chance to have kids than you had before though.”

“I have a very strong feeling that it will work,” Mason offered. From the look on his face, he wasn’t just trying to offer them false hope and I breathed a sigh of relief. When Mason had strong feelings about something he was usually right. This could very well save the Faery from extinction.

We had no problem finding volunteers, there were so many in fact that Yanisse had to organize a lottery since she had decided to limit the test phase to three for now. If it ended up working, then the whole village would have a chance at a child if they wanted one. Since Rebecca was the most unbiased person there, not knowing any of the Faery very well and not having any magick to affect the results, she was the one who drew the lots.

To everyone’s surprise and delight, Yanisse was one of the three lucky winners. Despite her happiness at the turn of events, the Chieftain had tried to refuse and give someone else the chance but her fellow Faery insisted that she deserved a chance at a child as much as everyone else. I immediately retrieved the magical device from my portable bunker and once Lisa and Michelle had explained how it worked, they used the device on the three volunteers and their chosen partners.