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Jim meets him for the first time when he’s six.
He’s lost. Frank had been fighting with Sam again and he had just wanted to get away. He couldn’t stand the yelling and the arguing anymore.
This was supposed to be a family vacation, out in the redwoods, and it had started well. That is until Mom was called away on a work emergency, leaving him and Sam under the care of Frank.
And soon it all had gone downhill from there.
Now, he’s lost.
The trees tower over him, tall like buildings, and reaching the rapidly darkening sky.
Briefly, he wonders if he could touch the stars if he were to climb one of them all the way to the top. He knows it’s just a fanciful dream, as he knows, after poring over the thick old fashioned Astronomy book he’d found in the school’s library, that stars are millions and billions of miles away from Earth.
But still, he wishes he could. Maybe they would take him away to somewhere he felt at home.
The chill of night reaches him quickly, and he pulls his jacket tighter around his thin frame. He tries to remember all the little tidbits of camping knowledge Sam had tried to drill on him during the trip up to the woods, but his mind is foggy with the exhaustion of walking aimlessly through the forest for hours.
He continues walking, trying his best to find his way back to the trail. Hopeless desperation begins to fill him as he finds himself more and more lost as the minutes pass by.
The forest darkens almost suddenly, bathing him in the inky blackness of night. Crickets and other night creatures chirp in the distance, the woods coming alive in the safety of the dark.
Almost blind, he stumbles on a rock, falling hard on the ground.
He lets out a cry as sharp pebbles dig into the palms of his hands and as the shabby fabric of his jeans gets thorn, tearing the skin on his knees.
Tired, hungry, and cold, he can’t help the sob that escapes him.
He had always tried to be strong for Sam, strong for Mom, but this is too much.
He’s lost and alone, and he’s scared.
Jim doesn’t know for how long he cries, curled up on the ground where he’d stumbled and fell. He’s shivering from the cold, his teeth chattering and breaking his small sobs.
A gust of damp warm air hits his back, and his eyes shoot open, not realizing he had closed them. Something warm and large nudges him, and fearfully he peeks over his shoulder.
A massive furry face stares back at him, eyes shining in the dark. He freezes, fear making him unable to scream or move.
The creature is huge, a gigantic bear with moss clinging to its fur. It’s bigger than anything Jim has ever seen, much bigger than the bears he’d seen in documentaries and in zoos.
The bear peers curiously down at him, and makes a snuffling sound as it nudges him again, jostling Jim out of his frozen state.
Swallowing thickly he slowly gets up from his curled position, heart hammering on his chest as his brain screams at him to run from the creature, even as it merely stares at him and makes no move to attack or touch him further.
“P-please don’t eat me,” he says weakly, realizing immediately he sounds very stupid talking to this strange massive bear.
It peers at him for another moment, before laying down heavily on the ground. Jim swears he can feel the earth beneath his feet rumble with the weight of the creature.
The bear gazes somewhere over Jim’s shoulder just as he hears someone speak behind him.
“He will not harm you,” the voice is soft and steady, and it just about makes him jump out of his skin. He bites down the urge to yelp as he turns around.
In the dark of the forest, Jim can only see a tall shape between the trees, it has the same eerie green glow in its eyes that the bear has. He’s not sure if it’s because it’s so dark but they seem to blend into the surrounding trees and low bushes.
“Are you hurt?” the voice asks, and it seems to tilt its head slightly to the side as if assessing him.
“N-no… I’m ok,” Jim’s not sure what to do. He’s deathly scared, and there is nowhere to run. He wishes he was back at the woodland cabin they were staying in, with his mom and Sam, warm and safe.
With trembling arms he hugs his middle, despair, and fear making him cry again, hiccuping sobs escaping him.
“You are afraid,” the figure says, surprise bleeding into its monotone voice. “My apologies, it was not my wish to scare you.”
He hears a scraping sound as the massive bear behind him shuffles closer to him, pressing its huge wet nose to his calves. The figure steps closer, becoming illuminated by the faint moonlight that streams through the tree branches.
The man - and Jim thinks it’s a man at any rate - that is revealed is broad-shouldered with long inky black hair that seems to shift with an unseen breeze, with pale skin and sharp, angled eyebrows giving him a severe look. Thorny branches seem to sprout from his forehead, curling around his head like an antlered crown.
He is wearing a long dress that appears to be part of his skin, it looks like old bark, covered in moss and mushrooms, and large green insect wings peek from behind him. As he shifts to look down at Jim, he sees pointed elven ears that curl elegantly upwards.
Jim realizes he has stopped crying as he looks up at the tall man, eyes wide and mesmerized by his strange appearance.
“I assure you, I and I-Chaya wish you no harm. Please, are you cold?” the man gently asks, hands lacing together in front of him.
He looks back at I-Chaya, the massive bear behind him, who looks back at him with kind old eyes, strangely reminding him of his grandma’s old dog, who would sit and watch him play in the garden of his grandparents’ house.
His arms loosen as fear slowly bleeds out from him, “A little bit, who are you?”
The large bear behind him shifts, moving to press part of its huge body against Jim. The creature is so, so , warm that Jim can’t help but sink into the fur, leaning his small frame against it with a small pleased sigh.
“I am Spock,” the man answers.
He giggles, “That’s a weird name. But you’re also weird.”
Spock’s head cocks to the side, peering at him as he burrows himself closer to I-Chaya, basking in the bear’s warmth.
“Yes, I suppose my appearance would look strange to a mortal. What is your name?”
“Oh,” he rubs his nose with the back of his hand, sniffling and looking down at his dirty boots. “My name’s James Tiberius Kirk, but everyone calls me Jim… or Jimmy, -” he grimaces “- but don’t call me Jimmy, only my mom, and Sam call me that.”
He looks back up at Spock, who seems as still as a statue, his hair blowing to an unknown breeze the only thing that moves, eyes glinting in the dark.
“Are you an elf?” the man reminds him of the elves in the old Lord of the Rings holovids, he has the same pointy ears and elegant features, but he always thought elves were only stories.
Spock blinks, “I am not of the elves, I am of the fae.”
Jim scrunches his face at the word, frowning, “I don’t know what that is.”
The tall man takes a few steps forward, before sinking into the forest floor in a seated position, legs crossed. His strange dress of bark seems to blend in with the dirt and moss, and as he sits Jim sees mushrooms and moss sprout to life all around them, fireflies flickering to life and bathing them in a soft green-yellow glow.
His eyes go wide in wonder at the display, a small gasp escaping his lips. A firefly lands on his nose and he giggles again, making it fly away.
“The fae are the people under the hills and in the trees,” Spock intones, and when Jim looks back at him he has a small smile on his face. “We are guardians of magic and songs of power. My people once walked the lands of men before we retreated to the fae realms. You might know us by another name, the fairies.”
Fairies, that’s something Jim knows, has seen that word in picture books. But just like elves, they were supposed to be only stories, “I thought fairies were supposed to be small.”
“We can be if we wish. Jim…” Spock begins, worry creasing between his angled eyebrows, “Why are you here?”
I-Chaya’s massive snout comes around and lands on his lap, and he begins petting the bristly furs behind his nose, “What do you mean?”
“You are in the threshold between the realms of men and of the fae, very few have ever found their way here, let alone a small child.”
He bites into his bottom lip, worrying it between his teeth.
“I’m lost,” he says in a small voice.
Spock’s expression softens, “I see.”
“What’s the fae realm like?” he asks after a moment of silence.
“There are many places in the land of the fae and many courts. I am part of the autumn court, and much like the name implies it is a land of perpetual fall, it exists in eternal twilight, suspended between the ripeness of harvest and the death brought on by winter. It is quite beautiful.”
Jim looks down at I-Chaya’s kind gaze, imagining a wondrous world of magic and adventure, away from the constant fighting and from a world that doesn’t understand him.
He sniffles, “Would you take me with you?”
“Is that what you truly wish?”
Twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands, Jim looks up at Spock, the man staring serenely at him with an assessing gaze, with no indications if he was taken aback by the request or not.
He thinks of going away, he thinks of Sam who would often grumble about leaving, he then thinks about Mom, about what she would feel if he one day simply disappeared.
She’d be so sad, and Jim doesn’t want to make her sad.
A smile comes to Spock’s face, it’s the tiniest twitch in the corner of his lips, but his brown eyes fill with warmth and understanding.
“It is not.”
He mumbles a tired, “Yeah…” as he curls further into I-Chaya’s warm fur. His eyelids are heavy as the tiredness of the day settles over him more firmly.
“Jim…” he blinks tired eyes back up at Spock as the man says his name, “Open your hand.”
Without really thinking about it, he opens his hand and extends it palm up to the fae man, watching curiously as Spock delicately cradles the back of it with one hand and places something on his hand with the other.
There is now the shell of a small beetle on the palm of his hand, it glints in emerald and gold, like a precious stone, glimmering in the light of the fireflies.
“Wow, it’s so pretty,” he turns wide blue eyes to Spock, looking at him in awe. “Is this for me?”
Spock nods solemnly, “Indeed. You have given me the gift of your name, Jim. And in turn, I give you this charm, hold on to it and you will never be lost again, and when the time is right, it shall bring you back to me.”
“And then I’ll be able to come with you?” he clutches the small beetle shell to his chest.
“If that becomes your true wish when the time comes, yes.”
He smiles brightly then, and with the shell firmly in his hands, he launches forward, hugging Spock’s middle as best he can with his short arms. “Thank you,” he mumbles into the strange bark-like texture of the fae’s dress, the smell of moss and rain clinging to his nose.
When he looks up at Spock, he sees the man looking down slightly alarmed at him, posture stiff and uncomfortable. He grins and then laughs, before letting the man go and shuffling to lay back on I-Chaya’s warm fur.
Spock blinks, snapped out of his startled daze, and stands gracefully.
“Sleep, Jim. When you wake, you will find home again.”
And just like that, a heaviness settles over him, and he yawns once again. He struggles to keep his eyes open, and the last thing he sees before sleep comes to him is the glint of yellowish-green of Spock’s eyes, blending in with the fireflies.
He falls into a dreamless sleep, his body and mind too tired for dreaming.
But he is warm and he feels safe.
And so the blackness of nothingness envelops him like a blanket.
He’s not sure how long he sleeps, but consciousness slowly comes back to him as he hears someone call his name.
“Jim!”
“Jim!!”
The voice is familiar, but it takes him a moment as he blinks his eyes open. He’s a bit cold, and still laying on the forest floor where he’d fallen asleep.
Blearily he looks around, noticing I-Chaya and Spock are long gone.
As he starts thinking they may have been a dream, he feels the shape of the beetle shell secured in his hand, and he opens it to find it just there, now shining in the morning sun.
“Jim!”
He snaps his head up, that’s his mom’s voice. He hears other voices shouting his name in the same general direction that her voice comes from, spread over the forest.
“Mom?” he tries to shout back, his voice coming out as a weak croak, he swallows and tries again, this time letting out a louder, “Mom!”
“Jim? Jim is that you?! Where are you?!” she sounds frantic, and he begins stumbling in the direction of her voice.
“Mom, I’m here!” his heart races at the thought of seeing his mom again, of going home again.
“Jim!!”
He spots her as he rounds a huge tree trunk, “Mom!”
The moment he sees her disheveled blonde hair, the wide red-rimmed eyes, and her look of relief, he starts crying, running towards her as she does the same.
They collide in a fierce hug, relieved laughter, and tears of joy mingling. “Oh, Jimmy!! Jimmy, my baby, oh god,” his mother sobs into his hair, smoothing her hands over his back.
“I’m ok mom,” he mumbles into her shoulder, clutching at the fabric of her coat and sniffling.
She leans back and cradles his face, “The hell you’re ok, I’ve been worried sick about you!”
Embarrassed, he looks down at his feet, scuffing them in the dirt, “I am, really… It was only a night, and there was-”
“Jimmy,” his mother cuts him off, a strange confused look in her eyes. “Honey, you’ve been missing for a week… I thought -” her voice breaks “- I thought I’d lost you.”
A week? He frowns, that wasn’t right. He is sure he’d only been lost in the woods for an afternoon and night, and his mom wouldn’t lie about something like this.
He resolves not to touch on the subject anymore, and soon Mom is pulling him towards the rest of the search party that had been deployed to find him, her arm protectively secured around his shoulders.
The shape of the beetle shell digs into the palm of his closed hand, and he opens it to peer at the small memento of his strange night, remembering I-Chaya’s soft warm fur, long raven hair blowing in the breeze, and deep brown eyes that glinted yellow-green like the light of a firefly.
Jim would meet him again, of that he was sure.
Leonard is twelve when he meets him for the first time.
He’s running through the woods behind the old farm, heart hammering in his chest and blood rushing in his ears.
He hears nothing but the beat of his steps on the dirt and his panting breath.
He doesn’t want to hear anything else, not anymore.
Branches snag on his clothing, tearing it and leaving him with scratches. But he doesn’t care, he grits his teeth and ignores them.
This is the angriest he’s ever been. His heart feels fit to burst with all the hurt and anger in it.
Why didn’t they tell him sooner? Why ?
He’s not too young to know, he’s a grown boy, he could have handled it.
Instead, they waited until the last possible moment to tell him, and he hates them for it.
Tears burn hot in his eyes, and he can’t hold them back anymore. The image of his father hooked on to a myriad of tubes and other medical implements, his eyes tired and withdrawn blooms in his mind.
Dying.
All this time his dad had been slowly withering away to some incurable disease and they never told him. He had noticed how with each passing day and week he seemed weaker, thinner, and frailer.
But whenever he’d ask what was wrong with him, his mother would shush him and deflect his questions.
And so he carried in him the hope that he would one day be all better.
Until the truth was finally staring him in the face.
His dad slipped away peacefully at the hospital, while he held his hand, bravely fighting back tears. Tears from hopelessness and anger.
He’d held his anger in check until he and his mom got back home to the old farm, and then it exploded.
Leonard had always been a good, polite boy. He’d never yelled at his momma, never cursed near her, had always been respectful.
But he was so angry.
How dare they hide this from him. How dare they !
She’d said she hadn’t wanted to put this burden on him, didn’t want him to suffer all that time like she had, even if he could tell there was something amiss.
It had only made him angrier.
After he yelled his voice hoarse, he fled the house, not able to stand being there anymore. Betrayal, grief, and anger tangling inside him into a horrible knot.
He loses track of time as he runs through the dense foliage, mind consumed in a storm of emotions he couldn’t escape.
At some point he slips and stumbles over an uneven portion of the terrain, letting out a startled yelp as the ground gives way and he falls down a slope.
He flails his arms, trying to latch on to something to stop himself from slipping further down the small hill, hitting his forearm hard on a passing tree trunk in the process and hearing more than feeling the sickening snap of a bone breaking.
Stopping finally at the bottom of the slope, Leonard pants harshly as he clutches his injured arm to his chest, breath coming short as he hyperventilates from the lancing pain and from adrenaline. He squeezes his eyes shut and curls in on himself, shivering and beginning to sob in between gulps of air.
He’s not sure how long he stays like that, but when he opens his eyes again it’s dark, much darker than it should have been considering that it had just been early afternoon. How had the hours passed him by that quickly?
As his eyes adjust to the dark he finds a myriad of fireflies flickering to life all around him, so many that the forest gets illuminated in weak yellow-green light.
He jumps and lets out a pained hiss when a gentle voice asks somewhere behind him, “Are you lost?”
Carefully sitting up he turns to the sound, feeling a cold shiver of fear go down his spine at the sight of a tall, dark figure peeking with unnatural glinting eyes from between the trees. He tries to stand and put some distance between himself and the stranger, letting out a cry and landing on his butt again as he finds out that he also has a badly sprained ankle.
His eyes go wide as the figure steps closer. Leonard tries to scramble backward with one arm, “D-don’t come any closer!”
He bumps his hand on a small, palm-sized rock, and seizing the opportunity picks it up, raising it in a threat, “I’m warning you!”
The figure stops and cocks its head to the side. Illuminated by the faint light of the fireflies, Leonard can now make out their features. Behind the eerie glow of yellow-green deep in the figure’s pupils, warm brown eyes look down curiously at him, glinting with barely concealed bemusement.
“I will not hurt you,” the deep masculine voice assures him, pale features devoid of any expression other than what Leonard sees in the expressive brown of their eyes. The stranger looks otherworldly, like something out of a fairytale, clad in a long dress made out of rotting bark, and adorned with a crown of thorny branches, and covered in various types of mushrooms and moss.
Still wary, he shuffles further backward, rock still firmly in hand, “Well, then stay right there.”
The amusement in the stranger’s eyes bleeds into a small smile that curls in the corner of their lips. “As you wish, however -” they look pointedly at the injured arm Leonard has curled protectively against his chest “- I will not be able to heal you if I cannot approach you.”
Leonard narrows his eyes, “Heal me? What on earth are you talkin’ about, have you got a bone knitter laying around in that dress of yours or somethin’?”
One of the stranger’s long slanted eyebrows raises in confusion, “A bone knitter?”
“Yeah, a bone knitter,” he scowls, gritting his teeth against the pain.
Still looking mildly confused, the stranger takes a step forward, “I am not in possession of such a thing, but if you will permit me I can mend your wounds with my magic.”
Leonard lets out a bark of incredulous laughter and immediately regrets it, groaning in pain and squeezing his eyes shut as tears gather in the corner of his eyes as the laugh jostles his broken arm. Involuntarily he clutches his injured arm with the one he’d been using to hold the rock, dropping it in the process.
Gentle, cool fingers touch his forearm, and he opens his eyes wide, fearful.
While he had been distracted by the pain in his arm, the stranger had silently approached him, kneeling so they would be level with Leonard.
“Wait, don’t-” his protests fall silent as he stares, slack-jawed, as moss sprouts over the angry red and swollen spot on his forearm where the bone had broken. Delicate fingers gently pry the hand that had been cradling his injured arm away from it, allowing more moss to grow over it.
Slowly, the pain subsides, and he stares transfixed as small white mushrooms grow and die over the moss, tiny bioluminescent fungi dotting the lichen, disappearing almost as soon as they appear. Eventually, the moss over his injury browns and dries out, decaying and falling to the forest floor in an instant, leaving only healthy skin and a perfectly healed arm in its wake.
Tangling moss curls around his sprained ankle, growing from the forest ground, and much like in his arm, it quickly withers and dies, taking the pain with it.
Tentatively he flexes the fingers on the once injured arm, stretching his forearm straight and rotating the wrist.
“The… pain is gone,” he looks up at the one who’d cured him, seeing warmth sparkle in those deep brown eyes and a small satisfied smile curl on the corner of their lips.
“I am glad,” the stranger stands, clasping hands behind their back. “I do not often find a need for my healing magic, so it is fortunate to see that it still works.”
Leonard nods, gaze going from them and back to his arm, still a bit dumbfounded at the fact that he had just been healed with magic of all things.
“Are you able to stand?” he blinks back up at the stranger and, embarrassed by the fact that he was still stupidly sitting on his butt on the dirt (and getting his pants wet from the humid ground), he scrambles back to his feet, dusting his clothes.
“Yeah… yeah I can, um -” suddenly flustered he looks down at his feet, crossing his arms tightly “- thanks for the help, I don’t know how you did that, but thanks.”
“It was no hardship,” the stranger intones.
He nods again and looks back up at this strange ethereal being in front of him, so alien and yet so human. Before his guts fail him, he extends a hand determinedly, “I’m Leonard, Leonard McCoy.”
“I am Spock, prince of the Autumn Court,” the stranger says, looking strangely at the offered hand, head cocking to the side.
A prince? Autumn Court? This was just getting stranger and stranger by the minute.
“Do you know where you are?” Spock asks.
“The woods just behind the farm, I…” for the first time Leonard really takes stock of his surroundings, finding them unfamiliar. The trees are too tall and look too old, small bioluminescent mushrooms glow between the cracks in the bark, white moss dangles from the tree branches like a silky curtain and fireflies dance all around them. He’s familiar with the woods he always used to play in as a kid, and this looks nothing like that place.
A cold shiver of fear runs down his spine, “... I don’t know where I am,” he finishes lamely, suddenly feeling very small and just as young as he truly is.
“You are indeed not at home anymore. This -” Spock motions with his hand to the forest all around them “- is the fae realm.”
Fae realm, the memory of the folklore and fantasy books he used to read when he was little hits him at the words, puzzles fitting in together. He remembers the stories of elves, trolls, and fairies his momma used to tell him just before bed, and the countless books he devoured when that wasn’t enough.
He also remembered the warnings about the fae folk that the stories usually told.
“Oh no… I gave you my name,” he whispers harshly under his breath, dread settling in his chest.
A sharp eyebrow raised elegantly on Spock’s otherwise impassive face, “So you did, I was afraid that your kind had forgotten the old lessons in the same manner that you seem to have forgotten about my kind. Not too long ago, a boy, not much younger than you, found his way into the threshold between both worlds, and he too did not hesitate before giving me his name.”
Leonard swallowed thickly, “What did you do to him?”
“I made sure he found his way home, of course,” Spock answers with a brief twitch of a smile. “My kind can often be cruel, of that I know, but I endeavor not to be.”
His shoulders slump as he lets out a breath along with a quiet, “Oh…”
Nervously he rubs the palm of his hand on his thighs, “Can you get me home too, then?”
“I can if that is your wish,” the fae man says cryptically.
“What do you mean, if I wish? Why wouldn’t I want to get back home?” he scowls at Spock, nervousness quickly turned to annoyance.
“Leonard,” the prince’s gaze is keen and seems to bore into his soul, making him shift on his feet, “No one finds their way into the fae realm by themselves if they did not really wish to leave the world of men, it takes an extraordinary will to step through the veil, especially for one so young such as yourself.”
He looks to the side, embarrassed, as Spock’s words ring true in his head. In his grief, he had wished to leave everything behind, and apparently with such conviction and force that he had stepped into a whole nother world. And still, the idea of leaving his pain behind and not returning home tempted him, but then the image of his mother’s grief-stricken face when she’d broken the news of his father’s ailment to him bloomed clearly in his mind.
Without Leonard, she would be all alone.
“No,” he shakes his head, arriving at his decision. “I want to go home.”
Spock scrutinizes him for a few moments, brown eyes softening at whatever it is he finds. The fae prince gracefully inclines his head.
“Then home you shall find,” Spock walks to him and kneels, the tall man coming face to face with him and delicately taking hold of one of his hands. Leonard watches curiously and a bit wary as Spock turns his palm up and places something on it.
It’s a small beetle shell, emerald and golden and glinting in the dark. He blinks back at Spock, confused.
“This is a charm that will bring you home, you will never be lost again if you keep it in your person. And when the time is right, we will meet again.”
“We will?” he asks, trying and failing to keep the hope from his voice.
“Indeed,” amusement shines in Spock’s eyes as Leonard feels his cheek heat up and blush in embarrassment.
“I mean, so long as you don’t abduct me and hold me as a prisoner in your court I guess it would be ok to see you again,” he grumbles, crossing his arms.
Spock cocks his head to the side, “Humans are a strange sort,” he says, seemingly mostly to himself before standing up.
“Keep the charm in your hands and follow the trees, you will know the way.”
Leonard looks back at the tall trees behind him, his hand closing in a tight fist around the beetle shell. Fireflies danced close to the ground, and a haze like early morning could be seen just beyond the trees. Even if there was no indication that that way was home, somehow he knew that if he set off in that direction he’d get there.
“Thanks, I-” he says, turning back to Spock, and finding only an empty forest in his place. He blinks and looks from side to side, even the fireflies had somehow gone away, and the silence of the woods returned to the chirps of insects and the calls of early morning birds.
“Thanks,” he repeats quietly, turning on his heel and following the path between the trees and the strange sensation inside him, like an inner compass.
He barely notices when the woods shift from the gloomy and foggy dark they were before, to the familiar trees and well-worn paths he remembered from memory. As the trees thin out and the morning light shines on his eyes, his step falters and he finally realizes, deep in his bones, that at some point he had left the fae realm and rejoined what Spock had called the world of men.
With a look at the forest behind him, he continues on his path, that same feeling guiding him and pointing him home.
When he steps into an open pasture, he sees the old McCoy farm in the near distance, the small light blue structure partially obscured by the morning fog still clinging to the grass.
His heart feels lighter as he sets off in a dash through the field. He hops over the fence separating the pasture and the farm’s backyard and catches sight of a lone figure sitting at the house’s back porch.
“Mom!” he shouts, instantly recognizing who it is.
Her head snaps up from where it was resting on her crossed arms, and she stands quickly, almost stumbling from the porches’ steps as she does so. As he gets closer he sees her flushed face and red-rimmed eyes, cheeks wet with fresh tears.
“Len?!” she gasps, running the few steps needed to meet him in a bear hug, “Oh darlin’ where were you?! You just disappeared, I was this close to callin’ the police.”
“I’m ok momma, I wasn’t gone that long, I just needed some time to think,” he answers, voice muffled by his mom’s jacket.
She pulls him back from the embrace, hands firm on his shoulders as she glares fiercely at him, more tears running down her face, “Leonard Horatio McCoy, you were gone for two, two whole days, don’t give me any of that ‘I wasn’t gone long’ nonsense, I was worryin’ myself crazy!”
He opens and closes his mouth, confused and not sure what to say. That wasn’t right, two days? It had barely felt like a few hours.
But then again, the whole experience in the woods didn’t make much sense when he thought about it.
He thought back at how strange the woods had felt while he was with Spock, how dreamlike everything had felt, and if it weren’t for the familiar shape of the beetle shell in his hand, he wouldn’t have been sure if he hadn’t actually dreamed the whole thing.
“Come on honey, let’s get you inside, you’re all dirty,” his mom says, arm coming round to circle his shoulders and start guiding him towards the house.
Leonard looks back one last time at the familiar woods bordering the farm.
It had been real.
Of that he is certain.
And he is also certain that one day he would meet the strange fae prince again.
The End.