“I used to believe that love was finding someone who would lead you through the deep water.” - Anne Hathaway

Kurt pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, squinting his eyes shut for a moment to try and let his pupils refocus themselves. He had been reading the texts Mab had set in front of him for hours now, trying to make sense of them and only becoming more and more frustrated by content and ideas that were above him. She might as well have been trying to teach him nuclear physics given how he didn't have the fundamental understandings for it, much less what she was trying to push into his mind. It was pointless.

“Can't read if your eyes aren't open boy,” the woman snapped from across the room where she was writing something - with a quill no less. Not only had she been training for centuries, but she certainly didn't make the effort to use any technology from after that point in time.

“It's nonsensical,” Kurt grumbled, slamming the book shut in front of him as he looked over at her. “I don't know what half these words mean, and the other half don't make sense when they're put together.”

“You're overthinking it.”

He rolled his eyes. The act was lost though on Mab though as she didn't even look his way as he did it, focused solely on whatever the hell she was writing.  

“Teach me how to use the pool of water behind the council's meeting room.”

It wasn't the first time he had asked her, and, given the way she ignored the question in previous attempts, it probably wouldn't be the last. Kurt had implored his mother for time to think about her offer when she had proposed it. After all, having a child was a big deal - at least where he came from, and in his view of the future, there had always been Blaine there to raise a child with. The problem in the past was that he and Blaine had no way to make a child together, and now the problem was that there was no Blaine there to help him parent. It was a trivial matter to his mother, who argued that she would be there to help and that parenting wasn't seen the same way in this place as it was in human society. Children weren't claimed so insistently as they were by humans, nor was their upbringing burdened on one or two individuals. Everyone assisted in the raising of the child, and everyone was seen as equally important regardless if they contributed the sperm or egg in its creation.  

A part of Kurt understood and even appreciated that sensibility, but the part of him that remembered his dad so fondly, and even his mother when she was more… human, had a hard time stomaching it. If he had a child, and perhaps this was selfish on his part, he wanted to be one of the most important, if not the most important, person in its life.

“I can't teach you that,” Mab responded curtly, not looking up from her work still.

“Why not?” It was the most of a response he had gotten out of her on the matter, and even though it sounded like rejection, it peaked his interest.

“Just like I can not help you with those texts. You have to make a translation for yourself for it to make sense.”

He groaned, slumping down and banging his head against the old, leather bound book. “I hate it when you talk like some old, mystical sensei. You sound like someone out of those ninja or superhero cartoons I watched as a kid.”

“Cartoons?”

He sighed. “Nevermind. Human thing.”

“Mmmhmmm. Now read.”

Again he flipped open the book, and again he stared at the pages as if just by looking at them they'd start to make sense. He didn't even know what he was supposed to be getting out of the books he was being forced to read. It wasn't like the textbooks he had in school with Science or Mathematics plastered over the front cover and notes along the sides of the pages with extra information on important concepts or graphs and pictures to help him understand materials. This was just line after line of words that didn't flow together, much less relate in a lot of cases. Every now and then a little pictogram would be inserted among the letters and for no purpose whatsoever. Maybe if he was reading this as a child, with him imagination intact, he would get something out of it. But right now, all he was getting was irritated.

“Listen to this Mab. Butterfly wise white green… a picture of an eye… denotes the beginning of class. How the hell am I supposed to understand that?!” Kurt read aloud, selecting a line that was typical of the work, and then expressing the problem he had with what came out of his mouth.

“Hmm… Is that what it says for you?”

“What it says for me?” He spread his hands out to either side and looked the line over again, “Yeah. That's exactly what it says.”

She stood up then, delicately setting the quill down on its side and stepping over to him before looking down at the page he had been reading. “To me it reads that the dark is coming, and specters are looming nearby.”

He glanced around, just to ensure she wasn't being literal with the specters part, and then looked up at her, “Yeah. That still makes no sense.”

“How does something make sense Kurt?”

He shrugged, looking back down at the paper. More and more she was speaking like an adult version of the wise teachers in the Saturday morning cartoons he used to watch in his pyjamas with his dad. In the cartoons though, their messages were easy enough to figure out.  Be kind to others, don't litter, sharing is caring, and other propaganda directed to youth to make them better citizens.  Mab said a lot, but nothing much came out of it. Maybe he was used to having to be direct with his words. There hadn't been time or effort to waste, after all, in the community on flowering words up. Everyone had jobs to do, and only so much time to do it in.  

“Why does one thing make sense and the other doesn't? Why is one thing logical and the other isn't? You use your human mind too much in these matters… you place limits on things that don't have natural limits. They are subjective, and your subjection is biased because of your short side.”

Short side, Kurt had learned, was a derogatory term for his human half, or, as the case was, his three-quarters part. He had never been the tallest guy around the community, but there he was at least taller than most of the women. Here he was easily the shortest of everyone.

“I can't overcome something that runs in my blood Mab.”

“Then use it to your advantage.”

He sighed. He did a lot of that when it came to her lessons, or, what she thought were lessons since he wasn't learning a damned thing from them. She must have actually sensed his exasperation, for once, at that point though, because she continued to speak.

“I can't teach you to use the pool because I am not you. Nor can Elizabeth truly teach you either. She can only tell you how she is able to use it.  What you have within you is unique to you, and only you can learn to harness it…”

“Then why bother with all… this?” Kurt grumbled, gesturing his hands over the books laying on the table in front of him.

“To support your learning. To give it context. To supplement. To learn magic is not like learning human language where you learn things piece by piece and then put them together. It is not something from outside you bring inside of you. Magic is inside you and must be pulled out, and it is different for everyone.”

“I wish I could say that what you were saying was actually helpful Mab… and not just more goobly-gook for my brain to somehow fixate on…”

“Goobly-gook?”

Another sigh. “Human term my dad used…. for things that didn't make sense.”

“Again with the focus on things making sense.  You need to stop putting limits on things.”

So Kurt returned to glaring at the words, if only to stop Mab from giving more unhelpful suggestions. He gave himself a headache by the end of his lessons for that day, and by the time he got out to what had become his archery range, he was more than happy to sink a dozen arrows into the dummy across from him.  

“My lessons aren't teaching me a damned thing,”  he grumbled to Midhir when the redhead crept up to his side. “They're a waste of time.”

“Ah. On the bit about how you have to figure things out for yourself, huh?”

Kurt released the arrow he had pulled back and then looked to Midhir beside him without watching where it hit - though, by the cheer the usual spectators gave, it was exactly where he intended. “How do I get past this point?”

Midhir made a small, apologetic shrug - clearly a carryover from his time growing up with a human family because it was a gesture Kurt had yet to see from any pureblood Other. “Exactly like she's probably telling you… you have to figure it out.”

“For fuck sake's…” Kurt snapped and pulled another arrow from his quiver to shoot at the puff of smoke someone had sent to the sky for him to hit. “... I don't have time for mind games.”

“Don't you?” Midhir asked, watching Kurt's follow through and the subsequent hole made in the small cloud from his arrow splicing through it. “You need to be somewhere?”

“Well… no… I just… it seems like a waste of time.”

“You won't live as long as a pureblood Kurt, but you also have a lot more time to live than a normal human does. Your time is only wasted if you decide it is.”

“My mother wants me to make her grandchildren,” Kurt noted, breaking the current train of dialogue with something that would, hopefully, give him less ambiguous responses.

“I wouldn't doubt it, but, more likely, she's being pressured to say as much from purebloods.”

“Why the fascination with procreation around here? You'd think with the way everyone expects it from me that you'd see more people around here with kids of their own…”

“Purebloods have the odd pureblood child together, but their interest is in strengthening the magic, and so Halflings are much more likely to be produced, and often end up living up top until their powers develop.”

“What about if the dad is human and the mother is pureblood?”

Midhir shifted on his feet. “My parents were a love match like that. We lived with them until my father passed on and then we came under the water.”

“So it's not all mechanical like they make it…” Kurt noted, walking to collect his arrows with Midhir on his heels.

“For some of them it is… yes… but we're all capable of falling in love just like humans do, but because of our longer life spans, we also know it's not as big a deal because we can do it a few times over. The idea of a soulmate is a completely human creation, probably created to satisfy romantic ideals.  I've read some of their religious texts too… I would go so far as to say marriage to one person for a lifetime was probably also to solidify inheritance and property rights given some of the references to it alongside those of marriage in those kinds of books.”

Kurt yanked his arrows out of the dummy. Would he get over Blaine? Was it just that simple? He knew people could fall in love again after they lost someone. He had honestly been hoping his dad might find someone not long before he ended up dying, if only because Kurt knew his dad would be happier with someone to hold at night.  

“Do yourself a favor Kurt. Try to use the pool using your own magic. Don't rely on what anyone else tells you to do or not to do, and don't force it.”

Kurt frowned and narrowed his eyes as he looked to Midhir. He suspected that someone had been watching him each evening when he had gone to the pool and tried his luck at making it show him Blaine, but he assumed it had been his mother. “Snooping?”

“No. Just wondering,” Midhir supplied softly. “I apologize if I overstepped my boundaries of friendship though.”

“It's fine…” Kurt sighed for the hundredth time that day. “There's not much to wonder about. I want to see the… person I left behind.”

“Human?”

Kurt nodded, as if there would be anyone else given how he was stuck here and Blaine was up there, unable to reach him, and vice versa. “Blaine.”

“Blaine,” Midhir repeated, and somehow hearing that name on someone else's tongue made Kurt's heart prickle in pain. “Sibling? Lover? Friend?”

“Husband,” Kurt murmured, his voice dropping with the word. There had been no formal ceremony, or no verbal agreement for that matter either when it came to his and Blaine's relationship. It had happened at a group dinner one day, Kitty had casually called Kurt Blaine's husband in passing conversation and no one batted an eyelash at the term - aside from Kurt and Blaine themselves though. They had looked at one another across the table, and Blaine had let such a sweet, toothy grin creep over his face before he bashfully looked down at the potatoes on his plate. From then on, that's what they were.

“Shame he wasn't a female. If he were then you could see if you could parent a child with him… as a her,” Midhir half-joked. “Would work for both the council's interests and your own.”

“I don't like female bits,” Kurt grumbled, searching through the grasses for the one arrow that was eluding him. “Too soft.”

“Your preference of course,” Midhir said with a shrug before pointing out the missing arrow which Kurt went to collect. “But you know that they won't care.”

“Isn't there just some kind of test they could do to see if I can even father a child before they make these demands?”

Midhir gestured back towards town where they had their usual tea after Kurt had gotten his archery practice in, and Kurt nodded in agreement. “I thought they had. The information that circulated was that they had taken some kind of blood sample and the Ilu had tested it and seen that you were viable.”

“Uck…” Kurt wrinkled up his nose. “Is that how they put it? Not that they hacked and slashed at me and my friends, killed people I had known for most of my life to get at me, including my damned dog, and tortured us for information we didn't have.”

Midhir was quiet momentarily, and then a simple, “No… that wasn't what I heard.”

Kurt sat down at the usual table at the tea bar and leaned back in his seat once he had set his quiver down against the table leg. “Well, that's what happened.”

“Unfortunate… Split-leaf with honey.” Midhir said. The first part was to Kurt, the second to the man who came to take their order - a magicless halfling who nodded to Midhir before looking to Kurt.

Kurt tried something new each time he came, and had yet to be disappointed with his choices aside from one, very bitter tasting concoction. “How about… the double-white?”

Another nod from the server and then Midhir and Kurt were left alone at the table again.  

“You know, I never went up there during what you call The Tides. They said I'm too young, too human yet, to understand… I heard some of the stories though, of course from their perspective… but yours is… unique.”

“Because I was on the other side of it,” Kurt muttered. “People were slaughtered.”

“That much I did know,” Midhir admitted, his shoulders quirking up in discomfort with the tone of the conversation. “They say they tried to do it humanely though. To stem the overpopulation…”

“Can't be done humanely if you're not human to begin with.” Kurt huffed, nodding his thanks to the server as their tea was set out in front of them. As the name suggested, this tea swirled with white and cream colors, and smelled of vanilla.  

“I'm not saying I agree with the choice of the council Kurt, nor am I saying that I think humanity wasn't at a tipping point, but I am saying that I'm sorry for what happened to you… as a friend.”

Kurt looked down into his tea, watching the two tones of ivory wrap around one another and the steam slip off it in a translucent cloud.  

“Thanks.”

Later on, he laid beside the pool, running his fingers through the water and watching how the cuts he made with them made the water ripple outwards. Even if Kurt hadn't been trying to conjure up an image of Blaine, this was the perfect place to relax. At first he didn't understand why more people weren't there, trying to summon up images of their family and friends up top, but then he remembered that all they needed was one of those coins and blood that carried magic to connect with them. In addition, those human families and friends that the Halflings had were probably long dead or forgotten. This pool might as well have been for him alone.

Kurt had tried every cheesy thing he could think of to make the water show him Blaine. He had thought of Blaine as he touched it, he had come up with a happy memory, he had uttered some of the nonsense words from the texts he had been studying at Mab's school, he had even tried meditating as best as he knew how. None of it had done anything except tire him out even more, so now he was just half-dozing beside the water, letting his fingers flutter in and out of the water absently.

He was beginning to think the whole thing was some kind of scam designed to convince him to agree to his mother's proposal.

“Kurt?”

He looked up and over his shoulder, spying his mother there with her hands clasped together in front of her stomach. She didn't wait for him to acknowledge her with more than his eyes though as she extended a hand.  

“Please. Come for supper… at my home.”

He sat up, and then stood, ignoring the offered hand and following after her as she wove through the streets. This was the first time she had offered to show him where she lived, and given the way she was wringing her hands together as they walked together, Kurt had to wonder what the secrecy was all about.  Things had been tense between them since she had asked him about siring children, and her visits had become less, going so far as to not being there each morning when Kurt woke.

In the main town, most lived in identical row houses, or in apartments like the one Kurt had been assigned. There was no reason for having one over the other aside from preference, given that they all had the same amount of space per occupant when it was all calculated out. Having a row home offered more amenities within the home compared to an apartment though, and Kurt could certainly see the appeal given how private he considered himself.  Currently he had to go out to eat all the time, and he still wasn't used to people always being around for that.

“I loved your dad Kurt… I still do…” Elizabeth said, pausing as she put her hand on the knob of one of many houses lined up along the street she had slowed her walking down on. Scanning it over, Kurt couldn't see anything that would make this home different from the rest of them. No individualization, nothing that made it stand out, nothing that the human side of his mother would have ensured with her lawn ornaments and christmas lights that she once insisted on.

“I know… at least… you already said as much.”

She sighed, a sound that reflected so much of Kurt's own voice, and then turned the knob. Kurt hadn't been in one of the row homes yet, and looked around at the sparse decorations, hoping to find something of his human mother in there, but not seeing anything aside from an additional set of shoes at the door - too big for her feet.

“Is he here?” a male voice spoke from down the hallway where the entrance was, and Kurt looked up from the shoes with wide eyes at the pointy-eared man that was certainly not his father standing a few feet away.

“Kurt. This is Claudius. Claudius - Kurt.”

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Elizabeth had brought him here for more than supper. This was a formal introduction to the fact that she had moved on from her life with Burt. This Other, and Kurt couldn't tell offhand if he was pure blooded or Halfling, who churned up a smile as he walked over to them both and then, seeming to recall something that might have been said to him, offered his hand over to Kurt for a shake.

“Good to meet you.”

Very slowly, cautiously even, as if the man might have an electric buzzer in his palm, Kurt took the offered hand and shook it once before releasing it and looking towards his mother as he sought an explanation for this entrapment. He hated surprises, especially the ones that entailed him being forced into what was sure to be an uncomfortable dinner.

“Claudius is an ice elementalist.” Elizabeth offered with a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes as she silently pleaded with Kurt to go along with things.

So he did. Not because he was a good son, or had been trained in the fine art of being a houseguest, but because Kurt was hungry and he wanted answers from his mother.

Claudius was chatty. Kurt wasn't sure if Others had nerves the way humans did, but he would have wagered Claudius covered up nerves with idle discussion. Within fifteen minutes, Kurt knew exactly where Claudius worked (at something called the Seasonal Afflictions Research Center), who he worked with (Annette, T'blo, and Urangit), that he was a Halfling that was considered young still at one hundred fifty years old, that he had been born in Italy with a love-matched Pureblood father and human mother, and also had several siblings through their union - all elementalists of some kind. Kurt made a lots of nods and ‘uh-huhs' to indicate he was listening, even though his eyes were set on his mother the whole time Claudius rambled on.

Elizabeth's eyes darted between Claudius and Kurt, glancing away whenever she noticed Kurt looking at her. Shame perhaps, Kurt thought. Or maybe it was her own set of nerves. At the very least she had to be feeling guilty for dragging Kurt here under innocent pretences.

The yipyapping of Claudius' voice continued on through dinner, which was what Kurt identified as some kind of sea-lettuce and rice and served with a chilled tea. Kurt didn't have a chance to get a word in edgewise, and he was glad that he didn't have to try. Claudius droned on about the work he did, which Kurt truly couldn't follow, and answered several of Kurt's questions without them even having to be asked. He and Elizabeth had worked together on a project years ago, found they had several mutual interests, and began cohabiting six years prior. He made sure that Kurt knew how much Kurt coming back to her had meant to Elizabeth, and was glad they had the opportunity to reconnect in a way so many families with magic blood weren't able to. Claudius even tried to joke that Kurt might try to usurp his position as the main man in her life - a joke that received no laughter and instead prompted Claudius to run into the next line of monologue after a moment of awkward silence.

“What was the point of telling me this… like this mother? Because with you, I know you had a point in there. It wasn't just to tell me you moved on,” Kurt finally let out once Claudius had taken the dishes from the table and moved into the kitchen to deal with them.

“Actually… it was just to let you know that I had moved on. I didn't tell you at first because the last time we had seen one another, I had been with your dad and I thought it would be upsetting, and then I didn't tell you because it was clear you were struggling to adapt to life here… and then… well… I just decided there would be no good time to tell you…”

“So you showed me,” Kurt grunted, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. “Rather, you shoved it in my face.”

“Kurt…”

“I know. You loved dad. Honestly, I don't care about it. I'm almost thirty mother. You don't need my permission to see anyone else.”

“Kurt…”

“In fact - good for you. You get another shot at romance after leaving us devastated. Too bad dad never had that chance.”

“Kurt…”

“Is the point to try and show me that I can also move on? Is that it? Because, believe me, I'm getting that message from everywhere and it's fucking annoying.”

She stopped trying to interrupt his rage-induced diatribe, just glancing to him with pity etched in her features. Features that made her look more like a sister than a mother.  

“Just how old are you even mother? What else haven't you told me?”

“I have a couple centuries on me…”

“Fuck.”

“... is there anything else you want to know?”

He shrugged, and then glanced at the floor for a split second before looking back up. “Yes, actually. Where did you grow up?”

“Germany.”

“Did you live with your mother?”

“Yes.”

“And Finavar?”

“No. It wasn't a love match. He prefers male company.”

“Have you been with others before dad?”

She paused, and her lips rolled in between her teeth. “Kurt…”

“So yes.”

“Yes.”

“Christ mother…. I don't even know what to say about this.”

“I know it must be difficult for you… but it's not just meeting Claudius.”

“Oh goody.  More surprises.  Do I have siblings?”

“No.  You're it Kurt.”  She took in a breath, trying to collect herself as Kurt glared her way.  “I'm going up top for awhile.”

“Why?”

“Healers take shifts up top.  It's my turn to go.”

“Can I come too?”

“You know they wouldn't allow it.”

“Why do they even need healers?  You're all pretty much indestructible as far as I can figure.”

“For the Halfling camps mostly… they're still being attacked even after all this time.”

Kurt clammed up, remembering what Blaine had told him about those places, and how those damned ear chains had come from the graves of Halfling children that had been attacked earlier by renegades.  

“I made up a little something from my time above! Trifle!” Claudius announced, holding dessert cups with the custardy treat on a tray in his hands as he reentered the room where an angry silence echoed against the walls.

Kurt stood up. “Thank you. I'm quite full though and ready to sleep.”

“Are you sure? Old Italian recipe….”

Kurt nodded, not bothering to look at his mother as he stepped out and let the door snap shut on its own as he left. He didn't know what he had expected, but it wasn't that. Moreover, he didn't know why it bothered him so much. His dad had died. His mom had every right to move on. Hell, she had lived longer than three human lifetimes, so why should he judge her relationships? Half of human relationships, if not more, ended in break-up, so why should he hold Other relationships to the same standard when he had been told it was normal for them to have many partners over the course of their lifetime?  

Despite what he had said, he didn't feel like sleeping, so he walked around the town. It still bustled with energy, as Others kept their work going in shifts so there was always roughly the same number of individuals out and about at any given time of the generated day and night. He walked past the common baths, peeking at the casually naked creatures there, both men and women, and then turning his head away so sharply he was sure he pulled something in his neck from the motion. No matter how hard his mother tried, he couldn't stand to look for more than a second at them. Inside, he was still the same shy, private boy he had always been. Hell, he wouldn't have even had sex if he hadn't had gotten drunk enough to lose some of those inhibitions.

Kurt couldn't possibly imagine losing his inhibitions again, and having that happen with anyone else but Blaine. He wasn't even sure if they had alcohol to help with that process down here.  

He kept walking, past the shops that were mostly manned by Halflings with no magic that choose to work in the services instead of in the armed military group that had headed the Tides. No one thought less of them for having no magic, they were still accepted, and for that, Kurt had to give this culture credit. Even when he was only teasingly suspected of having Other blood with the little points on his ears, he was considered an outcast in human society.

There was the council meeting hall, where a light on inside suggested a meeting was in session. Kurt hadn't seen Finavar since that first encounter, and he had no desire to get to know him better, even now. He felt no more connected to that man than he did anyone else here. He had his grandfather's eyes - that was it as far as he was concerned.

Finally Kurt got to where his feet led him to. The place he had been before his mother had led him to a supper that was more than just eating. He resumed laying beside the water, tapping his fingertips along the surface.

“What am I supposed to do...?” Kurt wondered aloud, for his ears only.  “... everyone says move on... but I don't know how, Blaine… how do I do that?”

Colors flickered in the water, and Kurt immediately shot up into a sitting position and leaned over the edge, looking down. He could barely make it out, but he had done it. Somehow, he had brought up Blaine's face, or at least his eyelids. Blaine was sleeping, and Kurt could identify those lashes anywhere - beautiful and long and brushed over the top of his cheeks.

“Blaine…”  He tapped his fingers along the water's surface again, trying to figure out how to make the image more clear, and give him more of Blaine to see. It wasn't like a camera or a computer though, at least what he remembered of those things. There was no adjustment settings and he didn't know how he had even turned this picture on.

It was beautiful though, and so Kurt just let himself sit there, quietly marvelling in Blaine's shut eyes until the water reclaimed the vision and the only indication that he had seen anything was the pounding of his heart and the tears in his eyes.