It was the morning of the following day and Cora was sitting at her usual spot behind the desk. Her aunt had been kind enough to let her oversleep, so she'd made her way downstairs after nine, and missed the morning rush. She was glad she hadn't been there when the majority of the guests had left, since it'd allowed her not to cross paths with Harry.

She'd returned to the hostel on her own the night before since he'd seemed busy, and she'd only realised that it might've struck him as impolite too late—which was unfortunate, considering she'd had a lovely evening with him.

There was something in him, though, that made Cora terribly uneasy. It was her inability to understand anything about him. There wasn't a single trait, action or behaviour that he had or made that made sense to her, and it made her feel insecure whenever he was around. She never knew what to do or say, because she couldn't predict how he would've reacted. And yet she was so skilled at doing that, usually.

Cora put her elbows on the desk, glancing at the glass in front of her, trying to convince herself not to take it and start cleaning it out of boredom as she usually did.

"Temptation, humanity's greatest foe," a velvety voice said.

Cora jolted. The mysterious man she'd seen the night before was standing in front of the counter. She'd been so distracted she hadn't even heard him enter the hostel. It was the first time she saw him up close; he was wearing a white cloak with the hood pulled up, and silver earrings glinted in the shadows underneath his earlobes, half-hidden by the light blond strands of his hair. She was unable to let out a sound.

"The glass, naturally." He picked it up with slender fingers and studied it in the candlelight. "Day by day, little blondie cleans her dirty glass away." He grazed the rim absentmindedly, and a golden dusting shone on it for an instant. "You should come with me."

Cora's brain connected back to her mouth, and she stepped away. "What do you want from me?"

"Personally, nothing." He put down the glass. "However, someone wants something, or else I wouldn't be here, you curious rill."

"Harry?" she guessed, and he smiled.

"That's very correct."

"Why isn't he here?"

Aster looked around the room, as if to make sure no one was observing them. "He's with the horses, if you must know."

The horses? "I don't want to come with you. I don't even know who you are."

"Nothing but a loyal servant, of course." He leaned closer; his lilac eyes were colder than she remembered. "Not yours, though. Time is ticking."

If Aster was the performer behind the marvellous show of the black tent, Cora's perspective on it had just been changed. "I'm not coming."

"I see," Aster replied, "I'm afraid I'll have to steal you away regardless. The owner of the Fair requests your presence."

Cora sighed, feeling herself giving in. It would just take a moment. "Where is he?"

"Let's go," he said, ignoring her. Cora followed him, wondering why she was doing it in the first place. Aster walked to the door but stopped and turned around so suddenly she almost crashed into him. "Let surreality become your reality."

"What?"

"It's the sentence written on your ticket to the Pavilion. You still possess it, I'm certain."

"The Pavilion?"

"I believe you call it the black tent." He tilted his head, and his blond hair fell in front of his eyes. "Do you fear surreality, Ms. Lewis?"

Cora furrowed her brow. "I don't understand."

"Could you understand a dream?"

Cora thought about it for a moment. "Probably not."

Aster smiled. "Then why would you even try?"

"But—"

"I simply answered your question." He pushed the door open, and his eyes landed on her puzzled face. "The one you didn't ask." Then he was out in the late morning sunlight, and Cora could do nothing but follow.

Aster walked in long strides, and she found herself having to quicken her step not to lose sight of his cloak. He turned into a street, and then another, and then another. Cora wanted to complain, but in an odd way, she was having fun. This unplanned walk wasn't enjoyable, but it was entertaining in a way she'd never known before.

The arrival of the Fair had shaken up her routine, and part of her knew she would become miserable in the second they left again. How was she supposed to go back to her boring days now that she knew what it meant to have something to look forward to other than meeting up with her friends and watching over the hostel? Only three more days were left and then it would disappear until the following year. They would go on with their show day after day, visiting places she couldn't even dream of visiting, while she would sit behind her counter, cleaning her glass and waiting for it to come back just to have something to look forward to again. The thought made something inside her break away and flutter angrily.

People stepped away to let Aster pass. Because of his oddly-coloured hair, confident stride and unusual clothing, everyone had recognised him as a performer from the Fair and was regarding him with curious looks. He never stopped to make sure Cora was following him, and she didn't know what to make of him. If Harry was confusing in an endearing way, Aster was in a striking one, like the entire world was arrogant for ever trying to make sense of him.

They found Harry with two horses in an empty street that brought to the core of the Fair. He was stroking the mane of a beautiful black mare.

Aster bowed his head. "Sir."

"You were fast," Harry commented. "The Pavilion needs you, Aster."

"I'll report to Eames immediately, sir." He gave him another respectful nod and walked away.

Cora stood in the middle of the street awkwardly, not knowing where to look. Why had he brought her there?

The black mare whinnied, and Harry silenced her with a gaze. His dark blue coat was draped over his shoulders, and the golden decoration at its hems shone in the light of the sun. His feathered hat was on his head, but a brunette curl had fallen over his eyes. He sent her a humoured gaze, and Cora realised she'd been staring at him as if she expected him to produce a dagger at any second.

"Cora," he said, covering the little distance between him and her. "You ran away last night."

"I'm sorry, sir... Harry," she corrected herself quickly, "I had to be back at midnight, and you seemed busy. Why am I here?"

Harry's green eyes studied her curiously. "You know, you remind me a lot of myself some time ago," he said. "Stuck somewhere I didn't want to be."

"Excuse me?"

"Come with me." It'd only been a murmur, the hint of promise in the tone of his voice, as if he was trying to tap into the part of her that was too curious for her own good.

Cora stepped back. She hadn't even realised she'd been leaning towards him slightly. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

"It wasn't a request."

"Why do you want me to come with you?" she fired back, annoyance blooming inside her. What did he want from her? She didn't have anything someone like him could be interested in. Not knowing why he kept insisting on spending time with her made her uneasy. She didn't know if, to him, it was a game or something else entirely, but she didn't like it at all.

He took off his hat and brushed back the curl that had fallen over his eyes. "As I said, you remind me of myself," he replied slowly, his dark pink lips wrapping around each syllable in the sound of a foreign accent Cora couldn't recognise. "I was freed by my prison, at last, by the Fair, so you must understand that, for the life of me, I couldn't possibly leave this town without having allowed you to do the same."

Let surreality become your reality. "This makes no sense," Cora said, "neither you nor Aster, talking about dreams..."

"Dreams, legends... they're all the same thing after all, aren't they?"

"Are they?" Her voice was tense.

The corners of Harry's lips contracted in the shadow of a smile, and he put his hat on. "Come with me, Cora."

"I have to work."

"Shall I ask your aunt for permission again, then?"

Cora sighed when she realised he wasn't going to give up. Thankfully her aunt was at the hostel—her presence wouldn't be missed. "Where are we going?"

"Someplace you've never been."

"Why are we going there?" She neared the horses, eyeing them suspiciously. She was no stranger to riding, but she'd never felt comfortable doing it. She'd always thought that she and the horses were on two different levels that couldn't communicate.

Harry's hand stopped on the mare's mane when he sent her a glance. "Am I confusing you with someone else, or were you a lot quieter yesterday?"

"I'd like to know where I'm being taken," Cora replied, a bit hesitant under his freezing gaze.

He let out a low hum, guiding her towards the brown horse. "I'm running some errands."

"What kind?" Cora couldn't help but ask. What kind of errands would the owner of the Fair have to run? The thought was much more intriguing than she would've liked to admit. She didn't know why he'd taken a sudden interest in her, but she knew that she would do her best to satisfy her curiosity for as long as it would last.

Harry got on the black horse. "My enchantress has run out of berries for her bat," he said nonchalantly, and Cora looked at him as if she believed he'd just lost his mind. "You asked." He dug his heels in the horse's sides and trotted away.

Cora scrambled to get on her designated horse and followed him, unsuccessfully trying to process his words. "Enchantress," she commented, smiling. It was lovely to see how dedicated he was to creating an aura of mystery around the Fair.

Magic had stopped existing a hundred years before, after the War, but Harry was still able to bring the resemblance of it into his craft. Maybe that was why the Fair had become such an essential part of the year, because it reminded people of a world they'd never got to live in.

"What does your... enchantress... do?" Cora asked loudly. People moved to the side to let him pass, mistaking the expensive fabric of Harry's coat for a sign of nobility, but weren't showing the same kindness to Cora's horse, and she struggled to reach him.

He seemed to realise that because he slowed down, glancing at her from over his shoulder. "She's training my fish."

"Fish?"

"It's a new thing I'm working on." Harry's words were partially lost over the voices around them. Cora hadn't expected the streets to be so busy on a weekday—yet another sign that she hardly left the hostel.

"Starlight?"

Harry sent her a weird look. "How do you know that?" He furrowed his eyebrows when she didn't reply and turned into an deserted side street. "Yes, however. There's a masquerade ball I'm attending a few months from now and my fish have to be ready by then."

"So you're getting berries for her bat?" Cora asked with a chuckle.

"She's busy with the fish," he stated matter-of-factly, turning his head to hide his face from view when a carriage rushed past them.

"Why don't you ask someone else to go?" Cora asked, hesitating before adding, "like Aster?"

"Aster is busy with the Pavilion. Besides, not everyone can go where we're going."

"Why's that?"

They took another turn and encountered the bridge that made the east entrance of Beilyn. The waters of the river roared beneath them, as if it was warning them off.

Harry's reply came after a moment of silence, after they'd reached the other side. "You have to have some specific... qualities. All the people I know that have these qualities are very busy." It was the first time Cora saw him hesitate.

"What kind of qualities are they?"

"I couldn't possibly explain them."

"So I understand that you have these qualities, Harry?"

The horses slowed down as Harry directed them off the street and on the soft wind-grazed grass. Cora was so taken aback by the fact that for once she was out of the city that she couldn't even feel the cold.

He spoke without looking at her. "Being too curious is never ideal, Cora."

She frowned at the veiled threat. "Why?"

"You're playing with fire, more than you're aware of."

"I don't understand."

"It's not for you to understand."

"Then why am I here?" Cora asked, frustrated. She was tired of Harry's antics—if she hadn't known better she would've believed he purposely tried to be more and more exhausting every time she saw him.

He shrugged. "I thought you would've liked to see another side of life."

"Another side?"

"Another."

Cora let out an aggravated huff and looked up. Her horse immediately came to a halt when she saw the wall of tall, dark trees in front of them. Taking advantage of her distraction, Harry had taken her to the edge of the greenwood. "Oh no. Oh no. We can't go in there!" Her heart beat faster and her hands tightened around the reins as a freezing chill cooled down her entire body at once. Not there. Everything but there.

Harry side-glanced at her, unaffected by the threat before them. "Why, Cora?"

Fear beat angrily in Cora's chest. "You don't understand! There are things in there!" Many dangerous creatures had made the greenwoods their home after the war, and going in there meant begging to be slaughtered. Nobody in their right mind would've ever entered that cursed place.

Harry's eyes burned bright with irony. "Only someone like you could be so dramatic over such a thing."

"They aren't fairytales, they exist!" Cora snapped, deciding to deal later with the consequences of her actions. It was better to deal with an angry Harry than to die. "Adair has seen one!"

Harry's head snapped in her direction. "He's seen what?"

"One of... those! When he was little."

"Those?"

"Creatures of the woods," Cora clarified. "They're dangerous. I've heard that simply looking at one in the eyes can result in death."

Harry smiled, as if he knew a funny detail she wasn't aware of. "That's hilarious."

"It isn't funny, it's true." She was starting to get tired of the way he was acting, as if he knew so much more than she did and what she was telling him was nothing more than tales to scare children.

"If it was true, I'd know."

Cora clenched her fists around the reins, trying her best to collect herself. "I know you've travelled and seen many things, but these are nothing like what you've seen before—"

"You'd be surprised."

"How are you not scared?!"

An unreadable look washed over his face. "The woods are way more homely to me than many cities," he said, lowly and slowly.

"How?"

"There's less disingenuousness and cruelty."

Cora raised an eyebrow. "It sounds like you've had some unfortunate encounters."

"I guess you could say that."

Cora's horse stopped again when the only thing separating her from the woods was a few steps. "I don't think we should go in." Her voice trembled as she looked into the deep darkness in front of her. She could feel the danger emanating from that place, the terrifying realisation that something was lurking in the shadows, waiting for her to walk inside to attack her.

Harry stopped next to her, and for some weird reason she found his presence soothing. Up until that point, him simply being around her had only made her panic more, but in that moment, standing in front of that place, she couldn't help but feel that, if something had indeed tried to hurt her, he would've been able to protect her. She didn't know why, since she knew that even he could do nothing against the things that were hidden inside that forest.

"There's nothing you have a reason to fear," he told her. His words sounded mildly reassuring, but not reassuring enough to calm the voice in Cora's mind that was screaming at her to step away from that place.

"That isn't true."

He sighed, the sound barely audible over the whistling of the wind that blew between the branches of the trees in front of them. "Trust me, Cora."

"You haven't given me a reason to."

"I've given you plenty of reasons to."

Harry took another step towards the darkness of the woods, but Cora couldn't get herself to do the same—the obscurity beneath the canopy of the trees had her frozen in place. He turned his head towards her when he realised she wasn't coming. "You can stay here if you want," he told her, "but I can promise you that if you do, you'll wonder what you could've seen in there forever." He turned around and disappeared into the forest, an unsettling calm in his step, as if he wasn't entering one of the most dangerous places in the world only to get some berries.

Cora stayed still, biting her lower lip as she tried to decide what to do, before sighing. She hated that he was right.

So she took a deep breath and followed him into the woods.

In the second she stepped into the first line of trees the light changed dramatically, becoming more suffused and of an almost greenish tone, hitting the ground after having passed though the filter of the foliage.

There were sounds everywhere around her, from the whisper of the wind moving through the leaves to the dull cracking of branches falling from time to time, to the chirping of birds hidden away in the canopy to the partly silent steps on the ground that Cora could only hope belonged to an animal and not something else entirely.

She looked behind her; the light of day was forgotten behind the invisible barrier that signalled the edge of the greenwood, and the peculiar hue all around her reminded her that she was somewhere she shouldn't be.

At the same time, though, she was excited. For once, she was doing what she wanted. Harry hadn't forced her to go in. He'd brought her in front of the greenwood and allowed her to make a choice. It was more than she'd ever had before.

She hurried on the bed of fallen leaves and musk to reach Harry, that was walking a few steps ahead, not seeming to be scared of getting lost in that maze of trees.

She looked around as she walked; the bark of every tree she encountered was wet with resin and covered in musk in multiple spots, myriads of little insects going up and down using the trunks as their private staircase.

Cora spotted Harry not far ahead, crouched on the ground.

"Maybe this place isn't so bad," she commented as she neared him, looking over his shoulder to see he was taking some small round purple fruits from a little plant covered in thorns. "What are those?"

"Zyrma berries." He slipped some into the small leather pouch at his hip. "The only kind her bat eats."

"That's a very picky bat."

"Just a poor choice on her part." He held one up for her to see. "They're very sweet, soothing even, almost drug-like. The right amount could knock out someone for a day. In small quantities, they're addicting, which is the case of her bat." He furrowed his eyebrows. "Don't tell her I said that."

"So you have a bunch of multi-coloured fish, a fish trainer and a bat on drugs?" Cora asked, smiling a little bit. It was hilarious to think that was the dynamic behind the Fair. Somehow, it all seemed way less magical and way funnier.

"Rather surreal, isn't it?" Harry replied, not seeming to pick up on her irony, standing up again. "This should be enough." He towered over her because she'd stepped closer to him inadvertently, so she took a step back to put some distance between them again.

"That was easy," she admitted. Still, she was glad they could leave, now. She wasn't used to pushing her limits like that, and too much freedom scared her. She yearned to go back to the hostel to gain some control over her day again.

"Keep some," Harry said, putting some berries into her open hand. "You never know when you might need them. They also work when dried."

Cora furrowed her brows but took the gift anyway, sliding them into the pocket of her dress, careful not to squish them.

"Time to go back." He turned back in the direction they'd come from and Cora followed him, feeling a little calmer now that she knew the greenwood didn't hide any immediate danger. She wondered where the many terrible stories had come from, now. It seemed to be a much quieter place than she'd expected.

They were almost at the edge of the woods when everything went downhill.

"Stop right there!"

Cora's head snapped in the direction of the shout, her heart beating wildly in her chest.

A woman was standing there. There was a threatening look in her violet eyes, and her grip around the handle of her knife tightened when she caught Cora's gaze. "You shouldn't be here!"

Harry moved a step forward, but she raised her weapon between them, a fierce look in her eyes.

"Not a step forward or I'll hurt you!"

"You crazy girl, what are you doing?" a deep voice said from Cora's left, and she moved closer to Harry when a man came from the trees, with a messy dark beard and piercing dark purple eyes.

"There are humans in here," the woman said, not relieving them of her glare.

"Humans?" The man looked at them and let out a sigh. "You'll cost me my head one of these days," he said, and the other lowered the knife. "I'm truly sorry for the confusion, sir. You're free to continue."

The woman looked between them with a frown, and then gasped. "I sincerely apologise, I hadn't realised."

The man grabbed her shoulder. "Deeply sorry. We've been forced to watch the borders lately, things are getting unsafe," he explained, and Harry nodded, as if he knew what he was talking about. "I'll leave you to it." The two left as quickly as they'd arrived.

Cora sent Harry a questioning look, but he turned around, exiting the woods.

The ride back to Beilyn was quiet, but it was the exact opposite in Cora's head.

She didn't know what to think. She didn't know who those people were or what they'd wanted from them, but she had caught that word. Humans. No human being would ever refer to another with a similar term—if Cora was a human, it meant they were not. But it made no sense, because only humans had lived in Andar for the past hundred years, since the War. But the legends, and the encounter... Where did that leave her?

And again, if she'd understood the situation right, why had they let them go? If humans in the greenwood were the problem, and they'd apologised for their mistake... She sent Harry a wary look. There was no logical explanation for what had happened. Or, better, there was, but she wasn't sure she was comfortable with it, because accepting it would also mean accepting another bunch of realisations that agitated her deep within.

The more she thought about it, the more it unsettled her. How hadn't she thought about it before? The answer had been obvious—it'd been everywhere ever since Harry had first walked into her life.

It was only when she hopped off her borrowed horse in front of the hostel that she spoke, a faint tremble in her voice. "You're different, aren't you?"

Harry's head snapped in her direction. "What did you say?"

"You aren't like me, are you?" she whispered. People were walking past them in the street and giving them curious looks, wondering at their odd pair. Their voices were mixing with the trotting horses and creaking carriages, but no sound could drown the storm in Cora's mind. "What you do isn't just a show."

Harry's look turned hostile. "You shouldn't ask that, especially in this setting," he hissed. "I'm required elsewhere."

The black mare cantered away with the other horse in tow under the surprises gazes of passersby, and Cora was left to walk inside alone.

She made it back to her bedroom unnoticed by her aunt. Her dress was stained with mud; she undid the lacing and let the grey fabric pool at her feet. Her gaze fell on her nightstand and she paused.

Don't fall for it, she told herself.

A moment later, she was kneeling before it and searching through its drawer. It took her a moment to find the black slip of paper. She hadn't glanced at the ticket once ever since she'd received it. She'd thought nothing was written on it, but now, in the sunlight coming from the window, she could see a single sentence was written on its dark paper. She angled it so the light would make the midnight blue ink shine.

Let surreality become your reality was written on it, with the stylised sketch of a cat at the end of the sentence.

Cora put it back into her drawer and slid the berries in the pocket of another grey dress in her wardrobe.

Thank you so much for the 30k on Lux! I hope you're enjoying the story. Also, check out the first part, Lux has a trailer x
Miki