A Friend In Mead

20260403

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Davis and Cassiopeia were previously seen here.

“Be careful not to drink too much at once - fey mead will give you a real buzz.”
While Davis believed Cassiopeia’s warning, he hadn’t worried about it. He was generally good at tracking his inebriation, and planned on drinking the mead slowly. Savouring it alongside a pleasant afternoon in the garden.
He didn’t realise she hadn’t meant “real” as in “significant” until it already felt like bees were partying in his bones. A deep-seated not-quite-rhythmic rapid rumble which was equal parts relaxing and unnerving.
Of course. He really should’ve learned by now - fey advice tended to be literal. Apparently it was a side effect of being reality warpers used to residing in a malleable plane of existence. When a minor miscommunication could reshape the world around you, you naturally got very good at precise communication.
Then you went and interacted with humans, who by comparison treated miscommunication as an art form. Several art forms, arguably, depending on how granularly you split up all the forms of humour which relied on it.
Regardless, both sides had to adjust. In his case the hardest thing turned out to be training himself out of hyperbole, a habit he’d never noticed before working with people who not only took things at face value but got shirty about you ‘lying’ to them.
No wonder all the other human staff were autistic. Probably some kind of coevolution factor there. Needing people who can talk to the Others.
Ahh he should really get up and try and find out if there was a cure for this. But he was just inebriated enough that fighting gravity to leave the cosy embrace of the hammock felt like far, far too much effort. And the buzzing had mostly settled down. And whenever he looked up cures for fey side-effects most of them seemed like hiccup “cures” - mostly intended to amuse bystanders.
All in all, research could wait until he needed the loo. Or the sun moved enough that he was no longer in shade. Or the temperature dropped from its current perfect state.
So he closed his eyes, hummed along with the organic tune tickling the inside of his ears, and sleepily made a mental note to tell Cass that she’d been right - this mead was delicious. But definitely best consumed in small amounts.

Prompt was “Begin your story with a metaphor that turns out to be literal.”