“It’s not so much falling…? It’s leaping with conviction, and an open heart! How can I entice you to try?”
A peculiar form of execution without burial comes to mind from Adris’ brief “service”, where those enemies and allies alike who had terribly frustrated his Xin’reh cadre leader were over time thrown to the torch-like sun’s malice. They would hope to suffocate quickly when soaring away from the sky islands without their rescue charms. Adris feels the dryness of his mouth at the parched alternatives; a recollection of also pondering this fate often within his hide tent, where even Serras had been mute about such executions afterward.
The alternative to roasting alive when the sun’s fiery facing was fullest was to hope to embrace the ripping winds of the black clouds instead…
“Elucidation lacking.” Neesiette mercifully pulls on his cloak before he can decide if it’s better to arrogantly leave the way they came or feign understanding of the situation. “Physical laws differing within alternate plane, disambiguation states with ease: ‘that which should come down obeys not the ground, but rather soars on whimsy’.”
(Shouldn’t “disambiguate” mean “be made easy to understand”?)
“Rule as stated, motivation of alien force activating upon such principle, suggesting course of action to quickly resolve issue it would.” There’s a hint in the way Neesiette narrows her eyes at Ave that conveys Adris’ total confusion for him.
“So long gone from fey lands…?
Beloved One, the sky is between and all around! With we a part of it always, up and down are only suggestions.” Ave’s arms are closed tightly to herself, then release when lifting upward on her tail as if letting go of tension. “Find peace, safety, within! Happiness, liberating from all heaviness!”
The elf beside Ave nods her head in agreement, a touch of fervor to the grin she bears. After her poetic explanation, Ave proudly waits for Adris to grasp a hold of an important truth she must feel is easy.
“Boss, gonna fly next? Will teach disciple, yes?” Kol’s unhelpful question is hopeful.
(As always, I’m left isolated by expectation. Wracking my mind to boldly stumble into the next solution to completely alien idiocy.)
Fast he works, the example of this mystic feel-good principle obviously shown earlier.
When Ave had “flown” through the transporting ring of a curved tree, it’d been without the aid of a chant or impulse of pseudo-aura.
(It felt as if she’d been plucked from the ground?)
Plucked and pulled…?
(Ave never said we were going to fly, only leap?)
To reach the ring himself, he’d called upon the rabbit boots. He’d not felt out for any aid from the tree.
So he closes his eyes. To feel the flow of the never-tiring winds that blow past, then change direction at their own whims to tickle his opened fingers with their currents.
It’s a strange recollection that comes from dwelling on the sensation when his mind goes back to Zon’til and its rooftops above the stagnant streets.
Driven by the hot winds of the torch-like sun’s first and last facings, these older currents let one leap far. It was a time when Adris felt most…!
(Oh!?)
Adris’ balance shifts at the joy of that memory somehow.
After opening his eyes when the shock ruins it, Adris stares at Kol with incredulity, wondering how the girl who tilts her head at him can analyze stupid things so swiftly.
(The bright dimension of Falke’s made mirrored images real. Why does “down” have to exist?)
“Nnn!? Stop patting!” The kobold backhands his arm away from her helmet, failing to dent Adris’ good mood as he leans in to order her.
“Kol, remember something very joyful.”
“Something? Anything?”
“Anything that makes you feel… unconstrained. Concentrate on it. Then, try to join me.”
Adris flings his half cloak to hang over his back to free his front after dropping Neesiette’s tome and his gear. Always longing for a good show to give, Adris plays up his purposeful gathering of the currents of air whipping at his clothing. They throughly enjoy his next memory; a fresher, more provocative one it is, since in it he chases after the plump ass of a witch from building to building…!
(I’ll always catch you!)
Gentleness without equal lifts all weight from Adris, and up he’s pulled into its embrace!
No destination was visualized, but he’s one with the winds the moment he believed it possible!
(I’m thrown off! Death… between the islands…!)
What should be total panic at the sureness of death strips away as Adris flips away from the branch. [Weightlessness] was Serras’ Technique for denying heights, a side effect of a truth she mastered but never explained.
The wind squeezes him, throws him around like a bird stuck in a twister when the fear lingers!
As he fights it with his muscles, it spins faster. Only when he releases all control by aura training, letting his heart explode with the rush as he loosens up his limbs, does he cease to spiral.
“I’m between!” Adris exclaims this when the wind careens him ever more upward. The instant Adris’ attention is taken by a green lake off of his right side, he’s swooping toward it.
(It’s… sending me wherever I look!?)
Fear makes him swing wildly in flight, so he cuts the fear off!
Adris recalls the first time he rode one of the great riding birds of the shorn cliffs that led to the sky tower of the Emperor. That exact disconnect between rider and mount had sent it climbing nearly sideways in a rush to spite him, with him holding on for dear life.
(I want to be graceful! Like you! Be my beautiful wife, almighty wind!)
Even flattery seems wanted, for Adris’ velocity slows. A state of perpetual falling is what he experiences on his trip round the branch he leaped from.
Small figures stare up at him as he cycles around it, and Adris realizes that “up and down” don’t exist for them, either. If they circumnavigate the branch, they will be standing up like the trees on its underside!
(A ‘globe effect’, is that it!? No wonder the distances seemed to fall off depending on where we walked! Every side of the branch pulls you toward it! The sky… isn’t a sky, it’s all the same space with different “downs”…)
Adris’ intellect is shining. A thought comes from it, that he deserves a reward for figuring out a difficult question.
Because Still is seen publicly cringing at his loops, the moment he finds he wants to toy with her he’s thrown close enough to swat the back of her skirt.
{CRAZY BAS—!?}
“Don’t stress where ‘there’ will be when you’re up with me! Hahaha!”
After coming so close, the currents carry him safely between tree trunks like a swift river dodging rocks, then hurl him skyward again.
There’s nothing to fear!
A second skin clings to him, nourishes his growing excitement with its own!
(This wind worships me, too, Ave!)
When he longs to be beside his party again, Adris falls toward the girls from above with the grace of a diver.
At the last moment, he veers away in an arc by rejecting attachment!
(Amazing, I’m ‘held by the between’ rather than ‘lost’!)
“Boss!”
As Adris turns from staring at the vastness of where he floats between branches and just out of reach of the darkness trapped between them, a black hunk of metal flips wildly, closing fast on his personal domain even when the sky is so spacious.
“Kol did it, too!”
“Eh?”
Pink eyes from within a wolf’s jaws are shining with excitement!
“Kol, wants Boss to watch!”
“STOP WANTING ME—GAAH!?”
Adris’ world spirals out of control after a kobold rams into his stomach. Only the mercy of the wind interposing at the last instant softens her armored skull.
(Hurl…! I might…!)
“Kakakaka! Fun!? FUN!”
“Guh! Let go!”
The kobold clings to his back after escaping his arms wrapped around her midsection, then screams into his ears louder than the chaotic currents she brought with her!
“Very strange! Kol feels like spinning… getting faster!”
“Close your eyes! Don’t follow the spin!”
“Mmm… bad!? Why, Kol’s belly…!?”
(If you hurl through your visor, I’ll skin you alive!)
Adris’ liberation as a bird is ruined, a brick throwing him toward liquid dangers that are black and rainbow-colored. No calming hope forming within quenches the fiery girl’s influence.
He grabs onto her hand and extends his will through their shared connection.
“Oh!? Boss… Kol feels familiar ‘hot’, now!”
“Drink it deeper!”
Kol grunts while concentrating, and so the two different currents that stole them up feather into one. Forcibly matching his breathing with Kol’s slows them, too. When he takes charge and longs to be beside the girls, he’s gracefully tossed from his levitation to touch down.
“Umu… ground, nicer than usual…”
“Next time, comprehend the basics before trying to join with the advanced demonstration.”
“… Understand. Kol, feels strange. Spots in head feel drippy and… spin, and…”
The kobold who rarely experiences any difficulties hunches over, sneezing again and again until she finally collapses onto the moss. Weak cackles follow as Kol stares up at where she was flying. “Very fun!”
“Favored.” Mython, their guide, whispers this. The elf’s interest raises to match Adris’ pride, yet Adris still can’t make out the elf’s deeper thoughts.
(Yes, yes, a heart as pure as mine is rare, dear elf, so if you’re praising me then you’re intelligent!)
“On Xin, Zennia, or this tree called Ysanne, an emperor of black skies can only be beloved by the wind.” Adris offers a teasing grin before letting his energetic movements dip him low to swoop up his gear. Keeping the joyous flight on his thoughts holds the breeze close and caressing him until it gives up. “I admit, though, this is the first time that it has invited me to be a part of it rather than simply obeying.”
(Let’s see you top that, Partner!)
Adris waits to see Still’s own performance, enjoying how the witch stays frozen in disbelief.
“… Favored is what you could only be.” Ave’s smile is mysterious to Adris, prompting him to relax his posturing. “Even should your forgotten bond have waned with you trapped in shadow, to be returned safely after trusting the wind is its promise. But, that’s unneeded, because Adris is Adris.”
(Shit. This is about Ave, not me.)
Her light tone doesn’t sound jealous or shocked, but Adris can’t help wanting to offer some deflection. “Since my covetous heart cannot be ‘liberated’, I might misunderstand the wind’s fear being love?”
An indelicate grin of satisfaction at that causes Ave to sigh. “Only you could find bullying the wind to be amusing!”
(Better a touch of evil than being its favored son before two elves.)
“Let’s not hold up Ave’s greetings.” Adris curls his hand toward Still and Neesiette, then points skyward. “You two should get used to falling into its embrace.”
“Mmm! Kol agrees, let’s do again! Come on, Moon!”
Overcoming her nausea, the kobold squire hoists Neesiette upward.
“Fullest comprehension accomplished not! Intrinsic rules overlooked that provide for unique access utilized by ‘Kol’ and ‘Adris’; setting down this lady be appropriate until qualification of these, Kol.” Neesiette waves her hand at another. “More completely providing such an explanation should the… ‘natives’ not?”
(Elucidate on what?)
Silent and still gazing at Adris, Mython then glances at Avenalliah. When Ave only squints with confusion at the question, the elf offers the difficulty.
“‘Sky and breath becoming one’…”
Finally arrogance stains an emotionless guide, her cheeks tight as she without gentleness condemns.
“… scorned are those who offer none.”
(Ah. One undead and one doll, neither who need to breathe.)
“I… don’t want them scorned.” Ave whispers this, a smile still affixed to her fierce face.
“The wind’s many moods change, but not its children, Priestess.” The two elves end up staring each other down in the quiet after.
(Angry? Opposed…?)
Again, Adris finds that their guide’s reaction to be too simple. Just a disappointment at Still’s existence.
But, it’s not long before the ranger breaks her gaze.
“…
… The wind will not… divorce from the wisher what is beloved.” The elf strides over and picks up Kol and Adris’ own gear, then the wind swirls in to comfort her. “Welcome for five is no different than three. Glad… I am to have them join me.”
While Adris had to leap, the forest guardian is gently plucked from the branch. She needs no orientation in her flight like Adris sought, nor suffers loss of momentum when curving. Her body surrenders completely to the gale which flings her sidelong toward the block island quicker than a sparrow.
(How one conceptualizes oneself within the motion of the wind defines the guidance of it via sympathy, perhaps!?)
“With me, then, dear friend?”
{…!} Still’s hands come up more in defense than to speak when Ave slides up to her.
“Kakakaka! Puddle, biggest scared!” Adris wants to sign not to cause a problem, but it’s not necessary after Kol taunts Still and then rockets off the branch with a hop.
“KOL SOAAAAAAAaaaaaa———rrrrr…!” The hunk of steel zig-zags toward the island on a mad, confusing journey, jerking wildly the whole time like a doll a child is shaking.
Eventually she crashes through the perimeter of the forest canopy and leaves a gaping hole in it for Adris to follow.
“Entrusting, this lady does.” As for the last “breathless” member, that one offers her hand while performing a curtsy. A formal dance will commence, with Neesiette ready to grade how he sweeps her up.
“You… are fine with this?”
“Be this lady not perfect and without imposing unduly under any conceivable circumstances?” Neesiette’s left eyebrow raises along with the severity of her placid tone.
(Heights don’t bother you now? No, wait…)
“What can only go down gracefully cannot fall, is that it?” Adris whispers this into her ear after whisking her up.
“One’s personage regularly be what lacks grace!” And so the lady pinches his wrist when he chuckles.
“I… won’t let anyone make you out to be a monster.”
{There’s no problem being hated, really~! I’m quite used to it.}
“That won’t happen here…”
Hand-in-hand after signing, a painted smile seems genuinely warm. Still’s curvy figure sags into Ave’s slender one when no discomfort from proximity is shown.
(Avenalliah is somehow controlling her outflow well.)
And then with a single happy memory, Adris’ being where he recalls the moment he ascended into the sky by the cross’ awakening of his ascension step, they’re “leaping” toward the village!
“COMPOSURE, EMPEROR!”
(I can do loops?)
An interesting addition, Adris enjoys the spectacle of the world that he cannot orient himself within becoming chaotic twirling around him.
Travel is difficult to control, though, with focus split between it and wrangling the yapping Neesiette.
Only when nothing but the feeling of the moving air over his skin is important does he smoothly traverse. His mind that reaches out to grab at these foreign energies that cradle him, to study and master them when made curious by this aloofness, jolts at the disdain he’s shown for the effort of comprehending.
They’re fickle as a mistress for the sudden changes in velocity inflicted, teasing when wanted more, then even tormenting via choppy turbulence when his mood sours at this rancor within himself over feeling…?
(The wind isn’t jilting me!
… Is it?)
The forest apart from the greater tree blunts the edge of feeling constantly lost. Upon first touching down, Adris heard from within himself a reverberating call. What drives Ave onward can only be this summons that grows stronger with each step through the less wild environs the elves have claimed.
(Why walk when we could’ve just flown?)
The wind is fickler the more he overtly reaches out for it with his aura senses, for away from the edge it becomes intentionally distant. Eventually, it stops caressing him altogether to divert from his path.
(I thought we’d become friends.)
The rim of the block, much larger than the distances gave proof of, slopes downward as the party criss-crosses through trails. Its shaded trees a constant surroundings of watchers, for they’re fully alive with an intensity that makes the greenhouse’s circle of protecting ones feel insignificant. Tall and unburdened when Ysanne’s other foliage bends upon itself, Adris finally notes a constant foreign mood pricking at his own.
He minds his hands not to grab upon any branch too harshly to move it, for there are sometimes groans of settling wood. Empty woods do not feel so vacant.
(Can they come to life like the goblin mystic managed?)
“Poorest of jokes, what hot air passes. Of all times sadly spent, none sadder than now comes soon; no sadder a jester, lingering here except you.” Ahead a derisive insult cares nothing for privacy. Whinier than Mython in cadence, Adris still can’t claim to know if it’s male or female.
No one speaks from the party when sneaking upon it, for their own joke is at hand. With Ave’s hope for a daring entry, the forest announces not their approach.
“Jest it’s not! From outside, the wind blows again!”
Another voice refuses the emotionless one, each syllable rising with fervor.
“Fate shall bend!
Our torments… end!”
Ave’s progression stops when this strange conversation grows louder, her shoulders drooping. Mython stays beside her, expectant without reason to be.
A third person joins the argument with a drawn out sigh.
“ITS [pangs] will pass. No matter how novel, do not trust the wind that carries ‘hope’ so long as one feels that caress here.”
“… Not false, the wind that blows! What came, claimed returned! In flesh and blood, and soul and breath… before us!”
“Never false, just a poison called ‘what’s wanted’. Be here longer than the short time claimed, and you shall realize it, too…”
After a tone which sounds almost caring and patient, the girlier, tired song that’s spoken turns crackling-dry.
“Ysanne’s days, seasons, and times have no range; for it, and its children: nothing will change.”
Adris shivers at the claim, wondering at how many curses he’s heard throughout his life that used more caustic words, but sounded less agonized.
He turns to Still at his left, finding her clutching a palm-sized charm that is a terribly twisted stick. The question he has clumsily uses his own signs for communicating that Still only shakes her head at negatively.
(“Run or not?” Ave’s paradise sounds lacking.)
“Wrong!” Ave hisses this before twisting in place, her hands clenching as she limbers up.
Adris struggles to whisper a warning, but the racing snake becomes the trail with her blurring speed. There is no wind through the descending forest but what she stirs up, yet it’s enough!
“After her!”
Everyone follows far too late, but treads the trail after her to arrive at a great clearing which envelops them the moment they exit the thicket…
(What ascended being builds this!?)
Adris’ mouth drops open at the chasm they stand over, a hand lifting to shield him from the piercing white glare from within it.
Roots of trees that stretch across it lace together in defiance of species sharing space with. Ground is absent between this rooted cap of the chasm. The many old and proud trees that join not the forest rim are at least thirty strong.
The harpies had a roost within the manse that sought the same aesthetic claim, but none of their shapings of wood match the civilization inherent amongst the wildness looming overhead.
For above the convex cap of the chasm sit what cannot be called homes since they lack the requisite enclosure. Adris instead settles on “stages” when like a daydream they revive old memories, for they are drawn from individual trees to serve as the gathering aesthetic focus of many cradling branches as if all should peer into what’s held.
Upon, and paradoxically underneath and on the side of them, lounge the speakers Adris heard. They bask in opulence that is purely foreign to him, never seeming made by human hands.
Children of leaf and green, surrounded by the architecture that Fatso the Elf Lover tried to emulate but failed to achieve. All curves elegantly, with living stone and glass set freely without constraint of supporting weight to fly up arches and project outward like the wings of dragonflies.
Pillars aren’t needed either, for the strange world tree realm denies the constraints of gravity. Instead, if a pillar must rise or descend, it is so that art may attach or hang out from it over the nothingness around it.
These breathing spaces that glow softly like their inhabitants are exposed to the whims of nature; fearless since they’re composed of it, beautiful because the instincts of crafter and tree are joined.
(No tables? No beds? Where is anything stored?)
These denizens utilize space only for art. Nothing of the basic human needs could be sated in any home within sight. The children that cast their eyes from all angles upon intruders lack any civilization but the highest examples in view.
“…” An intruder is silent.
Those children, these elves, stir from the random spots they hang from, recline upon, or lay flat on when a newcomer’s emerald scales shine over the impossible radiance from below.
To conquer the aloofness of everyone spread out in the clearing in their own domiciles, Ave seems drawn to one of many pulpits at the forest rim that is made from two small trees clasping together at a sloping angle.
(Be cautious of what you haven’t learned about them!)
Adris’ arm gets pulled by Still when he tries to join her in her climb up a vine-covered walkway.
She holds him tight despite the words he tries to form by moving his lips.
(You don’t understand, Ave, they’re foreign to you and also…)
They all have no presences.
And only truly powerful creatures have thus far managed this state when held before Adris in his aura sight.
Each elf that creeps a bit closer to the edges of their homes, betraying a daze like a mammal roused early from hibernation. When Ave reaches the pulpit perch with her tail filling the stairs to its bottom, she has an audience ill rested.
She runs a hand over the wild flowers that have infested the cupped perch of white marble, an overgrown symbiosis that matches the nature which fills so much of the many structures around with choked plant life.
“… I… I’ve come…” Ave’s voice is tight at the start, her lost timidity creeping back with kin staring from every vantage. Unsettled also by the sights, but for reasons Adris cannot fathom.
But, only for a moment, before she once again lifts up one hand. Her palm upright, she sings so much as shouts.
“… From the deep within where dwells no sage,
My wind was loosed to save this Age.”
So many yellow eyes glitter in the light.
Adris nearly jumps at the realization that where he stands now, at the base of Avenalliah’s growing appeal, can also be considered a “place where one could be seen by all”.
“Long forgotten Mandostesse;
Its memory returned, I bless!”
And it’s all the more surprising when Ave doesn’t wilt under the crushing weight of interest.
Her pleasant voice isn’t shrill from indecision.
Instead, it’s a whistle in a place where Adris for the first time feels no caress of the breeze upon his cheeks.
“The wind calls me Avenalliah Aurmaris!
Evil’s doom!? Soon; but, first: a Sylph’s kiss!”
The two retreating rangers further ahead of her, halfway up one of the spiraling trees that makes up the elves’ homes, kneel toward this pledge. Their palms spread and hook, a reverent sign offered once more.
Whoever denied Ave’s existence to them doesn’t speak up after she leaves the clearing quietened.
A whole menagerie of distant figures stay rooted. Many wear only the barest of dark green slips, while others appear nude where they lay.
The hesitancy is palpable at what Ave has claimed, though Adris gleans only innocent interest waking up behind their tired, unkempt appearances.
(Ave is walking a dangerous path. She knows about elves, but not these elves.)
At least she keeps composure. Had she started crying right after such a bold maneuver, Adris would be forced to try to heft her up and flee.
This is no normal appeal, for it has so many dangers…
A cracking sound becomes many! Bark chips spray around Ave and dare not scratch her!
“Eh?” Ave’s cute surprise is misplaced when suddenly staring at a scraped-up statue captured aloft two feet from her pleasant nose. This three-foot-tall, shaped sitting fox sculpture retreats when its mass shifts backward.
The trees that hold up the marble perch are now also wrapped around what was hurled from up high. Both moved with such speed that Adris could only pull free his cross by the time it was too late to intervene.
(CHALLENGES! There’s… always challenges for new people. Ave!)
But the result of the trial is so confusing to Adris, for neither the attacker nor Ave seemed to chant.
The living pulpit made of trees groans like the wind is tearing at it, but none is felt. To answer it, the alien trees of more than thirty surrounding them add their own distinctive cracklings in response.
After a groaning chorus of giants, the pulpit’s two arms of trunks release the statue. It gently floats to land on the overgrown moss below it.
Ave’s voice is lost in the shock, but nothing more seems to need saying when the many watchers stare ever more intently upon her. Whoever attacked will not likely be punished, for the sedation that afflicted the quiet grove abates after this demonstration.
(She’s grasped them through surviving an attack?)
Some elves rise slowly from their perches, creeping off out of Adris’ sight.
The rest make certain they’re able to see the entire village from where they spectate.
None offer questions, greetings, or slander.
Just constant witness.
“Priestess.”
“… Mython.” It’s the ranger that guides them that acts first, coming below the pulpit to gesture toward the far opposite edge of the grove.
The two rangers that abandoned Mython leap like stalking shadows to her side. Only sharp glances pass between Mython and the still-wrapped compatriots of hers before Mython continues.
“Firstly before joy of a reunion, one who calls upon us must meet the Caller.”
“There’s a Sylvan Caller here?” Ave’s calm features distort a bit, then they relax to a relieved smile. “Of course, if nowhere else, they would be where the wind is most playful! Why only one? There must be several!”
Adris catches the flinch from Mython when that is said, but keeps his mouth shut.
After more hesitation, closing her hands tightly and squeezing, Ave reverse slithers down the pulpit.
At the bottom, Ave seems astonished when Neesiette is waiting to grasp her arm.
“Forestalled at times good humor must be, for opportunity and mood must both coincide.”
“… That’s true~.” Ave grins sadly at the loss of something.
“Introductions planned of ours, to be offered exuberantly later after explaining our parts in the forthcoming joke. Designated representative of conclave, be this our next destination?”
“Yes. Let’s… go greet the oldest elf.”
“Shouldn’t Kol beat up pointy-sneak that tried to hurt Elf, first?” A clanking nightmare marches up to Mython, looming with such unusual menace that…
(They’re shivering?)
Such emotionless fellows step back quickly when the first hint of Kol’s heat haze spins up around her. Mython swallows hard, then sweat trickles down her forehead with Kol’s poleaxe lifting up.
“Kol, would like to know: which tree should Kol climb to have ‘word’ with?”
“… That…!? That is…! The… the one…!”
Mython’s fluid voice turns as shrill as the old Ave’s, and shortly the ranger curls up and bends like she’s in pain!
“Kol, leave them be.”
“Elf!?”
The kobold herself is rocked back when Ave yanks like Kol is a little puppy that got too far off.
“Even if you’re my friend, one of these days you’re going to have too many enemies for us to save you from, especially if you keep breaking before trying mending.”
“… Kol just heard ‘friend’ and a lot that meant nothing. Say simpler?”
“Hah… it – was – a – joke.” Ave jerks her finger at the statue, before pointing it at Still, who goes rigid with fright. “Like what Still does with you to try and be a… different sort of friend. To make you notice her.”
“… And Kol is not supposed to notice back this new friend?
AGAAH!?”
The kobold’s tone is petulant, but becomes almost begging when Ave hooks into Kol’s wolf jaw visor and yanks her to follow behind. “Let go! STUPID OVER-STRONG ELF…!”
Crisscrossing over the woven roots and bathing in the blinding radiance from below, the Ave that pulls a feet-dragging kobold is trailed by three devoted shadows and Neesiette.
“Nnnn, but ‘Mighty Elf’ also feels good-bad?”
“Being second-most, a useful exposure serving as this might for teaching knightly humility.”
“AAAAAH! Second!? Moon, Kol doesn’t like that word!?”
The eyes of the forest linger not just on them, but on Adris as he lags.
“Still.”
{Present…?}
His partner sticks so close that Adris might as well be wearing her, obviously of the same thoughts as he is.
“If… just as an ‘if’? If we had to…?”
Adris presses her side with a hidden sign.
“Would that be enjoyable?”
Still’s mask has the most comfortable grin on it when she slowly presses her answer back.
It screams {DEMISE}.
(That being the case, then let’s never let it come to that.)
If forced into a situation beyond your expectations and control, the first step toward resolution is to embrace it more fully than you would solely if you held confidence.
“Hah… what weak creatures elves appear to be.”
Adris arrogantly whispers that while leaning beneath Still’s wide-brim hat, enjoying how she contorts with rage and jabs pointedly at where her ear would be.
(Of course they heard that. That’s the ‘point’ to match theirs.)
“Yes, those are a bit ridiculous.”
Still nearly punches him, but holds back when Adris throws his arm around her to start following Ave.
“If we’re to be forced to visit for Ave’s sake, then maybe there’s something worth experiencing in such an uninteresting place, since she wanted to come here?”
The entirety of the raised village exists for Adris to study it back, letting himself be seen without reservation, only arrogance.
They watch him.
He watches them.
A seed is planted, nurtured by anger and spite, to blossom into an obsession with him.
Ave cannot be the only one thought mysterious by these elves. Even if he comprehends nothing about them, feeling only the barest level of sentient cognition from them called curiosity, he knows how to act to apply the minimum of negative emotional manipulation.
[The less he knows about them, the more they have to want to learn about him.]
By the time that he’s gathered sufficient information about who they are, he’ll have plenty of “words” for the elf that lives up high with a missing statue sticking out from between five others.
Sadly, the “private joke” he’s contemplating won’t go over well.
(My best ones are usually only funny to me.)