No time transpires after this truth about trees before he continues.
“Greetings and thirsts, the mutual firsts sated between,”
From where the elf lazes, a trapeze bag floats toward Avenalliah. He yawns broadly without a hand to hide it, then reclines back into his hammock.
“Unneeded, the usual.”
Timid hands grasp the bag from the air. Despite the lack of oppression from the dark greeting before, Ave lapses in the silence af—
“Unusual it is!”
Expectations crash along with almost her entire tea set when she yanks one cup out of the infinite storage of her bag. “Very unusual!?” She cries out, but the ornate enameled box that opens from one side is the first item to gently float out of its drop. The crystal tea pot and one more cup rise along with it to hover beside Ave.
“I can be unusual, too, so this isn’t…? Oh, we need more?” Recovering from shock, Ave reaches her hand back in. “Hm!?” Then jolts sideways, her ponytail whipping, when the bag almost chomps her hand closing itself. It floats out of her hand back to the elf leader.
(There’s only two cups.)
Above the floating pot a circling swirl of heated moisture collects, then drops within.
Ave claims the pot that keeps this heat. She looks around, keeping a serene smile, then into the pot she works her magic. With the right leaves and spices into the inner strainer, she produces the usual homey aroma that tickles Adris’ nose.
The dimness of the old elf’s interior expands like a lung to draw this magical scent further and Ave’s humming to add music. When the hammock-dweller rises to sniff too, there are phantoms of triangular-shaped petals flitting out from, then drawing back into, the dark beyond view at the aroma.
But he says nothing.
Dreamily swinging slowly in the moment, eyes closed once more.
So busy with her preparations that conclude with spitting two sugary cake slices on the edge of the elder’s cup, only after poking her cute tongue past her lips to taste the air does Ave sigh.
“Mmm, tea is life~!”
“‘Life’ (WIND) means ‘pleasure’ (WIND).”
“Oh!? Yes, so many similar things equal each otheerrrr…?”
Ave’s hand slips off the cup!
Without wobbling, the floating cup comes to hover beside his face. He turns onto his back when the hammock’s stands lift him up. He becomes a cat instead of an elf in behavior when lifting up and stretching.
“Enjoin tea.”
“But, there’s…?” Mumbling to herself and hesitating, Ave eventually does pour the second cup full for herself.
“Come.” At his command, the end of the circling ramp that has pillows for propping up becomes bathed in a light from above to match what illuminates this old one.
“…” For a moment, Ave draws back while holding a deep breath. Then she glances back at the group she left, looking between them and the destination.
“‘Obeying only one’s essential nature’, carry on with this as objective.”
“… Neesiette… that’s… right!”
Another’s instruction carries a heaviness to it that also flinches this emerald elf maid; but, once Ave starts to smile, she’s already frantically circling in a climb to reach the top!
“Elf!?” Kol calls with warning, but is ignored.
A pining flower outside of the tree blooms once lifted many feet up. “The wind named me Avenalliah Aurmaris! How called are you!?”
“Its name for me is not spoken often, so it shall not be heard now. A wind born from deep below must have more interesting truths, instead.”
Ave, speechless at first, shrugs it off. “I really hope so! A lot, too much, actually, but if… you’re looking for interesting!?”
(Truths…?)
Adris’ mouth falls a bit open when the bag floats up beside Ave. Already laying sideways on the comfortable ramp and burying herself into the pillows stacked at the end, she pulls out…
“[Aufleurdelsie!] Second Age treasure, Ariador-made, the bow of Lost Greens!”
“Elf, not tell him everything just because asked!” Kol calls out, but is ignored.
The effervescent, naive girl that Adris has met many times bursts out easily past the self-assured traveler from outside the tree when yanking free an unstrung horned bow from the bag.
Adris’ lingering anger perks, his nails digging into his palms when she unleashes without stopping.
Until now, this whole fanciful thing has seemed somewhat insipid; but, now…
“Many the enemy felled by it, those sinful invaders what it cleans!”
Ave runs her hand over its body, then thrusts it toward the old elf.
“Hold it, know it, embrace peerless stag-white beauty, by all means!”
At the singing rhymes, the elder’s eyes widen. Then, he giggles.
“My, droll and droning and nearly deceased the ancient tongue always to me seemed…” A counter-rhyme starts up, and into his hands it flies so that he can stroke the horn’s polished, but scarred, surface. “… when uttered by theatrical types in council; yet it’s, by exuberance, now redeemed.”
“Nearly deceased, yet!? With majesty you speak it, even smoother than any other!” Ave’s happy expression distorts for a moment when the elder…
(Why are you licking it!?)
After a tentative slurp of the horn, the elder resumes sniffing the tea he’s yet to even taste.
Ave stifles a laugh at the act, while Kol narrows her eyes with frustration and stomps forward, then pulls back when Neesiette frowns at the aggression.
“Oh eldest caller, why, on others’ lips do our first ‘thoughts’ now smother?”
It seems to Adris that the singsong speaking she uses now and earlier is overly formal, or perhaps out of place.
For Mython had struggled to return it when prompted…
“To speak cleverly, one’s heart needs be liberated.” After inspecting the bow, the elder lets it float off. “Third Age come, most kin be pathetically weighted.”
“… Why?”
“Eloquence is lengthy. Yet, brevity easy.”
Ave’s question dies off after brushing that by. Instead, from within the elder’s robe a crystal, long, flexible tube floats out to drop into his hovering cup. Coming nearer to his face, the tube offers the first sips without effort to move.
(How fucking lazy are you!?)
“Mwaha~!” Mostly-cat and less-elf, the elder stretches into a weird pose after crying out!
“Elder!?”
Rolling in his hammock for a moment, his face pokes back over its lip.
“A novel taste.” His face is shinier, the ever-present glow of his skin stronger! “Very decent.”
“I’m glad! Please try the cake, because it’s infused by the tea seeping into it!”
“Eventually. For now, a gift.”
Another crystal sipping tube wiggles like a snake when carried to Ave’s cup, plopping into it so that she can sip, too.
“For me!? How… grand! Please, for you, I have so much more to share!”
That is an absolute truth, as well, for the next duration that Adris does not bother tracking…
“[The Opal Rose of Zildain]! Crown jewel of the sovereign of the half-kin of that country, those who gathered in the shadow of the great woods in mute longing for reconciliation with us!”
“Very colorful.”
One priceless treasure after another comes out of her bag in between sipping tea and yapping an introduction to each,
“[Guildas, the Promise]! Treaty sword of the Twelve Legions, gift from the Tiberian Emperor to the Queen of Dreams herself, declaring her and all kin valorous opponents upon the field and in court! Reclaimed in the Second Age and uniting the hearts of the Alliance of Many Races!”
“Very human-made.”
For Adris witnesses so many items from her Welcome Web collection adding one by one to the procession of floating artifacts that also circle the elder.
Dozens of valuable, easily sell-able items that Adris has many times considered the auction value of in Petripolis, Adris painfully experiences a déjà vu of repeating histories.
A metallic flute the same color as Ave’s protective bodysuit links pops out next. “[Flute of the North Winds]! Given to children who wander far, if a true descendant of Mandostesse with thoughts of that city should play it, it shall call them…” Instead of pulling in for quiet inspection, it whistles to life with a mournful tune that longs for home! “Why is it playing itself!?”
The hyperactive flute orbits the elder, pelting him with notes. Rather than annoyed, the elf finds a new level of comfort by seeming to melt into a puddle that fills the hammock.
“Very longing.”
“But not only that, there’s also …!”
Before even the previous wondrous item can be fully taken in, Ave dives for more with the enthusiasm of a kid whose presents are endless and waiting to be unwrapped.
At first reticent, even concerned, Ave now is just as comfortable upon her personal rest as the elder. She is also oblivious to how the rest of her fellows stand awkwardly silent spectating, a somewhat of an unusual feeling to bear the brunt of.
For, the perspective seems wrong. Ave is sharing herself with someone, and it’s not from where Adris can gaze into her eyes.
(Move on. We’ve groundwork to lay.)
And bonds to sunder.
Adris scans the rest of their faces once realizing he’s restless, ready to step forward until Neesiette returns his gaze with a flash of alarm.
She abruptly taps up to come beneath Avenalliah, raising her voice.
“Forget not fellows, Avenalliah.”
“… It unleashed a disenchantment so grand that the tower and eye fell into—!
Neesiette?”
Ave stars down with confusion, but neither continue before the doll’s white spell-changing rod whips out. She points it at the elder!
“Dare—!?”
Her dress wavers, a gleaming burst of violet stabbing at the vast nothing that Adris scraps at approaching her. Eyes burn with comprehension, but Neesiette’s rod does not move.
“Supremacy dips low after falling, to guide a wind instead of lending genocide.”
The violet light which escapes to fend off shortly compresses back as a sphere.
A glorious Lunamaton gently scoops from the ground to float, held up by the rejection of inner power meeting an unseen force.
“Desist!” Neesiette speaks more so quickly that it’s unintelligible, but to no avail. Adris gawks at how she joins the procession of elvish artifacts near Avenalliah.
His ready cross doesn’t fly, for he’s felt no rush of battle nor whispers of carnage declaring a struggle.
In seeming defeat, Neesiette grimaces, then her gleaming dress diminishes. “Spirits, irascible, defying requirement for instructions to command pseudo-Art! Illogical and unordered components thereof, they be!”
“… Hello, Neesiette.” With the sphere of violet gone, Neesiette is just fixed in place beside Ave’s perch. “You… really don’t know how to coax nature’s will, do you?”
“Blue star, everything contained within it, defying obedience to betters! Necessitating ‘camaraderie’ these ‘spirits’ do to obey, explanation lacking!”
No wind blows, and the only sounds are the elf leader sipping while he stares at Neesiette with a curious look.
“Never has there ever been another descendant of the madness that fell that would perform as a friend. Rarest, this.” That look passes immediately after his comment, sparing a smile before returning to languid.
“Madness!? Peerless, immaculate Creator, besmirching not the qualities thereof, bipedal half-fey!”
“Now, abuse is most common.”
(Insulting my…? What is your aim!?)
No action this elder takes seems hospitable, nor does he explain his position in the village. As host, he should steer the festivities and guide the guests to meet his expectations.
But he offers no tells as to what he wants. Adris’ mind is already heated trying to determine if this is bait for him to intervene, or a show of force to dissuade…?
(It settles as bait for now!)
But he can’t monopolize on it.
“Friend is HERE!”
Rather than up the long ramp, a clomping wolf-tiger rushes to the column of ash that holds up the end that Ave rests at. With a mad rush sharp claws take Kol to the top, then flipping over to land on Ave.
“K-KOL!? There’s not enough room…!”
“Move over!”
Ave’s skin goes red with instinctive allergy to the girl that now clings to her. Forcing her way to clamp on from behind Ave’s back, Kol whips her head to get Ave’s hair out of her ears; settling on the elf’s head as a rest, Kol sneers down at the village’s leader and barks a challenge.
“Kol was first friend~.”
“… It isn’t a contest, Kol…!”
“Kol will be knight! This elf belongs to Kol… as, protection?”
“I don’t belong to anyone!?”
“No, Kol is the protection, so that’s…?”
The squire asks for help with a curious expression.
“‘Protectee’ be the position in this social equation.” Hovering nearly sideways, struggling to roll back upright, Neesiette says this plainly before continuing to stare at the elder.
“Right! Elf, ‘protectee’ed’, so better beware!”
A furry shoulder pet spoils for a fight.
But it’s not given. Silent still, the elder’s eyes dance with mirth briefly as he sips more tea.
(What is this dynamic?)
Already something escapes from him. Adris’ manners never asserted, nor did the host demand any. A time to intervene was stolen, so he’s left untethered.
Even Falke had been transparent about his core self. In the false garden that he pined for the past in, he’d longed to emulate the authority Dohle wrought over her religious empire.
But…?
(This fucking elf just smugly lays there. Sipping tea!)
And it doesn’t help that his anchor clinging to his back seems to sink lower and lower toward oblivion the longer she stays within sight of the strange creature.
Tea that isn’t shared… is tea that’s denied.
“A shadowed village is a strange place to find children of light hiding in.”
Into the vacuum of proper decorum, Adris decides to assert his own.
He steps lively up toward the elf, choosing to come as close as Avenalliah would be from above into the sphere of this elder’s authority.
The darkness beyond makes no change.
Slightly heated air, dry and filled with the moisture of sweet nectar, makes him swallow hard against the agitating presence of the one that can liberate his heart.
When there’s no response except for the girls to stop chatting at each other, Adris continues.
(There’s so much wrong with this village, so let’s start with the facts.)
“In the shadow of the Alchemaster is hazardous to exist, too, for yourself and potentially others. A tree that holds the world up? I can say that it seems more that it’s a world the Alchemaster stole from you elves to serve as a decoration.”
(The world tree is supposed to be a place that can only be reached from a gigantic trunk contained within the ancient forests of the elves. I’ve been wondering since Ave and the slayers explained it: why would the Alchemaster grow such an entryway?)
Now that the accusation is placed, it’s allowed for either party to continue the breach in peacefulness and etiquette.
Powerful men have certain humors about them.
Falke had chosen gentility even in the face of obvious insult, loving to hoard them to strike later with equal reprisals.
Drache allowed no attempt to joke about his authority to go without response, prickly as his grandfatherly, but fiery, personality demanded in jabbing back.
The Alchemaster had one rule: that she be worshiped, nay, loved above all else, and to defy that with adverse reactions…?
(She’s a good pick for him! Let’s start from there.)
“It is a poor elder that lets the enemy take his ‘kin’ from home.”
“ADRIS!” Ave predictably screams in protest, but there’s no need to address her.
In the proper manner of sizing up opponents, Adris’ body language of opening his centerline to attack by remaining with his feet beneath him, not with a single leg extended, makes his balance wary.
“But every time I meet another elf here, I wonder if you all don’t already belong with the Alchemaster?” His hands raised wryly as if this is a joke, and that the elder must be a part of the gag.
(All of you have something wrong! Or, there’s something very wrong with elves!)
One or the other!
Adris’ mood keeps going crazy because they all can’t seem to make any sense of themselves in order to prove who they are to Adris.
A “game” which threw them into a delusion so deep that he believed he was the Emperor of Xin until the colored bubbles popped is mighty powerful even for his homeworld.
(They fear to use their “playground”, but offer to play again if Ave is the one doing it?)
It’s not just her social status being bizarre that fuels the disconnect, it’s also that the elves don’t seem to care about the utility of such an amazing circle!
They left it abandoned, barely maintained by a single murderess suffering from the traumas of a war that she physically left but carries with her inside.
“You toy with one of my sworn, holding her aloft as your puppet?”
(Are you weak? Or, are you strong!? Imprisoning THE Neesiette makes me need to know!)
[Adris cannot be in any danger if Avenalliah is beholden to him.]
All of his years of being a conman scream that she’s made him immune to any repercussions.
“Neesiette is just up with me now! She hasn’t been hurt!”
For the doll’s part, Neesiette maintains her irate disposition but also stays silent.
(What do YOU obsess about, if all elves have obsessions? Seeing others as ants to treat as interesting if you please?)
“What proof could you offer that you aren’t the very enemy I seek to destroy, since you command her curse as if it’s your own while also taking on her evil moods?”
The million-coin question is his first lead in toward his end goal.
A bit too conspicuous for his usual dealings, the inhumanity of these elves pushes him to skip careful discussion, inquiry, baiting, and emotional overtures.
(Be my weapon against her! Answer that you aren’t hers, so we can move to the next poi—!)
“Why distrust!? There’s no malice given, nor needed! Our interactions, like feelings, are not easy to grasp for those not feeling them the same way.” Avenalliah calls down with a huff. “Greetings between kin, especially, they don’t… progress the same as elsewhere? It’s just how we do things… so, why…?” Then her look is disapproving when burying herself into her pillows.
“Why must you be so competitive about something so not important?”
(There’s only competition between the strong! To establish who is stronger, there MUST be rapport!)
No one as strong as this one would lack for that spirit.
The very act of overpowering Neesiette proves a drive for dominance!
To satisfy the meeting of two powerful potential foes, they must move on from intimidation to reconciliation.
(Why stand up for him when he’s the one trying to intentionally lord over us!? Even Kol is annoyed! But, that’s also the perfect reason…!)
To oppose Adris is one thing.
To endanger Ave is another! Every bit of guile within Adris screams that he’s hit the perfect reason to escalate this confrontation with him lowering his voice in total accusation.
“Are you not Ave’s enemy if so alike that evil, despite wearing a mask called ‘kin’?”
All the rest of those Adris has met that were strong would’ve replied with a frenzy at the suggestion that they would be opposed to this overly sweet, incredibly powerful, and divinely blessed supreme child that should never have needed Adris’ help even once in the past.
“No kin would harm another!” Ave screams this, yet it’s not certain since the owl elf.
(NOW you must act…!)
But after a minute, there’s still no response.
That the elder remains curled up in his hammock with his eyes closed, sipping his tea until he gathers noisy air instead from the bottom, presents a problem Adris has never encountered before now.
(TALK TO ME!)
Hands on his back keep yanking at him, but Adris can muscle through the scaredy-cat witch’s attempts so long as he gets a rise!
“I am from beyond your world. Everything you know is insufficient, for your ‘truth’ is only half the story. If you hide anything that would threaten her, I will know.”
Even menacingly lifting the black cross, an obsidian that makes even the darkness beyond seem muted, produces nothing but a twitch of this kid’s long ear to keep an errant lock of hair from tickling it.
(GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WORK WITH!)
Adris can only keep his face screwed up into unknowable fury set for so long.
The elder rolls to face up to Ave, pushing his floating, empty cup back toward her.
“This is only a misunderstanding, only a jest of some kind, why would they fight…?”
“Never enough~.” This dreamy dissatisfaction is an invitation for more tea, obviously, despite ignoring her hurtful whisper. It also totally undercuts the tension that Adris was developing when the elder rubs his eyes and yawns again.
(Are… you…?)
“What you should all fear is before you, but you don’t recognize it?”
With one last ditch attempt to imperil with allusion and his masterful voice control, Adris looms over the elf to try and cast a shadow using the illumination from above.
“Why do you avoid facing me?”
Finally the elder opens his eyes.
A serene purple stares straight through Adris and everything he is. This preposterously beautiful, totally unmasculine elf respon—
“Because… you’re [boring].”
With all the care of child getting tired of a toy, the enemy moans this through a yawn.
The flute that is still playing, its notes seem awfully long all of the sudden.
Overly warm, the air then grows cold to the skin.
Such a spectacularly evil chamber, made out of darkness and the right affectations for the villain of a plot, isn’t too interesting when Adris steps back into the weight on his shoulders.
A thousand different paths in the conversation were prepared for, all with different outcomes that would be beneficial.
But those brilliant thoughts grind to a halt.
Then stress as they try to break through the block.
He just blinks once at this strange creature in the hammock, earning a blink back.
No binding emotional exchange exists between them.
No play and counter-play.
Not one hint of deception at what this being thinks.
No longer casting a shadow over…
(That’s… not…?)
… Adris…
… a weird, omnipresent buzzing through him…
… every thought screaming in shock before being silenced…
(I’m tired.)
… a boy turns with as much grace as possible to his right, and then steps with…
… purpose…
“Adris?”
The center of this day, week, and dive into danger calls for him by a name that isn’t important right now.
In response…
Nothing.
Nothing is felt. Nothing at all.
… he finds that there is a little fellow waiting at the row of tiny homes that the boy comes to stand before.
It sounds like other women are calling, maybe even screaming, but…?
(That’s what women do best, right, Fatso?)
Just like before, they exchange a stare, the tall vs. the short.
A guest should be suitably provided for…
“Show me to where we will be rooming.”
(This sounds like how I should be asking it!)
The broom-wielding midget tilts his head once, then to the other side, and ultimately chucks his broom at his tiny house made of gathered leaves, needles, and forest detritus.
Curling his finger, the magical inn keeper runs off into the darkness.
“Many things shared of yourself, but few explained to their fullest.”
“… Then… then, I’ll tell you all about them!”
The moment resumes.
A fanciful explanation in depth, copied from many other nights.
What was singular becomes shared.
Once thinking that, the weight that falls upon the boy gets even randier in its attempts to pull him the opposite direction.
Instead of obeying, he enjoys that he can vanish too into the darkness…
(I’m very tired! What… what a…)
Because… you’re boring.
Their room is at the top of the turret seen from outside.
He’d merely been pulled up to the top, without even a hint of the wind speaking in his ear. Spartan to the extreme, it is a stepped dwelling that is lowest at the center where you fly up from below, and highest at the blocks which lie beneath the windows looking out over the omnipresent haze that the strange creatures put up to bully the boy.
(This is a nice room. It’s very far away from… everything.)
So far away that it feels as if the colors outside never truly reach him.
Though they shine, their light doesn’t penetrate.
He only feels secure.
Isolated.
Disconnected from all other things, even as he feels those things reach out for him through the windows.
(That’s good.)
He stares down at the fluffy, black, rectangular mat that unfurls when dropped by the midget’s hand gestures. It’s hard to figure out what’s stuffing it when it expands to be two-feet thick, if only because there’s so many gestures of black-meshed hands dancing before the boy’s face.
(I never get left alone.)
Slowly and with great deliberation, the boy throws himself to the mattress.
Left facing the midget that stares back with a strange expression to his wood-cut face, the boy considers what prompts him to keep staring.
“Yes, of course.” He digs into his hidden coin pocket, pulling an unusual gold piece that radiates a hint of malice.
“I’m in your care.” The boy tosses the coin to the midget, who promptly lifts the gleaming coin toward the ceiling. Inspecting it as the boy turns over, or tries to. Rubbing its surface with its patchwork sleeve, trying to make it shine even more strongly.
The heavy burden at his back is now needling him in the side with constant gestures, a fanciful painted face on a porcelain mask streaked into a frenzy of a smile.
He ponders that expression, only for a second, before pulling a wrapped bit of medicine out to unwind its covering.
The moment he tries to slip it past his lips, it’s slapped away.
A blue anchor climbs onto him, she must be clambering for something, because she keeps making weird gestures that he doesn’t bother with understanding.
“… I’m going to sleep.”
Not bothering to find the one that was slapped away, the boy chooses another medicinal aid of the same stock and unwraps it.
“This makes me sleep. I won’t wake up.”
Again grubby fingers try to steal it, but he’s resistant.
“I don’t want to wake up when they come in after…
Everything is fine. Everything is safe. So, I’ll sleep until morning.”
It’s a logical plan, yet more attempts at conversation keep flashing at him.
“I deserve sleep.”
An incessant flurry of fingers.
It’s all too much, so he just swallows the bitter pill that makes him drift off almost instantly once his stomach becomes warmer.
The mattress is so fluffy, even if what attaches itself to him isn’t.
As the dark pulls over everything…
A struggling presence at his side trying to find new ways to cling to him…
Because… you’re boring.
The only voice that he hears anymore is perhaps even more childlike than his own.
It crashes through his plunge into serenity.
Pursues him until the very end of the world, even as it feels like he’s rolling on an unseen ocean.