15 March 2373

  Faerie Adventure Day 11

  This day, I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon. Ever since she nearly fell into the glade of brilliant, crimson poppies, our Etnfrandian singer has been drowsy. Her mind often drifts from the moment’s conversation, and I worry that she has been affected. Captain Krid tells me that she did not keep awake for the duration of their watch. This is strange for an elf, so I am monitoring her carefully. When I inspected her eyes, I saw in them the gloss of one bewitched, the pupils round with relaxation when they should not be. While this is a phenomenal opportunity to observe the resistance of elves to bewitchment when met with charms from their own kind, I only hope it does not interfere with our journey.

  Until another opportunity arises,

  Mellark

  From The Truth and the Fae: A Memoir

  By Mellark Brandybeard

  Flowers of rich and vibrant variety swayed on a warm wind that kissed Gale’s skin with sun. The petunias danced and daisies laughed as she sauntered along, singing with their sway. A voice called to her, carried on the wind. She turned to see him.

  Fenn stood with the sun at his back, hair a halo of white. He smiled a full, dental smile, sending lines up his cheeks. He wore spring clothes: a linen shirt with a long kapor tunic of short sleeves over it, both tucked through a belt. Unlike his clothes in Etnfrandia, this had been tailored to fit so that the disparate contrast between his shoulders and slim waist was on full display.

  She smiled to see him, her heart aflutter. “Fenn.” She closed the distance quickly. “You’re here.”

  His eyes, unencumbered by glasses, traced over her, and the way they lingered said he found her pleasant in them. Smooth as a stream, he scooped up a galendria and placed the blossoms behind her ear. His hand stayed a moment too long in her hair, and she blushed, bringing her hand up to inspect the flower’s security.

  He took the hand in his. “It’s beautiful,” he assured her, bringing her fingers to his lips. He pressed them softly, his eyes locked to hers and his cheeks warm with affection. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured against her hand.

  Just when she thought her heart would burst, he wrapped a hand around the small of her back and pulled her to him. For a moment, she didn’t know if only her head spun, or if he spun her.

  “Gale.” He tickled her ear with his breath.

  “Gale!” A heavy hand shook her shoulder.

  “Fenn?” She looked around, confused. The flowers smiled at her, the sun shone, and Fenn spun her into a dance.

  “Let the dreams go, hun,” Mell’s voice cut through.

  Dreams?

  Gale blinked. Sun filtered through a golden canopy. She groaned. “Nooo.”

  Mell kept shaking her shoulder, but she dove headlong into the dream. Fenn’s hands on her back, his cheek against her temple, flowers swaying as they turned in a sixstep.

  “Come on! You're the last one sleeping. We’ve got work to do.” That persistent shoulder-shaker wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She clasped Fenn closer, and he pressed her against him in answer. “What is it, my love?” he whispered, his lips tickling her hair.

  She gasped as blood rushed to her head. Love? How many times had she wanted to hear that word out of his mouth. But, now it felt strange when he said it. Was there another voice on the wind? The hands on her back faded while the flowers and the warmth of the sun on her head became more vibrant.

  “Get up, child! Not even I'm that tired.”

  Tired? She was wide awake with sunshine blessing the flowers which in turn danced in a luscious breeze. Her true love held her close–the perfect day. What does this wind-voice mean by tired?

  “It’s… nothing,” she answered him.

  But it niggled in the back of her mind, worming out a remembrance: Fenn was supposed to apologize for something. She swayed with him, waiting. The sun shone brighter, a song rising on the wind as if to drown out the voice calling to her. Fenn's hand trailed up her back like it had never done, but she'd always wished it would.

  His kiss landed in her hair. She wished she were taller and it would land on her cheek. “Will you stay here with me?” he asked.

  Was that… did he sound possessive? She slipped a hand up his shoulder to the nape of his neck, caressing the soft hair that stuck out there. She was ready with an always, but then he didn’t wince. He always winced when she touched his hair.

  And the sun was just so soft. And the flowers so perfectly laid out. It was like something from a…

  “Dream!” the last edges of her awareness screamed. She shot her eyes open–her real eyes. She was curled up on the dirt in the Yellow Wood where she had sat for her watch, leaves clinging to her dress and hair. She pushed herself into a sitting position. Indeed, everyone else was awake, Fenn making breakfast, spectacled and awkward again.

  Seeing him, she felt her cheeks grow hot. Her legs curled into her and she squeezed them together, banishing the thoughts her dream had roused. She’d had a few romantic dreams in her life, but this one lingered in her mind, more real than the golden leaves at her feet. She scanned the poppy glade, still within sight, and wondered a second time if they hadn’t affected her.

  “Are you okay?” Mell probed from beside her.

  “I think so.” Gale pushed to her feet. Fenn was doing her job when he needed to do his: understanding artifacts and such. Even if she said she was fine, she couldn’t quite shake the dream: the vividness of the sun’s glow, the heat of Fenn holding her.

  “Isn’t it pretty unusual for an elf to sleep for ten hours?” Mell offered her a hand up.

  She gaped. Ten hours? “Very.”

  “Hm,” Mell’s gaze wandered to those same poppies, then she shrugged. “I guess none of us have slept much lately.”

  Hadn't slept, sure, but the dream! She’d known she loved Fenn–or had been reasonably sure. But to dream it up now, when they’d been arguing, set her mind to torture. She needed to know if all would be well between them; if he cared for her as more than some old friend. She watched him for a sign, glancing when he wasn’t looking, but he kept himself busy. When she approached the travel stove, he left it. When she walked near him in camp, he neither looked up nor buried his head in his books. She may as well have not existed.

  A bitter jealousy ate at her, burning her up from the inside. She didn’t even have anyone to be jealous of while he licked his thumb to turn a page. It brought attention to his thin, purple-pink lips. She pinched her eyes shut and rubbed sleep-crumbs off of them. When she opened them, she saw Krid inspecting a tree. She thought of joining him–if for no other reason than to bang her noggin against that tree until she stopped thinking about that dream, or about Fenn, or about the ache in her chest at not speaking to him.

  Then she saw Mell, and remembered a very magical crystal artifact with the power to see the future. “Mell, while we are resting up, do you think I could check on my father?” It was an easy lie to fabricate, but it felt heavy on her tongue. She was about to use the crystal for a very frivolous task.

  “Sure! It’s just in my bag in our tent.” Mell pointed from where she packed up breakfast by the stove.

  Gale found it quickly and settled onto the ground under the tent. If to scry she needed to concentrate on the person and will to see them, then to see the future, she would likely need to concentrate on that instead. It was worth a try.

  She took a few deep breaths, the crystal in her hands. Her reflection refracted on the surface, hair tangled and dress dirtied–not very appealing. She cleared her mind of it, willing the crystal to show her the future as she poured her magic into it, all the while thinking of Fenn, hoping to see his future. Their future.

  The crystal lit up with power. Fog swirled within it, then all at once it morphed. A centaur paraded through the Yellow Wood, mighty muscles rippling, light hair flying over his shoulders and in a line down his back.

  In another moment, Syrdin ran in the dark, boots slapping across a stone bridge over watery depths. A hundred voices shrieked at zhem.

  Then suddenly a feast of fresh fruit lay spread across a richly red table. Fenn sat opposite the view, his food untouched, mouth agape. A throaty laugh resounded near him.

  The picture plunged into a swirl of murky water. Shadows chased around it, swirling amidst bubbles.

  Next, a red dawn blazed in a distant sky over fields of honeyed grasses while a strange flute played a haunting tune. Fenn stood alone.

  In the dark, two faces appeared, one pale with glass over his eyes, the other her own. They were very near and–! She kissed Fenn soundly.

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  She dropped the crystal with a yelp. On the ground, it flashed again. Syrdin and Krid clashed swords over Fenn’s shoulder, and his face grimaced in the central focus as he strained against something. Or someone. Then the crystal cleared of the image, returning to its natural state.

  Gale plucked it up in a panic. She pulled it to her chest, letting the cool stone sooth the heat that had spread there. She couldn’t make sense of most of what she’d seen, but they’d kissed.

  And Syrdin had fought Krid! She snatched her bow. Syrdin was the enemy. She’d known it was so.

  She poked her head out of the tent, searching for zhem. She would resolve this now. She would not allow zhem to remain long enough to fight Krid.

  “See anything?” Mell inquired immediately.

  Her face turned hot. She’d seen something alright. Then, she became aware of Mell’s face faltering into confusion.

  Her blush only heated further in her cheeks. “I caught him at a bad time.”

  Mell’s brows raised over her spreading grin. She said nothing, which only sent the heat into the very tips of Gale’s ears.

  Mell chuckled. “The way you react, you’d think you hadn’t realized how you were made.”

  Gale hid her face behind a hand. Humans were so indecent. She could’ve meant something about the latrine. Besides, her father and mother hadn’t made her. Not the ones she knew anyway. The ones who had were dead, killed by a band of Night Elves from the Dark Wood.

  Night Elves. The enemy. Syrdin. Fenn stood with Krid a stone’s throw from camp, Syrdin between them. Gale’s anger surged up, ready to boil over. The time had come to face that problem head-on. No more waiting for Fenn to apologize. No more waiting for Syrdin to betray zheir intentions. She knew what she needed to do, even if she had to fight for the results.

  The soft brightness distinct to morning filtered through golden leaves above him and rode the backs of the ones falling from their heights. Those whose final journey down was complete crinkled softly between his toes. This place was quiet after the constant racket of Ferngal’s forest. But quiet did not mean safe. Krid traced the gashes splitting the white bark of a tree. These were vertical, while the natural ones ran horizontally. Fenn crunched up behind him, drawn by Krid’s scrutiny.

  “What do you think?” Krid rapped it with his knuckle. “It looks scratched to me.”

  Fenn peered at it, tracing it with his boney fingers. “I think it might be an antler rubbing.”

  “Antler rubbing?”

  “Yes, something a buck might do on the Trueplane to mark its territory.”

  Crossing his arms over his bare chest, Krid leaned back and considered the wisdom of donning his armor. If they were in some large, horned creature’s territory, he wasn’t pleased by the idea of meeting it in nothing but his breeches. “Is it a danger to us?”

  Fenn scratched over his ear.

  “Just speak your thoughts.” Krid had not missed the way everyone had taken to encouraging him to say his piece.

  “I can only imagine that it must be. After all, it is large, horned, and clearly territorial.” Fenn studied the stripped bark and rubbed the back of his neck. “I just hope it won’t consider us interlopers, seeing as we aren’t its species.”

  Krid took interlopers to mean invaders. “How dangerous? Cladafrum levels? Watcher dangerous?”

  Fenn reached for the uppermost scratch. Even stretched on his toes, he did not come close to the top. “It will be more than the cladafrum, but probably less than a Watcher. With all of us fighting together, maybe more dangerous than a morboran without her songs, but still less dangerous than Ferngal with her magic. Of course, if it has magic, we’re probably as good as dead.”

  Krid did not find this comforting. “Then we should move on.”

  “Moving might bring us straight to it. Where we are, it doesn’t know we are here. Besides,” Fenn ran a hand over the bark and then dusted his fingers together, “this is old. It hasn’t been here recently.”

  Krid squinted at the markings. Fenn would know better than he not only about Fae creatures, but also those of the forest. Desert-dwelling hadn’t exactly trained him about deer. “Fine, then. Let’s keep alert.”

  He turned around to find Syrdin, pale eyes bright against zheir rich skin, staring past him at the stripped bark.

  “Anything to add, little one? Or were you going to use this as an excuse to travel with us further?”

  Syrdin rolled zheir eyes dramatically. “Damp your thunder, drake. It’s in my best interest to know what lurks here either way.”

  Krid sent his darkest glower down at zhem. “You know, I might let you along if you tell us why you’ve come.”

  Zheir jaw flexed and zheir brow bent with fury. “Can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Zheir secrets chafed him like sand under the armor: always present, always scratching between his scales, and never letting him forget its presence. And, like sand, he feared the secrets would never leave him be, even if zhe was washed from his presence.

  “You want a direct answer? Fine. I can’t tell you what I’m doing because none of you would believe me. I have no proof. Words without proof are empty.”

  “You don’t know th–” Fenn had tried to say something, but Krid snorted.

  “–So you have no witness? No note? No order from whomever you work for?”

  “All intangible.”

  He wasn’t sure he knew the Brikhiish translation for that word. That made the whole thing all the more irritating. “Convenient.”

  “Not really,” Syrdin growled. “However, I would fight you for my right to stay.” Zheir gaze flicked to Fenn, jaw set.

  Krid scoffed. “Don’t waste our time. You have no second. Be off with you!”

  Syrdin didn’t break zheir gaze from Fenn as zhe turned. Zheir teeth ground. Whatever zhe wanted, zhe needed him for it. Finally, zhe turned and began the retreat back toward camp.

  “Wait,” Fenn spoke from beside the tree. “I’ll… I’d witness.”

  “Fenn, any one of you would second me–”

  “For Syrdin.” Fenn set a serious expression on him, steady, though his hands squeezed so tightly that his knuckles whitened.

  At first, Krid was too surprised to be angry. “You… want zhem along?” He’d been the one to tell zhem to go a few days ago. This had to be a trick.

  “I believe zhem.” He turned to Syrdin, who had whirled, mouth agape with surprise– possibly pretended. “Maybe I’m the first, and maybe it’s a foolish thing to do, but I do all the same.”

  A low growl escaped Krid. He trudged toward their camp. Somehow, Syrdin had manipulated Fenn: whether through magic or more ordinary methods, he did not know. It didn’t matter. He had to chase Syrdin away. It mattered even less who his own second was. Fenn was a weak fighter, and Krid himself was probably evenly matched with Syrdin. Mell or Gale would do, whoever volunteered first.

  “Krid?” Fenn’s voice followed him, pitched high with worry.

  He kept walking. He was going to have to fight his own brother over such an obviously misplaced faith.

  “Krid, please, I’ve talked with zhem!”

  Krid whirled, teeth bared in a snarl. “Then teach me. What purpose brings zhem here that you would go against the judgment of your brother and your own betrothed to invite zhem on your journey? Because I see through zhem, Fenn. Zhe is no Newt. Zhe never lived among my people. I don’t know who zhe belongs to, but zhe is not one of ours!”

  “I know that, Krid,” Fenn pleaded. “I was there. I would’ve met zhem. Instead, Mell found zhem at a tavern further South.”

  His claws dug into his palms. “Then you know zhe has no right to ask for a duel!”

  “No more than I would.”

  That stung. Krid considered him a Newt, but Fenn did not think so. And he confessed to knowing Syrdin misled them about zheir nationality. “You should have told me!”

  “Krid, zhe never said zhe was a Newt; you just assumed. And it wasn’t important where zhe really lived.” They had stopped near the edge of their triangle of tents. The wind blew crisply between them bearing golden leaves. “It still isn’t. Not every Night Elf refugee would become a Newt. The main thing is that we all knew zhe was a mercenary.”

  A Gut-spiller. Death or information, for hire.

  Krid growled. It did matter. There was no better place to go to escape that life than Brikhvarnn. No better place to learn a better way. To learn honor.

  No, Syrdin was up to no good, and zhe had planted ideas into Fenn’s head. He should have never allowed Syrdin and Fenn to share a tent. He had been wrong from the beginning. Not only was Syrdin Gale’s rival for Fenn’s loyalties, but for all of theirs.

  He bored his ill will into Syrdin with a glare. Zhe didn’t even notice, staring wide-eyed at Fenn. Zheir shock almost made him second-guess his accusations.

  “Well, I second Krid!” Gale, who had just burst from her tent moments ago, grasped her bow. “And if I have any right to challenge, then I have two to issue, because I’m pretty sure I’m well wronged.” She pointed a sharp end of her bow at Fenn, who took a guffawed step backward.

  “What?”

  “Conferring with the enemy!”

  “Now wait a minute!” Mell rose from her meal at the stove.

  “Lying to me!”

  “G-Gale, please.” Fenn raised his hands in front of him. “I don’t–”

  “Trying to leave me behind!” Gale’s cheeks grew red.

  He went rigid.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think–” she cut off abruptly, her eyes growing round with curiosity. Her stance lowered, head tilting.

  Krid spun to follow where she looked. It was another wisp. Or he assumed it must be. This one was not like a drifting cloud so much as a bubble of liquid silver. It flipped in place—or how it rippled made it appear to—and then it drifted up a tree’s trunk, perching in a branch.

  Fenn gasped, his notebook already in hand.

  “What is that?” Mell asked.

  “If the legends are as true as I believe, it’s a spirit.” Fenn answered.

  “A spirit?” Mell seemed doubtful.

  “A guiding light, on wooded bough, to good or fright, a wisp of hope.” Fenn recited.

  The thing chirruped, a sound more high and echoing than the prior day’s wisp. Krid blinked. “Is a wisp important?” The way they had dropped everything to stare made it seem so.

  “Perhaps.” Fenn said. “They’re supposed to be guides to the lost, but to either good or evil ends.” He sighed, lowering his notebook with a sketch already in place. “But I suppose we have a more pressing issue than responding to it.”

  They all stood silent, gloom hanging over them like a cloud over the sun. Krid crossed his arms, waiting for Fenn to continue.

  “So, this duel. What are the rules exactly?” Mell prompted.