Boundaries of Mirkwood
Treetop Talan
Chapter 10
As the paralysis induced by poison wore off, the paralysis of grief set in. The numbness caused by knowing he could not venture alone to another post in the night; it would not be safe were there ten to accompany him. His whole command appeared to be captured. Remnants of a battle between the spiders and the company on the talanlay scattered around him with a snapped twig there, a thread of silk here, and the complete lack of personnel. They had been caught in a trap set by the infesting darkness; an entire post of nine trained warriors. How could he have known, and yet, how could he not have seen the danger?
Nusirilo, Altéru, Nessimon, Failon, Ohtallo, Veryatur, Ristar, Hereno.
The immortal mind did not forget.
Light from the stars overhead winked at him, but Tyelco’s heart would not be soothed. All were yet captive in the cave. When this darkness passed, who among them would be alive? He cursed his inability to act. The wood was most dangerous at this late hour, especially with the cursed, manipulated spiders acting under the influence of an unseen evil. Were he recaptured, his knowledge would follow him to Mandos and the others would never be found. Yet, for every moment he hesitated, another immortal life could slowly be drained from its body.
He was resolved. There was no way he would allow himself to take rash action with so much at stake. Until daylight, it was best to remain at the platform and hope rescuers were on their way.
If that was not enough to press his mind, there was the pressing issue of the queer beings who had elected themselves his companions to consider.
They had the appearance of young, female adan but they certainly were not as they appeared. Magic they had in spades, though they clearly were not istari. They seemed ignorant of the recently unleashed evil which must have been months, if not years, in the brewing, but were equal to the task of fighting it. He knew not if they were to be trusted. How did they end up in the cave, or even the forest? Why did they release him, but not the others? There were many questions he wished to ask them, but whatever language they spoke he did not recognize. It was, in all likelihood, Westron, but as a young elf Tyelco had never bothered to learn the coarse speech of adanthough he could speak and read in five languages.
The two had been quite content to pass food between themselves, while the obsidian-colored one discordantly piped out cacophonous litanies and played with the flame-colored one’s hair jejunely. At least they’d kept the noise to an equitable level.
The smaller, obsidian one eventually drifted off into sleep atop a mat. As an elf, he had never seen a moral sleeping. It didn’t take long for him to decide it looked terribly boring. Sleeping, the obsidian one glowed; her light had penetrated the surrounding platform and mat where it created a protected, safe area.
As for the flame one, she seemed to be lying awake and restless. The pair was a mystery he did not care to think upon tonight; there was watch to keep.
Unfortunately, he was having difficulty focusing. His mind wanted to retreat in on itself. He wanted to flee from the anguish as much as he wanted to fight back. Time did not even register within his senses, and he did not notice he had company until the restless mortal was next to him. How often these girls managed to catch him, an elf, unaware was greatly disturbing.
The flame one’s legs shot out from under her and she comfortably settled down, her feet dangling over the precept. Tyelco scowled and avoided eye contact. He was furious that her stealth would not reveal its origin. Perhaps if he paid her no heed, she would go back to her mat and sleep as mortals required. There was a loud popping noise, the likes he’d never heard before. It startled him, which did nothing to improve his opinion of her.
With this one, it was always loud noises.
His first thought was that no eleth would disgrace herself with such immodestly short skirts as these beings did. The second was trying to place what exactly the cylindrical container she offered was, what it contained, and what exactly she’d started babbling about.
***
Arielle decided that there were worse people to be stuck in a dismal forest full of mutant spiders with than the perpetually cheery Yumiko. Pointy Ears, for example.
He’d found a nice corner to sulk in and had stayed there all night. Not even the warm scent of ramen wafting through the air coaxed him over. That was fine with her. He could pout until morning if he was so grouchy about their presence. It wasn’t as if he owed them anything.
Dinner had consisted of ramen and soda the miko provided by reaching into her bag and drawing from the bottomless void contained within. Thus far, it had produced several firecrackers, a lighter, two bowls of ramen, pop, hairbrushes, towels, and a pair of pajamas for Yumiko. The kid was a regular Mary Poppins.
Arielle didn’t know how Yumiko did it, but decided it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Though not one for slumber parties, Arielle put up with the grooming (Yumiko attacked her hair with a neon green hairbrush and proceeded to braid it thoroughly) and the singing (but only because it was Madonna, and the song seemed to be driving Pointy Ears spare).
Yumiko, having filled her stomach, washed her face clean with a towel and a bowl of water, and looking quite sleepy from the long day, found where the platform’s previous occupants had stowed the bedrolls and called it a night.
Out of habit, Arielle also lay down. The mat was immensely comfortable, but she soon gave up on sleep. She wasn’t about to doze off here. Without a roof she felt naked every time a breeze passed over her. The platform was too exposed to the elements. Her company was too unfamiliar. Tyelco wasn’t sleeping, and that meant there was the threat of attack was too imminent. Her status as being human was too precarious. If she shut her eyelids, eight glossy black eyes appeared behind them.
Rather than lay on her back awake, she decided to burn off her anxiety. Quietly slipping off the mat, she surveyed their location. If she had paper and pens she’s take note of everything that’d happened, starting with the terrible anxiety she’d felt waking up that very morning. Though raiding Yumiko’s bag was an option, it was too dark to write, even if she was now seeing further and clearer than she ever could at night back in Iowa.
Her throat constricted. Arielle didn’t want to think about Iowa where nothing ever happened.
Stars peeked through the upper leaves. From this vantage point, she could view the vast, dark mass of which was forest and the jagged mountains beyond. All in all, it was an impressive sight; the platform was clearly designed for observation. Morning would be worth waking early for.
Bored and with nothing better to do, Arielle began snooping amid the supplies. There wasn’t much stuff per se, but what there was, was exotically alien. Packets of whey bread were wrapped in large leaves, perfectly cut, proportioned, and packaged. There was a bag packed for travel; rations, a change of clothes nestled in a waxy covering to keep them dry, a knife, and what she assumed was a medical kit containing vials of herbs, liquids, bandages, and balm. She moved this into plain sight so that she wouldn’t forget to have Pointy Ears take it with him whenever they left.
Moving on, Arielle’s improved eyesight detected the subtle signs of a trap door. After fiddling with the opening mechanism, (and making sure Pointy Ears wasn’t interested in what she was getting up to) she unlatched it only to have her breath stolen. She was face to face with the armory. There was a cache of arrows, each positioned appropriately as not to damage the feathers. Several long, and a few hunting, knives lay sheathed. But there was something else that caught her eye. Strange, beautiful, and immaculately crafted, Arielle couldn’t resist reaching down and taking out an exquisite sword.
Though deceptively simplistic in design, it was a masterpiece in hand craftsmanship. Arielle didn’t need to be an expert to know this. Everything from the scrolling to the weight felt exquisitely proportioned and was seamless. Annoying as perfectionists were, at least it meant their work was, well, perfect.
Quietly, she shut the cache leaving it as she’d found it minus one sword. Lazily, she rested the sheathed weapon over her shoulder.
Again, she was bored. Wandering near the thick supporting branches, Arielle climbed out to examine the tree. Clearly, it was not a species she was familiar with, although it must have been some kind of deciduous, flowering tree. The problem with that classification was that she recalled Mrs. Garlock explaining to her AP Bio class these types were typically small. Not that things here were normal, but it’d be nice if they could at least follow the usual taxonomy.
Without much light, Arielle bent in closer to the bark, trying to see how its pattern was laid out. It was delicately rippled and gray, like elephant skin. During her inspection, she came across an anomaly in the wood protruding at an angle. Shifting her position to enable moonlight to hit the spot, she was surprised to find an arrowhead stuck into the bark. Its shaft was broken off not far from a head and bared no resemblance to the meticulously crafted heads in the armory.
This was a functioning guard station, not an abandoned one as she’d first assumed. Pulling out the deeply embedded head, Arielle examined its make; crude but effective and chipped out of something like flint. Covering its surface was wet tree sap.
Touching the wound in the tree, she felt the ooze of stick sap. This shot had been made recently, as the tree had no chance to heal over. Arielle hadn’t sensed anything flying through the air since the cave. Then it clicked.
The projectiles in the cave were arrows. There had been an attack here. Recently. Pointy Ears, with his own set of arrows, was obviously an archer who must’ve been stationed here. Their group was attacked by the spiders and the bipedal monsters in the cave.
Arielle felt her heart sink. Others must have been here with him. It made perfect sense that Pointy Ears was a sulking, frustrated, proud wreck tonight. They might be dead, or, she realized with horror, still in that cave somewhere.
Now knowing what to look for, Arielle saw other signs of struggle back on the platform; a deep slash in the woodwork, an overturned cooking pot she hadn’t upset while exploring, and a bit of spider silk hanging from one of the leaves, although she didn’t know if that meant anything. Perhaps that was from a normal spider.
Was it safe for them to remain here when the previous attack was, to all appearances, successful? Were they safe anywhere?
Sighing, she watched Pointy Ears for a moment. He didn’t seem to register her existence, though she suspected his eyesight was better than he’d let on so far. Morose and looking a little vacant, he stared off into the night sky. Had he eaten anything? He hadn’t moved, so probably not. Locating Yumiko’s bag, Arielle stuck her hand in and fished around before clamping down on two cans of soda and a bag of, well, she wasn’t sure what kind of Japanese crisps these were, but they seemed to be made of rice, and rice was edible.
Armed with comfort food, her pretty sword, and divested of fire armaments and her jacket, Arielle plopped down uninvited next to Pointy Ears. Judging from the way his eyes narrowed and shifted irritably in her direction, Arielle figured she wasn’t terribly welcome to her seat. Unperturbed by his condescension, she popped open a can and wordlessly offered the fizzy beverage to him. He was probably just acting tough in front of her and Yumiko for caution’s sake. If all his friends were gone, it was most forgivable.
“Soda, good. No nutritional value whatsoever.”
In typical Pointy Ears fashion, he contorted his face as though someone had stuck a smelly sock under his nose.
“Food. Edible. You eat things, don’t you?” She popped open her own can and took a sip. “See? It won’t kill me either.”
He looked at the can she was offering, then back to the other as she drank her own. “Cherry soda. Good."
Setting both cans aside, she pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and spread it over the space between them, then moved the cans next to their respective owners. She popped open the bag of rice crisps. They were round, baked patties with a thin glaze of honey over the top; each was contained in handy packs of two. Arielle dumped the content onto the makeshift picnic cloth, then opened a packet and offered Pointy Ears a cake while taking a bite of the other sweet and salty treat.
Although he didn’t accept the offering, he did examine the cake. However, instead of tasting the food or his drink, he picked up the clear plastic wrapper and scrutinized it thoroughly.
With an exasperated sigh, Arielle tossed the spare cake onto the top of the pile and laid back on the platform, her legs swinging out into space. “You’re hopeless.” Irritated, she took another bite of her cake. Couldn’t this guy just give up this whole I’m-too-good-to-speak-to-you-lowly-incomprehensible-being-things thing?
As if answering her soliloquy, she heard the distinctive crunch of rice cake. Turning her head to the side, she saw him chewing haltingly, as if expecting something in the food to crawl out of his mouth and bit him. Arielle’s chest trembled with a few chuckles as she watched. He took his second bite with the same precautionary air, ignoring her.
Without warning, his head shot up. He’d seen something in the distance. Arielle shot up as well, peering into the black night, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“What?” She whispered, knowing full well he couldn’t understand her, but had seen something.
“Adan.” He remarked calmly, arming himself with his bow and quiver and standing.
Arielle squinted as she looked over the tree line and was about to give up searching when she noticed a wisp of smoke she’d mistaken for a cloud. Somebody was having a bonfire with a pack of spiders on the loose.
Arielle stood; it was clear Yumiko was tired and could hold her own, at least for awhile. No spider could cross her glowing boundary. Pointy Ears, on the other hand, would need assistance bringing back whoever was out in the middle of the forest. Whatever was out there, Arielle could do a better job fighting it off than he could.
Pointy Ears had other ideas. Sternly pointing to her sleeping mat, he commanded, “Dortha.”
The meaning was clear. Like a dog, he was ordering her to stay. She muttered, “Tough shit pretty boy,” slung her coat on, and picked up the sword. As Pointy Ears didn’t care for her gun, she figured this would suit for now. Unfortunately, he caught on to her theft. Scathingly, he hissed at her; obviously, she didn’t understand one word of the lecture. Just to irritate him, she tried to look as pleasant as possible. It didn’t take him long to figure out she was mocking him. He turned and walked straight off the platform, dropping into the black below.
She shook her head, finally allowing her disgust to show, and spat, “Asshole.”
Confident in her incarnation, Arielle dropped into the black after him. Following Pointy Ears wasn’t easy, exactly. The bugger was fast, silent as the wind, and didn’t leave much of a trail. On her own, Arielle could move faster, but following along mean tracking. This wasn’t easy, as he darted through branches and could make surprisingly sharp turns as he ran out of branches underfoot. Luckily, with concentration, her new abilities allowed her to navigate in the dark and the air.
With their speed, it wasn’t much more than fifteen minutes before Pointy Ears stopped, crouching low on a branch, and surveyed the flickering firelight ahead. Silently, Arielle dropped beside him to find a reassuring sight. Not that two half-naked girls who looked like they’d drown in the river was necessarily reassuring.
Their possession eased her mind; plastic violin cases and bicycles. Those didn’t look like something found in this fairytale land.
Pointy Ears was having none of it. Glaring, he fluidly set and drew his bow in one easy motion.
Granted, he’d had a rough twenty-four hours, but that was no excuse for shooting first and asking questions later. Sensibly (though she was getting more and more annoyed), Arielle put her hand over the arrow, to which he, surprise of all surprises, glared.
Mustering a stern face and pointing to the branch, she ordered, “Dortha.”
Arielle leapt into the air leaving Pointy Ears to pout on his own time.
Her landing by the fire was met with a short stick in her face. The petite, white, dirty-blonde female in a tank top, Dr. Matins, and panties wielded the stick as though she meant to take an eye out even if her jaw was a slackened “O.”
The dark female clad in purple grinned pleasantly, her vividly violet eyes twinkling. “She is not the shadow, Abigail.”
“O-oh,” Abigail stammered, lowering her stick.
“Welcome to our fireside. I am Niobe Night Watson; this is Abigail Williams, and I fear we all,” her eyes shifted askance as though to direct the newcomer to the source, “are about to be attacked.”
***
Dortha = Stay
Treetop Talan
Chapter 10
As the paralysis induced by poison wore off, the paralysis of grief set in. The numbness caused by knowing he could not venture alone to another post in the night; it would not be safe were there ten to accompany him. His whole command appeared to be captured. Remnants of a battle between the spiders and the company on the talanlay scattered around him with a snapped twig there, a thread of silk here, and the complete lack of personnel. They had been caught in a trap set by the infesting darkness; an entire post of nine trained warriors. How could he have known, and yet, how could he not have seen the danger?
Nusirilo, Altéru, Nessimon, Failon, Ohtallo, Veryatur, Ristar, Hereno.
The immortal mind did not forget.
Light from the stars overhead winked at him, but Tyelco’s heart would not be soothed. All were yet captive in the cave. When this darkness passed, who among them would be alive? He cursed his inability to act. The wood was most dangerous at this late hour, especially with the cursed, manipulated spiders acting under the influence of an unseen evil. Were he recaptured, his knowledge would follow him to Mandos and the others would never be found. Yet, for every moment he hesitated, another immortal life could slowly be drained from its body.
He was resolved. There was no way he would allow himself to take rash action with so much at stake. Until daylight, it was best to remain at the platform and hope rescuers were on their way.
If that was not enough to press his mind, there was the pressing issue of the queer beings who had elected themselves his companions to consider.
They had the appearance of young, female adan but they certainly were not as they appeared. Magic they had in spades, though they clearly were not istari. They seemed ignorant of the recently unleashed evil which must have been months, if not years, in the brewing, but were equal to the task of fighting it. He knew not if they were to be trusted. How did they end up in the cave, or even the forest? Why did they release him, but not the others? There were many questions he wished to ask them, but whatever language they spoke he did not recognize. It was, in all likelihood, Westron, but as a young elf Tyelco had never bothered to learn the coarse speech of adanthough he could speak and read in five languages.
The two had been quite content to pass food between themselves, while the obsidian-colored one discordantly piped out cacophonous litanies and played with the flame-colored one’s hair jejunely. At least they’d kept the noise to an equitable level.
The smaller, obsidian one eventually drifted off into sleep atop a mat. As an elf, he had never seen a moral sleeping. It didn’t take long for him to decide it looked terribly boring. Sleeping, the obsidian one glowed; her light had penetrated the surrounding platform and mat where it created a protected, safe area.
As for the flame one, she seemed to be lying awake and restless. The pair was a mystery he did not care to think upon tonight; there was watch to keep.
Unfortunately, he was having difficulty focusing. His mind wanted to retreat in on itself. He wanted to flee from the anguish as much as he wanted to fight back. Time did not even register within his senses, and he did not notice he had company until the restless mortal was next to him. How often these girls managed to catch him, an elf, unaware was greatly disturbing.
The flame one’s legs shot out from under her and she comfortably settled down, her feet dangling over the precept. Tyelco scowled and avoided eye contact. He was furious that her stealth would not reveal its origin. Perhaps if he paid her no heed, she would go back to her mat and sleep as mortals required. There was a loud popping noise, the likes he’d never heard before. It startled him, which did nothing to improve his opinion of her.
With this one, it was always loud noises.
His first thought was that no eleth would disgrace herself with such immodestly short skirts as these beings did. The second was trying to place what exactly the cylindrical container she offered was, what it contained, and what exactly she’d started babbling about.
***
Arielle decided that there were worse people to be stuck in a dismal forest full of mutant spiders with than the perpetually cheery Yumiko. Pointy Ears, for example.
He’d found a nice corner to sulk in and had stayed there all night. Not even the warm scent of ramen wafting through the air coaxed him over. That was fine with her. He could pout until morning if he was so grouchy about their presence. It wasn’t as if he owed them anything.
Dinner had consisted of ramen and soda the miko provided by reaching into her bag and drawing from the bottomless void contained within. Thus far, it had produced several firecrackers, a lighter, two bowls of ramen, pop, hairbrushes, towels, and a pair of pajamas for Yumiko. The kid was a regular Mary Poppins.
Arielle didn’t know how Yumiko did it, but decided it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Though not one for slumber parties, Arielle put up with the grooming (Yumiko attacked her hair with a neon green hairbrush and proceeded to braid it thoroughly) and the singing (but only because it was Madonna, and the song seemed to be driving Pointy Ears spare).
Yumiko, having filled her stomach, washed her face clean with a towel and a bowl of water, and looking quite sleepy from the long day, found where the platform’s previous occupants had stowed the bedrolls and called it a night.
Out of habit, Arielle also lay down. The mat was immensely comfortable, but she soon gave up on sleep. She wasn’t about to doze off here. Without a roof she felt naked every time a breeze passed over her. The platform was too exposed to the elements. Her company was too unfamiliar. Tyelco wasn’t sleeping, and that meant there was the threat of attack was too imminent. Her status as being human was too precarious. If she shut her eyelids, eight glossy black eyes appeared behind them.
Rather than lay on her back awake, she decided to burn off her anxiety. Quietly slipping off the mat, she surveyed their location. If she had paper and pens she’s take note of everything that’d happened, starting with the terrible anxiety she’d felt waking up that very morning. Though raiding Yumiko’s bag was an option, it was too dark to write, even if she was now seeing further and clearer than she ever could at night back in Iowa.
Her throat constricted. Arielle didn’t want to think about Iowa where nothing ever happened.
Stars peeked through the upper leaves. From this vantage point, she could view the vast, dark mass of which was forest and the jagged mountains beyond. All in all, it was an impressive sight; the platform was clearly designed for observation. Morning would be worth waking early for.
Bored and with nothing better to do, Arielle began snooping amid the supplies. There wasn’t much stuff per se, but what there was, was exotically alien. Packets of whey bread were wrapped in large leaves, perfectly cut, proportioned, and packaged. There was a bag packed for travel; rations, a change of clothes nestled in a waxy covering to keep them dry, a knife, and what she assumed was a medical kit containing vials of herbs, liquids, bandages, and balm. She moved this into plain sight so that she wouldn’t forget to have Pointy Ears take it with him whenever they left.
Moving on, Arielle’s improved eyesight detected the subtle signs of a trap door. After fiddling with the opening mechanism, (and making sure Pointy Ears wasn’t interested in what she was getting up to) she unlatched it only to have her breath stolen. She was face to face with the armory. There was a cache of arrows, each positioned appropriately as not to damage the feathers. Several long, and a few hunting, knives lay sheathed. But there was something else that caught her eye. Strange, beautiful, and immaculately crafted, Arielle couldn’t resist reaching down and taking out an exquisite sword.
Though deceptively simplistic in design, it was a masterpiece in hand craftsmanship. Arielle didn’t need to be an expert to know this. Everything from the scrolling to the weight felt exquisitely proportioned and was seamless. Annoying as perfectionists were, at least it meant their work was, well, perfect.
Quietly, she shut the cache leaving it as she’d found it minus one sword. Lazily, she rested the sheathed weapon over her shoulder.
Again, she was bored. Wandering near the thick supporting branches, Arielle climbed out to examine the tree. Clearly, it was not a species she was familiar with, although it must have been some kind of deciduous, flowering tree. The problem with that classification was that she recalled Mrs. Garlock explaining to her AP Bio class these types were typically small. Not that things here were normal, but it’d be nice if they could at least follow the usual taxonomy.
Without much light, Arielle bent in closer to the bark, trying to see how its pattern was laid out. It was delicately rippled and gray, like elephant skin. During her inspection, she came across an anomaly in the wood protruding at an angle. Shifting her position to enable moonlight to hit the spot, she was surprised to find an arrowhead stuck into the bark. Its shaft was broken off not far from a head and bared no resemblance to the meticulously crafted heads in the armory.
This was a functioning guard station, not an abandoned one as she’d first assumed. Pulling out the deeply embedded head, Arielle examined its make; crude but effective and chipped out of something like flint. Covering its surface was wet tree sap.
Touching the wound in the tree, she felt the ooze of stick sap. This shot had been made recently, as the tree had no chance to heal over. Arielle hadn’t sensed anything flying through the air since the cave. Then it clicked.
The projectiles in the cave were arrows. There had been an attack here. Recently. Pointy Ears, with his own set of arrows, was obviously an archer who must’ve been stationed here. Their group was attacked by the spiders and the bipedal monsters in the cave.
Arielle felt her heart sink. Others must have been here with him. It made perfect sense that Pointy Ears was a sulking, frustrated, proud wreck tonight. They might be dead, or, she realized with horror, still in that cave somewhere.
Now knowing what to look for, Arielle saw other signs of struggle back on the platform; a deep slash in the woodwork, an overturned cooking pot she hadn’t upset while exploring, and a bit of spider silk hanging from one of the leaves, although she didn’t know if that meant anything. Perhaps that was from a normal spider.
Was it safe for them to remain here when the previous attack was, to all appearances, successful? Were they safe anywhere?
Sighing, she watched Pointy Ears for a moment. He didn’t seem to register her existence, though she suspected his eyesight was better than he’d let on so far. Morose and looking a little vacant, he stared off into the night sky. Had he eaten anything? He hadn’t moved, so probably not. Locating Yumiko’s bag, Arielle stuck her hand in and fished around before clamping down on two cans of soda and a bag of, well, she wasn’t sure what kind of Japanese crisps these were, but they seemed to be made of rice, and rice was edible.
Armed with comfort food, her pretty sword, and divested of fire armaments and her jacket, Arielle plopped down uninvited next to Pointy Ears. Judging from the way his eyes narrowed and shifted irritably in her direction, Arielle figured she wasn’t terribly welcome to her seat. Unperturbed by his condescension, she popped open a can and wordlessly offered the fizzy beverage to him. He was probably just acting tough in front of her and Yumiko for caution’s sake. If all his friends were gone, it was most forgivable.
“Soda, good. No nutritional value whatsoever.”
In typical Pointy Ears fashion, he contorted his face as though someone had stuck a smelly sock under his nose.
“Food. Edible. You eat things, don’t you?” She popped open her own can and took a sip. “See? It won’t kill me either.”
He looked at the can she was offering, then back to the other as she drank her own. “Cherry soda. Good."
Setting both cans aside, she pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and spread it over the space between them, then moved the cans next to their respective owners. She popped open the bag of rice crisps. They were round, baked patties with a thin glaze of honey over the top; each was contained in handy packs of two. Arielle dumped the content onto the makeshift picnic cloth, then opened a packet and offered Pointy Ears a cake while taking a bite of the other sweet and salty treat.
Although he didn’t accept the offering, he did examine the cake. However, instead of tasting the food or his drink, he picked up the clear plastic wrapper and scrutinized it thoroughly.
With an exasperated sigh, Arielle tossed the spare cake onto the top of the pile and laid back on the platform, her legs swinging out into space. “You’re hopeless.” Irritated, she took another bite of her cake. Couldn’t this guy just give up this whole I’m-too-good-to-speak-to-you-lowly-incomprehensible-being-things thing?
As if answering her soliloquy, she heard the distinctive crunch of rice cake. Turning her head to the side, she saw him chewing haltingly, as if expecting something in the food to crawl out of his mouth and bit him. Arielle’s chest trembled with a few chuckles as she watched. He took his second bite with the same precautionary air, ignoring her.
Without warning, his head shot up. He’d seen something in the distance. Arielle shot up as well, peering into the black night, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“What?” She whispered, knowing full well he couldn’t understand her, but had seen something.
“Adan.” He remarked calmly, arming himself with his bow and quiver and standing.
Arielle squinted as she looked over the tree line and was about to give up searching when she noticed a wisp of smoke she’d mistaken for a cloud. Somebody was having a bonfire with a pack of spiders on the loose.
Arielle stood; it was clear Yumiko was tired and could hold her own, at least for awhile. No spider could cross her glowing boundary. Pointy Ears, on the other hand, would need assistance bringing back whoever was out in the middle of the forest. Whatever was out there, Arielle could do a better job fighting it off than he could.
Pointy Ears had other ideas. Sternly pointing to her sleeping mat, he commanded, “Dortha.”
The meaning was clear. Like a dog, he was ordering her to stay. She muttered, “Tough shit pretty boy,” slung her coat on, and picked up the sword. As Pointy Ears didn’t care for her gun, she figured this would suit for now. Unfortunately, he caught on to her theft. Scathingly, he hissed at her; obviously, she didn’t understand one word of the lecture. Just to irritate him, she tried to look as pleasant as possible. It didn’t take him long to figure out she was mocking him. He turned and walked straight off the platform, dropping into the black below.
She shook her head, finally allowing her disgust to show, and spat, “Asshole.”
Confident in her incarnation, Arielle dropped into the black after him. Following Pointy Ears wasn’t easy, exactly. The bugger was fast, silent as the wind, and didn’t leave much of a trail. On her own, Arielle could move faster, but following along mean tracking. This wasn’t easy, as he darted through branches and could make surprisingly sharp turns as he ran out of branches underfoot. Luckily, with concentration, her new abilities allowed her to navigate in the dark and the air.
With their speed, it wasn’t much more than fifteen minutes before Pointy Ears stopped, crouching low on a branch, and surveyed the flickering firelight ahead. Silently, Arielle dropped beside him to find a reassuring sight. Not that two half-naked girls who looked like they’d drown in the river was necessarily reassuring.
Their possession eased her mind; plastic violin cases and bicycles. Those didn’t look like something found in this fairytale land.
Pointy Ears was having none of it. Glaring, he fluidly set and drew his bow in one easy motion.
Granted, he’d had a rough twenty-four hours, but that was no excuse for shooting first and asking questions later. Sensibly (though she was getting more and more annoyed), Arielle put her hand over the arrow, to which he, surprise of all surprises, glared.
Mustering a stern face and pointing to the branch, she ordered, “Dortha.”
Arielle leapt into the air leaving Pointy Ears to pout on his own time.
Her landing by the fire was met with a short stick in her face. The petite, white, dirty-blonde female in a tank top, Dr. Matins, and panties wielded the stick as though she meant to take an eye out even if her jaw was a slackened “O.”
The dark female clad in purple grinned pleasantly, her vividly violet eyes twinkling. “She is not the shadow, Abigail.”
“O-oh,” Abigail stammered, lowering her stick.
“Welcome to our fireside. I am Niobe Night Watson; this is Abigail Williams, and I fear we all,” her eyes shifted askance as though to direct the newcomer to the source, “are about to be attacked.”
***
Dortha = Stay
Subtitles
- Darkness and Starlight
- Abigail of Wellington
- Niobe of St. Andrews
- Arielle of Cedar Brook
- Yumiko of Shinjuku
- The Banks of River Running
- Stiff and Stark
- Screams in the Dark
- The Red Bird
- Many Meetings
- Night Fight
- Yumiko's New Friend
- A Mind of One's Own
- Running in Circles
- The Price for Revenge
- The Coming Night
- It Speaks English!
- Fragile Things: I
- Lull