Written: 8/13/24
Word Count: 1,025

"Lady Swanmere." The Wood Elf with green, spongy hair and green-mottled skin stepped forward. This one wasn't as large as those overbearing oafs who played Pickleven until the one pound bat and zero pound ball added fifty pounds of muscle, but he was still rather tall, like a great, mossy oak. "If I could, Lady Rosetta may have kept something of mine. Would it be possible to—"

"No," Emery said flatly. I glanced at it in surprise. Its tone felt colorless and empty. Now what was its problem?

"Me too," the other Wood Elf said. This one had skin the most golden of cedar. It was even lined with the fingerprint-like swirls that famously decorated that tree. "Miss Rosetta's always been good to us Dryads—"

"You're a nymph?" I couldn't help but blurt.

The Dryad blinked owlish eyes. "Why, yes..."

"Oh."

"Let's go," Emery pulled me further away. I didn't understand the insistence.

"Lady Swanmere..." The Wood Elf came in again, an agitated twitch roving between his fingers. "I think she's left something behind for me—"

"Or me," the Dryad continued. "We were—quite close, your aunt and I. If anyone should have anything left behind, it would probably be me."

What in the blazing, yewing naga???

"She wouldn't leave anything to a one-timer," the Wood Elf snorted, crossing his arms across his chest. Green and brown patches, like a tree's bark covered in sporadic clouds, glimmered under the baking sun. Or was I just beginning to see spots?

I did feel rather faint all of a sudden. Perhaps I'd taxed my injured limbs too much today. Shame. This exhausting excursion wasn't even halfway done yet.

"I spent three nights with the Missus." The Wood Elf reverted to the speech Dark Elves used. Calling Aunt Rosetta "Missus" carried a different weight from one of her plethora of ex-lovers. "If anyone should see the spoils, it should be me."

"Spoils?" I echoed, while Emery cursed.

"Let's move," it said, yanking me through a patch of water.

"It took you three nights to make the kind of impression that took me one," the nymph flexed his whorled skin, brandishing his muscles in a ridiculously threatening manner. "If anyone should get the Dragon's Breath, it's me."

I stopped in my tracks.

Dragon's...breath?

Emery pulled me forward, and I lost my balance. I toppled into the Hesperide, its dwarfish nine-year-old's frame quickly swallowed up under my shadow. That vibrant pool water sploshed in terror as two bodies slipped under the railing of the gold-colored fence like two elvants bursting out of an amniotic sac.

I grabbed at the metal rungs of the fence's curlicue design. Just great. Now my ankle wrappings were soaked. Why was I even surprised? Shouldn't I be used to the existential shitstorm by now?

"Oh, Charlotte," a gleeful voice catcalled from the other side of the fence. With the way it drizzled down my skin like a sticky syrup that was hard to scrape off, I knew it was Denford Caulsmith. "I just realized why I missed you soooo much. Why didn't Niall tell me you'd grown up into this proper little thing, hm?"

What a disgusting cad. An absolute swine.

Why was he even here? Just, why?

Even after hiking for three days to a remote village in the Western Sector, I still couldn't escape the Capital. If it wasn't the looming shadow of my father's expectations—or lack thereof—then it was one of Niall's "friends" suddenly showing up to my Aunt's Burning.

No matter what I did or how I tried, it always just came back to the same thing, again and again. Oh, Charlotte, the elvaniac, the fool. The Loon of the East. Even out west, she only knows how to rage and cry and stamp her feet and get into all sorts of trouble.

There was this feeling, this great, horrible emotion. When I was younger, I would feel it in my stomach like a tiny, inconsequential organ that occasionally flared up into some itchy rash. Now that I was in my twenties, the sheer breadth of it almost blew me away. It had moved from my stomach to linger beneath my ribs, an inky black that threatened to swallow me up one organ at a time. Like a cancerous growth or an elvant born of pure hate, this black stole my food so that it could grow. And grow. And grow. And grow.

I would never be free of myself.

I would never be anything other than an inexperienced, overly-emotional, failure of a High Elf.

"Beckett!" Resinee gasped loud enough to cut the chatter of the milling villagers to a low hum.

Splashing commenced in the water off to my left. I took this time to locate Emery.

Like a drowned, vengeful bird of prey, the kid sat there, letting the pool waters cascade around its body and uplift it from its seat.

The ground was slippery, almost slimy. I wasn't sure if I was grossed out by it or if it was my self-hatred made palpable, but each brush against that smooth clay surface made me want to break my nails and produce those Goddess-damned shivers that really made me hate existence.

"Are you alright?" It asked at the same time I did. We blinked at one another until gray ankles appeared on my peripheral.

"What happened?" Resinee exclaimed, hands moving to cover her mouth in horror. Her eyes were a softer shade of blue than the water I sat in, but against the sun, they looked almost white. "Rocco, come help us." She waved to something above my head, and before I could brace myself against my distaste for hearing that name, a giant splash drowned the rest of me.

Like a cat. Like a blazing cat.

Once again, I was picked up. This time, instead of a prone bag of potatoes, I turned into a slug thrown over a massive shoulder.

Rocco smelled like rocks. One burning hand rested on the back of my thigh to keep me in place, and I felt scalded. I met Denny's eyes, shut into half-moons of glee, and tears finally descended my cheeks.