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Inklings Challenge Submission: Doorways to Fresh Bread

(My finished submission for the Inklings Challenge as a member of Team Tolkien! This story focuses on the theme of Reconciliation, using an elfin character who is being slowly developed in my, as of now, ongoing Creative Writing college course)

No warnings apply. Secondary World Fantasy Setting.

@inklings-challenge

The loaf of bread was cooling on the windowsill when Cinne came back.

Standing twenty feet or so away from the house, he could smell it, traveling from the fresh, hot loaf to his nose. All his attempts at making bread for the past few centuries were reduced to nothing in that one whiff.

The house itself stood exactly as he remembered it. The valley it sat in was smaller than before, eaten up by buildings along its fringe, eaten up by villages and towns. But the house remained, still untouched by the world, sitting tall and unmoved in its sea of golden grass. Its wooden roof, its painted walls, were perhaps more weathered than he had remembered it; his mind hadn’t exactly painted its door and windowsills and walls the right colors. That’s what time did to memories, though. It changed them, ate them, the way time and people were eating the valley. It was an unavoidable degradation, and it didn’t matter in the long run. What mattered was that he was here, now, after so long a time.

Cinne strode across the grass without making a sound. Behind his back, his wings prickled and fluffed, the way a bird’s might when they perceived a threat. The house advanced to meet him, the grasses swishing about him in every direction, baked to a perfect golden under an unobstructed valley sun. A gentle breeze carried the scent of bread to him, stirred the coal-dust feathers of his prickled wings, played with the tips of his ashy-white hair.

Somewhere in the grasses, hidden from sight, a speckled pheasant sang out a warning song. It mingled with the sound of soft laughter, the source of which Cinne could see as he approached the house.

Two children romped by the open door of the house; one was a boy, tall and thin for his age, waving and bending, as agile as the dancing grasses. The other was a girl, younger, following the other this way and that and laughing as she went. As they bounced about, their golden hair bounced, too, and so did their robes, light, comfortable, woven in a way that only an elf could.

Cinne examined them as he approached, watched their play with removed curiosity, only for it to strike him light a bolt of lightning through a tree when they stopped to look at him with their large eyes, set in stoic, perfect faces, small, pointed ears twitching toward him. These two little elves were his brother and sister. They looked like his mother and father: the sun-kissed skin of Valley Elves, the sun-bleached hair of flaxen gold, the lithe, agile frame and features too perfect to belong to a mortal. He didn’t know their names, but they were his brother and sister.

Had he been gone so long?

It made sense, he supposed. After all, it had been several centuries since he had come back to the house. Surely, he didn’t think everything would be the same, did he?

“What are you?”

The boy speaks, his eyes trailing up Cinne’s form. He had an innocent look, his gaze unblemished by things of the world, and it pinned Cinne to the earth. He felt entirely undressed and looked-through by the simple, understandable question. How would his brother know what Cinne was? After all, this little elf had never looked into a spellbook; he’s certain that, after he left, his mother and father banned all mentions of magic within the walls of their home. His little brother wouldn’t know a Shadow if he saw one. It only made sense that he should examine Cinne’s tall, thin frame, coated in a layer of skin the color of ash, the huge coal-dust wings that spread behind his back, tearing through his robes, and the horns that sprouted from between locks of tangled, dark hair, and ask “what are you?”

Cinne would have asked the same thing, were their places switched.

He opened his mouth – he had no reply ready, but felt one was necessary, and so readied himself for it – and paused when his mother appeared in the doorway.

To a mortal, she might have looked as she had the day Cinne had left to study magic. But he could see the passage of years in her face, in her eyes, older than when he had looked into them last. She still held herself with the grace and dignity of a Valley Elf, framed in the doorway of the little house which she and his father had built long before Cinne was born. He had crossed over that doorway many a time, himself. Now he isn’t sure if his wings will fit between the beams of weathered wood.

Her gaze passed over her two children, then landed on Cinne. There was no way she could miss him: a blot of corruption, reeking of black magic, stained against the gold grass and cloudless sky.

Again, he felt as if he were stripped away, unrobed, and that she could see not only his twisted appearance, but the actions which led to such disfigurement.

He stepped forward, forced himself forward, one foot at a time. His wings dragged behind him. They were useless things, too heavy to fly. They weren’t meant to be decorative nor practical, but simply another physical representation of the black magic which had nearly encased his heart.

The two children watched Cinne, trailing slowly behind him as he shuffled to the doorway, stopping there and looking down at his mother. He stood taller than her; that, at least, was a similarity between mortals and elves. His eyes were no longer pieces of valley sky. Now they looked like stormy clouds, dull and agitated, ready to spill torrents of water at any second.

She didn’t say anything, and in all of his imagined meetings with her, Cinne never expected her to speak first. It gave him time, he told himself, to dig out the letter from the folds of his robes and hold it out to her. When she didn’t take it, he faltered, his ears drooping as the letter shook in his fingers.

“This…will explain everything,” he said finally. “Why I was gone for so long. Why I look the way I do. Why…”

He wasn’t able to get any other words out, for his mother had risen on tip-toe to get her arms around her son’s neck. Her cheek pressed against his own, and Cinne found himself stuck in her hair, which smelled of the fireplace, of baked bread, of clean sheets and the wild valley. His hands hung limply at his sides, his wings prickled over his back as if they were just as shocked as himself by the turn of events.

“Why should I read a letter when I have you right here in front of me?”

Her voice was little more than a husky whisper.

Cinne finally remembered that he had arms, working arms, and he put them around his mother. Then his wings, his shaggy, nearly-useless wings, folded around his mother. They closed around her like a feathery cloak, and they went down together in the doorway, holding to each other, afraid that if they let go, the other might disappear again.

How long they remained that way, Cinne could not be sure. Long enough for his arms to begin feeling sore, though not quite enough time for tears to spill. It took much for an elf to cry, after all. His mother composed herself first, pulling away and cupping her hands to his cheeks so she might study his face. If she saw how his features had thinned and sharpened, she chose not to say anything, but instead rose, slowly, gathering her robes about her and extending a hand toward Cinne. She didn’t flinch when he took it, didn’t shy away when he rose to his full height once more.

“There’s…there’s so much I need to tell you,” Cinne said. He stooped to pick up the letter from where it had fallen on the floor. “So much for you and father to hear, and-”

His mother stopped him with an upheld hand. A quivering smile rested on her lips, and she motioned for the boy and girl to come inside with them.

“-I know. But not out here.”

She stepped through the open doorway, turning and waiting for Cinne. He looked back at her, then glanced at the wooden beams, before breathing out slowly and advancing. His bare feet crossed over grass and found their landing on the wooden front room flooring. It was a squeeze; his wings and horns required some bending and twisting to properly fit himself in and through, but he was standing in the little home. His mother was leading the two children – his brother and sister – to the table, but they sat in seats of their own, leaving Cinne’s spot open.

She was slicing the warm, freshly-made bread, putting some on plates for the two children, for herself, and for Cinne.

She looked up at him, and smiled, and he truly believed it to be a genuine one.

“Come to the table, Cinne. We’ll discuss it all over fresh bread.”