A TUMBLR STORY: TORN PAGE (p.35)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey hey, my apologies for the delays! Moving into university always proves more stressful and time-consuming than I remember... yet I'm back, so I hope you enjoy this new page!
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PREVIOUS RESULT: I regret letting Laefen get hurt.
If you regretted something, what would it be? Most likely, that one occasion. If you could pinpoint where everything went wrong, you’d lose yourself in all the hundreds of mistakes you made; and yet, that one occasion stood out like a clear stain from which you could plausibly trace the beginning of an end. You shouldn’t have let him get hurt.
Your travel continued the next morning. The noise around you became louder as the wall grew smaller and smaller on your horizon; soon, it was nothing but a thin line melting over the world’s edge. The birds chirped and the trees sang. Everyone was a little quieter.
Hibiscus swayed in the wind like a flower blooming in fertile ground – she looked happier now that the dragon’s influence was left far behind. Amani walked besides her, still stuck in her report. She managed to write even on the go, placing a wooden tablet on her right arm as she scribbled down notes with the left one. Ashna was behind them, from time to time, peeking into Amani’s writing, but more often turning to look at you, sometimes with a shy smile, sometimes with a playful one. M walked by your side. They looked pensive; you caught yourself feeling odd about it. There was too much expressed investment on that stone-like face.
Your eyes, while free from Ashna’s mesmerising traps, watched the silhouette of the scout elf in front of you, first in line. Laefen kept his posture firm, walking without a hint of wounds or of exhaustion. You wondered if his fast recovery was enough to heal him from the last encounter. Then, you wondered why you wondered – questioning his abilities was rude even in thought. If he moved, he knew what he was doing. And if he didn’t… well, wasn’t that on him?
“He’s not fully recovered,” you turned to look at M, who spoke as if they guessed your thoughts. Was that a thing humans could do? It was worth asking Ashna later.
“Excuse me?” You still wondered.
They looked at you, too, and in their calm eyes you saw a passing note of amusement. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I would much rather prefer you to formulate it out loud,” you shook your head. That is how conversations worked, after all.
You arched a brow. “Because I cannot answer if I do not have the full information.”
“How would you know? I have not voiced them.”
“Do elves not know how to understand each other?” A smile appeared on M’s lips, if only for a moment. You frowned. It felt like an insult.
“We understand each other perfectly, because we make ourselves clear enough, human,” you said with bitterness that you should have restrained, perhaps, a little more. And yet it only made them chuckle.
“That is called lacking understanding, elf.”
“Humans have a very developed indirect language,” Ashna slowed down a little, catching the last bit of your conversation and expectably keen on discussing social behaviour. “Sign language, body language, intention, context, they read it all to formulate the most plausible guess on the other’s unfinished sentence. We do that too,” they addressed M. “But on a lower level. Elves prefer clearer communication.”
You sighed, letting the expert explain. A whisper crossed your mind as they spoke, a troublemaker’s thought: But haven’t you been understanding Ashna without a word needed? You hushed it away as quick as you could, unwilling to ponder on the implications of such a possibility. It wasn’t the time; it wasn’t the place. You had a job to do.
Perhaps, you should’ve pondered on it.
The further north you went, the darker it became. It may have been the shortness of the days, with the few light hours barely allowing you to cross the complicated parts before the sun escaped you. It may have been the landscape: lacking snow, it looked more desolated, emptier, the sharp rock of mountains slowly taking over forests and fields. To your right, you could see the grim shadow of the blackened peaks that split you from the Battle Lands. They were coming to an end, however – instead, for a short while you saw reflections of the sky upon a water mirror, the ocean reaching in to meet you deeper inland.
In front, more and more mountains appeared. Leaving behind the remnants of a disastrous past, some trees began to grow amidst their stones and white covered the highest peaks. It got colder; darkness still accompanied you, the shadows of the range making you confuse day and night. None of you were used to such a landscape, quiet, still, colourless.
Hibiscus was the best handling the change. Wrapped in a thick cloth made of thin, woven stems, she paled together with the nature around her, losing her variegated shades to look like a delicate bush that hid beneath the snow. Next to her, Amani had long left her notes and wrapped herself in protective clothing, activating a few flaming runes for additional warmth. She was the nomadic sort of scholar – she, too, knew what she was doing.
M seemed unbothered. They looked sickly amidst the ice, too thin to cope with the frozen breeze and too small to maintain a good pace. However, they still walked alongside you, defying all logic, almost refusing to admit the obvious flaws of their anatomy.
Laefen didn’t look at you. He was focused on the road ahead, keeping the rhythm for everyone else, eyes clawed to a mountain of three peaks that raised slightly higher above the others. That was your objective – the observatory you were trying to reach, the last place anyone had ever seen a Dragon.
You gazed at Ashna. They were unusually quiet for the past few days, tucking themselves into the depths of their furred cloak. They didn’t seem too cold – they didn’t seem to mind walking over rougher rock, nor were they too impressed by the snow. You knew the reason; they told you, so many weeks ago, back in Celest. And yet your mind demanded to know more…
Was it the same place? Another one? Was probability playing with you (as much as coincidence could be called a game)?
“Hey, that amulet… it’s glowing.”
