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 Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:27 am
Okay, I rewrote the first three chapters (excluding the prologue). Let me know what you think of what I have now.
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Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:58 pm
Chapter Four
Over the course of the next couple days Silanis watched the smaller things in life that she had never paid much attention to. Things she had once seen as insignificant - little tone fluctuations, and minute attitudes that people took on when other people said or did things…
The sound of real laughter versus the fake laughter she heard in even some of her own friends; the bloom of a flower in morning light, the backstabbing that was so open, but so friendly…
It was painful for her to see how many people drank alcohol from small bottles and flasks, which they kept on their person. This wasn’t her place, she couldn’t be meant to stay here until death, or marry one of these drunken men, or run her fathers little shop and deal with all these people, all the time. Whatever was in her future, it was almost guaranteed to be more significant than being a wife and running a store in a city of drunks and fake people. But how would she convince her parents to let her go?
That was where Wolfe came in. Wolfe had magic, and knew how to use it. She would be able to find a way to get Silanis’ parents to agree to her leaving, because she refused to just leave them with no explanation. So it was decided, as she sat in a small park at the edge of the market place, that she would go with the little faerie to see the elders and learn her fate. They had already lost two days of travel time.
------
“How, then, are we to convince my parents that I am supposed to go now?” Silanis asked, after explaining her feelings to Wolfe.
The little faerie sat on her bed, thinking, for what seemed like ages. It was quite a conundrum, Silanis wanted to go, but did not want to hurt her parents at all in going. The only way they would let her go would be if she were getting married, or if royalty called her away. Or especially if she were marrying royalty, but setting up something so elaborate would take more than just her own magic.
Although she supposed Dian would be willing to play the part of a suitor, if she could get a hold of him somehow. He had been looking for an excuse to visit the human cities, and this would be a good enough reason indeed. He had been helping her follow the box, to an extent. Logic stood to reason that if he were her friend, he would help her with this.
Looking to Silanis, the faerie began to smile. “I think I have a solution.” Her voice was soft and lilting. “I know someone who could be useful in getting you out of here, without hurting your parents.”
“Who?” Silanis asked, looking suspiciously at the faerie.
“His name is Dian.” She replied. “He lives in the elvish city Athlone. He’s been looking for an excuse for nearly two-hundred years to visit a human city.”
“An Elve?” Silanis asked, feeling small and insignificant in the large world that had been opened to her a couple of day’s prior.
“He could be a suitor come to whisk you away for marriage.” Wolfe continued. “He’s handsome, smart, and well-to-do. It would be a cinch to convince your parents.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait.” Silanis said, holding up her hands. “You want me to lie?”
“Only in the name of the greater good, dear.” Wolfe explained. “That ring is special, and your fate is just as special, being tied to the ring. You may save a city, a country, or the world, with that ring. You don’t know for sure, and neither do I. So it makes sense that you would go to the elders, and if you have to lie in order to get there, I know the Gods forgive if the ends justifies the means.”
“I get that much, but why does it have to be marriage?” She didn’t much like the idea of marriage, and being lovey-dovey with someone she did not know. “Couldn’t it be something else? Couldn’t he be from the ByTalnan government, come to whisk me away to be… I don’t know, a courtier? The Reid’s may not be anything special here, but I’m sure we’ve got something our lineage we could use, instead of marriage.”
“If you want to take the time to look everything up, by all means, go right ahead.” Wolfe said. “But every day you take is a day less in the rest of your life, so use the time before you leave very carefully.”
“I will.” She would, and she would go right away to check her family lineage.
There was a book on it in her fathers study, and he was working the storefront right now. She could look through it uninterrupted for a while. She grabbed some of his paper and a small dove quill to take notes. By the end of that day, she had a list four pages long and showed it to the faerie.
“Are there any names here that look familiar to you in any way?” She asked.
“Heyail Reid.” Wolfe said. “He was in the court of the Nylian kingdom many years ago. He also had strong ties as an ambassador of Nylia to ByTalna. I had no idea there was any actual relation, though, or I would have mentioned him earlier.”
“So then my suggestion of this Dian being a courtier from ByTalna would work, right?” Silanis would try anything to avoid lying about marriage to her parents.
“Theoretically, yes.” Wolfe replied. “Its worth a try, at any rate. I’ll go get him tonight, then, and in the morning he will come to get you, yes?”
“Alright, that sounds good.” Silanis replied. “Give me a heads up before he gets here, ok?”
“Of course.” Wolfe replied, and opened her window. “I’ll return really soon, Silanis. Get a good nights rest, and I’ll be back come morning.”
Silanis nodded, and Wolfe took off out the window. She closed the window behind the faerie, and prepared herself for bed. Tomorrow would be an interesting day.
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Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 3:47 pm
Chapter Five
With her ability to fly, it made getting to Athlone faster than if she had had to travel by foot or horse. This meant that she made it there just around one thirty in my morning, a four hour flight.
Dian was a night owl, so he would still be up, and she knew he would be happy to see her no matter what time it was. She got to his door, and knocked. She saw a light on in the kitchen, near the back, and heard a chair scuffle. A tall man with blood red hair and pointed ears made his way to the door, a look of curiosity on his soft, angular features.
“Wolfe!” He exclaimed when he opened the door. “My friend, its good to see you again!”
“Same.” The faerie replied. “I’ve gotten myself into something you might be interested in.”
“Come in, then.” He said. “I’ll make you something to eat and we can talk about it.”
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Wolfe sat in Dian’s kitchen, looking at the papers he had strewn about his table. They were mostly bard’s tales, stories about the truly mythic creatures, and legends about the truly unknown things in the world. Why was Dian reading these things?
“So, tell me then, Wolfe.” He said, turning from his wood stove and the luluhid pancakes he was cooking. “What is it you’ve gotten yourself into, that you need my help?”
She smiled, and bade him turn back to the food so it wouldn’t burn. Explaining about the box – Dian mentioned that he remembered how she’d been following it around for about a century and a half now - she told him about Silanis, and how she found and then proceeded to open the box.
Wolfe also added in the part about her vision, and how she fell to the floor out of nowhere. She explained the plan Silanis had come up with, and the role she needed Dian to fill, making sure to mention he could leave once they had gotten Silanis on the road.
“What, and leave a young human girl open and vulnerable to the hardships and cruelties of travelling so close to Cianira’s Bunch over in Meadowvale??” He shook his head. “If I decide to go, I’d be going all in.”
““Cianira’s Bunch”? What are you talking about?” The faerie quirked a brow.
“I used to know Cianira when we were both around a hundred and thirty. That was a little over five hundred and eighty years ago. She was a nice girl, very much into designing projectile weapons. She created what she calls “hand cannons”. They are very dangerous, because they shoot a pointed chunk of lead at a fast velocity. She leaked her design in secret to humans, but on a smaller, less powerful scale. “Let them figure out how to make ‘em bigger.” She said to me when I spoke with her before she did it.
“I’ve only spoken with her a handful of times in the last five hundred and eighty-two years – the last time was about eight months ago. She was running out of an underground base near the Meadowvale Feyveil Tavern.
“I think they’re crazy, bunch of anarchists living so close to a human city... I could understand way back when, but these days its just… Stupid. Anyway…
“They like to… Search for people who could possibly know Zaçic. They interrogate any humans that stray too close. It’s funny, because there are at least two humans in the group.
“I know there was Vervain, who has a personal vendetta against the wizard, but there’s another named Jahnjyeh, whose motives I don’t know. They would stop you two for sure, especially alone. If I’m there, on the other hand…
“I’m the only Elve with blood red hair in the last thirteen centuries. They’d know me simply because of that fact. Ci might even help.”
Wolfe scratched her head a bit and thought. An anarchist group living so near to the Feyveil was certainly an interesting predicament. How had she not heard of that sooner? It hadn’t occurred to her that she was that far out of touch with the rest of her world, which actually made things more difficult. She would need Dian for the long run, and hoped desperately that he would agree to go with her.
“Look,” Dian started, putting a plate of the pancakes in front of her, “this has been important to you for over a century, right? And it’s tied in directly with the Elders not only in your home, but here in mine as well, so she would have to stop here anyway. That makes my meeting her inevitable, regardless of how you get her out of her own home. I’ll come, I’ll help, and I’ll see what her fate is. Once you learn that, I say we stay here a little longer than you planned while I make a hard choice. I do have a sister to worry about, remember?”
He most certainly did have a sister, and Wolfe remembered Nuku well. The two never got along, she always thought that Wolfe stole her brothers attention away, and quite frequently said that the faerie would be the death of one or the other of them. She was asleep right now, up two floors in the tree line, her own entrance locked tight. It was a five-story home, the third split in two, with a locked door, and two entrances – one from the ground, and one from the tree line onto a bridge.
“Okay.” Wolfe replied, sombrely. “That makes sense.”
“Alright.” He picked up one of his papers and began to read a bit. Wolfe took a bite of the pancakes, he always made such heavenly food, and she was thankful for the Elvish cooking mastery he had picked up from his uncle as a child. But, of course, with a few centuries of practice, almost anyone could become a fantastic cook. All that took was practice, which Wolfe had never once bothered with.
As he sat there reading the papers in the dim magic light of the kitchen, Wolfe watched the expressionlessness of his beautiful face. What was he reading, she found herself wondering, that he was so unconcerned with everything else around him, even ignoring his own luluhid pancakes. Having never seen him this intent on reading random papers, she shifted uneasily.
"Um... What are you reading, anyways, Dian?" She asked, and he looked over to her. Shrugging, she looked at him with an expression that read 'what’s so interesting?'
"You know about the Völva of the ByTalna cliffs, correct?" He responded.
"The supposed bird-women who live in almost unreachable caves?"
"Those would be the ones." Dian affirmed. "They are supposed to know the secret of the New Goddess who will bring Zaçic to ruin."
"No one has ever seen them off hand, you know," Wolfe said, "just stories about friends of friends who met them. Just fairytales, woven by the creatures of fairytales."
"You, of all creatures, Wolfe, should know that the creatures of fairytales are real, even if they are the fairytales of us "fairytales."" He dropped the page in front of her, pointing to the drawing etched in charcoal on the parchment paper.
On the parchment was a woman with hair so black it seemed to shine blue, and eyes that looked both amused and deeply sorrowed. There were wings behind her bangs, sticking off of her head, and wings on her back, both magnificent shades that looked almost silver. Her midriff and flat stomach were exposed, as was her cleavage, but there was a long, sectioned metal necklace - or at least she assumed it was a necklace, but with all the sections, it looked as though were she to take it off, her neck would flop over. That probably made her look taller than she was, unless her spine was really that long. The sleeves of her bellytop hung well past her hands, looking like the sleeves of a robe instead, and her skirt came down almost to the bottoms of her boots. Wolfe could see her tailfeathers poking out from behind the skirt, too. This was a Völva, she was certain, and from the detail, it looked like the artist had her pose specifically for the occasion. It was unsigned, so whoever did it did not want to be known.
"On the back it reads as follows:
"The Völva Priestesses are part bird, part woman, and hold the True Prophesy of the NEW Goddess, and her battles with the False Prophet and Wizard, Zaçic, so-called "Son" of the falsified "One True God."
"The Völva reside within the ByTalna Mountains, in cave dwellings among a series of cliffs in the center of the mountain range. They each hold loyalty to one other God, but all worship the NEW Goddedss first and foremost.
"The practices of the Völva are obscure and generally unknown, though are said to involve food, drink, and sexual activity.
"The existance of the Völva is generally put off as myth, legend, folktale. Most will write them off as a fairytale, though there are always those who will search for them, or claim to have seen them.
"I have met them, by a chance encounter, on a journey through the mountains to search for certain gemstones found in the region. The Völva are kind, and gentle, and they treat their guests with love and respect at all times. Stumbling upon them is very good luck, as they will take you in and help you.
"Its signed Heyail Reid." Dian finished, looking to Wolfe. "This man met them, he spoke with, danced with, and slept among these priestesses."
Wolfe simply stared at her friend, unbelieving that the one who drew and wrote of these creatures was related to the very girl who had found and opened the box. Unable to think clearly or even to speak, she sat there staring at the page after a while, and trying to put this together.
"Are you okay?" Trying to get a feel for what kind of reaction this would turn into, he bent to try and look into her eyes. She looked back to him, a look of utter disbelief on her face.
“I know now how Silanis must have felt when I told her everything she thought to be a fantasy was real.” In her foolish pride, she had assumed she knew it all, but she really only knew a fraction of what she had thought. If the Völva were real, then perhaps there was some truth to their prophecy. “But it opens up interesting theories in regards to their new goddess.”
“I’ve found myself more and more interested in them as time goes on.” Dian looked at the drawing. “I want to find them.”
Wolfe sighed. “Look, you probably slept all day, so you’re good to drive, right? I want to be there in the morning when Silanis wakes up. I wouldn’t want her to think I’d forgotten her.”
Dian nodded and gathered up his papers. “I’ll have the carriage reading in about half an hour.” He walked away to get some things together for the journey, and Wolfe finished her pancakes, though they had gotten a little cold by now. She contemplated the idea of a new goddess, thinking of ways it could be beneficial. She looked through all the pages, and there were several more drawings of other things, a good chunk signed by Heyail Reid with various dates and years.
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