By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2023 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
The Table Prepared
__________Theirs was a forbidden love; the melding of magic not meant to mix. Theirs was a farmhouse in a forgotten forest; the canopy that covered their scars. Theirs were the elf-twins, Fruyr and Kimio, who tore their sheltering shade asunder.
__________When ancient secrets were leaked, and the terrors of the past arose and threatened the current era, Nica led the charge against an ancient evil. She was a war heroine, who wielded a blade from the elder days, and cut down waves of the unredeemable. She, and her two companions, judged and executed a bloody hoard of dark forces. They cut a path for an exiled prince, so he could reach the heart of the scourge and run the she-devil through.
__________Then, Nica’s party disbanded. She hid herself and her sword away from the recovering world, and its never-ending slough of trouble. She settled her heart on a single, amicable partner. She married Talsis, a charming, Sea-elf diplomat, and they made a life for themselves, away from it all. Would it not have been shameful to fight for peace, and then live a life seeking after the thrill of battle, once the fighting was done?
__________Talsis abhorred bloodshed; he boasted the tongue, as a keener weapon than the sword. His speeches cut to the hearts of his enemies, without ever breaking their skin. Most other Sea elves mocked Talsis’s pacifism and polite mannerisms, until his gentle smile and clever wordsmithery calmed the thunderous disputes of cantankerous sea captains on the aquatic homefront. His speeches spared the structural coral and glass of their underwater cities a beating and a shattering, while lining the cities’ coffers with a hefty share of the gold, silver, and jewels that the pirates’ factions squabbled over. Talsis was owed more than a few favors when he ran himself aground, abandoned the seas, swam ashore, and chased after Nica. She was the brightest gem he ever set his sights on. So, he set her in a binding, silver band, and the Sea elves shunned him evermore.
__________Nica was a drifter. She was a Flame-elf swordswoman, who set aside her sword. She sought shelter and solace from the infernal storm destiny brewed for her. Talsis longed to quell the storm and pacify the ardent peacemaker (his only suitable match), but this was a supernatural storm, cast down from the heavens. Reignited by a spark from his and Nica’s curious, forbidden sons, the storm roared with the strength of the Eternal Flame, and blazed as an inferno. It boomed louder than Talsis could bellow.
__________The small, comfortable house in the forgotten, woodland village, where the pair of Elvish-Bond traitors hid from the world that cried foul of their love, was left to burn. The lovers abandoned it to the inferno that the sons of their love ignited. For, when the lovers realized the smiling faces of their forbidden sons would never again greet them at the door, they shut the door forever. They mounted their horses and released their livestock from their pens.
__________Instinctually, the animals fled from the flames. The horses carried their riders to a split path, where silent tears dripped from Nica’s and Talsis’s eyes, as the forbidden lovers parted for the first time in a century. They left to the lands of their birth, where each sought to cash in on the favors owed them. If they begged for mercy, for help relocating their missing sons, would the Elvish tradition of safeguarding youth circumvent the elves’ hatred for the union of opposing Elvish Elemental Bonds? It was a longshot in the dark, but it was the only shot left in their quivers. They could reach each other by letter, if there were any news to pen.
* * *
__________Glaiven cast his hood over his dark hair and unlatched the carriage door. He pushed the door open, stepped outside, and held the door ajar. A blustery wind pelted his cloak with a thousand, tiny raindrops, each no bigger than a pinhead. It was as if the weather were a drenched wolf, shaking out his fur and all the discomforts of the hunt, before dragging his prey into the den. Or perhaps, Glaiven was the wolf, Kimio was the prey, and the weather mocked them both? Glaiven liked to think he was more than a dog of the Zalirkatheer military, but here he was: inches away from handing over his prized catch to the higher-ups, like a hound seeking his master’s favor. His gaze drifted to the double-doors of the fungal-wood barracks behind him, and then boomeranged to the open doorway of the carriage.
__________Uuinora appeared in the doorway. She carried sleeping Kimio, with one arm wrapped around the boy’s upper back, while the other arm supported his bent knees. She kneeled and bent over to lower Kimio to Glaiven’s reach and pass the boy off to him. Glaiven smirked and shut the door in her face.
__________“I have a better idea” he said, and then he sealed the carriage door with a spell.
__________Thud! Uuinora dropped Kimio onto the carriage floor.
__________“Mmph,” Kimio whimpered, as the jarring startled him awake.
__________Rattle, rattle! Clink, clink! Uuinora fought with the doorlatch. “Crisis!” she cursed.
__________Kimio opened his eyes and sat up. He pulled his knees to his chest and crossed his arms over his knees. “What’s happening?”
__________Bang, bang! Uuinora pounded her blue-tinged fists against the doorframe. Pow! With all her might, she jumped up and swung her foot into the flat of the door, but to no avail. “What do you think?” she screeched. “He’s locked us in!”
__________Glaiven chuckled at Uuinora’s distress, as he climbed onto the coach box and grasped the reigns of the black stallions, who yanked the wheels of the carriage onward. Glaiven whistled melodically, and the horses marched, disinterested with and unaffected by Uuinora’s continued outbursts.
__________Kimio rose on wobbly legs and slippery feet, which had grown unaccustomed to land after spending uncountable days underwater. He stumbled to the nearest window, leaned against its tiny windowsill, and pressed his face to the glass. Without the accompanying pressure of the deep sea, which signaled a need for night vision, Kimio’s eyes struggled to adjust to the openair darkness of Zaliradai. Whenever he dilated his pupils, his gills parted, and suddenly, he gasped for breath, like a fish out of water. It won’t work, he accepted bitterly.
__________He reluctantly turned away from the carriage window, closed his eyes, and honed his ears. He wanted to know something of the road he traveled, so he listened closely. He dropped down, pressed the pads of his fingertips to the wooden floor of the carriage, and leaned his back against the nearest wall. He let the motion of the carriage tell him what his eyes could not. He counted the horses’ steps along each winding curve and narrow straight. He mentally mapped the path the horses trod, until helplessly, his rhythmic counting lulled him back to sleep, as if the horses’ hooves were a flock of prancing sheep.
* * *
__________Before a two-story, fungal-wood cabin, built into the leaning rockface of a cliff, Glaiven ceased to whistle, and the horses stalled. Glaiven jumped down from the coach box and dispelled the carriage door. He stood by the door and waited.
__________Uuinora kicked the door open, withdrew a dagger from her shoulder belt, and lunged for Glaiven’s chest. Glaiven caught the upper edge of the door in the palm of his hand. Then he jabbed the steel-toe of his boot into Uuinora’s tender wrist. She lost grip of the dagger, and it flung out of reach.
__________Uuinora wrinkled her nose and reached for a second dagger.
__________Glaiven slid his fingers through hers, disrupting her armament. He squeezed her hand firmly and guided her a step down from the carriage, so they stood upon level ground and met face-to-face. Uuinora’s eyes widened with shock, as Glaiven spun her towards the front doors of the two-story cabin, as a gentleman leads a lady to dance.
__________“After you,” he offered.
__________How did he move me so easily? she wondered. Why couldn’t I resist?
__________Uuinora narrowed her eyes and turned up her chin. “As it should be,” she answered Glaiven, “since I netted the little Selkie in the first place.”
__________Glaiven pressed a finger to his lips. “Shuh,” he expressed, “or our little Selkie will be flopping about the deck.”
__________Uuinora sighed, pressed a palm to her hip, and laid her other palm out in front of her.
__________Swoosh! Glaiven spun to face the carriage, and then he tossed a silver key over his shoulder. Clink! Uuinora caught it.
__________She unlocked and opened the doors, while Glaiven scooped sleeping Kimio off the floor of the carriage. The Dark-elf pair worked together: They carefully and quietly put Kimio to bed, lit the hearth fire, and warmed the cabin.
__________In the kitchen, Glaiven picked through the bitter roots, spongey mushrooms, and dried fruits that hung from a rope, strung above two tin tubs. The tin tubs were set into fungal-wood frames that raised them up to waist level and within arms’ reach. Next to the raised tubs was a stone tabletop, which jutted out from the rockface, having been carved from the stone with elf-song. Three fungal-wood stools were stored underneath the jutting, stone tabletop.
__________Glaiven selected some ingredients from the rope-vine, set them on the tabletop, and pulled out a stool. He sat down, and Uuinora reached around him. Some of her long, dark locks draped over his shoulder, as she set one of her daggers down upon the tabletop, next to the ingredients he chose. Glaiven rested a hand atop the hilt of the dagger. He glanced at Uuinora, and then his gaze traced an invisible line from her eyes to her hair upon his shoulder. He lifted her locks with his free hand, lingered for a moment, and then tossed her locks behind his back. Her hair has always been so dastardly soft, he thought, like stroking a cloud…
__________Uuinora straightened, stepped aside, and crossed her arms. “He’ll need more than veggies to regain his strength,” she cautioned.
__________Glaiven closed his hand around the handle of the dagger. He grabbed a mushroom stalk from his pile, raised the blade, and chopped the stalk into bits. “There are black walnuts in the barrel to your left,” he explained, “and a jar of honey in the cabinet to your right.”
__________Uuinora rolled her eyes but retrieved the items. “You’re expecting him to recover on trail rations?” she accused.
__________Glaiven laughed. “No,” he replied. “They’ll be time enough for that. Tonight, the captive elf-child eats a warrior’s fill.”
__________“You’re cooking that hodgepodge into something delectable?” Uuinora mocked. “I’ll believe it when I taste it.”
__________Glaiven sneered. “They’ll be time enough for that too.”
__________The cookfire crackled beneath Glaiven’s cast-iron skillet. The vegetables sizzled against the hot iron. Glaiven shook the skillet over the fire and tossed the vegetables into the air as they cooked. He caught them with the skillet as they fell. Once the vegetables settled at the base of the skillet, Glaiven scattered walnuts and poured honey atop it all. The sweet-and-savory smell of flame-cooked, Elvish cuisine deliciously fragranced the kitchen and every room nearby.
__________Kimio awoke, and soon after, he stumbled into the kitchen. For so many days, he sparred for scraps, but those who starved him now served him? He was reasonably wary and unbearably hungry. ‘I’ve eaten at the table of my enemies, Son,’ Kimio recalled his mother saying, ‘but I’d sooner go without than eat hastily into their hands.’
__________Kimio stubbornly hung about the doorway. When Uuinora saw him, she laughed. “Eyes ablaze with desire, stance unmoving,” she assessed. “You may make a soldier yet!”
__________Kimio scoffed. “It’s only natural I’d be hungry after the two of you starved me,” he challenged, “but I’d cut down the two of you before I’d ever stick a sword in anyone else!”
__________“Yes, come chuck words at us, as if they were knives,” Uuinora said, “like your silver-tongued sire and your fiery dam.”
__________Kimio’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped in offense. “Are you calling me a well-bred cur?”
__________“Or maybe just a mutt,” Uuinora suggested, as she walked across the room to a polished, black-walnut, dining table. Behind the table rose an indoor balcony of six windows, as tall as the average man and arranged as half a hexagon. These windows had patterned, silk curtains, gathered with shimmering, Elvish rope, so nocturnal guests could admire the view. Six cushioned chairs sat against the table; three of them faced away from the windows, and the other three faced towards them. Uuinora pulled a chair out and gestured for Kimio to sit. “Look out into the blackness,” she ordered, “and tell me which you are.”
__________Reluctantly, Kimio sat down; his rage competing with his hunger for the glint in his glare. Uuinora set the table. She positioned the plates and forks thoughtfully: She and Glaiven would sit across from Kimio, with an empty chair between them. Kimio would peer past the chair, into the dark, dreary landscape beyond the glass, even though he would not see it. The firelight behind him met the glass before him and plastered a copy of himself over the window, as though it were a mirror.
__________Glaiven plopped a third of the meal he prepared onto each plate, and then turned the conversation on its head. He sat down in his place, reached over the empty chair, and patted Uuinora’s back, barring Kimio’s view of his reflection. “Ah, it could be worse, Pup,” Glaiven teased, with his hand upon Uuinora’s back, and his gaze locked on Kimio. “At least you have options. There’s titles aplenty for sons of bitches, but there’s only one for her.”
__________Uuinora glared. Her gaze traced a line across Glaiven’s arm, crested his shoulder, and crawled up his neck, until her angry, red eyes locked onto his smug expression. “Say another syllable,” she threatened, “and I’ll slice off your tongue.”
__________Glaiven lowered his arm and met her gaze with a gleaming smile. “Down girl,” he ordered, “or you’ll meet the wrong end of your master’s belt.”
__________Uuinora clutched the edge of the table and shoved her chair backward. Creak! The hardwood floor screeched, as the feet of her chair scraped and scarred it. Kimio winced. Uuinora stood, stepped into the gap where her chair had been, and kicked the middle chair into Glaiven’s seat. Smack! Crash! Thud! The chair shattered, decorating Glaiven’s side in splinters as thin and sharp as porcupine quills. The larger pieces hit the floor and rolled under the table.
__________Kimio cringed. That must have hurt…
__________Uuinora swiped her fork off the table, stepped into the rubble, and raised the prongs of the fork to Glaiven’s neck, but the prongs never grazed nor pierced his flesh. The fingers of the hand that Glaiven rested in his lap were bent, stretched, and twisted into a complex spell trigger.
__________With a flick of his wrist that relaxed his fingers, the fork in Uuinora’s hand bent backwards. The prongs stretched to the length of boning knives and stabbed through the back of her hand. Their bloodied tips jutted out through her palm. Uuinora gasped, clapped her uninjured hand to the curved handle of the hexed fork, and frantically jostled it. She hoped to work her injured hand free with minimal damage to bones, veins, and muscles, but her face contorted with every twist and pull. Her blood sprinkled across the table, the rubble, and the floor.
__________Kimio pulled his plate to his chest. He wrapped an arm around the rim of the plate, building a wall of cloth and flesh between his dinner and Uuinora’s impaled, bleeding palm. Kimio’s dominant hand grasped his fork. He tasted Glaiven’s homemade dish, and soon gave into his hunger. The Dark elves’ drama captivated his eyes, while their cooking captivated his tongue. Are they killing each other without declaring Zalmehirk? Kimio wondered. Does that mean this is Kehmon or Kalinvaud? Are they friends or foes?
__________Glaiven stood, paying no mind to the steady, crimson streams trickling out from his hundred splinters. He gracefully laid his hand over Uuinora’s jostling fingers and gently slid the elongated prongs of the hexed fork out as painlessly as possible. Uuinora smacked Glaiven’s hand away, smearing another stripe of blood across his palm and the ruined chair. The hexed fork flew out from under both of their hands and skidded across the floor. Uuinora gripped her injured hand with the other, squeezed it to stall the bleeding, and fled to another room.
__________Glaiven kicked a decorated, rusty, baking tin out from under the dining table. He picked it up, removed the lid, and sat back down in his chair. With the unlidded tin resting between his legs, he picked the splinters out of his dark clothes and blue-tinged skin. Clink… Clink… Clink… He dropped them into the tin, one at a time.
__________Nothing phases him, Kimio realized. Neither pinpricks nor parley.
__________Glaiven continued to pick, toss, and store splinters, as if he were harvesting berries. His expression was neutral, almost bored. His eyes drifted away from his grooming.
He faced Kimio. “She’ll return once she’s licked her wounds,” he said. “Meanwhile, tell me, Little Selkie: How desperate are you?”
__________Kimio raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “Isn’t that a little vague, Shadow?”
__________Glaiven nodded, and then smiled. “So, you know the sectional slurs,” he acknowledged. “Not as naive as you pretend.”
__________Kimio set down his fork and pushed his empty plate aside. “Dangling a lure in my face won’t make me forget the stone you dropped in the water,” he insisted.
__________“How desperate are you to drown me in the merciless depths?”
__________“Put a sword in my hand, and I’ll show you.”
__________Glaiven laughed. “I could that; I will, if you insist,” he said, “but you’d be dead before you landed a blow.”
__________“You don’t know that,” Kimio argued. “Unarmed and nearly dead, I slew your pet siren!”
__________“A victory to boast, for sure,” Glaiven admitted, as he dropped the last of his splinters into the tin. He lidded the tin and kicked it back under the table.
__________Then he stood, retrieved the hexed fork, and set it on the table, like a decorative centerpiece. He sat back down in his chair, locked eyes with Kimio, and explained: “But to topple someone who stands atop the mountain’s peak, you must first climb the mountain.”
__________“Riddles again?” Kimio groaned. He rolled his eyes and curled his hands into fists.
__________“Advice,” Glaiven corrected, “with an offer attached.”
__________“What offer?” Kimio asked.
__________Uuinora emerged, having bandaged her injured hand. She snuck around the table, winked at Kimio, and reached through the gap between Glaiven’s elbow and his side. A pair of gloves were stashed between Glaiven’s belt and tunic. Uuinora stole a glove. She raised her arm to fit her fingers to its socks. Glaiven grabbed her arm and lifted his chin to meet her gaze.
__________“Have you lost your gear, your senses, or both?” he challenged.
__________Uuinora shook her head and yanked her arm away. “Mine won’t fit since you maimed me,” she hissed, “so you’ve lent me yours.”
__________“Wear the pair, not the half,” Glaiven ordered, clearly disgruntled. He withdrew the other glove from his belt and threw it at her. It bounced off Uuinora’s torso and dropped onto the floor. She retrieved it and put it on.
__________“Kind of you to ensure no part of me was half dressed,” she teased, as she retrieved her chair.
__________Glaiven raised his arm and flicked his wrist. “Not much I wouldn’t do to clothe you,” he confessed.
__________Frowning, Uuinora scooted her chair to the edge of the table and sat down.
__________Kimio shook his head. I still can’t tell what they are to each other.
__________Glaiven set his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and rested his chin atop them. He studied Kimio’s face, as he warned him: “Throw down the gauntlet now, and I’ll snuff what remains of your light out.”
__________Kimio’s eyes narrowed. “Or?” he inquired. “It didn’t sound like you were finished.”
__________Uuinora giggled. “Clever boy,” she praised.
__________Glaiven nodded. “Wear that grudge awhile longer, train under me, until you can throw down as expertly as I,” he offered. “The choice is yours, Little Selkie.”
__________Let them place me in check, while I maneuver to checkmate, Kimio decided. Fruyr wouldn’t hesitate.
__________Kimio nodded calmly. “Toss me the rope,” he replied.
__________Glaiven smiled and extended his hand. “Grab hold,” he urged.
__________Uuinora interrupted, waving a finger in Kimio’s face. “It’s an uphill battle,” she cautioned, “and it’s a long way to the top.”
__________“Just a couple-decades’ climb,” Kimio subverted, as he swept Uuinora’s hand aside, and shook Glaiven’s.
__________“Sealed and sworn,” Glaiven agreed, releasing Kimio’s hand.
__________In thought, he added: Let us tarry awhile longer in the shade.
__________Uuinora gestured to hers and Glaiven’s uneaten meals. “A deal’s struck, the hour is late, and our meals are chilled,” she cautioned. “Enough talk; let’s finish our food before the moonlight shifts.”
__________Glaiven reached across the table and tapped the hexed fork twice with two fingers.
__________“May the misshapen reshape,” he whispered, and suddenly, the prongs of the fork shrank, and the handle straightened. Glaiven handed the fork to Uuinora, handle first. “Mind the bloody tang,” he teased.
__________Uuinora smiled, took the fork, and ate. “Flavorful,” she remarked. “Tastier even than it was without.”
Endlesslore 