View source for An Elven Story (short story)

{{creative-work | title = An Elven Story | type = short story | author = Charna Ja'Varrel'Kav | author-displayed = player of [[Charna Ja'Varrel'Kav]] | date = 2021-06-02}}

An Elven Story
In the history of elves, there have been many romances, many wars, and many sorrows.  The waxing and waning tides of chance riddle the history with tales of loves taken and loves lost, of brides widowed and men bereft of the women they desire.  

There have been tales of power, stories of armies clashing, visions of victory, and legacies laced with Houses casting aside heirs.  There have been unrequited actions left to swelter in the hot days of summer, and a myriad of plots destined to be the downfall of Kings, Queens, and their kin.  

And, of course, there have been fate.

This is a tale for them.

The pair I will speak of had heard each of the other over some months of travel on a difficult road.  Though the paths that they had taken were long and arduous, their destinations were unwittingly always the same, and yet, very different.

She was an Elf of no great consequence.  

Her appearance was plain and simple, not rapturously beautiful, yet possibly quite comely without trying to be.  She was of lowly birth, owing nothing to Queen or country.  She was a fighter for her people, through vows sworn.  

He, on the other hand, was a Faendryl.  As dark in complexion, as she was light, though their eyes were reverse.  Where hers were the color of sun-dappled forests, his were the shade of cold winter skies, blue and distant.  

He was a sharply handsome man, his prestige and power rolling off of him in waves that echoed in his high head, straight shoulders, and smoldering glare.  If he had an estate that he once ruled, none now in this time knew its name, yet he carried himself as a man that once commanded many.  

He was a Faendryl to be reckoned with.

The day the two met was many months, as I have said, after their first hearing each of the other.  For her part, the Elf did not know he had been hearing of her, and for his I am uncertain.  

Suffice it to say that he was every bit of what she had heard, though I know little of whether she was every bit as he had heard.  He was darkly reserved, compelling in speech and manner, and carried himself with an air that commanded attention.  And yet, he ignored any of her frailties of the body only to pay astute attention to her intellect, and cunning.

Their retreat was secluded and, she came easily at his bidding with anticipation in her gut that would not clear. 

Fate.  

A single word that would suddenly turn two on the path of one.

The tree they met under was filled with the rich scent of loam, and the acrid scent of the distant sea.  They were neither of them in their own lands, their homes having quit them some many years before.

Their talk was light, their words careful, and yet for months after they would linger in her mind.  That their paths were to be very different was without a question, that they should never have come together to speak is without a doubt.  And yet, they did.  

Fate or chance?

The day of their first talk trickled away as their lives became tangled in an unrelenting struggle between their peoples.  Ever-changing, the tides of wars waged upon fields at their feet in the course of the two years of their acquaintance.

She listened to his tales, his words careful and well-thought-out.  Nothing that fell from his lips was ever idle but always calculated.  The stories he would share caused her no small amount of puzzlement, and she oft would ask him what they meant.  He, in his usual cryptic manner, would say that one day they would be made clear to her.

For his part, the Faendryl seemed amused by her erratic behaviors.  She asked him why, but he deigned not to answer.  She did not mind so long as she could continue as she was.  Once, he told her that her efforts and ways were a waste of time.  

Her reply?  

Only that it was her time, she could do with it as she wished.

He did not travel alone.  As a Faendryl Sorcerer, he had in his care a Palestra of great stature.  The man was positively enormous, his complexion stony and frightening.  

The Palestra’s wife was quiet but no less lethal.  The Elf would spend time with them in travel, in the hunt, in rest, and in sorrow.  

When the Faendryl grew distant, as sometimes Sorcerers are want to do, the pair would offer her shelter, and comfort and they made a very odd quartet.

The Palestra and his wife became both mother and father to her, something she had been bereft of since she was very small.  

Within this strange structure of trust, compassion, respect, and mutual understanding she began to feel whole.  She started to see her own self-worth.  Her knowledge expanded, and her skills blossomed.

As the second year dwindled to a close, the breadth and depth of the war between the two great peoples that they each belonged became heavily embroiled.  With great care for the union that the four had found, they strove to accept and endure all that would pass; even though they each had other parts to play.

She was in grave danger.  Not merely for actions that her people had taken, but because she had done something that she should not have.  Something that the Faendryl had warned her against.  She had fallen in love with him.  

He had warned her against this action, time and time again.  Yet, he had never purposely avoided her or disappeared as she knew well he could.  She knew that he had lost a great love, and inside she felt daily that she competed with someone who was dead and gone.

She came to him, one last night before the final battle was upon them.  She asked him questions that she had never voiced, though longed to know.  He told her she was brave to ask them, but in his infuriating way would not answer them.  They would have to return from whence they came.  

He thought that she should not return.  She asked him, with hope quivering in her voice, “Is that a request?”

He would not answer.

And so that pair returned, each to the sidelines of a great war.  Each bowing under the weight of oaths they had given.  Though perhaps she bowed more and he merely held his head high.

Her heart was no longer in the fight, yet her word was given.  If he had but asked her, if he had said but one thing, she’d have given up her place. 

By Fate or Chance, the request that she longed for never came.

And so it was that in the final moments when the world held its breath still she was the one that cast asunder the war and stole the triumph he wanted.  She was ignorant of her part till the very last moments.  Not by choice, or by some uncommon stupidity, but because she simply did not see herself as *that* important in the battle.  

She was naïve of the reaction it would have in the man she loved.  

She was blinded by Fate’s hand.

The voice of the gods speaks so rarely, and in those hours she did not hear them but felt the inescapable pull of their will.  She was their unwitting tool.

In the aftermath, she became excruciatingly aware of the rift that it had opened for her and she was cast from the comforting, loving coils of the house of the Faendryl.  

His Palestra became blind and deaf in her presence, though he could not deny her food or warmth.  The Palestra’s wife felt keenly sorry for the Elf girl, yet Fate or Chance, life was as it was.
 
The Elf girl wrote a song for him, and I would sing it here for you tonight.

If you had asked it of me…<br>
I’d have knelt at your side whilst everything died.<br>
If I had asked it of you…<br>
Silence would linger, but I’d have understood.<br>
If you had asked it of me…<br>
I’d have watched my home tumble to the tide.<br>
If I had asked it of you…<br>
You’d have denied, and still have done what you could.<br>
If you had asked it of me….<br>
I’d have broken my vow, tossed it to the ground.<br>
If I had asked it of you…<br>
You’d have scoffed, and held your vow close to your heart.<br>
If you had asked it of me…<br>
I’d have embraced your long dark without a sound.<br>
If I had asked it of you…<br>
You’d have expressed amusement, and done your part.<br>

But you did not ask it of me…<br>
I was bound by my vow and you unto yours.<br>
So you did not ask it of me…<br>
And I saved a world from your long, and cold dark.<br>
And I did not ask it of you…<br>
But always forgave you for your dark war’s chores.<br>
But now, now I am asking you…<br>
Forgive me, so that you and I can finally mark….<br>
The day of our promised dance.<br>

What, you may ask, was the Faendryl’s responses to this?

I do not know.  

When last the Elf attempted speech with the Faendryl he had turned his back on her.  No more tales to fall from his lips.  No more amusement in her erratic behavior.  No more common interest.  No more peace in strange times.  No more comfortable existences.  For she no longer existed to him.

What became of the girl, you ask me?  She sits in a cave of her loneliness, having lost the one thing she’d have given up a world for.

And I, for my part in this tale, have sung the last song I will ever sing.  For without that dance, my heart knows music….

No more.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elven Story (short story)}}