A Half-Told Tale (closed for Obuzeti)

In her mind, she is teetering on the edge of a long board held out over a chasm. As he holds her against him, tasting and touching her at once, her muscles tense, nearly lock, until she feels the first hot blast of seed splashing inside her. Then, the board neither breaks nor does she fall: she rises. Held in the air for the slightest of moments, then a drop and she explodes into light.

She opens her eyes to feel his lips on hers. To hear him speak so quietly into her ear she wonders if he can simply transmit his thoughts to her. She pats his jaw in mutual appreciation, still too overwhelmed and a bit too sensitive to speak. Cerid breathes deeply and gingerly dislodges his cock, which even soft, takes up a fair amount of room. She rises back to her feet, one on either side of him. A fat bubble of seed and her lubricant drips back down onto him, more follows less quickly down her thighs. He can see he's left her rather red and tender, but she makes no show of it, walking towards her leathers. She shivers as the sweat meets the cold air.

“I'll need a bit more of that water, to clean myself up before we move. Made a bit of a mess.” She smiles when she says this, pulling the undershirt back over her breasts. “I'll just have to make sure to give myself a bit more time before...well, we had better take a break, if I'm to be fit to walk.” She contemplates, then continues. “If we go westerly towards Asendii, there's a bit of a secret pool, tradesmen used to use it before the war changed the roads to what they are now...well, we'll have to see if we can find it. Maybe eight hours out. Maybe ten if we don't make good time. It will make a good spot to camp. Hunt. We could make plans from there if my memory still serves us."

She realizes she's chattering.

"The spring runs downhill. Bathe in it," Caedan says, efficient as ever. He rises on momentarily shaky legs, and rolls his neck, trying to air the bliss-fogged cobwebs out of his head. Fresh from mating his body still glistens, his thighs coated in the release of Cerid's passion. "I will pack and bathe after."

There's not much to pack, to be honest - the cottage itself is his only truly valuable possession beyond his hunter's tools. The bow, knife, and spear he bundles together, and then he sets aside three pigskins of water, salted jerky, and the last of some various essentials like some medicinal herbs, more salt, and flint. These he binds together under another fur that will serve as a sleeping mat and cloak against the rains, should they come again.

That is the summary of his worldly belongings. He feels hollow, momentarily. It is so easy to reduce it to nothing.

Caedan sits, and waits for his companion. He stares out the open doorway into the forever that awaits him in all tomorrows to come.

Cerid had been thoughtful. She supposes she had Fenomin to thank for that. She had not planned to access the palace vault for another ten-day at least, but she'd been attentive to his whispers, if only to know where not to be when he prowled the halls at night looking for her. He was a minor mage of the guard, still in training, though he bore the title. That her inquiries into the Book were being noted only reached her ears due to his, ultimately idle, threats that as servant she was meant to also serve him.

She'd packed to move quickly, though, she'd anticipated coming away with the book of her people intact rather than ripped in twain. Fenomin's one effective act. A bit of water, her lockpicks, a small pouch full of the coin she'd been slowly accumulating over her three months within the palace walls, a bit of hard tack, a coded note, a few bits of cloth, and one rather questionable apple. Now, she supposes, she can rely on Caedan's obvious mastery to ensure they won't go hungry. How odd to feel so utterly certain that, in that regard, she need not fear.

Bathed and clad back in her leathers with her blades at her hips, the third tucked into her boot, Cerid kneels down and opens her pack, fearing the worst. The pages, those she'd yanked hard enough to take with her, should be a smear of ink now. Useless. Or so she thought, as removed the thin fabric that she'd wrapped around the half of the grimoire, and found it entirely dry. The language of the text was of magic and nothing she could read or make sense of, but...someone could, at least. As she flipped the pages, she felt a strange noise in the back of her mind, the sound of old wood creaking. She closes and rewraps the precious book, thanking the Eldest Woman to herself for not taking away her proof, at least, that she'd failed her mission.

The rain begins to slow to a mist when she arrives back at the threshold where Caedan is waiting, her pack settled on her shoulders. She is ready when he is to begin.

Caedan stands - stares, at the skull set in the centrepiece of the hut where he'd lived for over a decade now, at the remains of a past he'd communicated only briefly. He reaches up with one hand, broad and strong, and places it upon the bone remnant.

He crushes it to powder.

Then he turns and leaves the cottage behind him, packs and skins slung over his shoulder, and nods at his companion. "Lead me," he says, voice barely audible. "I know not the way."

For all his quietness, his hands do not shake as he closes and bolts the door behind them, nor does his stride falter as they set off.

Cerid knew where she had intended to go upon exiting through the tunnels beneath the castle. A time quickly passed in maneuvering through the City of Green Stone, seat of King Horis and all of his magicians, then a ride on a cart to the forest she found herself in now. What was meant to be a simple transverse through the trees and back out to join the winding roads that knit along the Kingsroad toward Aelfara had become a misery of terrifying visions and then, the unending rain.

From here, westward was a less obvious itinerary, but she had taken this way before. Back when she was young and times were calmer. She knew the way the land turned deeper valleys and rivers as it turned from one nation to another. She spoke now and again about landmarks, scenic beauty that brought to mind memories of earlier times, when elves were still distrusted, but the war was not the powder keg it was today.

About halfway through this leg of the trek, the pain between her thighs as she walked the walk became diffuse, and then negligible. Caedan followed closely, but gave her room to intuit the route. She came to a stand of trees where she'd once camped, a nice shady overgrowth, a bit hidden, but it was the marker where roads became either more standardized or almost entirely lost to human eye.

Two hunters, both human, the first they'd seen, tipped their hats and nodded as they passed from the dwindling roadside. They were fixing their bows and arrows but appeared in no rush to do so.

She continued past a bit further, then grabbed Caedan's hand and drew him around the thick bark of an enormous, sheltering tree. “Stay. Let us wait them out. I do not want them to know our way.”

The road has already passed what is familiar to Caedan - known hills give way to unknown, new scents confuse his sensitive nose, and the road opens up. It's been years since he last saw a road with wheel-ruts in it; longer since he'd traveled further than the nearest village. He buries his nerves in cataloguing each new species of plant he sees, the defining features that make it different than those he knows. The people he point-blank ignores aside from watching the language of their bodies, the unconscious threat-posture that none of them offer; each is soaked with exhaustion, slumping over steps that they have left behind them in calamitous number, bending backs with exhaustion.

Thus, when Cerid pulls him aside, he simply nods and follows without complaint - he knows not the ways of men, even less than she, and will follow her advice when it is given honestly. He settles aside the great oak and drops to a crouch, seated on his haunches, and stares at nothing - his peripheral vision covering the entire area instead, as he watches for motion by habit. "Do you still hurt?" he asks, body angled towards the elf in inquiry.

His hand turns and claims Cerid's own with a brief clasp, and then settles just behind her shoulder and high on her arm - where a press dictates direction faster than any word can, but where it won't throw her balance, either. He also finds himself reluctant to lose contact once initiated, but finds it unworthy of comment.

Something about the bows brushes his attention. He focuses on the hunter's quivers, and his head tilts.

"Look," he murmurs, without moving. "Their arrows. Bodkin."

Bodkin arrows, meant to punch through chain or even plate at close ranges, much less lighter arrows. If these are hunters, their prey walks upright - any hunter of animal would bring broadhead, for deep wounds and surer strikes on the vitals of their prey. No animal wears armor worth a bodkin.

She raises her eyebrow, taking his meaning. Cerid scans ahead, letting the keenness of her vision seek signs that she might recognize some insignia, some coloring or detail in their clothing that would mark them out as members of the King's Mageguard.

The mages, were they here, would be casting sweep spells. But a King's bounty, and her theft she believed was worth one, would draw out any number of mercenaries. She was not at the right angle to cut their throats, tree cover ran thin in the other direction. A distraction, perhaps, but then...?

She could have it all wrong, of course. There might be some other...target these arrows were meant for. Her habit was not to linger in such moments. Still, she reached for the comfort of her dagger hilts, noting the strange equilibrium that came from Caedan's close proximity, the light but constant pressure of his palm on her.

They were at enough distance that whispers would not draw immediate attention. She looks up at him, her voice steely, tactical even though she is aware her tactics have only accommodated keeping her own hide out of the fire until now. “I'm well enough to run now if we must. Run, perhaps find some place to hide amidst the undergrowth. Well, provided there's enough for us both. Unless you have some other idea? Rather not get shot today.”

Caedan sinks into the hunt-place, where everything is clear like water. "They are a pack," he says, soft, as his mind creeps through the forest. "Many members, moving together. They search for a trail. Could kill them - they have seen us, they know the trail. Saw us leave."

He glances past them, at the empty road. "But better than one part of the pack dead is one that slows it," he murmurs. "If the scent is wrong, the pack has wasted time and energy to track it."

The hunter's eyes flick to the road ahead, where it begins to thicken into a true traderoad, wheel-ruts running through the dirt where it had been packed down by the weight of passing carts and wagons. His eyes flit to these and he nods once. "Wait a moment. Allow them to see us confer. Follow the main road, offer trade to a wagon for passage upon it. Leave traces there - depart unseen. Allow our trackers to follow the wagon while we head in a different direction. Confuse the track, lose our pursuer."

Caedan glances over at Cerid. "Will it work?"

She weighed his plan in her mind. Mercenaries that could be raised within a few days would have to come from the city. They wouldn't sit about in fallow fields awaiting work. This land would not be well-known to them. “More of a risk. But we'd sleep better with them following a route we're not on. Alright. ”

“One thing ought to be decided, though. What man travels with an elf who does not owe him service in human lands? Will be odd, if in the village where a wagon might be hired– likely Mairstowe if my maps hold true – if I do not...show some deference. Let you deal for the wagon, I've the purse for it, but...” Cerid pauses, glancing back over her shoulder to stare down their would-be assassins. “I am no whore, but that's what most will see.” She shrugs with some degree of contempt in her eyes, which softens, though not completely, when she looks back at him. “I do not wish to alarm you if I...circumstances demand some...playing of pretend.”

She pats his face and gives a sharp nod of assent before pulling him out from the tree with her, adjusting her bodice enough so that onlookers in the distance might easily tell themselves a story that was easy to swallow.

Caedan pauses, then sets down the skins set upon his back. He takes a moment to search through the third, with its miscellany of precious things, and comes up with a cloth-wrapped disc that he proffers to Cerid. Within is a thin silver circle on a chain, with a deaths-head moth engraved on one side. There is a chilling amount of detail - even the faint fur of the wings is visible. He dons it without comment, slides the disc itself beneath the furs, and takes the skins back upon his shoulder.

"They will not touch you," he says, quiet, the weight of oath anchoring his voice in the depths. Then he allows her to lead him onto the main road. The hunters themselves pay them little regard, and the road is empty for the most part this early - most cargo wagons are just now being loaded. They finally do spot one, a wool-trader by the looks of it, with a covered back to prevent the sun from bleaching out the good product in the back. The hunter's hand touches her shoulder lightly and he angles his way over to beside it.

"Hallo the camp," he calls up to the driver, who blinks and glances over, shaking his head out as the light daze of long riding fades from behind his eyes. "Long road?"

The driver is a younger man, probably a journeyman whose master is busy. His straw-blonde hair and blue eyes marks him as a misfit Northerner, probably one of the misfit brats from the Varangian Guard that gets left behind in whatever village they pass through. He smiles after a moment, welcoming the distraction. "Gods yes, I've been on this thing for a day now. Should make Namsley by nightfall, if they've any grace."

"They've got fine wine there," Caedan says, wistful. His body language alters; turns towards the journeyman, relaxes and begins to bob with faint exhaustion, his weight coming down harder with each step, enough to make the dirt shift beneath his otherwise soundless feet. "What's that vineyard that works out the east district there? Gladman's? Good stuff. I had a bottle once."

"I've only ever had a cup," the youth says, envious, shaking his head. "You heading there too, yeah?"

Cerid pauses, eyebrow raised at the scene she sees playing out before her, at the persona that Caedan has put on with no great struggle. One had only to stumble over Caedan's threshold to observe that he was a man of some secrets. Her time with him had thus provided a singular clear path to travel towards mutual understanding, but it cut through briar with such thorns that she began to wonder what she was idly wandering past, unknowing.

What is more dangerous than a man who can make you believe he tells the truth? This holds in her mind as she replays the moment of their meeting.

Still, the boy looks easily plied, and Caedan plies him with thoughts that have a certain appeal to her, as well. A king's hall did not provide servants with much of a vintage, but she'd the sort of fingers that could improve on the offering and what might have been unbearable, with a few deep cups, had been endured.

Drawing a tendril of hair out from under the hood of her cloak, coiling it around her finger and letting the loose curl fall anew over the bit of cream fabric that frames her cleavage, she steps away from the tree she had been leaning against. She slid her arm around his waist with obvious familiarity, though soundless, eyes cast low, not interrupting the conversation. Cerid, however, was well-aware from the skip in the lad's speech that he'd noted her arrival. She tilts her head up toward Caedan, the hood falling back to reveal the strong pointed tips of her ears, her expression inquires if he'd found them the ride they both earnestly require.

Caedan's arm settles around the elf's shoulder with thoughtless ease; his hand settles on her opposite shoulder, one broad thumb brushing the bare, delicate skin of her collarbone possessively, just above the deep cleavage on display. The journeyman's eyes pause at the sight of that hand and shoot back up to meet Caedan's unamused gaze. "Haha, so this is your -"

An awkward pause, as he takes in the defensive posture Caedan's assumed, and swallows the world he'd been about to use. "Your friend."

Caedan smiles. Something moves beneath the surface of his eyes, something unfriendly, but it passes like a cloud and he relaxes back to something more genial. "That works. Cerid. A friend of mine. Look, it's a hot day out, and my feet hurt, let alone hers. You give us a ride, I'll split one of those bottles with you when we make it there."

The boy sucks on his lip, thinking. They're strangers, sure, but he can't keep his eyes off the elf at all - they keep flicking away from her chest to her bright red hair and back - ceaseless bouncing. If he's not a virgin, he damned well should be. His thoughts click as audibly as marbles in his head.

"Well, fine," he says after a moment, offering a hand down to Caedan to shake, which he does with a firm grip, provoking a smile back. "I'm Jonathan. Climb aboard, yeah? You, elf, what's your name?"

Jonathan's smile is noticeably brighter as he turns to her.

Cerid smiles lightly in return, as she had seen some of the more successful hangers-on at the court do. Avert her gaze, all the while leaning slightly in. Bethe, in the palace kitchens, had put it thus: distant, but because of one's elven nature, always, at least somewhat, amenable.

“Thank you. You could call me Eila....Jonathan.” The alias is the name of a friend she knew once, back when she could claim other elves as friends. She'd died in a skirmish over sixty years ago, but this meant the name no longer attached to anyone with life, not anyone who could be hurt. She doesn't feel safe providing this obviously mouthy git with anything truly personal. She nods her head as if she's made some level of effort to remember the lad's name, then glances between the two of them, to confirm that the accord had indeed been struck.

With the agreement set, she could climb deftly into the wagon bed on her own, but allows Caedan to help her over the side of the wagon - Jonathan making no real pretense in disguising his ogling. Once seated, she fans herself, looking off into the middle distances. As Caedan boards and seats himself next to her, she unknots her cloak, careful to keep the dagger at each hip under its cloth.

Though she isn't thrilled at playing this part, there is something oddly pleasing at watching Caedan watch the boy watch her. The mild...seething that comes off of him has a certain charm. This reminds her to ask him once they're alone again – the charm he put on – she will have to remember to ask him its meaning. Caedan and Jonathan finish their pleasantries for the moment, she sets the flat of her right hand on his taut, firm thigh, and the wagon finally lurches on.

The two men shoot the breeze for a bit, talking about local trading, which Caedan leads to taking about merchant caravans - and then to caravan guards and their stories - and then to soldiers, which Jonathan complains about easily. "Two dozen rode through the town last week, with one of those scarlet-cloak mages, kill you as soon as look at you," he says, distressed, worrying his lip in between his teeth, the familiar anguish of the powerless. "Took a room at the local inn and didn't pay a farthing, but the innkeep's daughter - she's been crying since, won't meet anybody's eyes. I -"

He swallows, hot red flushing his cheeks and neck as he tries to speak through an impossible mix of shame and anger, and then fear wins out.

"I guess they were in a hurry," he whispers, ashamed.

Caedan regards him. The boy is, perhaps, seventeen. He'd bet this daughter's of a like age; probably grew up together. As the innkeep's daughter he'd have seen her almost every week, passing through the market square on weekends.

He takes a long, slow breath. "He have a medallion?"

"Yeah," Jonathan says after a long moment. "Griffon thing. Always had it out. How you know them, right?"

"Yes," Caedan says, soft. "Makes them easy to see coming."

He clasps Jonathan's shoulder, tight. Lets go, and then changes the topic to fishing, which Jonathan shakily tries to warm up to, the previous topic slow to leave his mind. The hunter spaces a glance - a quick flick of eye contact with Cerid, and leans his head in the direction the wagon had come from, then a bare shake of his head. His hand covers hers, warm and strong.

"How'd you wind up with an elf, anyways?" Jonathan asks, still a little wobbly in his smile, but the freeze coming out of his eyes some. "I mean, Elia, I see yours all through the city, but I thought yours weren't fond of the outskirts. Y'know, out here with the peasants."

The journeyman smiles a little with the weak joke.

The color of the cloaks runs through her mind. The weight of one of their oversize length on her shoulders to amuse a newly anointed Mage. The shiver that ran down her spine when Bethe invented nonsense songs of praise for the Mageguard, ending one malformed couplet with the rhymeless scarlet and cackling at her “Just like your hair!”

The monstrous echoing noise when then they returned into the bowels of the castle, just below the servants quarters, where they were barracked after completing whatever sport pleased the High Mages, or the King. One is in danger of thinking those interests were the same. No, Bethe, they are not a velvet ribbon wrapped around the City; they are a river of blood.

Nothing surprises her about the boy's private sorrow. Not that it occurred, not that there is no justice to be had for it even among humans...only that Caedan seems keen to draw it from him and yet is so gentle with the result. More symbology to track.

She realizes, looking up with a start from her reverie, that Caedan hasn't replied. Perhaps caught in his own reverie for a moment. The truth of their meeting made too little sense to speak. The falsehood invented itself as though it always had been.

“In truth, I had never intended to leave The Perfumed City. It happened I was drawn out into the green country at the pleasure of one of the Master Perfumers. He wanted to create without being corrupted by the usual overpowering palette of scents of the city and set up a large laboratory to test formulae and entertain lavishly. Unfortunately, he choked on a chicken bone during a party one evening.” she says, in a casual, matter-of-fact tone. “And his estate provided no means for myself or the others to return home. I'd sold all I had to make the journey. The ability to make friends in such circumstance, however, is of great value.”

She pauses again, and pops up in her seat to give the scruff on his cheek a kiss.
“I'd not make much of a bar wench.”

"You really wouldn't," Caedan agrees, humor twinkling deep somewhere in his eyes, and his arm slides up Cerid's arm to clasp about her shoulders, drawing her against his side comfortably. He smells like the pine logs of his cottage and the faint musk of fur, warm and powerful; a breathing mountain. "You doing alright, by the way? I know your skin's sensitive. She doesn't tan well, something about elf skin doesn't like it."

It's a blatant lie, but Jonathan nods in understand, his eyes flicking down to her cleavage again momentarily. "Hey, if it's an issue, she can ride in the back of the wagon. Nice and shady there under the cover. Just, y'know, don't yank any of the wool out, that'd get me in lots of trouble."

Caedan glances over at Cerid and raises an eyebrow; flicks his eyes to the back. That'll move one of them out of Jonathan's line of sight and get her gone - but Caedan himself is right beside him.

The amused tilt of his mouth doesn't imply that's a problem.

Settled in under the crook of his arm, comfortably leaning against him, she nods slightly in agreement. Cerid plays out a few scenarios in her mind that would get them off-trail and make it to the pool where they could camp unseen.

“You are very courteous. I do not wish to take ill now when we've come so far.” She bows her head, this time taking care as she looks up to catch their very courteous driver's eyes on her breasts as she speaks. She holds there a moment, forcing him to follow her gaze back up. Cerid winks, feeling an odd combination of self-loathing and thrill at toying with the lad. Already she can feel the pace of the horses slow, slightly, then stop. This time, she climbs out gingerly, slips out and back to the ground with ease.

She glances at the surroundings before drawing herself, before noting Jonathan had also rounded the back of the wagon, with Caedan directly behind. She fanned herself again as Jonathan fiddled in his pockets for a thick key to remove the lock and open the minimal security required of a wool-trader.

She looks to Caedan, plotting, hoping her plot is aligning with his, or that his apparent skill in small talk would smooth the bumps. “I've a bit of a tincture in my pack that will help with the worst of the sun. Will you send it back with me? Maybe...join me?” Cerid turns to the boy, turning on every last charm available to her short of giving him the peek his imagination must have already described to him. “You have been so kind to us. You wouldn't mind...would you, Jonathan...if my friend joined me in the shade for a bit?”

Cerid doesn't even have to lean over - this close, with the difference in their relative height, Jonathan can see straight down her blouse and the effect is so strong that he's actively staring up instead, not trusting himself at all to avoid looking more obviously than he has been.

"Lord," he says with half a laugh, a little pained. "Look, I -"

The journeyman sighs.

"That's fine, but don't do that when your man's right here," he says, even though the words make him cringe a little to say. "I mean, I get it. It's a good reason, but - he seems alright. And you seem to like each other. Just don't pretend for my sake, alright?"

Jonathan glances back down to meet Cerid's eyes, and this time he meets them firm, even through the edges of his smile twitch down towards a grimace on occasion. "I mean, you're sexy and - shit. What am I even trying to say?"

Caedan steps up beside the journeyman and briefly clasps his shoulder. "You are trying to say you know," he murmurs, "And that you understand. And that words are too much."

Jonathan glances over at Caedan, and they wordlessly look at each other for a moment. Then the younger man smiles, a bit awkward, but geniune. "Yeah. Thanks, man."

He offers a hand, and Caedan clasps forearms with him. Then he unlocks the back and the hunter climbs in, offering Cerid a hand up into the high back of the wagon. Jonathan looks at them for a moment with a fond smile, and then closes the door to allow them the shade. Just before it closes, Caedan slides a loose piece of wood over and catches the frame with it, so that the doors don't close all the way, just a little open.

He sighs, and leans back; glances over at his companion, the friendly geniality fading into the cool waters of his empty stare almost immediately, like taking off a cloak.

"He is a good man. Will be better." he says, quiet so as not to be heard over the trotting of the mules.

She sets her pack on her back, untwisting the straps, adjusting the undershirt to an almost aggressively modest position. Cerid does not fully understand their young driver's sudden self-awareness. If it can all be chalked up to the presence that seems to emanate out of Caedan. The man who makes men out of men.
She is not sure she trusts this goodness. She's quite sure she shouldn't. There were fables from ten of their long lifetimes ago that said the same.

But whatever should be so and whatever persuasive abilities he possesses, the landscape she sees and breathes and thinks is so mingled with desire that her own sense feels corrupted at the edges. The elf needs to see something of home, to be remind herself of purpose, of mission. The dead and the missing. The prayers of The Once and Yet to Be. This, Cerid believed, made this the right path. She could visit the Waters of Anelitra.

“Be ready.”

Cerid peers out, awaiting a sign as Caedan secures his furs. The wagon's moving at a steady pace, but slow enough that she can make out the thick red trunk of a tree amongst greys in the distance. This is where they need to get off, where she can secure them safety, at least for one night. One moment.

She turns to Caedan with a wordless point and a nod, leaps headlong out of the door of the wagon, landing lightly on the road. She keeps moving, the weight of her pack not slowing her as she runs and jumps off the edge and into a dry bed of a brook, now half-overgrown with tall ferns and a lush pillow of grass, both serving to break her fall. Swiftly, Caedan thumps only with a bit less grace, though not much more sound down into the tuffet of green next to her.

Jonathan and his wagon lumbers on ahead of them, none the wiser for now.

She looks over at Caedan, who despite instinctively following her lead, was taking a moment to catch his breath. “Come on...” She whispered, and offered him her hand to get him back on his feet and begin pushing further into the woods. The trees were close here and cover nearly instant. It would be a short hour's walk, with Cerid's memory leading them, turning and twisting and cutting through unexpected darts in the landscape that seemed to draw a map together that otherwise could not be found.

It was still late afternoon when they arrived at the lip of the pool that served the Unending Court, what Cerid knew as a historic landmark for her people, forgotten in what was now called human land.

Standing there, she breathed it in for a moment. The quiet, the stillness that now also reminded her of Caedan. That she had lead a human here, to this sacred place...did it freely was a sign of disturbance. If this were amongst the Eilonwir, the punishment would be drastic, bloody, and marked in memory so only a reborn god might forgive her.

But she would not turn him from the Waters, the light, curling steam that rose from its surface. Anelitra was the twelth of the True Names of the Unending Court. To some, not an excessively impressive figure in the stories. Anelitra, the Lady-in-Waiting. Anelitra, who had been born twice since and each time brought some new beauty into the world of the elves. She was and is and ever will be a servant with a glad heart.

She stuck her pack beneath one of the massive tree roots nearby, quickly undressed, and without ceremony or further explanation, stepped into the warm, bathlike water.

They make good time away from the false trail, and the place Cerid leads the hunter to is someplace beyond his limited imagination - a place he can tell, by sight and soul, is not meant for his kind. The heated waters are clear as glass, reflecting the forest canopy above so perfectly he can see the moss on the trees. Rather than wade in himself, he sets aside his furs and seats himself, cautiously, on the water's edge; he casts aside his cloak and tunic, leaving himself in only his breeches, and reaches out to just above the water's surface.

He hangs there, on the rim of the elven waters, and draws in his breath and the world with it - passes it through himself like air, a flawless thing of nature no more man than branch or deer. He knows not the name or story of this place but the resonance of meaning rings through him like a heartbeat, like an eagle's call.

"What is this place?" he asks, soft, eyes half-lidded. "It feels. It breathes. There is knowing here, and a grand love."

He barely understands these concepts, himself, being both a novice to the world and a lonely existence, but he cannot disguise the truth of this place from himself.

"Love." She feels the word spread out like rings from a skipped stone.

Cerid pauses, spins in the water, relishing its heat moving through her muscles, easing pains she's refused to feel. Elves were barred entry from the baths at the palace so she could count on one hand how many she'd had in warm water. But this pond did not chill or turn to swamp. It spoke of a loyalty that would not be swayed, a servant's offering to her beloved Lady. Perpetual. Eternal. Eternal, Cerid felt, at least until the Unending Court ruled again.

Caedan holds back, staying on the land, hesitant, but awed. She feels a bit more at ease, smiling at him before dipping her head under the water and swimming back to the shallows, her hair dripping over her shoulders. The afternoon cuts through a few sparse patches in the canopy and light etches along the water, making the path forward glow slightly where she stands.

She is remembering a century of memories as she speaks. “You feel her here?” She tilts her head, appreciative of his respect for this place. “These are the Waters of Anelitra. She sat Once at the feet of our Queen and Will sit there Again, once all the Court has been through their trials and are born through our bodies anew and for the last time. It is...complicated. But she is of a time before our races dreamed of war. If you do not seek to destroy, to desecrate, she would welcome you here.”

Through the steam and mist, a small island in the center of the water is visible. It's only large enough to serve as ground for a small stone hovel. Cerid points toward it.

“It is there I must leave a blessing. If you will not join me, please give me something small so she knows that we have come for healing. A flower, a bit of hair, perhaps. I will not be long if you wish to stand guard. But I promised her once I would visit.”

Caedan ponders on this, then slides from his breeches and leaves them on the shore as he smoothly flows into the water and disappears beneath the surface. He does not wade, he swims - flexing beneath the surface of the waist-high waters like some enormous otter, as smoothly comfortable as on land. His black mane streams behind him like liquid ink, and he rises from the water before Cerid with a flick of that gorgeous hair, tossing it over his shoulder with a nigh-unconscious motion.

The hunter stands taller than her, the waters coming waist-high on his towering form; freshly-washed, he is a smooth, lean animal. There is no leanness of starvation on him; his limbs and broad chest are smooth and firm, well-fed and padded with heavy sinews and muscle; not the naked musculature of a self-starved bodybuilder, but the healthy, raw power of a predator in its prime.

Through him passes death - clean and consuming, to strip suffering and the fat of life. In this boudoir of resurrection and renewal he is the running stream, to cleanse what has come and carry it to a distant shore. Something is bared here in the man that is not elsewhere; a pure, shining sharpness like moonlight and the briefness of the dewdrop.

"I will come," he says, voice soft again, as the wind through willow. His hand brushes Cerid's shoulder - thankful, gentle. His other hand rises to display something from his pack: a perfect pearl, taken from a freshwater mussel, iridescent and immaculate.

If he had wished to view wonder, this is such a thing as he had never dreamed of, and he is transformed by its viewing.

She runs her hands up his chest, over the firm muscles, the body a life seemed to have sheared out of stone and looked at the pearl. It was one thing to acknowledge Anelitra, Caedan seemed prepared to delight her. This shrine, as undisturbed as Cerid was grateful it was, was so rarely visited. She'd forgotten so much living amongst the humans, and yet, here she was.

“It is perfect.”

The distance to swim is further than it looks, but not much further. She pulls herself up onto the grassy bit of shore, and Caedan's aquatic prowess has him immediately behind her.

There is no door on the structure save an arch, no furniture, save a single bowl that sits atop a pedestal in the middle of the floor. If they hadn't already been undressed, it was here they would shed clothes. To make offering to the Unending Court was to recognize the body. The ones they had lost, the ones they will take, the beloved flesh that houses the eternal soul, that all secrets may be seen.

Cerid thinks of how just a few days ago, she was in filthy sheets in the City of Green Stone, and dreaming of red cloaks, imagining herself as apart from all this...perhaps, forever.

She kneels down on the stone floor, one that time has made smooth with rain.

Motioning for Caedan to kneel and place the pearl in the bowl, she takes one of the small, flat stones that lay below it and the black piece of obsidian that is nestled at the base as well and scratches out the elven symbol for Anelitra, and places it in the center of the bowl.

She glances ever so quickly at Caedan to see his head bowed next to her, not watching her in this moment where she clears her throat and begins to sing a song of childhood. A song that like the Song of the Dead, her voice seems to draw forth by compulsion rather than thought. It is the story of the Court, their tragedy, their hope in the elven people, and the peace that may one day return. It is a song for children, but yet still holds some beauty.

Her voice is not sonorous or practiced, but is not unpleasant to the ear. When she finishes, all is a staccato of birdsong and quiet. Cerid whispers prayers she has not spoken in decades, as she does so, letting her hand squeeze her companion's tightly before letting it go.

She glances back as the pearl began to spin around in the depression in the bowl, moving of its own accord. If Cerid could move herself, she would leap back in shock at the sight of it, but she holds steady next to Caedan as the pearl lifts itself to eye level and begins to glow. It grows brighter and brighter until it bursts like a fat grape and the resulting light holds in the air in the form of a symbol she does not recognize before dispersing and reforming into one she knows quite well. The Queen.

The light fades and a relieved, if disembodied, sigh fills the small chamber and passes through them and then through the walls. The pearl is no more.

Cerid allows herself to rise to her feet, the feeling of the warm surround of the water sustaining itself even on dry land.

“I...don't know what it means...that...has never happened before, not in any of my prayers, never heard of....” Cerid's eyes squint slightly, the corners of her mouth turned up, all the while concerned for notions of faith she could not casually explain. “...but she seems...pleased.” She looks to Caedan, strokes the beads of moisture down his arm, in the completion of the ritual. She is suddenly reminded of the closeness of his body, of the desire that it draws forth from her. “That we have been brought here together....are you all right?”

Caedan witnesses - experiences. This shrine has been polished by faith into a flawless form; there are no half-hearted worshipers here, no one to clutch to an empty throne. By its solitude is this place's sanctity made invulnerable. The song and stone and waters move together through Caedan's senses, along with the light of the pearl he sacrifices, and in its wake he is worn smooth like river bedrock, changed by its passage, though he knows not the words yet to capture that sensation.

His mouth opens, but even his few words desert him. Instead, he turns and places a soft kiss upon Cerid's brow. His eyes are wet. He can't recall the last time he felt such a way.

"I have so much to learn," he says, soft, and his hand finds Cerid's and squeezes. "Thank you."

His little realm of bone and wood has been shed and suddenly he is aware of how tremendous the world outside is, a massive place that he could never learn all the nooks and secrets of in a thousand thousand years, all the people, the whispered tales, the gods content in their hidden shrines; before him the earth has shifted and unfolded like a map. He swallows, convulsively, and blinks.

"If this is the only thing you ever show me," Caedan says, as he closes his eyes and breathes until he composes himself, "Your promise is fulfilled. I will go with you until you tire of my company, Cerid."

It is the first time he has said her name, and in this place his words have the weight of oath lighter than a feather, burying deeper in him than roots.

She stares at him. She cannot help but stare at him. That her faith was not a knot held tightly within, an anchor to keep her from drowning, but a place she might visit, where she might go and find herself not alone. A gift she might give, might want to give him solely out of tenderness. He had not been turned away, he had been invited in, found shelter as she had, in strange arms.

His emotions are striking, making his features beautiful in their state of overwhelm. Her own thoughts have been moving too quickly to make sense, but she stands with him and her mind calms until all she contemplates is energy building fiercely between them.

He says her name and she does not hear the false names she has given so many others. She hears him speak her name, a pearl, precious. His solemnity as he vows to stay with her. What she wants she cannot have inside these stone walls. Her reverence requires that the eye must be allowed to close.

“Come.” She pulls on his wrist, diving into the water. They make even quicker time on the return and emerge on the far side of the pond where all of their packs and items are undisturbed. Behind them, the hovel is no longer visible, only the steam clouds that waft and undulate in the distance.

As Caedan reaches for his breeches, she reaches for his cock, looking up and into his eyes as she pulls her palm along its length.

“Don't dress. Take me here.”

It's a request, not a demand, but there's no denying she's aroused. There's a flat enough space where she lays out her cloak and she crawls atop on all fours, sitting back on her heels, looking back over her shoulder at him, awaiting a rebuff...or...