Illel's Story Chapter 3
Category: Dungeons and Dragons
Title: Illel's Story
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Seeds of Hope
Genre: Fantasy/Tragedy
Rating: Fiction Rated: T
Summary: This chapter is about the druid and the elf getting to know each other a little. We learn a little bit about some of the things Illel was carrying as well. Druid does most of the talking, Illel is still in shock. This part takes place in the past, in Illel of the future's reverie.
Illel's Story chapters Ch1: Smoke and Blood Ch2: Of Falls and Cocoons Ch3: Seeds of Hope
Chapter 3 - Seeds of Hope
The druid woke gently from sleep that, although recuperative, carried the theme of worry for what he should do for his little charge, throughout. The night was alive with music; the choruses of animals and insects, and the beginning stirrings of some birds, as the sky started to lighten to twilight, the stars blazing brilliantly and twinkling in their own mystical, beautiful play of light.
Worry caught him off-guard, when he noticed the little elf girl was no longer where she had been resting, his cloak laying in a heap where she had been. The night before, she had been shivering, so he had put his cloak over her, not realizing she was not shivering because of the chill night air. When he had stroked her hair, and spoke some reassuring words in her family’s elvish dialect, she had seemed to settle and become more at ease, at least for a short time.
Astyanax stood quietly, bent over so as not to hit the canopy of leaves and branches that wove and grew together above him to provide a small amount of shelter, and stepped into the moist grass and leaves barefoot, walking about the encampment towards where he saw a small form sitting on a root that had grown above ground near a short, old tree, conveniently twisted to provide an excellent seat with a view of the forest and small lake that this side of the rise the encampment was on overlooked. He could tell she was aware of him as he approached, so he said nothing, as she stared quietly into the distance, not turning as he sat on the ground next to her, but taking in the vastness of the earth and sky about her. The sky on the horizon where she looked was turning a lighter shade of blue slowly. The air was very calm.
He gazed into her face quietly, trying to read what was there: her eyes seemed sad, there was an emptiness about her, almost disbelief. It seemed she was not recollecting the events of a few nights ago, but trying to come to terms with… the sudden emptiness, the gap left by her parents, her family, her way of life disappearing. He looked over the view of the forest and lake, and mused that she seemed to be progressing well, all things considered. The spectrum of the sky began to shift as he watched, the deep navy and burst of stars receding and fading behind him to the west, and turning into a green and then a yellower tinge blending to the horizon in front of them.
He looked back at her, noticing her hair had become more dishevelled, her face somehow stoic in the twilight, and he noticed that clenched fist again, that she held gingerly on her knees: there was something she was holding in it.
“May I see?” he asked her softly, gesturing towards her hand when he got her attention. Her face twisted in protest, and she brought her fist closer to her chest protectively, but after a moment, she relented, slowly, carefully holding her hand out, just close enough, and uncurling her slender elven fingers.
In her hand was an acorn-like seed that sparkled silvery white and that shimmered in the twilight.
“Oh! That IS very special,” the druid remarked, “that is the seed of one of the spirit trees. Did your parents give you that before-“ he caught himself before he finished what he was saying, but she understood and nodded her head reticently in reply. “You need to take extra special care of that. The spirit trees are gone now - the home of your ancestral spirits, where your people commune with the elders and the yet-to-be-born-again. Now that they are gone, “ her expression seemed to crack for a moment, tears welling in her eyes, but in the moment after, as he continued, her gaze was steady and clear again, “this seed is your hope for your people, your clan, to be born again - and to be reunited with your family-“ he was startled for a moment as she suddenly tensed, desperately hopeful, with longing in her face, “…in spirit,” he continued. She looked down at the seed with a certain awe, seeming more energetic and full of life, suddenly.
He reached towards it slowly, “May I? I can make it into a necklace for you, and protect it with magic.” She proffered the seed to him, reluctant but trusting.
“I will be back with it in a moment,” he said, standing, as he walked back to the shelter, and tapped an open-caged, sweet-smelling lantern, and fireflies began to fly about and glow, giving him a little extra light to work by.
The horizon was turning a golden orange, the sky above a pale baby-blue, and small clouds were blazing in the distance in lavenders, pinks, and orange. The stars had receded to the very furthest reaches of the sky, except for a couple bright ones in the east. [planets] The little elf girl was looking down at the seed she now wore strung around her neck, the work done on it, with such a look of joy that it was the druid’s turn to fear shedding a tear, as he broke some bark up and put it into a steaming pot over a small fire nearby.
An axe lay with its head buried in a chopping stump near them, but it looked as if little wood had been chopped in the area for quite some time. There was a stinky muddy patch a short walk away, with the biggest mushrooms of all kinds that Illel had ever seen, growing in the shade of a stand of tall trees. There was a path down to the river, where a small dock jutted into the water, with a long narrow boat pulled up onto the shore. She could hear the buzzing of bees from one tree nearby, see the little hidden nest where they swarmed about.
“Bzzz Bzzz!” she sounded at the druid as he savoured his steaming tea, before taking a sip of her own tea, which was heavily sweetened with honey. This game was so much fun!
“Very good! What else do you see?” the druid encouraged. She could see two songbirds on a branch in a tree nearby, singing to each other. Illel made a sing-song bird noise like the birds she heard and saw. The druid smiled at her and said, “what else?”
Next to them was a wild, haphazard, overgrown-looking garden of bushes and flowers and stones, with vegetables and berries and flowers, a wondrous cacophony of smells wafting towards them on a gentle breeze. Illel inhaled deeply and slowly through her nose, closing her eyes, taking it all in. She pointed gingerly toward a flower growing nearby where they sat.
“Yes, flowers too. But, what kinds of flowers? They’re not all the same you know. They have different tastes, and smells, and looks and feels… if you listen close enough, their voices are different too!” Illel smiled shyly, shaking her head disbelievingly as he teased her. “This is dusky blue strawberry, and that is darrow cucumber,” the druid explained to her as she walked through the plants. A little ways a part was another, similar garden, slightly more sheltered than the other, hidden from view by taller bushes around it. Illel wandered into that one, to the druid’s dismay.
“That is a medicinal garden, little one…you’re not ready to learn those yet…” he trailed off as she wandered in heedless. A beautiful, majestic deep violet flower caught her attention, and she pointed at it and looked askance. “Don’t touch that little one; it is a rare flower, and it can be quite dangerous. That one is called black lotus. Come over here and finish your tea. The soup is almost ready.” She wandered back to the fire obediently, as the druid bemused how she seemed drawn to beautiful, dangerous things. He wondered if her clan taught of such herbs and poisons to use, then decided there was no need for schooling in that just yet, whatever the case may be.
O O O
During the quiet, as they drank their soup, Illel’s countenance grew distant, and forlorn in reminiscence, the cold tendrils of despair twisting into her soul despite the warm, bright clear sky of day. The druid slurped his soup noisily, then made like he was licking it up like a dog, which seem to amuse and draw a disdainful look from her, as she seemed to forget the day before for the moment. He plunged his face into the soup, then made a silly effort to get soup bits from his beard into his mouth with his tongue. Her face turned red and she kicked her feet at his silliness, cracking a bit of a smile, but she did not laugh.
They washed their faces and hands with water from a bucket, then he poured some on the fire, and blew at the billows of smoke as they rose. She seemed to enjoy the game at first, but then something seemed to strike a chord, and tears began to stream down her face as she stared blankly and mutely, forgetting what was in front of her. The druid Astyanax frowned disappointedly and doused the rest of the fire without fanfare.
O O O
They sat on the ground, with her few belongings spread on the ground between them. A small thick bow of green wood; a pair of toughened, treated leaf and wood-strip archery bracers that had the texture of leather; and delicate-looking boots of the same sort of material which was in fact exceedingly durable; a satchel of same with wrapped leaf food with the smell of berries and fruit coming from it, as well as a dagger that seemed made from a tooth; a small yellow faceted crystal.
The druid could sense the magic in these, an ancient and secret elvish magic learned from the ways of the fey; a magic not entirely unlike his own. The dagger and food seemed mostly mundane, he could not discern the purpose of the crystal - perhaps it was for some spiritual rite. He reached for the bow and asked, “May I see?” and examined it once she nodded.
“Living wood? It grows with you? The string is made of moonsilk? Does the bow speak to you in your mind?” The girl seemed puzzled, not understanding what he meant. “It responds to your thoughts and feelings?” he said, and this time she nodded. He tested the pull of the bow, and was surprised that the harder he pulled, the greater the pull of the bow. It was truly a bow that would grow with the archer, as she gained in strength. Moonsilk, he mused; he never knew such a string to have been broken by mundane means, and knew also it resonated with the mental powers of the Soroswol clan elves - it helped them to use some of their abilities. The bow itself probably enhanced these as well.
He cast a spell, and glowing runes were revealed on the bracers… the magic of which, seemed to allow an archer to fire more precisely, to time their shots, especially to avoid hitting friendly combatants near the target being fired at.
The runes on the boots seemed to suggest mental powers of bonding, of holding the wearer against a surface, besides being protected from the elements and wear. They likely helped a young elf to master their clan’s secret of tree-running, running and staying on surfaces, like trees, without falling off, so they could literally run up and down trees. Remembering earlier, it occurred to him she must not have mastered these either, yet.
He flipped the knife in the air above his hand, flipped the grip, spun it in his hand; the weight was good, for throwing or fighting, but it seemed more a tool than a fighting weapon. He smiled at her, “I have just the thing…” and went back to the shelter, lifting a wide flatish rock, which seem to cover a stone enclosure, with various things in it. He pulled out some tools and some leather, and began to work away, while Illel hugged her knees and stared at her things. She tried flipping the knife around in her hand as the druid had, then tiring of that quickly, started gazing at the clouds that passed overhead, her hair blowing gently in the breeze. He returned with a sheath, that had a strap that could be adjusted.
“I suggest you put it on your ankle, but you can put it around your waist too, if need be, he said, and took the offered foot and fit the sheath there snugly, wrapping and tying the extra length slowly, making sure she was watching and saw how he did it. “Like that.”
2007-10-03
m_G