Different worlds

3. Away from everyone's eyes

POV Aisha:

My tail still aching, I finally arrive at The Cliff, gateway to the village I live in, Argondis. I look down and see the limpid lake, its depths not known. I then raise my head and look before me as I take a step forward into thin air.
I feel the solid bridge below my feet and smile - every single time I use it, I still fear a mistake in Granny's enchantment, a problem, even though deep down I know she isn't capable of such a mistake. I walk, holding my charge tight in case he slips, but I doubt he would wake up before a while after how I knocked him out.

***

After 5 minutes, I have crossed the gap separating the big pile of rocks and the waterfall. It would reach up to 25 meters and the water became white when it touches the lake because of the impact. It was beautiful and peaceful, not what one would expect to be the hideout of the most searched for revolutionary operator in the southeast, which was exactly the reason it was such a good 'home'. After all, I had lived there for a little less than 10 years.

I arrive in front of the rushing waterfall and pronounce three distinctive words, opening a small gap in the curtain of water that I know will close back in a matter of seconds. I take a step forward and close my eyes shut. A flash of light almost swallows me up but all I do is smile : this light, is the sign I've arrived.

***

I'm looking after my prisoner with an insistent look and if I can feel the eyes of the guards in my back, I just ignore it. It's been nearly an hour I have been back and not once have I spoken a word, as if that would have broken my luck with Granny's fury. So far, so good, she hadn't yet come to break my silence and peace. Just as I'm thinking about this, a 90-inch tall Elvlin comes into the room, clearing its throat.

-Madam Green requests your assistance, she is waiting for you in the Upper Branch.

Madam Green, the leader of this forest's Elvlins. Even though she was only around 100 years old, she was respected a lot. She had welcomed me in when I was about 6, after my dad abandoned me in the forest. I call her Madam Green in public, like anybody else, but when we are alone, I call her Granny.

She doesn't show it much, but she loves me, I know she does, but sadly that won't ever stop her from punishing me... He then scrambles away without another word and I know I am in the deepest depths of trouble, just when I had started to think she wouldn't mind...

***

After I had given the order to the guards to watch over the prisoner closely, I scale the Mother tree, where the eastern forest Elvlins reside, taking all of my time, wishing to delay the most I could the moment I would have to confront her. But, sadly, luck has never been my forte and inevitably, I end up waist to nose with Granny.

I was a meter away from her and I could see anger, frustration but also dissapointment. I had screwed up bringing a human (soldier, as if it couldn't get worse). I knew, for one, that she couldn't stand the very sight of a human being and the reason we had been coexisting so well was that she thought of me as her own daughter, or so she said. Nothing else. Nothing more.

-Didn't last time teach you any kind of lesson?, she asks, the anger in her eyes slowly fading away.

I then remember the biggest mistake of my stay here: I had felt pity for a beggar and brought him here, believing that we could be friends. It wasn't but three days later that he sold information about a hidden village in the area around Maikril, hosting a resistance fighter, a person not following the laws written by the emperor himself : me that is.