Snakes and Lattes (Jurdan mortal world au)

Elfhame (Part 3): Faith, Trust and Moth Dust

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We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

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𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐜

Fear. Hatred. Fear again. Both were preferable to the mask of porcelain docility Taryn finally settled on.

Madoc watched his daughter lower herself into a curtsey, affording him brief respite from being the subject of her odd gaze. It hurt to be looked at that way. By a daughter. By this daughter. Little Taryn, first of her sisters to forgive him, last to remain in the kingdom he had won for her.

'My Lord.'

Mere months had passed since last he visited. Now he was lord rather than father?

'Rise,' he bid gently.

They each possessed conflicting concepts of time. He had to remember that. She was young enough to still mark her birthdays while he had lost track of his own years entirely. Some days he sensed his years, others had them hurtling by without his noticing. To see time fly, he need only cast his gaze across the waves toward the mortal lands where millions of new lights twinkled over hills that had only yesterday been wild. But it only felt like yesterday.

Taryn rose from her curtsey without lifting her eyes. She stared at the ground as though she hoped it might swallow and spit her out in another realm. Her children scattered off indoors. Madoc dismissed his retinue. Father and daughter stood in a silence taut as a bowstring.

'I wasn't expecting you so close to morning.' Taryn's eyes dipped to her gown as she spoke. She seemed surprised to find herself in it. 'I'm sorry to have received you out here, in this state.'

Indeed, her sleeves were comically unfit for the activity Madoc had interrupted. Tree felling? At such a bitter predawn hour? The juxtaposition of the dress and the hatchet did not perplex him so much as the way in which she held the tool. Her knuckles were bone white around the handle.

'Allow me.' He offered his open hands to take the hatchet, suddenly conscious of the way his claws protruded toward her.

Ten tiny daggers.

Slowly, Taryn began to offer up the tool. Madoc took the handle, and that was where the exchange abruptly halted. The girl would not let the thing go.

That was when he noticed the swell of a bruise blooming along one row of her knuckles. Evidence of a recently-dealt punch. Good. Meek as she was, he was glad to know there was still some fight left in her. Fire, he called it. He'd only ever known it to burn so brightly in her twin-you don't forget a blaze like that.

It was all he could ever hope for in a daughter.

'I hope the fool on the receiving end of this was deserving,' he said, running a thumb along the girl's bruised knuckles, allowing pride to warm his tone. 'I hope you split his lip.'

'And knocked the prick out cold.'

The corners of her mouth betrayed her in a smile. It disappeared as quickly as it came. Neither saw a need to utter the victim's name; the "prick" she punched. It would have been wasted breath.