Charlotte, Beckett, Swanmere lives as her father's untrimmed hedge.
Merlot Rainbaum searches for a miracle cure to heal her mother, who is none other than the Queen of the Mermaids.
Railey Ferntoss, renown across the Western Sector as the Dragon Mas...
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Leaves rustled overhead, their yawning like a great, unfurling beast. The slight creaking beneath my seat added to this worrisome scene; will the branch break before I desire to leave? Flipping to the next page of my sketchpad, ink stains caught against my thumb, leaving traces on the wavy edges of the stack.
The only way to find out for sure would be to stay in this exact spot until it was the elm that had no choice but to crack.
It would be nice if someone else would crack for once.
I yawned, stretching my spine. Without a backrest, the series of bones automatically slouched. My shoulders automatically rounded, automatically tried to curl up to my pointy ears. Automatically tried to block out all the noise and the words that inevitably came with it.
Elmhurst Grand was the chief university for High Elves and those deemed worthy enough to mingle with them: A horde of Ice Elves moving in a pack, their quills displayed before them like weapons and their books as shields. A few spatters of Wood Elves, usually only seen dipping in and out of the manicured gardens, adding new mixes of seeds the maintenance crew tried to painstakingly remove.
No Dark Elves.
E.G. was a business college. By "business," it meant matters of the High Elven Courts and the 13 intricate rings of governance it all equated to. The future leaders of the Goddess's Femur studied at Elmhurst, their destinies already written on the Ancient Redwood's thousands of rings, each tremulous line of wood scrawled over in the boxy, runic lettering of their ancestors.
Well, ok, they weren't actually written down yet. News trickled into the Western Sector at a snail's pace. Those old fogies, who had nothing better to do but sit around waiting for the sun to die, recorded the story of the Elves. Not the Brownies, nor the Pixies, nor the Mermaids.
Just the Elves. Mostly the High Elves.
"Not that it matters," I muttered out loud to myself. Like a loon, high up in a tree, waiting for some innocent children to come by, so I could collect a traveler's toll of three gold ingots. Ah, well. Once a nutter, always a nutter. "It doesn't matter."
Each tip of my jaggedly long fingernails was covered in a smathering of ink. Ink-staining was still considered an esteemed medium, if a bit lacking in taste. Elves had a reputation to uphold, for goodness' sake. True art shouldn't be so...messy.
Drops of ink plopped onto the shadowed base of the tree. Ah, blazes. I'm just as bad as those trickster Wood Elves. Poor maintenance crew. However, the thought of a possible inconvenience to Elves just trying to do their jobs didn't deter me from continuing to rain black ink on the sparse patch of grass directly below.
My right arm got more than just a few drops, anyway. My holster was a bit crooked, where it sat snug around my bicep. Just a simple brown leather band that always chafed during Summer, but it allowed me to sit high up in the trees and not be bothered. Sitting in trees wasn't flat or steady, so a river of black always effused whichever arm was unlucky enough to hold my ink pot that day.
