Written: 7/27/23
Word Count: 1,325
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.
"Haaaaaa," I sighed, turning yet another page without bothering to wait for the previous one to dry first. What was the point, anyway? They were all failures. "This is pointless. Pointless. I haven't been able to do a proper seashell that doesn't look like a damn monster in over a year. Agh, I just can't." I finished with a slap, pushing my sketchpad off my lap and letting its pages ruffle through the open air, their sides painted black and curled from all the times I'd been out staining in the rain.
It landed right on the puddle of ink peeking through the grass with a guilt-inducing thud.
"Yew—naga!"
Pushing a leafy branch out of my immediate sight, I peered down to the base of the elm, wondering if I'd lost it enough for my sketchpad to start talking to me. If I really had crossed that line, why did a pad of paper sound like an Elf-Ham? One of those fellas who walked around with shining teeth, loudly proclaiming their family's status, knowing all the elvas would flock to them. The ones who tried to overdose on spirits and were probably high on Elfsbane at all times. Especially during finals, if the sounds of near-retching echoing through the quiet classrooms had any lesson to give.
I poured my heart and soul—well, not much of either, really, but still, how could you do this to me, sketchpad? I thought we were friends!
Friends wouldn't throw their friend out of a tree to crash-land on the ground.
"Ugh!" I placed those ink-stained hands straight on my brow, a pulse resounding at my temples, its beat-beat-beat insistent, desperate.
"Uh, Beckett?" The Elf-Ham was back.
I sighed again, this one choked with the beginning tremble of tears. "What?" I asked my sketchpad, snottily. "What the hell do you want, sketchbook?"
"Sketch...book?" The Elf-Ham's tone took on the overly-ridiculous coloring of a Ham in the midst of confusion. The moment a pretty girl turned them down. The moment a professor close to their parents gave them a brutally-honest grade.
Something crunched beneath my sight, my ears twitching in instant alarm. Skitters shivered down my spine, those hell-wrathed, elven instincts kicking in of their own accord. My hearing adjusted outward, extending way, way too far. My head pounded harder as more Elf-Hams filtered into my ears, frolicking through the fields over a game of Pickleven.
I swallowed, nervously, even as my vision dimmed and my pounding head warned me implosion was imminent. Just how many Elf-Hams were on campus grounds today? We've been infiltrated by the worst dates an elf could ask for, all just roaming like little fireball traps out on the fluffy fields of Elmhurst!
Quick, someone, grab an elva with an actual brain to defeat them! Just start talking about the answers to our latest Theology test! They'll dissipate like webs under a torrential downpour!
"Beckett...Swanmere. Uh, you...good?"
Quiet, reinforced breaths resounded down my spine. A bit raspy, a bit hollow. Deeper. Go deeper. Straining my stomach to fill up with extra air, I let it stay inside of me. Forced it, rather. Once I could breathe evenly, I condensed my hearing range, dialing it closer, closer, closer. It was like dismissing the pointed stares as I walked through the hallways. Toss off each one like a stuck ring, then fling it right back at them. The mental walls inside my mind could only be reinforced by this violent series of images.
It was the exact opposite of what any elvancy teacher would tell you.
Embracing the wind and all that sounded nice, but when I needed to block everything out, right now, before my head actually imploded, there was no time to make friends with the squirrels and accept their noises in a catalog to be stored inside my soul. Please.
"Who..." I wet my lips, my tongue lagging more behind than I'd like, "...are you?"
"I'm Vincent," Vincent said, like that was all the information that was needed. He was Vincent, so of course I would realize which Vincent was here to see me and why.
I rolled my eyes, the action forcing a sharp spike of pain behind them. No, not my vision! Don't enhance my vision, you stupid instincts!
"What do you want?" I prompted the Elf-Ham, face still covered by my inky hands.
"Uhh..." Vincent floundered, as if he'd forgotten why he'd walked halfway off campus to a secluded, dying tree surrounded by nothing but livelier trees with healthier leaves. Not the only one with graying bark, the leaves leached of almost all colors, like this one. "The Headmaster wants to see you."