Prologue: A Story

flights fancies and nightmares prologue. in which a story is told.

 

Prologue: A Story

 

The Riverwood, 13 A.P.

 

“Mother,” the young girl whined over the crunching autumn leaves beneath her. “What is the point of this? It only makes my feet hurt, and we haven’t seen a single rabbit! Besides,” the sullen girl finished, “I want to play with Gryphon.” A cool breeze caressed her cheeks and sent the earthy smell of the forest up her nostrils.

The woman walking next to the girl frowned. “The point of this, dearest, is to better your tracking and hunting skills, just in case you ever end up on your own. Had you not been complaining this entire time, you might have seen several rabbits and their trails.” The older woman paused to let the child absorb the constructive criticism. In truth, the older woman didn’t seem very old at all; she had a youthful spring in her step and a strong, young body. Her eyes, though, spoke of weary winters.

      “The reason we are out here is so that you can learn the basic living skills you will need later in life when I am no longer with you. I took you out this late in the season because I know there are fewer tracks—you have to work harder.”

      “But you’ll always be with me, Mother,” the girl said.

      Smiling down upon her daughter’s head, the woman nodded slowly. “So I shall.” Then she adopted a more airy tone. “It’s also very scenic at this time of the year, with all the red and orange and gold. It is quite lovely, really. But we should be getting back home, now. It will be dark soon, and the Riverwood is not as safe in the dark.”

      A sigh of relief escaped the young woman’s daughter, sending a large puff of mist into the air. The girl looked around her, trying to appreciate the scenery, but she kept limping; they had been walking for many hours.

      Noticing the girl’s dramatic attempts at exaggeration, the old-young woman asked, “Would you care to hear a tale?” The child nodded emphatically, her limp becoming suddenly less pronounced. If she heard her mother’s amusement, she gave no notice.

      The young woman always had a story to tell the village youth; sometimes it had monsters and draken killed by heroes, or about loathsome elves destroying villages until a great king chased them away. Some of the other mothers thought the stories too violent, but somehow the same children were waiting every time she went to market in West Village. She was famous for her stories, and was affectionately known as the Village Bard.

      The older woman chuckled. “Very well. I will tell you of –” she hesitated for a moment, thinking, and then artfully plucked a story from the vast library in her mind (for it suited the length of the walk) –“a great battle during the Fifth War of the Races. Many call it The Battle of the Sun and Moon.” And she began.

      “Humans have never gotten along with the elves, have we? Those pointy-eared, long-living creatures?” Her daughter shook her head vehemently, nose scrunched in disgust. “Several times, that enmity reached a breaking point and erupted, causing devastating wars. The most recent of these was the Fifth War. It started about seventeen years ago, and lasted for about four. One day, during perhaps the most important battle of the entire war, the leaders of both races met each other and fought in a duel.”

The woman’s voice dropped to a mysterious murmur. “There was a unique trait that both leaders’ swords bore, distinguishing them from any ordinary soldier’s sword. Both had a pure white band just under the hilt, the mark of a Swordmaster. But the second marks were rarer. The human woman—surprising that was, a woman in charge of a human army—had a sun, the mark of the god Solanis, engraved on the pommel and the blade. The elf had a waxing crescent moon, the symbol of the goddess Lunaria—Solanis’ sister, as other stories go—marked in those same places. That is how the battle got its name.”

The woman lowered her voice, imparting to her daughter the awe she would have felt were she actually present at the battle. “The two leaders wove an intricate dance across the battlefield unhindered, for all of the soldiers, elf and human alike, had stopped fighting. Instead, they watched the two Swordmasters. The two fought for nigh an entire day without stopping for food or rest. Something kept the fighters going.”

“What? What was it?” the girl interrupted, mystified.

The older woman’s brow furrowed. “Nobody knows,” she said thoughtfully. “Or, no one has told anyone. Even the fighters wondered at their newfound endurance. Shall I continue?”

“Yes! Yes, please!” the child said eagerly. So, with a tolerant smile, the woman continued.

“On and on the two fought. So well did they fight that neither received a scratch, though both were hard pressed by the opponent. The human met the elfin man’s wiry strength with speed, and each had his or her own deadly grace. She moved like a calculating cat, while he slithered like a sly snake. At last, the woman made a final attack. She feigned a feint to her left, slapped the elf’s sword wide, and quickly followed through with a punch square on the elf’s nose. He dropped like a sack of grain. Then she picked up his sword and pointed both blades at his throat before he could scramble back to his feet.”

The older woman paused for a long moment to add to the dramatic effect. For a moment, the only sound was that of the crunching leaves under the pair’s feet as the girl waited tensely for her mother to finish.

“The soldiers who had formed a circle and had set aside their differences to talk about the match’s outcome suddenly fell silent. Somehow, they felt that this battle was not for them. They lifted no finger for either fighter.

“Then, the young woman, no more than twenty summers, turned to the elf. He looked about the same age, but he was probably several centuries older. The woman spoke. ‘I assume by the mark on your blade you lead the elfin militia. Your skill with it confirms that. As you are in little position to compromise, I shall offer you a treaty and if you value your life, you will sit quietly and listen. You and all of your elves will leave human land and stop pillaging our villages in the Borderlands. We will then have no reason to raid your land and therefore shall not do so. What say you?’

“The elf had been quiet during the woman’s small speech, and when she finished, he sighed and said, ‘By the Moon and the Sun, I swear that I shall order all elves off of human lands. Unless there is sufficient reason to return.’ The human woman gave her oath in turn: ‘By the Sun and the Moon, the humans will not attack elfin land unless our lives are threatened first.’ To this day, we call that agreement The Pact.

“As the woman let the elf get up, she saw on a long finger a ring, a ring she knew signified high royalty. He was an elfin king. The woman said nothing though, except to command the human soldiers to leave, that the war was over. When her men were ready to leave, the woman handed the Moon sword back to the king and rode back.” The woman finally stopped talking and looked down at the girl.

Again, the crunching of dry leaves and twigs was all that broke the silence.

“So she just let the king go?” the girl asked, perplexed.

“Yes. She showed him mercy,” the woman answered.

The girl kept walking, all traces of her exaggerated limp gone, and her features darkened in thought. Her eyes widened when a peculiar thought occurred to her.

“Mother, what was the woman’s name?” she asked.

The older woman hesitated for a moment, and then answered, “Her name was Eyrie.”

Satisfied, the girl quickened her pace and ran ahead; home was just in sight. “I bet I will beat you home, mother!” she laughed.

Behind her, the woman laughed and sprinted ahead, easily catching up and passing the girl. When the girl followed her mother inside the house, she collapsed into a straight-backed wooden chair at their small wooden table, gawking at her mother. The woman was leaning against the wall near the fireplace, not even breathing hard.

“That’s one bet lost, dearest. It seems as though you’ve got something else to learn,” the woman chuckled.

 

#

 

 

 

Solanis looked down upon a woman and her daughter, a world away. He yawned, his great fanged jaws spreading wide, and he stretched, his great leathery wings creaking with stiffness. “She will do,” his majestic “voice” rumbled.

“Will she truly?” Lunaria thought to her brother as she appeared from the shadows. Where Solanis’s thoughts were forceful, demanding attention, Lunaria’s were musical and soft, sliding through the mind gently. There was a similar difference in their scales. Solanis’s were a vibrant gold streaked with all shades of red and orange, and they reflected regally. Lunaria’s scales were silver, streaked with the blues and purples of the night, shining subtly; they appeared to have a glow all their own.

“Do you really think she can stand against our brother? You know he is persuasive,” Lunaria said.

“She will go well with the elf you have chosen. Perhaps together they can. But if they cannot stand against Lusifain, no one can.”

The two dragons looked thoughtfully on the mother and her daughter.

 

Reviews

[Monsieur L]

I must admit it, I was hooked the entire time and certainly loved it. I think the woman was a great storyteller, and the author of this piece an ever greater one... I would recommend to look out for placement of punctuation, and be careful with quotation marks. I am very fond of the interruptions and inflections the woman makes to emphisize her story, but there are times when the lack of ["..."] confuses the reader. Feel free to go forth and back in the line of story within a story, but make sure you differentiate them. There is also a line where you mention the marks in the swords, and forgot a possessive apostrophe. Here --

"There was a unique trait that both leader[']s swords bore that distinguished them from any ordinary soldier's sword."

Awkward? I think it is original and you will get many different appreciations of your work, but it is definitely a great story to tell, and you have found an amazing way of telling it. One thing to consider, though, is what some call character's motivation; the reasons a character has to do what (s)he does. We know that the pair is out there because the lady wants her daughter to learn basic living skills should she ever be on her own, and it's understandable, but does the woman by any chance feel her end is near? Is that her only motivation or is there something else? And what motivates her to tell that specific story to her child at that very moment? Being the storyteller she is, I am sure she knows many more stories -- a storyteller has always a reason to throw in a certain story, then why did she choose that very story? By the end, when she tells her daughter that the human woman showed the king mercy, I thought she had chosen that story to teach her daughter of that value, but is that so? I mean, if the girl does find a rabbit, should she be merciful as well?

Forced? I would say work a bit more on he kid's reactions to her mom's story... Is she really excited about the story or she is just trying to be nice to her mom and accepts to hear the story? She is the daughter, rihgt? So she knows that is what her mom does best, then, how fond is she of her mom's stories?

Natural? The end makes clear that the stories told by the mother certainly did happen, at some point... the only question is, how does she know them? Or , is it even important to know how she learnt them?

The ending was great; it leaves the reader wondering what is next and wanting more, and the descriptions all throughout the text were vivid. The reader is practically teleported and held captive in the world of these two...

Keep up the good job,

aLejanDro

[Chris]

I enjoyed the chapter; it definitely got me hooked onto the story. There really isn't much for me to say since Monsieur L has pretty much covered it all. However, there was one thing I noticed:

"...and said, "By the Moon and the Sun, I swear that I shall order all elves of off human lands."

I'm not sure if I'm somehow reading it wrong, and if I am, feel free to ignore this, but I don't think you need the of.