Part 1 of Chapter 1

In order to get something on the table...  The text is missing some key points, but they will be added in the future.  Have patience :)

Chapter One

“We are an ancient race, a pillar of the cosmos, with gifts as old as the first spring...but our spring has become eternal, and our memory is brief.  History begins not more than a hundred years ago, and the years of wandering weave into and through even our most ancient legends.  No one senses the strangeness of this amnesia.  Perhaps they simply do not care to remember.  Or perhaps there occurred an event so profound that everything before it seemed worthless in comparison…”

Why are we down here, studying history in the dark?  The roots are strong, but they do not like to be disturbed.  They cannot recover well from it.

“Elm, child, are you listening to me?”

“Sir?”  Elm raised his head from where it had been leaning against the inner wood, staring fixedly at the grains that streamed down the dark corridor to seek water far below.  

“You must attend, sprite.  I do not have the time or the inclination to impart my wisdom to tree roots.”  Oak turned his lined face away from his pupil, and began to move slowly up the tunnel, extending his wings to counterbalance the stoop of his shoulders.  Elm moved to follow, protesting slightly, but without much hope.  

“Sir, I was attending, truly I was.  You were just suggesting that we faeries have forgotten our ancient past due to some striking but recent event.  But what was it, sir?”  

But Oak ignored his question, merely setting his face as they drew up a wider path to ground level, now climbing spiraling stairs rather than the sloped corridor.  Elm grew silent, sensing keenly his mentor’s disappointment.  But there was something more besides.

The deep roots groan as we leave them behind.

“Sir,” Elm looked up at the old faery rather desperately.  “I’m sorry.”  Oak looked back into the dark brown eyes, now gently pleading, and relented.  Lowering himself down onto a shaped step, he began his story…

“I must ask you, did you notice the inconsistency yourself, before I saw fit to mention it to you?  I have often suspected that there are more brains behind those bold eyes than most faeries ever see evidence of.”  Oak smiled slightly, taking the sting out of his words. 

Elm, sitting on a lower step, leaned forward slightly, looking up at his mentor. “I have wondered why, although we know that other races exist and live in community with each other, we have never tried to communicate with them.  I had hoped, perhaps, to travel among them in the future, but -” 

“You will have many responsibilities in the future as high priest and advisor to the King, which will leave little time for traveling.  It is the wisdom of the Elders that we do not interact with the other races, but keep ourselves independent and secure.  You do not have the right to change that law.”  Oak said firmly.  “And now I must pass on - those responsibilities which will weigh down your future are mine, for now.”

Elm lowered his head respectfully as the chief priest of Faeriland passed by, back down the stairs and into the darkness. He was thinking of the time when he had recognized the “inconsistency”, as Oak named it, without knowing what it was.  It was a thought that had come to him when he was perhaps six years old, sitting beside his new mentor at the front row of the Hall of Justice, and gazing into the convict’s black and bottomless eyes as the verdict was made…

“You, Lord Nightshade, have been found guilty of the murder of Briar Rose, esteemed advisor and friend to the King.  On the testimony of your own mentor is this guilt established.  You will henceforth be banished from faeriland, and should you ever choose to enter the Kingdom again, you will suffer death…”

Elm wandered out of memory and back into the familiar spiraling staircase of the ancient tree.  The day had worn on while the mentor and student lessoned together deep within the roots. 

They are still muttering - he is down moving among them.  I must ask to move our lessons, it is not fair to inflict pain on the tree with no reason.  But for now, it will not do much harm to let him be…

Elm pushed against the wall of the staircase, emerging onto a lower branch of the giant tree, and walking lightly along it to the ground.  The twilight cast strange shadows on the grove floor - arching stems of windflowers looked like grasping arms stretched out to entangle the faery’s feet, but Elm walked among them without fear.  There was no fear here, where there had been absolute peace for the last hundred years.  No disturbance more than bickering between unfriendly neighbors, no one to trade or war with, no vivid memories to arouse striving desire.  Only one convict in a hundred years, and he had been shown mercy.  

He shook his head lightly, clearing away the last vestiges of the earthy darkness that clung to his mind from the roots.   Faeries are primarily creatures of light and air, and even the tree dwellers prefer the breeze among the branches rather than the soil among the roots.  Elm filled his lungs with twilight air, allowing his wings to lift him in response.  Lithe brown arms raised, he grasped a branch far above the ground, and drew himself onto it, gazing over the castle gardens, to the building itself, flaming with homey fires and candles throughout.  

Here it is easy to see, and having seen, to worship.  That is the heart of this festival - simply taking the time to joy in the beauty around us.  Ah, is there any place as lovely as this?

Could it have been mercy to banish the convict?

The sudden doubt interjected within his pleasure shocked Elm, but he forced himself to put it away.  If he had no control over his own thoughts, then it was no wonder that Oak, the master of self discipline, was disgusted with his performance this day.  He did not even have Vetch’s company to distract him - tomorrow he would probably be of no use at all to his mentor.  

Elm sat up attentively on his branch.  He had seen someone striding up the approach to the castle gates - not a strange event, certainly, and yet, the figure was familiar. Without a sound, he leapt from the tree branch, wings speeding him in descent toward the road, where the silhouette was still barely visible.  Elm’s feet were already pounding the earth as his wings let him down, a final flap thrusting him against the traveler’s back, rolling both faeries to the ground in a bundle of wings and limbs.  They sprang apart, hurdled upright by tensed wings, and looking at each other for a moment, they laughed.  

Perhaps a beginning - at least an Introduction

        They are clever sprites, each in his own way.  Politically a cut above the rest, they also possess a superiority of mind which does not always accompany aristocracy.  They had met, perhaps, at one of the fabulous but forgettable court functions to which young faeries of a certain standing are sent.  Was it friendship at first sight?  No, but they shared the heady companionship of youth, and as the days fell away they were drawn together with the inexorable bonds of friendship.
Elm is the more memorable of the two.  It is his precocious spirit which instigates most of  the mischief and destruction that follows the path of their play.  With sandy brown hair and nut colored skin, he physically reflects the heritage of the tree faeries, dwellers in bark and shade.  But his direct eyes, dark brown with flecks of gold, prove him to be of noble lineage, descendant of the old and lordly elms.  What is seen by most as boldness in his youth, is understood by a few to be the habit of years of authority, passed down to this youngest generation of nobility.
If Elm was the perpetrator of mischief, then according to common perception, Vetch was his sidekick.  His true function, however, is more accurately that of an alter ego, a complementary nature to Elm.  Vetch was a dreamer, and generally a more cautious and humble faery.  He was one of the field lords, unimportant and outlandish, yet a child of the sun and sky, with the wheat gold hair, blue eyes, and light complexion to prove it.  He is sensitive rather than confident, though it is not peer pressure which leads him into Elm’s escapades, but rather a security in their friendship which frees Vetch to be as rowdy as a young sprite ought.  He is analytical, not unaware of his own faults of fear, emotional variance, and irrationality - but being so aware he is more likely to control those faults than the high-tempered Elm.  Thus many faeries who considered Elm to be incorrigible but clever, and Vetch as steady and calm, could not understand their dynamic camaraderie, when the reality of their relationship was exactly the opposite.

Bienvenue :)

     Well, there are not many excuses to begin a blog, but I think I have a pretty good one.  This train wreck is not my fault.  It is Jordan's fault, she guilt-tripped me into it.  So I am sorry if you are afflicted by my writing, but you ought to know beforehand whom to blame.  

     That said, you also ought to know that there will not be much organization in this blog.  I have not much organization in my brain, so you cannot expect more from a mere blog.  The main idea is to force me to actually write something out properly by giving me an imaginary audience, and a very real best friend breathing down my neck. 

     Hopefully this has sufficiently lowered your expectations.  Please feel free to comment, I may even deign to reply.  Please do not hate my characters - they are the product of an overwrought and rapidly diminishing brain.  Good luck.