[Lerune]: 6.Untitled.more randomness

In the soft glow of the campfire, Mindriel sat, looking through her pack. Jerrick looked around: the others were asleep at long last. Quietly, he made his way over to where Mindriel sat. For a moment, he just stood there, watching the light dance across her ebony hair and her luminous face. She removed a strip of leather from her bag and hooked one end over her left foot. She then stretched the leather taught and reached for the hand axe she kept at her hip.

With quick movements, she began to sharpen the axe, stopping in between swipes to blow across the blade softly, removing any small traces of the leather that might have dusted its surface. The unmistakable sound of metal sliding smartly across strong leather echoed though the camp, but was swallowed by the surrounding foliage. Though Mindriel made no attempts to be quiet, the forest seemed to swallow her noises and envelope her, keeping her safe from ears that would pick up the sound and seek her out as prey.

How different she seemed from the girl he had known, yet, much of the Mindriel he cherished still remained beneath the rigid exterior. As he watched her silently sharpen her blade, he thought to himself how wonderfully she seemed to fit in with her surroundings. Thinking back to her when they were younger, his Mindriel had always seemed like a flower, trying to blossom in the engulfing heat of the desert. Here, he could see that same flower as it grew and blossomed and strengthened in the untamed wilds. The land here was close to her heart: pure and uncontrollable…free.

“Are you going to stand there all night, or come sit with me,” she asked, turning toward Jerrick.

“How did you know I was here?”

“It’s what I do,” she replied with a shrug.

“I know,” he began, “there is much you do now that you didn’t before. Sometimes I have to keep that in mind. You are quite different now.”

“You change when you live alone in the woods. You learn how to survive, Jerrick. By all means possible,” she responded, as she sharpened her hand axe.

“Really no different than living on your own in the town, eh?” he smiled, “a different kind of wilderness and a different kind of survival, but we both seem to have mastered our elements.”

“True, the woods have always been where I belong…”she trailed off and slowly lowered her axe. Looking up at the stars, her tense face relaxed for a moment, and she began to speak absently, “…you remember how it was for me. They always told me I was different, I wasn’t good enough. They said my blood was bad, because of my mother. They said I was cruel and heartless, but it was really them. I always wanted to be invisible, so I came here, where invisibility is an art, and I found that the elven blood they mocked in me was nothing to be ashamed of.. That blood binds me to the woods here, and I found that I could be good enough…on my own.”

Jerrick looked at her face…time had truly changed her. He wondered for a moment if the Mindriel he knew was even inside her anymore.

“It wasn’t always so bad,” he began, “we had some good times.”

A smile played on her lips.

“Yes, we had some good times.”

“Remember the time we sold widow Pratt those wildberries we picked in the woods, and then stole the pies she made from them?”

“I remember you sold her the berries and you stole the pies…”

Jerrick pretended to think.

“Oh yeah,” he began, “that was me. Well, you were there for moral support.”

Mindriel laughed.

“Remember the time we cut Bree Castalle’s curls off when we found her napping by the weeping willow? She was so upset! It took years for her hair to get that long again.”

“I remember…” Mindriel said, her face softening a bit.

“We were always getting into trouble, or else we were scheming our way out of it, remember?”

“I forget…”

“Of course you do,” Jerrick laughed, “but all that was nothing compared to the time we let out all of the horses at the stables and then got paid to fix up all the stuff they broke as they stampeded through town.”

“You got paid, Jerrick, yes. I got blamed for the horses being let out, and it was your idea in the first place, remember?”

“Yeah, I know…but I never meant for it to go that way. I got old man Gorm back for saying that about you, though…I herded a bunch of wild rabbits into his crops, he lost half of them that year!”

“I remember that as well.”

“He was always so mean to you, he deserved it.”

Mindriel began sharpening her blade again. Her silence spoke volumes.

“Sorry, Min,” Jerrick began, “I forget that talking about this stuff bothers you. It’s just…well, we were always a team, you know…and then… Well, you left me, Min. You just left. I’ve wanted to talk to you and laugh with you for so long. I almost gave up on ever seeing you again. A lot of the people in town said you were dead. That you…well, that--”

“That I wasn’t strong enough to make it on my own out here?” Mindriel snapped.

“Something like that,” Jerrick trailed off, “I mean, you know how they all are, and how scared they are of the things they don’t know. They thought the elves would get you…like your Dad…”

“I’m sorry to disappoint them.”

“Ah, don’t be. I’m not disappointed. I’m glad I followed my visions and came looking for you.”

“Your visions…” Mindriel raised an eyebrow, “that is strange. You never had those before.”

“You never had those before,” Jerrick winked, looking downward, “see, we have both changed.”

Following his gaze, Mindriel realized he was looking at her axe and the leather strap. She narrowed her eyes in mock disgust. Jerrick laughed.

“You haven’t changed all that much, Jerrick, you are still absolutely impossible.”

“Why thank you, my dear, I aim to please.”

Mindriel rolled her eyes and tried not to smile. 

“Jerrick,” she began, “is there anywhere you don’t fit in?”

“I am sure there are some places,” he responded with a grin, but then growing serious, he continued, “Why would you ask that?”

“You didn’t really have it very hard back there in Sarchelle. You may have been an orphan, like me, but at least you fit in . You always flashed that smile and your little wink and got whatever you wanted. The city was your stage, and you played it well. I can see you still do,” she said, motioning to the camp, “you got Suri Velanor to head into the dark, dangerous wood and look for the freakish half-human. Impressive.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No, not really,” Mindriel retorted, “you always did have a way of making people do what you wanted.”

“I do not!”

“Oh, whatever, Jerrick!” she exclaimed, “I’m not completely out of touch. I remember all those little girls, fawning all over you. I’m sure after I left that is was a lot easier for you, because I wasn’t lurking in your shadow.”

“Hey, did I ever make you feel like you were in my shadow?” he asked, sounding defensive.

“You didn’t, but you never stopped the others, either.”

“How could I stop them?”

Mindriel fell silent.

“Hey, give me a little credit, Min,” Jerrick began softly, “I always put you first. I never cared about anyone else. You were the only one who was a real friend to me…the only one who ever looked at me and saw the real me, not my fake smile and cheap compliments.”

Still, she was silent.

“I can’t help it that it was easier for me…I always, always kept you right there with me, though. I never cared about what the others thought. Only you, you know that. It really hurt when you left. Especially when I wasn‘t invited…I would have gone with you.”

“Your place was there.” she spoke.

“No, it wasn’t. It was just easier for me to blend in.”

“I always hated that,” she stated.

“That I blended in?”

“That you didn’t have to try to blend in,” she turned toward him, “you talk about our childhood like it was all fun and games, Jerrick, but the truth is, it was rarely fun. You might have had fun, but I was the one in the corner that everyone tried to ignore, I was the bad omen. Don’t you remember that? Can’t you remember the year we had that drought and every single crop failed? You remember who they blamed it on? All because of my mother…all because I was different from them. And all these escapades you speak of -- nearly all of them ended the same way! I was blamed for the mishap and you were the savior who fixed it all. They made me your scapegoat.”

“Which was stupid. They were all stupid. I wasn’t talking about them anyway, I was talking about us. Come on, Min, some of us was fun.”

“Like Bree’s hair?”

“Exactly,” Jerrick smiled.

“Do you remember why we did that?”

“Yes…I remember…” Jerrick’s mind flashed to a time long ago: a time when kids were cruel.

“And you know what else I remember? I seem to remember that she had the biggest crush on you, no matter what ‘we’ did to her, right up until the day I left Sarchelle.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” he replied, “can I help it if I am so irresistible?”

Mindriel rolled her eyes.

“No, I suppose you couldn’t…and you wouldn’t have done so even if you could have.”

“That hurts, Min, really,” he grinned wickedly.

“I hate it when you call me Min,” she said flatly, returning to polishing her knife.

“I can’t believe are still upset that Bree Castalle always made fun of your ears,” he sighed.

Mindriel stopped.

“My ears?” she said quietly. “It was never just my ears. And it was never just Bree. It was all of them and all of me: I had pointy ears, I was too small, I was too pale. There wasn‘t anything about me that any of them didn‘t make fun of.”

Jerrick thought he saw a tear in the corner of her eye and knew he had gone too far.

“I didn’t,” he replied, his smile now gone, “listen, I’m sorry, Mindriel. I didn’t mean to--”

“Whatever,” she interrupted, unhooking her strap from her boot and flinging it into her bag. She then sheathed her axe and stood, tossing her bag over her shoulder and turning away, “you’ll never understand any of that, Jerrick, because it just isn’t who you are. It isn’t your fault, it is just that people in that place looked at you through a different lens that the one they used for me. Maybe if I hadn’t been a half-blood, I would have been treated the same way, but I wasn’t, I’m not and that will never change. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to scout the area a bit before bed.”

“Mindriel,” he said, standing.
She kept walking.

“Hey,” he began again, “I never made fun of you. Not your size, your complexion, or even your ears. I always thought, well…that they were beautiful. Like everything else about you. I loved the fact that you were part elf. I always thought it made you special. I still do…” he trailed off.

For a moment, she stopped, her heart fluttering with something she had never felt before. For a moment, she thought of turning back, sitting back down, and talking more with the only friend she had ever known. For a moment…but the moment soon passed, and she stepped into the precious wilderness, and let it hide her and her tears from Jerrick’s longing gaze.