Private Tales Jungle Sands

[Olyssa]

Olyssa nearly dropped the fish as she went to turn it.

Was the Winter Court truly so useless it had not been visible enough within the mortal realm that there were people who didn't know what they were? It was outrageous, not least because certain fae required people knowing about them to survive. She thought of the Little Folk and their gifts of milk from wise mothers and maids, the sustenance those gifts gave them. Without it they would fade and die or have to rely on the stronger fae like her and her sisters to keep them going.

Her lips pressed into a thin line and she carefully set the fish back on the spit.

"Faeries?" she tried to keep the incredulousness out of her voice. "You've never heard of Faeries or leprechauns or brownies or pixies? Not in stories?" she had moved back towards him slowly as though she were somehow... afraid of him, before sinking to her knees. "Kelpies, selkies, Little Folk?"

 

[Siraj]

Siraj blinked.

"No." She sounded almost...incredulous. As if she couldn't believe that her people were some sort of enigma. For a few seconds he felt a sort of guilt pang through his stomach, as though he had somehow offended her in some way.

They had many stories in the blight, many tales that they told one another. Most revolved around Menalus, his rise to power, how things had corrupted and changed within the Blightlands after he'd reached for his throne in Molthal.

"But." He offered. "I have been imprisoned for the last few years."

Siraj wondered if that would make her feel better. "I do not know...much."

Not beyond what his parents had taught him.

 

[Olyssa]

Olyssa looked heartbroken. Sad eyes wandered over his face for a long, stretched out pause but it was like she wasn't truly seeing him. Her thoughts were on the poor souls who would suffer under the Winter Courts failure. Eventually she blinked and came back to herself with a deep, painful sigh.

"The Fae are..." how did she explain? "We are some of... no... the oldest creatures in this world. We watched your kind crawl out of the seas, the elves out of the forest," her fingers brushed his hair back from his face with gentle fingers, though there seemed to be an odd threat to her touch. "We are magic itself. Granting your people wishes in return for gifts, changing tides of war, giving life itself," a soft sigh again as her finger curled about a lock of hair.

"Perhaps I should keep you here," she mused to herself. Her voice turned into a seductive whisper. "Would you like that, pet? Never to fear again, to be stronger and faster than other humans, a long life? I could help you get revenge on the man who did this to you and you could live in my gardens forever."

 

[Siraj]

He frowned for a moment, not quite sure how to react to the words. It was an offer, and there was temptation to it, yet...yet it did not feel right. Something in the back of his mind screamed at him, a voice that seemed almost disconnected. "No..."

Lips thinned for a moment.

"No man did this to me." His hurt was wrought by giants, by the hands of creatures that went far beyond what man could ever do. Menalus and his sons, the twisted abominations of souls that they were. "And..."

There was something entrancing about her words, something...tempting, yet he knew what he desired within his heart.

Siraj knew what he desired. "I would see them die by my own hands..."

The words were hard to speak, almost impossible.

"None others." Why did it feel like he was choking?

 

[Olyssa]

"Oh, it'll be by your own hands my sweet," Olyssa cooed softly, long fingers trailing over his smooth cheek in a tender caress. Like a mother would a child, like a collector would a prized gem. "But I can make your hands stronger, teach you how to use the magic that lives inside of you, I can help you become a hero of your people," every word dripped with honey as she drew him closer and closer. It was another dreadful thing, truly, that the boy didn't know about the fae or it might have helped to serve him in a scenario such as this.

She had not uttered a single word that wasn't true; she could make everything she had said come to pass. She could do far, far more in fact. The ugly truth was though that he would pay for it with his very soul. Olyssa would keep him like a collector might keep a butterfly; pinned by its precious wings inside of a glass cage. She could sense the power within him and see how - with her help - it could be a great thing. He would be a delicious thing to own.

"I'll give you twenty long years to live with them and then you come home to me here, to live for the rest of your life in luxury," her fingers curled under his chin to tilt his face up towards her. "Wouldn't that be nice, my darling?"

 

[Siraj]

It did sound nice.

Pleasant.

It wouldn't have been so bad. There were worse places in the world, more dangerous places. He had suffered through them so long, seen the horror of them. Trapped in a dungeon, tortured, broken over and over again for weeks on end.

That memory snapped into place.

The reminder of being stuck in a cage, strung up and with never a moment of free will. His eyes seemed to grow hollow, the subtle glow to them disappearing as he frowned and then slowly shook his head. He remembered.

He remembered being trapped. "My people are dead."

Never again.

"They don't need heroes." Nor did he want to be one. Slowly Siraj pulled himself up against the tree, hand coming up to grab her wrist and pull her hand away from her chin. "I will find my own path back."

Whether he ended a corpse upon it or not.

 

[Olyssa]

Olyssa let him pull her hand away and sighed sadly, or was it happily? It was hard to tell with a woman who could twist her appearance and voice to anything and everything a person wanted to see or hear. She gave his hair one last stroke and then she stood up and went back to the fish as though nothing had happened. Fae might have been devious, evil even in some cases, but they could never force a person to do something against their will.

"My offer is open for two years, little one. If you change your mind you need only call me, I will hear you," she pulled the fish off the flame and then set it down on a large leaf that acted as a plate. Once it was served she carried it over to him and offered it.

"My name is Olyssa."

 

[Siraj]

For some reason he found himself weary of taking anything from her now, that voice...that odd offer ringing within his ears. Lips thinned for a moment, but he thought it alright.

Well, perhaps just his stomach did. "I am Siraj."

That was the name he remembered, though he did not know if it was the right one anymore. He had a vague memory of his mother calling him that, a haze of thought that was an older woman addressing him by that name.

It felt far though.

With a weak hand he reached out, grabbing the fish and peeling a bit of it off as he began to eat. He tried not to consume it voraciously, holding himself back from just eating the thing whole.

 

[Olyssa]

Her lips twitched at the corners in amusement.

"Don't stand on ceremony, eat, I can get more," and she was off back to the lake before he could protest. It was a good thing that his appetite was returning. When a human was starved for a long time it was often the case their appetite was too slow at returning that they grew sicker and died. Olyssa liked to pride herself on the care of all creatures and so to see him progressing so well was a matter of pride for her.

Three more fish went on the fire and the fae sat back down opposite the boy with her wings spread out to either side of her so that they glittered in the sun.

"Who did this to you if not a man?"

 

[Siraj]

Siraj continued to eat, filling his belly with as much as he could. There was a greed to the way that he scarfed down the meal.

It was clear that he had not eaten in some time, and the manner in which he ate spoke of a guardedness. He had spent the last two years in prison, a dungeon. Food had been scarce and meals had often been fought over by other prisoners.

The boy was nearly rabid.

By the time he actually took a second to answer her question the fish he had been handed was naught but bone. Even the eyes were gone. "Giant's."

Half-Giants more truthfully.

"The Son's of Menalus." With their sorcery, their cruelty, and their deals of death.

 

[Olyssa]

The faerie chewed over his words thoughtfully and then spat to the side.

"Children of clay," an ancient history that the boy likely had no idea of but the fae remembered, the fae remembered all. She stood up in a flurry of wing and skirt to fetch him two more fishes. When she brought them back she all but dumped them in his lap and then rested her cheek in her palm.

"And they chose you to torture... why?" It befuddled the mind why giants did anything in truth to her but perhaps she could learn, she was not an arrogant being who would assume no matter how many years past she couldn't do so.

 

[Siraj]

"Fire." He corrected. "Not clay."

His eyes seemed to go somewhat hazy, the yellow light in them dimming for a moment as he remembered the torture that he had suffered through. Lips thinned, but he did not speak again until a full breath entered his lungs.

He hesitated a moment. "My people are....were nomads."

Something Menalus detested. He preferred the settled, those easy to control and manipulate.

"At first I thought he wished knowledge of our travels. The Oases we knew of in the blight." Lips thinned."I believe now I was wrong."

His hand raised. "It was this."

Siraj's fingers curled, and almost preternaturally the sand beneath their feet began to shift, move. The earth drew itself up in the air, small wisps of it floating through the air.

 

[Olyssa]

Olyssa slapped the boys hand, hopefully disrupting the magic, with a scowl that would suit a teacher telling off a troublesome child.

"What part of Burnout did you not understand, boy?" The more he used his gifts the longer it would take him to heal and he already had a way to go. Her lips pressed into a thin line and her brows pulled down into a disapproving scowl. "You are not to use your magic until you are better. I didn't waste my energy healing you for you to kill yourself," a tut and then she settled herself back down with a bit more decorum, like a bird smoothing out its feathers.

"You really do not know the fundamentals of being a elemental?"

 

[Siraj]

The sand fell, and his shoulders shrugged. "No."

Siraj felt little pain now. The smack on his hand was hardly there, just a distant feeling that belonged to somebody else with the same body. He could not 'ignore' it, but he had learned to dissociate from such things long ago.

It had been the only way for him to survive.

"I was imprisoned." He reminded her. "They did not care to teach, only break and cut."

Siraj frowned for a moment. "I did not even know of...this."

He gestured towards the sands.

"Until I used it to escape." Desperation had claimed him, and the memories of that were still fuzzy.

 

[Olyssa]

Magic for the fae was a core part of their very being and thus it was often hard for them to understand how people could live without knowing they possessed some ability or other. She stared at Siraj as though he had told her he had forgotten how to walk and then shook her head. Dark green strands of hair shook and slid across her shoulders disturbing the multitude of feathers, berries and pinecones that decorated her braids.

In an old language she muttered something under her breath about mortals.

"You have learnt the greatest lesson the hard way, child. When you use magic you use energy, like you would use when running or fighting. Burnout happens when you use more magic than you have energy to power it. You're lucky you didn't kill yourself using the amount you did in the state you were in but it sounds like it was an instinctive thing."

 

[Siraj]

Siraj nodded his head slowly in confirmation.

He understood the lesson well, he doubted that he would ever be able to forget it. Some of the pain still seemed to ache within his very veins, a feeling of tiredness that clung to him worse than it had when they had forced him not to sleep. She said it would pass, though in that moment it seemed an impossibility.

"I will learn more." Siraj said, and then immediately added as he remembered her offer. "On my own path."

He did not quite understand what she was, what her offer meant...but something told him not to trust it. Bargains were dangerous things at the best of time, even more so if you did not trust the one offering it.

His father had always said that, insisted on it.

Knowing who you were dealing with was an essential thing in the Blightlands. Trust was in short supply when anyone and everyone could be a spy of Menalus. Even your own families were suspect at time, though Siraj of course did not know this.

Did not know the whole truth. "This world is far more than I thought it would be."

 

[Olyssa]

Olyssa couldn't help the little smile at his hurried correction; he was learning. Such a shame really, he would be such a pretty addition to the menagerie.

"You have barely covered an inch of it," the faerie snorted softly. Siraj was going to be in for quite the shock the further on in his journey he went if he already thought he had travelled far. The great cities of the West were wonders in their own rights; brick forests instead of wooden like this one here. The types of people who wandered the earth too were a spectacle in themselves. Arethil was never the same twice when she travelled, though she supposed that might be more to do with the fact she travelled once or twice a century.

"But you should not shun those who could teach you," Olyssa sniffed and stood to go fetch the last of the roasted fish; the boy had eaten the others as quickly as the first. She sat back down and handed it over. "When you are better you will learn a little before leaving. There is no point in me tending to you for you to go get yourself killed a week later."

 

[Siraj]

He frowned a moment, not saying yes or no. Siraj figured that if he said nothing he at least was not actively choosing some sort of bargain.

A technicality perhaps, but perhaps one that would work? In truth he had absolutely no idea, no clue how any of this world worked. For all he knew he had made a mistake, though he sensed that his decision had at least been the correct one.

At least he hoped so. "I know enough to survive."

He said with a frown.

"They will not find me again." He was confident in that. Menalus might have ruled the Blightlands, controlled it, but he did not know it like those who had lived there for generations.

"Nor do I plan to run straight to their arms." Siraj said with a frown. "I know I cannot kill them."

Yet.

 

[Olyssa]

Clever, clever little mouse.

The avoidance of her offer meant he neither disrespected her nor agreed to stay. She wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or proud of him but either way she went on smoothly with the topic of conversation as though he hadn't won a tiny game.

"It's not just enemies from home you need to watch out for, child," she sighed and looked over to the bear with his head on his giant paws. She reached out and stroked through his fur in slow, gentle movements though her eyes were on the stitching atop his skull. "There will be dangers every where you go - from animals and plants to people, a lot will try and use you for what you have and even more will resent you for it," she nodded to herself at her own handwork then dropped her hand back into her lap and turned her sharp icy eyes to him.

"You will not be able to truly rest once you leave here."

 

[Siraj]

"I do not doubt this." Not that he would rest well here either.

She saved his life, but it was very clear that she had some sort of motive he did not quite understand. There was something at work here, in this place. Siraj could not have said what it was, why it was happening, but he recognized it.

The words were honey'd they were sweet and tempting, but they were no different than those that the Son's of Menalus had offered him in that dungeon. "I will take the time to recover."

He insisted.

"But I cannot be a plague here." For that was what he was, in the end.

 

[Olyssa]

There was something slightly off about her smile this time but she remained pleasant enough.

"As you--," the bear sat up suddenly and Olyssa's head snapped around in the same direction the animal stared. Her pointed ears twitched as though hearing something far too quiet for human ears and then she abruptly stood. The creature was growling but she put a hand on the thick ruff of his coat and he quietened, leaning in to her touch as though he craved it. As for the faerie herself she barely paid mind to either of them and in an absentminded way she excused herself.

"Gar-ak-ah will stay with you," she motioned to the bear, one foot beyond the little glade already. With one last glance back to them she shrugged in an apologetic manner and then disappeared into the undergrowth. The Grugila stared after her for a moment or two then swung his giant head back to look at the boy and huffed.