Private Tales The Lost Princess and The Exiled Prince

[Arun]

Magic was a wondrous thing.

Arun had his own talents, though not many of them lay with the elements. His father had always rebuked him for that, expecting his first born son to master everything the Falwood had to offer.

That was how he'd learned to make this.

As soon as Maeve pulled on the leaf the tub seemed to create an odd shimmer, then seconds later it began to fill with steaming hot water directly from the bottom. "Magic."

He said waving his fingers, trying not to laugh at the expression on her face.

Arun knew how simple Humans could be, a little bit of magic was enough to blow most of their minds.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve had launched herself back from the tub as it began to fill with water, her eyes round. She leaned down and ran her fingers through the water to test the temperature then stepped back again and looked at it with suspicion. She had turned with him to ask how it worked when he had wiggled his fingers at her like she were some sort of child. Her lips pressed into a thin line and her eyes narrowed when the wind suddenly rushed around him in a storm, almost threatening to push him off the porch.

When it died off in a pattering of laughter she waggled her own fingers at him.

"Magic."

 

[Arun]

Arun steadied himself on the railing, foot falling heavily as he looked at her with a smirk.

Not human. At least not entirely. He had already guessed that much given the sheen on her skin, the beauty that held to her, but it was always good to confirm it. A smile touched his lips, and he turned away from her.

A wave of his hand was all he offered. "I'll leave you to it."

The girl had been tortured, worked, and who knew what else. He could not imagine that she would want someone staring at her while she took a bath.

"Shout if you need anything." Arun told her as he stepped back into his cabin.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve was relieved he had taken his leave himself but she still waited a few moments to ensure he was inside before she began peeling off the rags they had given her to wear. The hot water stung every inch of her but it was the good sort of pain. She could feel the grime coming off of her and after a while her muscles loosened too and she sunk further into the water with a sigh.

She must have drifted off at some point because when she woke the water was cool if not unpleasant still. Mae rubbed at her eyes and then went to get out before freezing. She had forgotten to ask for a towel. Slowly she lowered herself back down into the tub and then chewed on her lip before cursing.

"A-Arun?" the wind carried her voice for her. "Do you have a towel?"

 

[Arun]

Arun had been reading a book when he heard Maeve call out, his expression shifting for a second as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

He'd forgotten what it was like to have another person around. "Coming."

The Elf said as he slowly closed his book, marked with a leave, and then place it down onto the table in front of him. A second later he walked over towards his bedroom, retrieving a large tower that probably could have covered Maeve twice over.

He then stepped outside onto the porch, opening the towel up besides the bath tub before deliberately closing his eyes and looking away.

Some things his father had raised him with had stuck.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve was practically under the water when he came out and didn't move until she was quite certain he wasn't going to look. She pushed herself out of the bath tub with a wince and then quickly wrapped the towel around herself. It did in fact engulf her thrice over and even pooled on the floor to the point she had to lift it up like it were a dress in order to walk.

"Thank you," she shuffled back from him so that there was space once more between them and then glanced between him and the door back into the cabin quietly, waiting for him to move before she did.

 

[Arun]

She was a nervous thing, but he supposed that barbarity did that thing to a persons mind.

He wondered briefly if his brothers had fared the same way after their torture a the hands of the Anirians. A frown touched his face for a brief moment as he remembered those days, and then he slowly shook his head as he dismissed the thought.

"Would you like something to eat?" Arun asked as he turned around and headed back towards the doorway of the cabin.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve waited exactly until he was five paces in front of her before she followed, the wind drying off her wet footprints as she went. The warmth of the cabin was much appreciated and she shut the door quietly behind her once she was inside, shivering slightly.

"No."

Her stomach growled noisily in protest and she pressed her lips into a thin line. He hadn't poisoned her tea so maybe the food would be ok. Her hands were under the towel and she raised a bit of the towel to rub a drip off water off her nose.

"Maybe something small..."

 

[Arun]

"There is a fire there." He pointed to a hearth in the corner of the room.

A flame flickered within it, though oddly enough there was no wood inside of it nor any sort of coal. It seemed the fire simply danced on it's own, moving and weaving as though it were drawn to the top of the stove by nothing at all.

"I will make you some soup." Arun told her. "It will be easier for you to keep down."

Kindness, as it turned out, was proving easier than he had thought it was.

Could it be that he had actually missed talking to another living being? The idea seemed somewhat ludicrous to him, but...well he hadn't thrown her out of his house yet and that was something to be said.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve glanced over to where the fire was before back to him, measuring her choices, before she slowly tip-toed her way over to it and sat down in front of it in a bundle of thick wool. She sighed as the heat began to quickly seep into her bones and inched a little closer. The flames made her red hair seem to come truly to life especially now that it was clean and threw the blue tribal markings on her face into sharp relief.

"Is that where we are then... the Fal...wood?" she said it slowly, trying to remember what exactly he had said. The maps she had seen before she had left her isles had not included much beyond the seas aside from a few rough markings that had been added by a drunken adventurer several hundred years ago. Liath had been the last to leave and he had never returned.

 

[Arun]

As Arun set about cooking, Maeve warmed herself by the fire. The Elf glanced back at her a few times, noting the marks on he face seeming to give off a radiance within the flame.

What an interesting creature.

"Yes." He told her simple. "On the outskirts near the Cortosi Sea, but still the Falwood proper."

Where humans generally did not dare to tread. "Where are you from?"

She said that she'd been tricked, but...that could mean any one of a hundred things. Kidnapping wasn't exactly uncommon among the more savage races, something that he'd learned during the last War with the race of man.

Maeve must have come from far away to not even know where she was.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve merely blinked at him as if the words meant nothing: which they did not. Her people had different names for the sea she had crossed and she wouldn't known it was one and the same until she saw it for herself. His question caused her to frown as she tried to think of the answer.

"I do not know if it exists to you," she had been able to see it from Liaths but on the edge of the land faintly like a smudge but that was only because she possessed the Sight. "It is called many things in my language but the translation is usually The Isle in your tongue. The tribe I come from is the Ilcinki," she turned her gaze away from his and looked at the fire instead. She seemed to be debating something in her mind before she spoke again.

"I fled my home and took a boat and ended up here. I found my grandfather here but then we were separated and..." she pulled the towel about herself a little tighter.

 

[Arun]

Fascinating.

Arethil was big, and his people had mapped much of it over the millenoia, but there were always corners that had yet to be explored. If he had not been tied to the Falwood he thought he would have made a decent explorer.

"I see." Arun said as he stirred the soup, frowning for a brief moment.

He presumed that she had been captured aboard a ship, but it seemed that she'd already arrived at her destination. It made sense he supposed, though how the tribals had gotten her was another question.

"Do you remember the place you met your grandfather?" He asked. "What it looked like there."

He pulled a wooden bowl free from one of the cubbards.

 

[Maeve]

"Yes," there was a warmth to her tone like a sudden summer breeze as she answered him. Even though she didn't look across there was a smile that flirted with her lips and her eyes danced with something other than fear for the first time since she had woken. Liath's hut was like home already to her, far more than the palace back home where she would have spent her life trapped in a marriage to a creature who owned her soul.

"It was along the coast, I would recognise the area if we found it again. From there I would be able to show you where I met the elf who attacked me," she subconsciously rubbed her knee where the woman had shattered the bone with an arrow with a nasty rock head designed to disable their prey. She pondered for a moment to think if there was anything she remembered strongly that might make it stand out but everything had been odd to her, everything new. She didn't know what grew specifically there and not elsewhere.

"There were strange purple flowers with yellow dots he said not to touch, that grew nearby."

 

[Arun]

Oh. Well that was a helpful little detail. There were many flowers in the Falwood, some deadly, others not. The one she described however was more than familiar to him. It's stem could be used as an anti-dote to many different poisons, though the flower was as deadly as could be.

To humans at least. "Excellent."

Arun said as he ladled some of the soup into the bowl he'd taken out, making sure not to spill any as he walked over towards where Maeve was sitting.

He offered the bowl to her, holding out a spoon in his other hand.

"Then I will offer a new bargain." Arun began. "I will take you back there, or as close as I can. Then you show me."

Simple.

 

[Maeve]

It took the strength of her will not to move backwards as he approached her. When he came to a stop her eyes flicked from the food to his face and back to the food before slowly reaching out and taking the offered bowl and spoon, careful to avoid in direct contact with his skin. She slowly withdrew them and held her to her chest but she didn't move again until he had retreated five paces again. Then she began to eat. It was hesitantly at first as if she were waiting for something in it to make her ill but when she seemed convinced nothing was going to happen she began wolfing it down.

"Grandfather would be likely to try and kill you if you came anywhere close," she explained after finishing the whole bowl and setting it on the floor with a content sigh. It was practically licked clean. "But I will take you as far as I can," Mae nodded, agreeing to the new proposal. It mattered not to her if these elves died for their crimes. Perhaps he would even free the others.

 

[Arun]

"Would you like some more?" He was calm, though he didn't seem too bothered by the idea of her grandfather attacking him.

Arun was not so ignorant as to think himself immortal. Elves lived a long time, the longest of nearly any species, but he knew that he could die just as she could. His confidence was born of a simple listless energy, one that his father had despised.

Death would come eventually. Whether by the hands of whatever Maeve's grandfather was or an Anirian Inquisitor.

It would come eventually, so why worry. "You will need rest first."

He told her.

"When you are better we can set off." Which would likely take a week or so, knowing humans.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve glanced at the bowl thoughtfully and then after a moment she nodded.

"I can get it..."

As long as he stayed over there anyway, her eyes flicked to where he sat on the sofa as she stood and walked over to the kitchen area. It was a painful and tiring thing but it was a bit of normality. She was not a Princess any longer and could serve herself her own food. She quietly ladled more food into the bowel then went back to her sit by the fire and resumed her meal.

"Do you sleep?" Mae glanced up as she brought the spoon to her mouth. "They others didn't. Not often anyway," it was what had made leaving so difficult.

 

[Arun]

"Sometimes." Though he did not really need it, Arun did enjoy sleeping.

He liked to dream.

There was something about the unconscious mind, that prickle over the magic he held which allowed him to see things that he could not ordinarily see. He slowly crossed his legs, considering for a moment the last time he'd slept.

"We generally do not need to." He explained. "Meditation will do most of the time."

That was also why they were so effective at war. "Did you learn much of them?"

He asked.

 

[Maeve]

Maeve nodded almost to herself as he spoke. It confirmed something she had suspected but had never got the answers to whilst she had lived amongst them. They were similar to the Fae in that sense at the least.

"It wasn't exactly an environment that encouraged questions," she replied darkly to his question and her hand lightly brushed against one of the bruises on her skin. Mae pulled the towel up and over it without ever taking her eyes off the bowl.

"From what I saw they seemed quite simple, the camp seemed to move every five or six days, none of them seemed to particularly get along with one another either," she remembered the elf who had given her a lashing and the woman who had 'owned' her's livid response to damaging 'her' property. Then she had given Mae the lashes again from her own hand. Her eyes briefly shut as she tried to banish the memory from her mind. "They were just living off the land really, carried out raids on other villages or towns they came across. Took more slaves or just robbed them blind."

 

[Arun]

Tribals. Disgusting little vermin. "Like Cockroaches."

Arun said in disgust.

"I am rather displeased they were your first impression of my people. It seems a shame you would be forever tainted by that view." There was something bitter on his tongue. He had always kept himself apart from society, at least after the war...but that doesn't mean he had no pride in his people

Fingers played over the knee of his trousers.

"My father would be displeased." He told her with the shake of his head. "Ah, but he isn't here."

Arun felt like he was rambling. Too long since he'd talked to another living being. At least one that could talk back. "Apologies. I have not spoken to a living person in some time."

 

[Maeve]

Maeve didn't disagree with his words nor his tone. It sung to something in her own heart and broken body. If she had met them on the field and they had treated her in such a way then she would have at least been able to admit it was punishment for her failure. But she had already been wounded and they had attacked her.

"Who is your father?" the fact he had mentioned him drew her attention. She didn't bother to dismiss his apologies though they mattered little to her, she was not so caught up in such airs and graces. He had said what he had wanted to say and it mattered little now if he regretted it. "And why would he care as long as they were not hurting his own?"

 

[Arun]

Arun wondered briefly if this girl could even comprehend what she had stepped into, what the Elves of this Kingdom stood for. Once the Falwood had been the very center of the world. They had ruled as kings and lived their lives like only they could.

"My father is Kel'Tharas. King of Eagles and First of Mayeen." The port of the Elves, the great mountain hold overlooking the seas. "He who lead the armies against Vel Anir and fought them to a standstill."

He let out a sigh. "He would care because he cares of who we are."

Arun motioned to himself.

"We elves." It would have been wrong to call his father a supremacist, though he was close to it. "These men who took you, they cast dispersion on us."

 

[Maeve]

Her spoon paused on the way to her mouth when he revealed who exactly his father was. She might not have understood the full implications that came with that, but she understood the importance of kings all to well. She also understood how a King took the weight of a whole race upon their shoulders even if it was only a small portion they actually governed. Her father had been the same. She put the clean bowl on the floor and then moved to lean her back against the wall closest to the fire so she was facing him properly.

"I understand," and for once she actually did. Her eyes closed as she leaned her head back and took a deep breath. What were the odds she would run into another Prince? Another who had apparently also fled his duties? The musical laughter of the Wind rang throughout the room and Mae scowled slightly.

"Well if I can help lead you and your father to them I will try my best," then she wanted nothing more to do with the issue.

 

[Arun]

He smiled. "My father will not be coming."

It was a lovely thought, but a thousand miles and a hundred years of Exiles would prevent any sort of assistance.

No, she would have to deal with just him.

"Do not worry." He motioned. "This little problem will be taken care of once you're well."

He had seen the way she'd still been struggling, pushing herself to just get a bowl of soup. "Do you eat meat?"

Arun asked somewhat cautiously.