Once Upon a Time...

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Once Aurea left, Linnor walked back to his uncle's home, calling, "I'm home," as soon as he had pulled back the curtain hanging in the doorway. Blacksnake was telling his daughters an old story about the nature gods and how they came to be. It had been one of his favorites as a child, and he was surprised that it captured Blakesnake's daughter's attention so well. Indeed, they hardly looked up at Linnor as he entered.

Finding Dreamrain in the bedroom, hanging fresh curtains over the glass-less windows, Linnor asked, "Can you help me get this off?" he asked, gesturing towards the shirt. She nodded, a light smile on her face.

"Are you going to tell me what happened to break your leg and..." She took note of how he gasped when she started lifting the hem of the tunic. "Your ribs or stomach...?"

Linnor sighed. "I got beat up walking home from work yesterday...She helped me to her house and..." He cursed when his arms were lifted to pull the tunic over his head. "...got me to Icetalon..." Dreamrain nodded before pulling the tunic all the way off of him. She gasped when she saw the extent of the bruises on his side before pulling him into an embrace.

"Oh, Nightvine..." she murmured. "Those Aka's hurt you so bad..."

Gently, he pushed her off of him, grabbing for a rough cotton shirt that sat, folded, beneath his bed. Pulling it on easily, taking in a sharp breath when his ribs shifted, he said, "It doesn't matter. My leg will be better in a few weeks, Icetalon said...And the shirt is mine now..." Seeing the look in Dreamrain's eyes, he said, "I don't want to sell it. They'll think we stole it...I...I don't know what I want to do with it right now..." He trailed off, before continuing, "I just want to go to sleep..."

"Fine," Dreamrain said, smiling sadly. After that, she left him, and Linnor was able to lie down on his bed. It was decidedly less comfortable than the bed in the spare room at Aurea's home, but he fell asleep nonetheless, and when he awoke, it was morning.

Standing up, he changed in silence, not wanting to wake up the others who lived there, all of whom were sleeping. His uncle worked mostly with the other tribes and their tribeleaders, taking Linnor's place until he was old enough while Dreamrain worked as a cleaner to some noble in the city elf part of town. Both of them wouldn't have to be awake for a few more hours, but Linnor was expected at Silver Lantern Trading early in the morning.

Once he was dressed, he left, limping towards Market Square. At the building, a decently-large merchant shop, he unlocked the back door, stepping inside and beginning to open up the windows and unlock the front doors. The owner, an older elf named Ahdiar, wouldn't arrive for at least another hour, but the other apprentice, a Tralk tribeswoman named Ima, should have been arriving soon. Opening the large front windows and setting up the counter through which purchases would be made, Linnor sat down behind it, deciding that he would sit in the shade as much as possible on that hot day.
 
Aurea fanned herself with her hand as she leaned against the wall of a nearby shop. She was glad to have tied her hair back and chosen clothes that breathed when she moved. And here, not many knew her. If she'd brought her mother or father, city elves would have flocked to them. She disliked the attention her father got, but he adored it. People knew who he was and they asked him about everything. They clearly thought he had good advice about everything.

Aurea disagreed, but it was never her place to say.

She passed by many shops, but nothing really caught her eye, even though she wasn't looking. She liked to wander anyway. Some of the shops had names and others didn't. She was trying to keep an eye out for the Silver Lantern Trading building, but so far, she hadn't passed by it. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress so they were past her elbows, swinging her arms as she walked. The hustle and bustle of Market Square made her feel like a child again.

She finally came upon the Silver Lantern, moving inside and breathing a sigh of cool air now that she was in the shade. There were others already looking to purchase things, so Aurea moved to the back, keeping herself quiet and her hands clasped behind her back as she took light steps. Her light brown gaze sparked with wonder at everything inside, and there was an aura of contentedness around her.
 
By the time Ima arrived, Linnor had moved to the back rooms. He wasn't as charismatic as she was, and felt that he wasn't up to answering questions about his leg from the people who came regularly. Since Adhiar had taken on wild elves as apprentices, business suffered a bit, but it was nice to be able to interact with city elves who didn't think of wild elves as the bane of their existence. A couple of the regular customers had even become friends with him over the months he had worked there. Though he would complain about the job all the time, in truth, he really liked it, and thoroughly enjoyed learning about being a merchant. When Adhiar came, he answered the question about his leg with a noncommittal, "Nothing too bad," before having the older man help him with copying down the income from the last couple days into the logbooks.

Eventually, Adhiar had decided it was Ima's turn to learn about it, so he sent Linnor out to the front to tend the store. As he was walking out of the back room, he caught sight of Aurea, looking in wonder at all she saw. A light grin on his face, he made his way over to her, waving once he was certain she saw him. "Hi," he said simply, a grin on his face. "How do you like the place? Ima swept it out this morning," he added, gesturing towards the tattooed Tralk girl as she walked into the back room. She made him feel weird, too, like that blind Tralk man they had passed yesterday. He wasn't quite sure how to act around her, since their fathers had probably fought before in some manner, so he tried to keep a cordial demeanor around her, while simultaneously keeping his distance. That seemed to be fine with her, so he decided that he wouldn't change it.

"I'm surprised you came so early," he said, smiling. "This place is kind of hard to find..."
 
Aurea turned her head and saw him wave, and she gave him a smile in return. He hobbled over to her, but she took a few steps so he wouldn't have to go as far. "It's lovely," she said, and it was genuine. It was small, compared to some of the shops the city elves owned, but it had a certain air about it. It was more welcoming and homey, something she wouldn't expect to find in the shop of a city elf. "You sell so much here." She watched the Tralk elf, Ima, breeze through the back, and she was surprised at how different she looked from Linnor. It must have been the tribes differences that set their appearances apart.

She pulled her gaze away and continued to look around until Linnor spoke again. "Oh, I've been walking around for a little while now. I've been searching, but I did find it," she answered, returning his smile again. "I like it. It's quiet... but not so quiet that you don't have customers." City elf wares, whatever they sold or no matter what they sold, were always highly sought after. Here, it was different, a welcome change.

"So, do you do everything here?" she asked, slowly twirling in a circle while keeping her place beside Linnor.
 
"Mmm..." Meryck said, thinking for a moment. "Not really...Ima does the same work I do, and Adhair, the guy who owns the place, he does more than both of us...I just check the books and mind the store when Adhair is teaching Ima...I'm just an apprentice..." He glanced away, pretending to be busy looking at something else. Normally, apprentices were much younger. However, when Linnor had found the flyer, nailed to a beam in front of a tavern closer to the docks, it had asked specifically for wild elves, so he must have known that they would be older. As far as Linnor knew, Ima was the same age as he was, give or take a few years. However, Adhair had had no qualms about having two wild elves who were both adults being his employees.

After he got over his embarrassment, Linnor said, "Whenever we get some Aka's that Adhair knows, he deals with them...He a city elf, so he doesn't get the same treatment Ima and I get." He grimaced at the thought, but said nothing more on the subject. Changing it, he said, "We sell both wild elf and city elf wares here, since Adhair is one of the nice guys...And it keeps away the Aka's, for the most part." Turning his grimace into a slight smile, he asked, "Do you want me to show you around?"
 
Aurea smiled as he turned away. He was doing what he could to help his family, even if it meant being an apprentice. "I don't think there's anything wrong with that," she said. Adhiar sounded like a nice city elf if he was willing to take not one, but two wild elves into his shop. Linnor turned back to her, but the soft smile was still on her face. She tilted her head at the word 'Aka's.' She'd never heard anyone be called that before. She nodded at his question, "If that's not too much trouble for your leg."

She walked slow for him so he wouldn't have to strain his broken leg. She never kept her eyes in one place for long. There was too much to see. City elf shops sold one thing, since there were so many. The Silver Lantern Trading Shop seemed like so much more, simply because it had both wild elf and city elf items. "What is an Aka's?" she asked, glancing up into his grey eyes before she looked back around again. "Is that what you call us? Does it mean something?" There was no judgement in her voice when she spoke. After all, if the city elves had a name for wild elves, then it was only fair that they return the favor.
 
Linnor winced slightly when he heard Aurea. Of course she wouldn't know what the word meant. He'd spent too much time with Ima lately, talking bad things about the city elves that would rant and rave the moment they heard that Adhair had two wild elves in his employ. After a while, he said, "Sometimes we call city elves Aka's...But only if they're like the thugs that beat me up the other night. Otherwise, if they are like you, then they are just city elves. A long time ago, my uncle told me, the word was used for the hunters that weren't wild elves, but they didn't exactly belong in the city. They would trade with us, sometimes share a meal with us, and become our friends. The hunters would stay for a while, hunting game to sell in the cities, but they wouldn't disrupt us in our hunting or be anything less than kind to us..." He trailed off for a moment, lost in thought.

When he regained his train of thought, he continued, "It's kind of funny how the word changed over the years...It used to be a word for our friends outside the tribe...now it is only describing city elves like the ones who hurt me..." Sighing softly at the thought, he turned back to Aurea. "I'm sorry...you probably don't care about the long, lost history of my people." Leaning against the wall behind him, he saw that one of the regular customers was waiting for him at the counter. "I'll be right back," he said, before walking over. "Hello, Adena," he said, checking over what she was going to buy. At least once a week, she bought a pair of shoes that some Ya'jahj tribesman made. It wasn't anything truly special, but it had a few pretty baubles on it, even though the material was thin and it wouldn't be much use outside of a well-floored house. Still, it made Linnor feel good about selling something that was made by a wild elf, even if it was Ya'jahj.

Once Linnor had taken the money from Adena, he put it in the locked box that Adhair kept the money in, kept beneath the counter. It was awkward bending down to open it, with his leg in such a state that he couldn't even bend his knee, but he managed it. Turning to gesture towards Aurea to walk towards him, he smiled again, saying, "If Adhair comes out, pretend you're asking me a question about something...that would probably give you an excuse to be back here."
 
If they are like you...

Linnor's words struck a chord in her, and it was painful. Everyone hated these elves, but there was nothing about Linnor that she hated. There was nothing wrong with him or dangerous or anything else she'd been told about wild elves. Was she really one of the few elves willing to be kind to them? It seemed very wrong to her.

Linnor was speaking of history, so she turned her attention from her thoughts back to him. Even a single word had a story behind it, even if that word was now used as an insult for some. But then Linnor stopped and apologized. She did care. She started to shake her head and say, "I do care...," but the words didn't come. He was already making his way to the counter, so she waited against the wall quietly while he made his exchange with Adena. She was buying something made by a wild elf, but it made Aurea smile. Not every city elf walking into the shop was like Calanon or her father. They were polite, which was far better than the majority of any city elf.

Her eyes traveled from Adena's purchase to Linnor as he appeared to struggle with opening the box. She started forward to help, but she wasn't allowed behind the counter. However, Linnor straightened and motioned for her to come anyway. Aurea smiled and moved so she was beside him, giving a soft laugh at his words. "I guess I should feel special for going somewhere I'm not supposed to," she said, looking up at him before her attention was diverted to the other wares behind the counter. She was quiet for a moment before she turned back to him. "I do care... About your history. We... We don't have anything like that in our past."

City elves tried to cover up the worst part of their history: the forced removal of the wild elves. They told stories to hide it, or they just refused to think about it. Aurea didn't really give much thought to it either, but she found the rendition of the wild elves' history, coming from them, was the most likely. Otherwise, the city elves had no reason to treat all of them in such a way.
 
Linnor couldn't help but smile at the words, "I do care." Coming from a city elf, that meant a lot. Especially since most city elves didn't give wild elves the time of day. To hear that she was interested and cared about the history of the wild elves, that was something special. Running a hand through his hair, he sighed happily before saying, "I'm sure city elves have a history of some sort...just...maybe not too many people know about it...Or else it's just kept a secret..."

He shook his head. That would be nonsense. The Lord Regent wouldn't do that to his people...would he? Of course, he had forced the wild elves to live in slums at the edges of his city, hadn't he? Shaking away the thoughts, he forced a smile before saying, "I think my leg is doing better...I know Icetalon said it would be a few weeks, but it hasn't been hurting that much..."
 
Linnor seemed to perk up with her affirmation and it made her happy to see it. She didn't comment on the city elves and their past, because it was a jumbled mess of twisted stories and false truths. Linnor was right; no one knew, but it was a secret to keep it that way. She hated to think about it. She reminded herself to ask her mother about it. Rinath did her best not to lie to her daughter, but it had always been a touchy subject.

Linnor changed the subject, but she still smiled as he spoke. "Well, that's better than the other day then," Aurea said, glancing down at his leg. Since it was set in the sticks and he had the helpful third stick to walk around with, it looked better. "What about your side?" she added, stepping around him in a circle to simply study him. There was something interesting about him that Aurea could not yet place.
 
He winced slightly at the mention of his side. "I had forgotten about the pain..." he muttered ruefully, a smile on his face. Placing his free hand upon his side. Watching her step around him, he slowly followed her with his gaze, curious as to what it was she wanted. "What...?" he asked, a slight grin appearing. Hearing Adhair calling for him, in the only Old Tongue word he knew, which was, "Ti'leah!" and meant, "Helper," Linnor grimaced slightly. That seemed to be his favorite word, and he used it for everything, from calling for his apprentices to asking for help when lifting things. Every chance he got, he would use the word, and on days that he seemed incredibly agitated, and needed help from his apprentices more, it would get slightly annoying. Once or twice, Linnor had even shouted at him, "Learn a new word!" but he had been told to clean out Adhair's junk closet.

Sighing softly, Linnor said to Aurea, "I'll be right back..."

It turned out, all Adhair wanted was for him to get a heavy chest down from a high shelf. It had contained a bunch of old books, but that was of no concern to Linnor, who returned to Aurea's side as soon as possible. Brushing the dust from his hair, but forgetting about a few flakes in his eyebrows, he said, "I was just moving a trunk..." in explanation.
 
Aurea hadn't expected Linnor to call her out on her circling. She was only curious, but she was spared the explanation when she heard a sharp word called out. With the way Linnor reacted quickly, she could only assume his services were needed. She watched him limp away before she decided to study everything on the lower shelves behind the counter. Bending down, she looked over everything before popping back up and stepping with light feet all around. Some of the other elves gave her strange glances, but Aurea managed to ignore them all until Linnor came back.

Her braid twirled as she did, and immediately, she had to hide a laugh. The wild elf had dust lining his eyebrows, and it was indeed a funny sight. Reaching up, she removed the specks from his facial hair and said, "All better now." Realizing she might have been too close for him, she stepped back, turning her head slightly to let the pink color wash over her cheeks. She'd moved out of hastiness, but her reaction might have been unwelcome. "I'm sorry. It's just that you had dust on your face," she said, looking back up and smiling, the threat of a giggle in her voice.
 
Linnor had been taken aback when Aurea started touching his eyebrows after he had returned to the front room. Still, he hadn't done anything, just stood there and let her. When she explained what had happened, he felt a slight blush cross his cheeks for a moment before he answered. "Thank you," he murmured, looking away for a moment to try to distract himself from the redness coloring his cheeks. In truth, her earlier closeness had made his heart beat a bit faster, but he believed that to be a cause of his instinctual fight or flight sequence, not Aurea herself.

Once he had gotten over the blushing and his heartbeat, he asked, "How long are you going to be here? Not that I want you to leave, but I'll be working for a while and I don't want you to be spending your time watching me work..."
 
Aurea smiled at his thanks, and she clasped her hands behind her back, looking away so she wouldn't embarrass Linnor even more. When he spoke, she turned around again. "Oh, well... I have a lot of time. I don't want to disturb you. I can come back after you close, so you don't have to walk alone." A limping wild elf was more than enough of a provocation to get beaten again. The city elves responsible for those occurrences were like a pack of wolves. They always hunted for the weakest ones. Not that Linnor was weak, but being injured didn't help at all either. If she walked with him, maybe it would dissuade anyone from approaching. Aurea wasn't fit to protect Linnor, but her presence was.

She gave him a smile and moved out from behind the counter. "Thank you for letting me see you again," she added. With that, she weaved through the few patrons in the store and left so Adhair wouldn't ask why she was behind the counter or chatting up his apprentice while he was supposed to be working. She took the rest of the time wandering around some other shops, but she didn't stray far from the Silver Lantern. She kept to the shade until it started to cool off and the amount of people along the street dwindled to only a few returning to their homes. Aurea realized she'd spent far longer in the Silver Lantern talking to Linnor than she'd spent in every other shop combined that day. The thought made her smile. As long as he was willing to have her, she would return.

And return she did, waiting for Linnor to close the shop so she could walk part of the way home with him.
 
Linnor was surprised when Aurea left him, but it allowed him to focus more on his work. Still...he had enjoyed her company. Going about the business as usual, he listed around the shop, bored, and occasionally would help one of the customers when they wanted to buy something. When it started getting darker, and not as many people were in the store, he started cleaning up: straightening the shelves, wiping down the counter, and picking up anything that might have fallen. When Ima came out to tell him that Adhair wanted him to help with picking up the back room, he nodded, sighing softly. The back room, after Adhair and Ima spent the day in it, would be a mess.

While Linnor helped with the clean up, Ima was sent to watch the store, and was there when Aurea arrived. "Linnor's helping in the back," she said sullenly, running a tattooed hand through her auburn hair. "He should be out in half an hour...or less, depending on Adhair's mood..." She quirked a smile, rolling her eyes. "Didn't think Linnor had it in him to find a city elf girlfriend..."
 
Aurea only saw Ima at the front and she was saddened by that. However, she knew that Ima had the same job as Linnor, and he was probably doing something she had already been doing. She nodded at Ima's explanation, but she froze at her second comment. She wasn't anything like that to Linnor. "Oh, no, I'm not that. I'm just a friend... I helped him get home after his leg was hurt." She felt like that was a legitimate excuse for coming back to see someone, but it didn't stop the color change on her face.

She found Linnor interesting and fascinating, but she pushed it on the fact that he was different, a wild elf. Maybe he felt the same way about her and that was why they continued to talk. In a poor effort to escape the conversation, she said to Ima, "Do your tattoos mean something?" It was something genuinely interesting, and if it pulled the conversation off of her relationship with Linnor, all the better.
 
Ima rolled her eyes at Aurea's blushing. Such a silly little city girl, she thought, before brightening slightly at her question. "They do," she answered. On her arms, the tattoos were just curving bands, all of them black and severe against her pale skin. Those disappeared beneath the sleeves of her shirt, but the tattoos continued all over her body, tracing the contours of her figure. At her neckline, a couple pointed ends of her tattoos peeked over her shirt.

"They probably just look like pretty designs to you," Ima said, "but they tell a story...my life. All the fights I've won, the great beasts I've taken down...at least, up until we moved to this damned city." She ended the sentence with a slight growl, obviously angry at the forced move of her tribe. When she had calmed down some, she continued, "After we moved, the tradition was dropped because we couldn't get the materials to make the inks anymore..." she trailed off into silence, before moving her left sleeve over her shoulder. "This tattoo," she pointed to a jagged circular shape, "tells the story of how we moved."
 
Aurea moved over to the counter so she could see Ima's tattoos. She watched as the wild elf moved her fingers over the markings and explained what they all meant. She couldn't mistake the anger in Ima's voice for anything else but that, and it made her wonder. Linnor had also mentioned something like that after she spoke about her mysterious past surrounding the city elves. It seemed sad, and Aurea didn't like it. Not only that, but Ima and the other wild elves couldn't mark themselves because of the move. Aurea looked down at the jagged circle before she worked up the courage to ask.

"How... How were you moved?" It seemed like such a strange question, but Aurea wanted to know how the wild elves felt. They had no reason to lie about what happened, while the city elves had every reason. "I realize that it probably sounds like a naive question, but the city elves... We don't talk about it. Everyone says something different."
 
Ima couldn't help but frown at the question. "I was younger, around ten years old, and I was hunting with my brothers. When we got back to the camp, we saw that the Lord Regent's soldiers were there. Our mother was with the other women of our tribe, being kept to the ground by soldiers while some captain or commander or something shouted at the tribeleader in a language we couldn't understand. That was before I learned the Common Tongue, but our tribeleader knew it, but he was being extremely calm and collected. The men of our tribe, including my father, were in shackles, as if they would snap and just begin attacking them. When the soldiers saw my brothers and I, they ran after us...We tried to run, but non of us were all that fast. They put us in chains, too, and took away everything we had brought with us...No one knew what was happening, until the soldiers made us stand up and our tribeleader told us that we were being forced to move to the city...That we weren't supposed to be Tralk anymore." Ima looked away, lost in her memories. When she looked up, she continued, "I don't know if it was the same in the other tribes, but from what Linnor has told me, it was probably the same with the rest of them. Except, he's told me some things that had happened to him and his tribe that were worse than mine..." She trailed off, a slight frown on her face.
 
Aurea was silent while Ima iterated her past, but she winced at the worst parts. She closed her eyes, and she still couldn't imagine what any of them went through. Aurea wasn't that much younger than Ima or Linnor, but she didn't remember anything. Her mother never spoke of it, and her father had only told her they moved to the city from far away after all the wild elves had been moved. Somehow, it seemed wrong. Would her father lie to her about such a thing? At this point, she wasn't really sure.

There were really no words to express how Aurea felt, and no apology would fill the suffering gap they had endured all those years ago. "Thank you for telling me," she said, looking back up, and despite everything that had been said, she smiled. Ima had no reason to lie about what really happened, and it was nice to be told the truth. It seemed in the city, there was nothing but lies. "I did not know... everything. Thank you for taking that time for me." She hadn't really wanted to bring up anything painful, but it was hard not to with such a subject.

"I think your tattoos are beautiful," she added, stepping back up to look at them again. "Especially with the meaning behind them." Even the jagged circle, the symbol for the move, had its own special loveliness to it.
 
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