by Darkbringer
And, amazingly enough, I was good at it. In fact, I was damn good at it! Father said I was naturally gifted and that if I continued to practice with him, he thought I could become a blademaster by the time I turned thirteen. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain what a blademaster is, but it seemed important to him so I promised I’d try my best.
My important time to sit in, loaf around, and listen to mother’s lectures was greatly reduced. My precious time where I could sneak off and try to work magic on my own in the forest was harder to find now as well. I was learning to become a swordsman, whether I really wanted to be one or not, but at least I was making my parents proud.
The only good thing I can honestly say I’m grateful for, with Father teaching me the sword at the time, is that I met the first love of my life thanks to him.
De’Nara was a beautiful new student at the school and had a sparkling laugh which lit up all around her. She was only twelve but already was showing the signs of a beautiful woman in the making with a set of fine athletic curves, and she was one of those rare girls who spent as much time learning under father as she did under mother. De’Nara was training hard to become what she referred to as a ‘war wizard’, and she was a true inspiration to me.
Every day, she was out there with me, going through the same grueling training which father expected from all his students. He worked her to the point of near exhaustion – harder than the rest of the girls from what I could tell – and yet she never complained. Every day she thanked him for his teachings and then she went to lunch where she was so tired she could barely eat. And, after lunch, she went back out to mother’s side of the field and spent her whole evening working just as hard to try and master magic itself.
It seemed to me that both my parents expected more from her, and demanded more from her than they did everyone else. If I would’ve been in her shoes, I would’ve exploded, but she never did. She was also one of Father’s favorites and a lot of times in the evening he would take her out to the picnic area around the side of the building and give her extracurricular lessons in pleasing a man.
Compared to the training hell that she endured every day, my own hardships were nothing. Just seeing her handle everything and never once complain gave me a lot of strength and resolve to push myself even harder. She was a beautiful girl of peerless strength and spirit, and she treated me as a friend and an equal even though I was less than half her age.
She completely stole my heart. It may sound foolish since there was absolutely no way for there to be any real intimacy between us, but it’s the truth. De’Nara was my first love in this new world, and foolish or not, she’ll always have a special place in my heart.
Whenever I got a chance, I started spending as much time as possible with her. I sat by her side during meals. I often walked beside her whenever I had free time, and even though I may have been adding to her burden, she became just about the only girl whom I ever bathed with or groped anymore. I spent as much time as possible with her, and whenever I had a question about magic, I asked her in a roundabout way about the problem. I claimed that it was to help her ‘with her own studies’, but honestly, it was with my own growth.
If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know if I could have held out and continued with the grueling regime which I set to my own training. But, since she was there and an inspiration for me, I endured!
Early mornings were mealtime, followed by intense training and physical endurance exercises with father, De’Nara, and a few of the other girls who rotated in and out of the training schedule. Only De’Nara was there every morning with us. After training with father, we had lunch, which neither of us had the energy to eat. A lot of times we just sat and softly chewed some soupy bread and sprawled out under the sun somewhere to rest.
After lunch, De’Nara went off to study with mother and I had ‘general lessons’ which I had to endure. Sometimes father would teach me, sometimes one of the other girls would come and teach. I had to learn to read and write several languages, and speak several of them. I endured lessons of ranks, houses, lands, and politics. I had to learn etiquette, dancing, taxes, and even the laws of many different places.
My afternoons were spent in the endless boring study of the things which a young noble of the world was supposed to know – and we’re not even noble! My parents just happen to be teachers at their own little island academy. But, I was still expected to learn so that I wouldn’t embarrass them whenever I went out in the world.
At least, that’s what they claim. I honestly don’t think anything could embarrass mother. If I got caught making love to a goat, she’d simply smile and say something like ‘Men will be men, and that man is my son – is there a problem?’ And, if there was, I think she’d simply melt someone into goo and then the problem would go away…
All I can say is Mother is simply Mother. She’s unique in this world.
Father on the other hand probably wouldn’t be very embarrassed either. If anything, he’d be pouty that I didn’t invite him to join in. He really is a creepy perverted geezer!
But, he’s still my father and I have to love him. If anyone has a problem with that, I’ll just have to figure out how to turn them into goo like Mother does and make the problem go away…
After ‘general studies’, it was time for supper which I always eat with De’Nara. She was completely exhausted usually, but she always forced down a meal in the evenings no matter what. I think some of the other girls would’ve given her some trouble by picking on her since they were jealous of all the attention she was receiving from mother and father, but they didn’t dare do anything while I was around. After all, a young child like me, I might tattle anytime on them, and no one wanted to face my parent’s wrath on the island.
After supper, we’d often try and find a spot out of the way somewhere to just sit and relax together and watch the sun set and the two moons come up. Some evenings father would catch her and De’Nara would have extra ‘chores’ to finish before she could take a bath or shower, and other days we could just relax for a while.
After the sun changed the sky red, and the first moon rose, we went to the bathing area and helped wash each other clean. She scrubbed me just as much as I scrubbed her, and day by day, De’Nara wiggled herself deeper into my heart. I’m afraid she probably thought of me as either a nuisance, or perhaps a little brother, but she never complained – and I’ll always be eternally grateful for the kindness she showed me during that time.
And after our baths, we went our separate ways. Once I was up in the privacy of my own room, there’s where I stayed up late every night and practiced my magic as much as possible. Often it was passed midnight before I collapsed into a dreamless sleep of exhaustion on the bed. I was learning to shape stone, to heat metals, produce flame and water, and over time, I even learned to shape iron and steel with my magics.
Those five years with De’Nara went by in the blink of an eye, and my heart broke when it was time for her to graduate on leave us. She’ll always be my first love, and there’ll always be a special place in my heart for her.
Letting Go
De’Nara’s graduation ceremony was one of the saddest times in my new life. She was beautiful in her pure white dress, with a golden rose in her platinum blond hair, but I knew her graduation meant she was going to be leaving soon afterward. I’d never made it to my high school graduation, but a lot of my friends had graduated a year before me, and I can honestly say that losing them didn’t pain my heart like her ceremony did.
After the speeches, drinks, and hugs with all her friends, and mother and father, she finally made some time for me alone. I think over the last several years I had grown on her as well, and I was the last person she came to after all was said and done. Quietly, we walked together and left the school, and she followed me into the forest where I hadn’t had a chance to go and visit for quite some time. I wanted to show her the beauty of my special place, and I had a gift for her before she departed.
; Getting deeper into the forest, we finally stopped walking and I turned to hug her. She laughed lightly, roughly rubbed my head, and then pulled off her dress and stretched naked back on the soft grass. I knew the forest probably better than anyone else on the island, and I knew that we were in one of the deeper and most beautiful sections where most people never came. Shadows danced between the trees as the sunlight dappled rays of illuminance around us. Flowers of various sorts were in bloom (some I may have had to use a little magic to convince to grow and open their petals out of season), and the area we were in was a small little piece of paradise here on earth. I’d never imagined that she’d take her clothes off out here – even though I’d seen and bathed with her many times – and the sun dancing across De’Nara’s skin made her look like an angel in my eyes.
“Like it?” I finally asked.
“I do!” She was relaxing and simply inhaling the smells of all the blooms in the air, and I was mesmerized watching her chest rise and fall with each deep breath. “How did you ever find such a beautiful place?” She asked me.
“It’s a secret,” I told her with a twinkle in my eye. “If you want, you could think of this as De’Nara’s glade. It’s a special little place built only for you.”
She laughed lightly, plucked a flower from its stem and then smelt it. “Well thank you Mik’hail. This place helps calm me like nowhere I think I’ve ever been. You really know me well. Today has fried my nerves, and I needed something like this to just sit and unwind.”
All I could do is smile, go over, and sit down beside her. I wasn’t going to cry, no matter how my heart was breaking. Now was time to leave her with a good memory, and not the thought of some foolish child who wouldn’t let go when she had to leave. “I was hoping you’d like it,” I told her honestly.
De’Nara laughed lightly, leaned up, and then wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down beside her. If I was just a few years older, and if puberty would’ve started, I would’ve taken her then and there. Unfortunately, I was still too young and even though my mind was willing, my body was capable of doing anything remotely like that yet. All I could do is sit, snuggle, and enjoy the time together with her.
“I’m really going to miss you, you know.” I finally had to tell her the truth about how I felt.
“I’m going to miss you as well.” De’Nara leaned up and kissed me lightly on the nose. “But somehow, I don’t think you’re going to be missing me as badly as what you think you might.” She giggled lightly, ruffled my hair again, and then pulled my head down between her breasts to scrub it.
“You know, I have a surprise for you as well when we get back,” she told me when she finally let go so I could breathe again.
“Well,” I tried to straighten up my hair where she’d mucked it all up, “I have a surprise for you even before we leave here!”
“Oh really?” She sat up and looked at me all seriously. “What is it? You should know not to keep a girl waiting if you have gifts for them!” Her eyes were twinkling and I could tell from the smile at the edge of her lips that she was simply joking around with me.
“Well, here’s the first surprise!” I told her as I suddenly reached out and grabbed both her bare breasts and squeeze them! “Noogie! Noogie! Noogie!” I jiggled them up and down and back and forth like she’d just scrubbed my hair, and her eyes got huge. For a moment, I thought she might get angry, but then she started laughing and just pulled me up and hugged me.
“I’m going to miss you too, rugrat. I hope you know that,” she finally told me when she let go of me.
Knowing that somewhere in her heart, I might have a special place, made me smile and feel somewhat better. I wasn’t certain how exactly De’Nara viewed me – friend or little brother – but I was just grateful to know that she had some sort of true feelings towards me. I was sad but happy at the same time.
Seeing that the sun was dipping down lower in the sky, I knew that our short time together was coming to an end. She was supposed to be on one of the boats and sail away by the setting of the sun, and the evening was getting long in the hour. Not wanting to let the moment pass, but knowing that I lacked the power to stop time even if I wished I could, I finally walked over and pulled out the cloth-wrapped bundle from behind some of the bushes that I’d placed so carefully there earlier.
“I do have one thing for you before you leave, and I hope you’ll take it and enjoy it. If it’s not worth using, simply put it up on a shelf somewhere and you can look at it and sometimes think about the foolish kid you left behind when your training was over.” Hesitantly, I held it out to her and she took it while looking at me all oddly.
“You should know I’ll treasure it no matter what it is, just as I treasure our friendship,” De’Nara told me as she unwrapped the cloth. When she saw what was inside, her eyes opened wide and she let out a little “Oh” of wonder.
What I’d given her was a pure white sword of my own making.
I knew that she would be graduating this year, and I wanted to give her something special to remember me by. Over the last several years, I’d practiced and refined my ability to work with earth and fire magic, and shaping earth was my greatest skill. For the whole last year, I’d focused single-mindedly on one simple task – putting energy into the earth, removing the impurities, refining the stone, strengthening it with my magic, and then repeating the process. Over and over and over I’d enhanced, refined, and strengthened a hunk of stone the size of my arm.
What had started out a dull gray flint or granite had changed sometime in the last year into a pure white seamless stone. It wasn’t off-white like ivory; it was a pure white – like freshly fallen snow in winter. And it was solid, heavy, and much, much stronger than any steel I’ve ever seen on the island here. I’d tested it once with one of the steel shields which father had in a storehouse – it sliced through the inch thick metal like a hot knife through warm butter. I’d had to use my magic to fix the shield just so no one would know what I’d did to it by testing the sword out.
Once I was certain that the density and strength of the stone was as hard as I could make it, I then spent the time to shape it and make it the ugly bastard that it was today. Lots of people talk about how beautiful a royal sword is, or how elegant a knight’s blade can be with all the fancy engravings and such on it. This blade was nothing like that!
The blade was about a meter long, and only about two fingers wide. It had a slight curve to it, and I knew that De’Nara had trained with similar weapons in the past. Instead of fancy engravings or decorations, I’d shaped the side of the blade to be spiked forward and backward – like a wood rasp. The top of the blade wasn’t smooth and elegant; it was serrated and jagged like a sawblade.
No matter which end of that weapon struck an opponent, it was going to cause them pain. Massive amounts of pain. And if someone was ever unlucky enough to have it thrust into them…
Let’s just say it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience and probably one they’d only experience once in their lives.
“I call it ‘Snowflake Razor’,” I told her as she stared at it in silence. “You might find it useful, or you might find it worthless. I really don’t know.” I was starting to blush slightly now, thinking about the one large flaw that the blade had. “I don’t have a clue how the heck you’d actually wear such a thing. It won’t fit in any scabbard that I know of from the way it’s made, and I don’t know how useful it’d be if you had to unwrap it from some moldy old cloth each time you needed it.”
De’Nara didn’t say a word and just kept staring at it. Long moments passed in silence and I was afraid she was going to hand it back to me before she finally spoke. “Can... Can I really have something like this? Is it OK?” Tears were flowing down her face and she was barely whispering the words.
“Of course you can! I made it for you after all,” I told her.
“You …”
“You made it?” Now she was staring at me with that same wide-eyed look that she had b
een staring at the sword with earlier. Tears freely leaked out of the corner of her eyelids and ran unattended down her cheeks.
“Uh…” Crap! I didn’t exactly want to admit to something like that as it might lead to questions which I didn’t want to answer. Unfortunately, it was too late to take back what I’d already said; I wasn’t going to lie to De’Nara.
“Yeah.” I barely whispered it. “I made it over the last year, but please don’t ask me how. It’s a secret, and I’ll share it with you sometime in the future when we meet again, but I can’t talk about it right now. If that’s OK?”
Laughing lightly, De’Nara stood up and hugged me. She was getting ready to say something when I put my hands on her lips and lightly hushed her. “We’ll meet again and then we can say more that needs to be said. For now,” I reminded her, “you ship is going to sail soon – with or without you.”
De’Nara looked up, looked around, gave a sudden little “Oh damn!” and started to run off towards the beach.
Naked!!
“De’Nara! De’Nara!” I grabbed her dress and chased after her as she disappeared out of sight through the forest.
I never did catch up to her to return her dress. The sight of her running naked, clutching the cloth bundle in her arms as her naked body dashed through the forest was the last I saw of her. Her legs were longer than mine as I still hadn’t come into my full man’s growth, and by the time I managed to reach the docks her ship was already casting off and sailing away.
She’d never gave me the present that she’d intended, and I didn’t have a clue what she wanted me to have, but I did end up with the last dress which she wore on our island and it still held the slightly perfumed scent of roses and her. It was one of my true treasures and I took it back to my room, folded it gently, and preserved it to keep forever more.
And after that, I cried myself to sleep like the child I was.
