His eyes lit up a bit and his lips quirked at the corners. He never really fully smiled, she noticed. The only way for her to really tell what was going on inside of him was through his eyes. His eyes were always so deep, as though his thoughts, his feelings, his memories, covered vast centuries of time. Liran seemed so young but had the burdens of a much older being. A being who had perhaps seen more than he had ever wanted to see.
She found herself, as they traveled, looking over at him, pondering the person behind the mask. All people wore them. It was safer to wear a mask, and there were so many—a mask of indifference when you really, secretly cared; a mask of biting sarcasm to cover a world-weary heart; a mask of cruelty to cover feelings of inferiority.
With Liran, his mask was carefully concealed, almost beyond her understanding. The mask was deep and had many layers. Layer upon layer of history and things that he wanted to keep hidden from the world. But her deepest sense of him was that he was a very good person and he felt very deeply about things. He cared perhaps too much. She looked down at her feet and sighed. Was there such a thing as caring too much? Perhaps. . .
Liran interrupted the quiet with a sudden blunt question. “Has your skin always been warm?” he asked, his intense eyes looking directly at her.
“Yes. I’ve always thought it was because I am an elf.”
He stopped walking, and suddenly his palm was flat against her cheek, cradling it. His touch was soft and cool. “Elves are slightly cooler than humans, but you’re not, you’re warmer,” he murmured.
She swallowed. “I guess I am.”
His eyes flashed through emotions too fast for her to pin any down, but the last to flash through was clear: frustration. He closed his eyes for a minute and took a deep breath. His hand continued to cradle her cheek. She trembled and closed her eyes too. Her heart was drumming inside of her chest; her breath sped up. And then he was gone. The absence of his hand felt so strange that she put her own palm up to touch her cheek.
What had just happened? The empty clearing echoed only silence. She shook her head, dazed, and hurried to catch up with him.
Hours passed in silence. He didn’t stop again to listen to the forest; he didn’t even glance her way. It was as though she had ceased to exist to him. He traveled swiftly. Gracefully. Quietly. Twigs snapped beneath her boots, creating what felt like a ricochet of sound, but where Liran walked was absolute silence. His breath made no sound. His feet made no sound. He was like a walking shadow.
She kept her head down, focusing on her footing so that she didn’t trip. Usually she managed not to, but the forest was so thick with brambles and snagging bushes, rocks and fallen logs that she needed to watch where she was going. Liran apparently didn’t need to. His eyes were straight ahead, looking beyond the next bend or the next tree, watchful and alert.
She thought back to . . . was it only last night? When he had gotten up abruptly and went to stand by the windows. She could picture it in her mind. His face angled away from her, staring out at the dark. His body radiating anger. What had caused that? If she could figure that out, maybe she could get a better look at the person behind the mask. She glanced at him walking beside her. His whole body screamed unapproachable just then, but she asked anyway.
“Liran, what happened in the Great Hall? Did I say something that somehow offended you?”
Images flashed suddenly into her mind. Liran walking through a forest alone, searching for things that only he could see and hear. Liran standing with less than a handful of people at the back of a sun-drenched room. Liran standing by himself on a hillside in the dark, watching the dragons annihilate each other. She stopped walking suddenly, feeling as though she had just been punched in the stomach. He was always alone. Even amidst people, Liran was alone.
He stopped but didn’t turn. His shoulders were tense.
“I don’t understand,” she said quietly. “And I want to.”
“It wasn’t you, Auri,” he rasped. “I just. . .”
She walked forward to grab his arm and slowly turned him to face her. “What? You just what?”
Indefinable emotion filled his eyes with bright intensity. She kept her hand on his arm—waiting. “I was furious that you have been treated so poorly,” he said finally, his voice quiet. “Furious at the blind ignorance of self-indulged, small-minded people.”
Her eyes widened. He hadn’t been angry with her, but rather angry on her behalf. She released his arm and stepped back, confusion sweeping over her. She felt as though she constantly had to readjust her perceptions of him. As soon as she felt like she had him figured out, he said something that had her floundering. He watched her steadily. She swallowed the emotion clogging her throat and tried to speak. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He nodded curtly. They walked for another long stretch of silence before she spoke again. “Liran?”
“Yes?”
“You mentioned four others. Are they around usually? Do you see them often?”
He shook his head. “No. Maybe once every few years.”
“Once every few years? But why? Don’t you need to keep each other apprised?”
His smile was sad. “There is no need to keep them apprised when things only ever continue as they always have. The poison spreads, and hope slowly dwindles until there is nothing but darkness. These are things the Watchers already know.”
Silence for another mile or so. “Liran?”
“Yes?”
“How long?”
She was amazed, and yet not, that he understood without her needing to expound. “A long time,” he said quietly.
She swallowed. Her eyes burned. “What about me?”
He stopped and turned. “You may not want my friendship, Auri. I’m quite a bit older than you are.”
She glared at him, the moment of tenderness completely gone. “I, am not shallow.”
His lips twitched with the ghost of a smile. “No, I guess you’re not.”
“You can’t be that old,” she said in frustration. “You don’t look older than a score of years, maybe a score and five.”
He shook his head in amusement, his eyes continuing to laugh at her as she scowled at him. “Elves don’t age the same as humans.”
“Are you going to tell me or not?” she demanded.
“Not, I think,” he said with a small chuckle.
She resisted the urge to kick him. When he chuckled again, she decided she really shouldn’t hold all that anger in—it was undoubtedly bad for her—so she flicked her foot out and kicked him in the shins. Hard. “Tell me!” she demanded, trying not to wince at the sudden throbbing of her toe. His shins were like stone!
He smiled his half smile. “Are you going to kick me again if I don’t?”
“Probably.”
“Alright,” he said with a slight laugh, his hands up in surrender. “But only to protect your foot from further injury.” His face became serious, his eyes intent. “I’m a century three score and nineteen.”
She blinked, the throbbing of her toe momentarily forgotten. He was a hundred and seventy-nine years old! He had started forward again; she followed after him, dazed and slightly limping. How long did elves live? There wasn’t much about that in any of the books back at Ardalan. She had scoured the library, and found distressingly little.
“Is that considered young?”
He shook his head. “Not really. It’s closer to midlife for us. You are what would be considered young.”
She pondered that for a while. If he was only in his middle age then elves probably lived to be around five centuries. She felt shock. Five centuries seemed so long compared with the relatively short lives of humans. It was long enough to see empires grow and crumble, to see loved ones live and die. Valdys and Sweena, she would probably long outlive both of them. . .
Her voice was subdued when she spoke again. “I still would like to,” she said quietly.
He tilted his head and regarded her from behind steady, luminous eyes. �
�I would be honored, Auri. Thank you.”
She nodded and looked away, feeling again as though there was more behind his words. More that she didn’t understand.
After a while, she started to get hungry. Liran seemed content to continue indefinitely without food, but she might need to eat something soon. Just as she thought this, her stomach growled. Liran heard it and laughed quietly. “I think we should feed you soon. We can stop here.”
They had come to a small, winding stream in the middle of a thicket of trees. It was peaceful and quiet. She took her boots and socks off and stuck her feet in the cool water. The water sluiced over her throbbing toe and quieted it. Liran handed her something from his bag. She took it and saw that it was a container filled with nuts and dried berries. “Thank you,” she said, taking a bite. She looked over at him. “This is good.”
He nodded.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“I only need to eat once every few days, and even then I don’t need much. You take it,” he said, his lips quirking in a half smile. “You need it more than I do.”
She pushed at him half-heartedly in annoyance as he sat down next to her to wait.
“Is that normal for elves?” she asked after a quiet minute of eating.
“No, only for Watchers. Most of the others eat pretty regularly.”
“Why is it different for you then?”
He shrugged. “I’m not really sure why, it just is. We need little rest, eat infrequently, and have heightened senses above that of a normal elf. It’s part of the queen’s graces. When she sent us from El`ness Nahrral, she graced us with some of her abilities.”
“Are her abilities so different then?”
He was quiet for a moment before he replied. “Yes,” he said softly. “The queen’s graces are very different. They need to be.”
She nodded, watching the water pass her by, thinking about the queen. What would she be like?
When she finished, she pulled her feet from the water. The toe on her right foot was still swollen and bright red. She turned and scowled at him.
He bent over her to examine it. “Sorry,” he said repentantly, as though he had asked her to kick him. “I guess I have thick shins.” He tilted his face down, closed his eyes, and went completely still. His hand remained on her boot so that she couldn’t put it back on. When he opened his eyes again, he stood with fluid grace and walked quickly out of her range of sight. Less than a minute later he was back with some sort of moss in his hands. “If you wrap this around your foot it will reduce the swelling.”
She took it, glancing from the moss to Liran in surprise. “How did you find this?”
He shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “I can feel it. It’s a living thing.”
She wrapped her toe, continuing to glance at him out of the corner of her eye. When her boot was back on, she tried to grab her bag, but his hand was already there. He took it without a word and added it to his own pack. “I’ll carry it for a while.”
“I can do it.”
“I never said you couldn’t.”
She sighed and followed him. He was almost out of her range of sight already.
They walked for several more hours. The shadows grew longer; the forest grew darker. “Does that work for all living things? Including people?”
“Yes.”
“What about me? Can you sense me?”
“Yes.”
“Does that . . . can you . . . can you read my thoughts?”
“I haven’t been trying to. I generally try to stay out of people’s heads. It helps me to stay sane.”
“But if you were trying,” she insisted, “you could read my thoughts?”
He nodded.
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. A cringing sort of exposure mostly.
As the dusk settled deeper around them, she noticed the tension gradually easing from Liran’s body. He had held himself painfully alert when the sun was high, but now, with the long shadows and sleepy silence, he seemed finally able to relax.
He stopped to listen for a moment and then headed straight into a clearing underneath a sparse outcrop of pines, almost as though he could see the clearing in his mind or perhaps hear the emptiness of the space. Could he do that? She looked over at him speculatively. She wouldn’t be surprised.
He smirked.
“You cheated!” she accused with narrowed eyes.
“You practically invited me in,” he said with a laugh.
“I did not! I only asked if you could!”
“I’ll stay out for a while. I promise.”
“For a while?” She glared at him. He chuckled again as he started setting up camp for the evening. She scowled at his back then shook her head. There wasn’t anything she could do about it. Either he would or he wouldn’t.
“Is there clean water close by?” she asked, looking around.
“Yes.”
She waited. When he didn’t say anything else, just continued setting up the stones, she cleared her throat. “And where might that be?”
He stopped what he was doing, and looked up at her. The silence grew.
“You are an elf, yes?” His voice was very gentle.
“Yes. . .”
He got up from his crouch, and came to stand before her. His eyes were tender. “Close your eyes,” he said quietly. She watched his face for a moment before she did as he asked.
“Now listen.”
She did. She didn’t hear anything other than the wind. “I don’t understand what I’m listening for.”
She felt his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve been raised by humans and, though they have many diverse abilities and skills, this is not one of them. Reach out with your feelings, feel the calm in the air, taste the wind, and listen for whatever sounds may introduce themselves to you.”
She cracked an eye open and looked at him in disgruntlement, sure that he was playing some sort of game with her.
His expression turned very sad. She squirmed uncomfortably at that look in his blazing, golden-amber eyes. “Trust me,” he said softly.
She sighed, closed her eyes again, and tried to do what he asked. At first, all she could hear was the wind but the longer she remained quiet and still the more she started to hear. Along with the sound of the wind was Liran’s breath, close to her face. She tapped into the sound of both and let her senses expand until she felt it—another slight shift within her. Almost as though something had lain dormant for many years and now was finally being awakened.
Her body grew more still. Her senses grew more acute. She could hear Liran’s heart beating now and the insects crawling along the forest floor. There was a rustle in the green ferns behind her. She cocked her head in that direction and tried to be still and listen. The rustling stopped. She moved on to another sound, fascinated with what was happening to her. The ability was so strong it was almost like sight. The ability to see things clearly by closing her eyes. Exactly as Liran had done in the images that he had shown her.
Soon, it seemed to her that the whole forest had come alive. She could hear a flock of birds as they flew some distance up in the sky. She could hear the sound of a reptile scuttling over the dirt. An owl hooted, its mournful cry calling out to the surrounding forest.
Liran’s breath had abruptly ceased. She scrunched her face together in a frown. “What’s wrong? Why did you stop breathing?”
His breath started again, heavier and raspier. “Nothing. Please continue,” he said in a strained voice.
Auri shrugged, and gave herself over to her sight again. Something brushed against the outer edges of her mind. She found a central pulse of stillness and expanded further. The too-loud sound of rushing rapids cascaded down over her. She flinched, startled.
“Don’t expand that far; close it in tighter to this area,” Liran said in a voice that was even more strained than before.
“How?” She was in a different area? How had that happened?
“Draw the sense
closer to your own life force.”
“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled in frustration. He made a strangled sound—half laugh, half groan—and then went quiet again. Auri took a deep breath in, concentrating even more, and slowly, very slowly, drew the sense closer to her body, radiating it out at what she thought was half a mile in any direction. And suddenly . . . there it was. The water was close to their current location, gurgling and shushing in a slow moving rivulet.
She opened her eyes, smiling slightly in awe, and looked at Liran. His face held an unreadable expression. “You are an elf, Auri. It’s part of you. Don’t shove it away.” With that said he resumed setting up camp while Auri, equally as quiet, grabbed her pack and started walking in the direction that the sound of the water had come from.
Her thoughts were centered around Liran.
When she reached the stream, she attended to her needs and washed up leisurely, enjoying the feeling of clean skin. She combed her wet hair with the pearl comb Valdys had given her several years ago. When she stowed everything back in her smaller pack, she found a smooth stone to sit on.
The sound of the water calmed her. She was excited at the prospect of visiting her homeland, but also nervous. Would they accept her? Would they be troubled at her upbringing? And then a strange thought flitted through her mind . . . perhaps she had family there! An uncle or cousin, perhaps grandparents, maybe all of the above.
As much as she cared about Valdys, as much as she loved him, she longed for those of her own kind. Someone who shared her blood. Someone who knew her mother and could tell her stories of what she was like when she was younger.
She only had vague impressions, vague memories of her mother. She had been beautiful, with long, dark hair and dark eyes, and the smell of pine and sunshine always surrounded her. When she’d snuggled with her that was the scent that had enveloped them. The pine was soft and subtle, the sunshine warm and effulgent. It made her feel warm inside even now to remember it. She stared up at the bright moon above her, lost in her thoughts.
Valdys had only known her mother for two years before she was killed. He described her as a woman of grace and beauty, and a woman haunted by much loss. At her request, he had sent a fleet of ships out, scouring the ocean for any sign of Auri’s father or any of the others they had been traveling with.
Dragon Dreams (The Chronicles of Shadow and Light) Book 1 Page 6
