The Elf and the Ogre

There was a strange thing. Ohg Shyll, even in his relatively brief and shallow travelings, had seen a great many things that the layman might consider to be strange: the astronomical phenomena of Olympus Borealis were surely strange, as were its inhabitants; the Holoborea was strange as well, all made of crystal and the trickery of light as it were; and the Hexed, venerable though they be, could just as easily fit into that nebulous category strange. They all were, however, well within expected parameters – none strayed so far from the reports of his seniors as to surprise him. Borealis was breathtaking, as he had imagined from the vivid descriptions and depictions of those that had come before him, but all of their majesty had been cataloged and collated for him long before he’d had the chance to experience it. The Holoborea was a symphony of sense, an eternally unspoiled and paradisiacal garden planted by the hands of gods, but before he had ever set foot within it he knew the kingdom and clade of every specimen to be found there. The Divine Orrery of the Hexed was staggering in the breadth and depth of its undertaking, and that they had worked so diligently at this tasked handed down to them by their creators was inspiring, but that was all that could be said about it – in the uncounted, uncountable years since they were placed on the planet of Vinyl, the stars had not strayed from their predestined paths. Though he had the sense of leave it out of his reports (who knew what would be done with him if he revealed to his betters that he was unsatisfied with the work they had given him), Ohg Shyll found that he could not shake this feeling of disappointment. He felt as though he were late to an event he was never informed was being held, and now there was nothing to be done but pick through the remnants of someone else’s experiences. It was, after all, their purpose: their shadowy masters had created his people as the eyes, the ears, the grasping fingers and jabbering mouths of a species that would never to be seen beyond the ominous and slick black ziggurats in which they dwelt. As the Hexed were given their duty by the Stargem, so were the Oll Ba Gwur tasked by the Oll Ba Hyem; go out and learn all that there is in this world and be wiser for knowing, so that they too might know and grow wise. A nobler cause there might never be – indeed, the thought of it as a young man set his hearts to thrum, with pride and anticipation of the day he might join the ranks of his elders. How was it, then, that he felt none of that pride and anticipation now? Why did it feel as though all of the work had already been done, and that he had been tasked simply with the mindless tedium of scrawling the instruction of refer to reports previous on a sheet of parchment and filing it away, assured that no one would read it. Where were all of the dark corners he had been promised in his youth, and promised in turn to bring light to? It was all as his predecessors had left it – within expected parameters.

This, though – this wasn’t.

It certainly wasn’t anything native to the area, he could tell at a glance, though it took him a few moments to pin down what exactly it was. It was a spindly thing, thin and gossamer, though the confidence – or carelessness? – with which it carried itself spoke to its surety that it was in no danger in spite of its apparent fragility. It wore a garment, partly of leather and partly of cloth, Ohg Shyll deciding shortly that thework was of no artisan’s hand – likely the creature’s own handiwork. Its skin was pale, its teeth were sharp, its hair was a fibrous off-white mess, and its eyes were wide and black like the night sky stripped of stars. Gold grease was smeared over most of its face, the cause of which lay within an immaculate crystalline jar that it held to its chest – as he watched, it jammed its slender hand through the mouth of the jug and retrieved it covered in the stuff, fitting it then wholesale into its maw.

It was an elf, he realized in time. Ohg Shyll wracked his brain – he didn’t recall any mention of elves trafficking in these parts, nor of any species thereof that would be found to live anywhere near here. The nearest habitat of their folk would, in fact, be quite a ways on land, and quite a water-ways besides that – across the Sea of Separations and well into the ensorcelled woods of the Fair Kingdoms. The fhae were known well enough to be taken by flights of fancy and whim and travel abroad (especially those Far Nobles that could afford such a venture, followed shortly by those with little to speak of to lose on the gamble regardless), but their cousins, the fhaeries, were known to be rather attached to their ancestral homes – appropriate, he supposed, that the plant people would be known to set down roots. The bloated purple behemoth had a little chuckle at this wordplay.

It did not go unnoticed. The elf’s head snapped toward him with such force and suddenness that it startled the servitor. It watched him for a moment from the short distance between them, then took a wider stance, clutching the thick crystal jar to its chest as though it expected he would leap up and snatch it from its slime-coated hands. The two were silent and still for a stretch that felt like ages.

Then, it took a step forwards – so practiced and subtle was it that Ohg Shyll hardly even noticed until it was completed. The aqueous giant dared not move: he had little doubt that he could defeat the thing if it sought to assail him, but had no want to harm it if it did not give him need to. An age passed, and it was a step closer, appearing all the world like a lifelong predator careful not to startle its prey.

The elf stood only a few meters from him now. Tense though the situation was, Ohg Shyll found that his hearts did not beat with fear, nor with anxiety – it was anticipation that had excited him so. Never so closely had he seen an elf, double so a fhaerie; few, in fact, had! They were a reclusive folk, tied inexplicably and inextricably to the enchanted lands from which they hailed, and were not keen on the intervention of outsiders, nor even particularly their appearance in the first place. Very rarely was it that one so scholarly-minded would be allowed such an immediate observation.

It was closer again – fascinating how it managed that while he was looking straight at it. Perhaps it was the thing’s heritage that lent it so naturally to slipping out of one’s mind? The Laughing God was known for its creations’ propensity to inspire madness; was the property innate? It was so close now that Ohg Shyll could smell the sweetness on its breath.

Sweetness? He wrestled down the urge to cock a brow, even tilt his head in curiosity. Sweet smell, considerable viscosity, golden hue – it must have been honey. The immaculate crystalline vessel would suggest it to have come from the Hexed. Very curious.

The elf’s advance halted. Its enormous abyssal eyes stared unflinchingly into Ohg Shyll’s tiny, beady black pinpricks. The standoff seemed to last for an eternity, neither saying a word, neither moving an inch, neither daring to let the other out of their sight for long enough even to blink.

Then, as it had before, it moved again before Ohg Shyll could properly process it, slinking off to the side and plopping down into the grass beside where he sat. The elf shoveled another handful of honey into its mouth and looked up at the massive mound of flesh beside it, tilting its head from side to side and narrowing its eyes.

Ohg Shyll waited a long few moments, staring back down at the creature, before he eventually rumbled, “Hello.”

“What kinda thing are you?” it – or rather, she – replied, with the telltale lilting and singsong of the Fair Kingdoms.

That was certainly no way to introduce oneself – though he supposed that the curiosity was merited, given the circumstances. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not a big bee,” she continued, sending flecks of honey scattering toward the majestic and regimented hives in the distance, “that means you’re not one of them.

“And you’re not a fhaerie,” the elf went on, counting on her fingers for every further example and pausing after each to clean the resulting honey smear, “and you’re not fhae, and you’re not a cat.”

Sound reasoning. He regarded the little thing for a time, eventually proposing, “Perhaps I am a very strange bee.”

The elf pulled a face somewhere between befuddlement and having just eaten something sour – he didn’t think she’d buy that.

“Mm. Perhaps not.” he agreed, nodding. “My name is Ohg Shyll. I am-”

The elf’s eyes lit ablaze! She turned all around to face him head-on, clamping the jug between her legs to point at him with her unhoneyed hand. “Like ohg-er! That’s what you were!” she exclaimed excitedly.

Ah, ogre – a common epithet for his people wherever they traveled. The procession through linguistic degradation was clear enough (in time, it seemed obvious that Oll Ba Gwur would need to be shortened), though no one was entirely certain where it had started. Regardless, it had stuck, and rather unanimously; seldom was the place among men that recalled their true name, and fewer still that called them by it. It was, in Ohg Shyll’s opinion, appropriately succinct and a delightfully unique development among these people, and he found it hard to hold against them that they would diminish the noble lineage seeded by the Oll Ba Hyem in such a way – it was, after all, quite a mouthful. Curious, though, that she should know it.

“And what might I call you, little fhaerie?” Ohg Shyll probed, trying his best to affect the strange vocal patterns of the Fair tongue as he spoke their word – not satisfactorily: he would have to practice that.

The elf spoke immediately, but little came out besides a muffled garbling. She swallowed a few times and tried again, much to the same effect. Gently, as not to spook her, Ohg Shyll reached down to his belt and fetched his canteen, shaking it indicatively before offering it to her. The creature didn’t have to think twice, snatching it with a honeyed hand and tearing the cork out with her teeth before emptying the entire thing into her jagged maw. Then, she carefully jammed the cork back into its rightful place and handed it back.

“Thank you!” she crowed happily, getting to work on sucking the remaining honey from her scooping hand.

Ohg Shyll rumbled, deep in faux-thought. “That is a strange name.”

“That’s cos it isn’t!” she agreed. “My name’s Ryhggil.”

That, too, was a strange name, but Ohg Shyll did at least believe it to be hers. Rye-ha-gill – said quickly, it was almost like wriggle. A funny name for a funny little beast, with all the hallmark quirkiness of the descendants of the Laughing God. That first question, though, nagged at him once again.

“What would bring a fhaerie so far afield then, Ryhggil? These lands are quite a ways from the Fair Kingdoms, after all.”

The fhaerie just shrugged. “Why not?”

She didn’t sound like she had thought much about the question, nor the answer: despite that, Ohg Shyll found it resonating with him. On a whim – something that he realized he had been following far too infrequently of late – he decided to change tack.

“Have you enjoyed it, then?” he inquired.

She raised an eyebrow at him, casting a glance down at the jar sitting now in her lap.

“The traveling, I mean.” he clarified.

“Sure!” she replied, looking out at the horizon and swaying back and forth like a tree in a gale. “I got to see that big river with the pretty water you can drink from, and then the big bees that gave me some honey, and now I got to see you!”

“Me? I don’t believe I’m hardly that interesting.” Ohg Shyll objected weakly.

“No, but you look weird.” Ryhggil countered.

It took a few moments, but eventually, Ohg Shyll started to chuckle – that had been meant as a compliment.

“I suppose I must, yes.” he agreed.

“Are you?”

The behemoth paused. “Am I… what?”

“Are you having fun?” Ryhggil asked.

He rumbled again, this time lost in very real thought. “Not as much as I had hoped, no.” he answered in time.

“Why not?” the elf repeated.

“Mmmh…” He wasn’t sure that she would really understand the why, but there couldn’t be any harm in trying. “It feels as though I have seen all there is to see.”

Her response was not as he had expected. Rather than sympathy, or even a simple failure to comprehend, she had that same look as before plastered over her face.

She didn’t believe him.

“Oh yeah?” She cast her hand again, now unhoneyed, toward the great structure of brilliantly colored glass looming in the distance. “What’s that, then?”

Ohg Shyll looked from the shape to Ryhggil. “The Orrery?”

“You made that up.” she objected, folding her arms.

“It is an implement of divine construction, designed to follow the movements of the stars on their paths through the night sky.” the giant continued, tracing a thick purple finger around the migratory pattern of an imagined celestial body. “It is said that the Stargem plotted every constellation that we see before the first men set foot on Vinyl.”

Invoking the name of a god seemed to assuage her incredulity some. “I thought he made that big tower.” she wondered aloud.

“The Prismatic Spire – he made them both.” Ohg Shyll nodded. “I actually intend to pay it a visit after I finish my reports here; I’d like very much to travel along with the company of war-sorcerers that will be departing soon.”

“Wizards? What are they doing here?” she prodded.

He could have told her, of course – he knew very well, and his accommodations had been made before even he had left Olympus Borealis – but Ohg Shyll considered the elf again. What should have been a simple and rote recitation of long-since memorized and longer-since compiled research had sparked something in him: even in the idyllic woodland and gardens of the southlands, the chill of the frigid north had never really left him. Now, though, he felt warm again. He wondered why. There shouldn’t be any measurable difference between the knowing of knowledge and telling of it.

Should there?

“Perhaps,” he began, anemic lips moving before he had bid them to, “you might like to ask them yourself, Ryhggil?”

She was tempted – he could see it – but she hesitated. “Can I?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it – double so with someone to vouch for you.” he went on, straightening up and puffing out his chest.

It took a moment before she caught on, but her eyes began to sparkle when she had. “You?”

“I had arranged to follow them south to the Spire: the sorcerers are to have relief arriving soon, and Xenozoa will be over it by the time we arrive.” There was a confidence to his tone that hadn’t been there before. He wasn’t sure from where it had come, but he liked it. “I might imagine a traveling companion would do me well, if you would care to see them.”

That was all he had needed to say. Before he could realize it, her arms had been thrown around his neck and she hung from them limply, grinning and giggling. He couldn’t help but join her, baring his perfectly manicured, perfectly square teeth and heaving out bouts of deep laughter. He wasn’t sure when, but he’d reached up to pat her on the head. He wasn’t sure why, either.

Perhaps it was another trick of the Laughing God.