Walking down the elven road

Chapter 14

“Do you know who she is? Where she went, where she came from?”

“I don’t know where she came from. I know that when she left she returned. Hanna says she was very beautiful, a narrow face just like me, weird ears just like me…”

“And do you know her name?” Kithans face lights up a bit.

“I do know that! Her name was Xoriah,” he says. Melya breathes in sharply and pales. “What is it?” he asks, “Are you not well?”

“I am, I mean, I am well,” she mumbles.

“Then what is it?”

“Xoriah… she banished me.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Kithan asks both curiously and carefully. Melya doesn’t answer. “Hey, Melya! Answer me!”

“It’s nothing,” she manages to say.

“Banishment is not nothing. And you’re not banished from my father’s kingdom, so where do you come from? And how did you meet my mother and how on earth did she have enough power to banish you?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Definitely not. Answer me.”

Melya starts walking away from him and ends up running into the forest. She runs, and runs, and runs, until her legs are cramping from shortage of oxygen. Heavily panting she leans against a tree, hears footsteps approaching. Elves run faster than humans, she remembers, and Kithan runs way too fast to be a human but too slow to be an elf. She looks up the tree, grabs a secure point to pull herself up and starts climbing. Each and every movement hurts, but she keeps going, running from herself and from her past. She only stops when she is so far up the tree the branches almost break when she puts her weight on them. Exhausted, she leans back against tree and waits.

Melya has been waiting in her tree for a while now. It should be past noon. People will be noticing she’s missing. She really doesn’t care. Kithan has not found her, she has heard nothing from him since she climbed up this awfully uncomfortable tree. She hasn’t heard anything, for that matter. I’ll stay up here, she thinks, no-one will ask me questions here. I can’t return to the castle, Kithan won’t be able to keep this to himself and then Sisi will ruin everything. Or maybe he figures it out for himself.

It isn’t until dusk she hears a sound which doesn’t come from nature itself. She is hungry, thirsty, tired, her muscles are stiff and sore. She is almost happy to hear footsteps. Carefully she looks down, and stares right at a dark-haired head. The head quickly moves its eyes upwards, and obviously sees her. The head belongs to Kithan, unsurprisingly.

“Hey,” he says, “Do you care to climb down?

“No.”

“Then I’ll climb up.”

“You’ll fall, humans are too heavy.”

“You just confirmed my suspicions.”

“What?”

“You’re an elven woman. Just like my mother, apparently,” he says calmly.

Oh no, Melya thinks, now I’m dead.