Saviour of Neither

14 - Contacts

After leaving the conference room, I immediately tear for my own quarters, to which I am carried by paessive memory. Then I slam the door behind me - sinking down, coiled up, heart hammering away to crack my chest open and breath snatched out of my lungs.

Idiot!

Hundreds of voices ravage through my headspace, mocking, yelling, admonishing, seething-

Idiot!

Hands ball into fists and pummel into the nearest wall, tearing the skin off their knuckles. I don't care.

How could you!? How could I? What whirlwind of madness allowed you to hurt a member of the hosting party? You've disgraced Chester. You've disgraced Solomon. You've disgraced Nora, Louise, Oscar, the whole of Magairleag and Ceatha Tor, what would Ruby say?-

A sudden, burning sensation in my palms brings me back to the physical world. My fingernails have dug into my skin, drawing blood, and poison is exacerbating the pain of the cuts. I don't even want to look at the blood now; both white and black specks are hidden within the scarlet, which fizzes through the cuffs of these shirt sleeves.

In... Out... In... Out...

Relax.

I need to heal my hands, and fix the cuffs. Then, head back to the meeting and pretend nothing is wrong.

***

I return half an hour later.

"Headache." I say simply, retaking my seat, but nobody is paying me any attention whatsoever.

The Menial beside me helpfully fills me in on everything that has taken place beforehand as the shouting match continues to progress.

"They're going over the fairy-elf buffer zone." she whispers. "The Elves say that Fairies have been seen wandering within the buffer."

"Didn't they ask for the buffer in the first place?" I frown; the mile-wide strip of land between Faicheland - the Fairy country - and Corquerca - that of the Elves - was designed after fairies living at the border began to become adversely affected by the intense magic of the Elves. There have, over the course of my life, been many disputes over this border despite having existed since before I was born, from where it should be to rights over the land to resettlement of its previous inhabitants.

"Well, because the Elves have been sticking to it so stringently, Fairies aren't really adversely affected by any nearby magic anymore." she says. "As such they've been taking strolls in it for leisure and letting their Fletchlings explore the glades as they please. It didn't sit well the Elves."

I have to suppress the urge to facepalm. "They're rather self-entitled, aren't they?"

"As is your race."

I open my mouth to argue indignantly, then clamp it shut. She's not wrong.

"If you can't keep your people under control then we'll have to do something about them ourselves!" The two of us look to the table; a male elf is yelling furiously. 

"How dare you think you can punish the members of our race!? You keep your pointy ears out of this!" Benjamin, Foreign Minister of the Fairies, roars back.

Eventually the topic reaches a temporary solution of the Fairies receiving the Elves' equivalent punishments for breaching the buffer-zone, with further discussions to either take place later during the summit or at a later convention.

The topics go on like this all day, with deals being agreed, disputed, and in one case spectacularly rejected by the Sprites when Chester massively undervalues cloud silk by accident (Penelope and the other Sprites refuse to speak to us for the rest of the day). There are multiple stops for breaks, and hardly anything is actually resolved.