Among the Birches *NaNoWriMo 2013*

The Jolly People of Wetherton

As Kya passed the shady outskirts of Wetherton, where small shacks stood surrounded by the debris of trade and life-- things like broken clay vessels, rotted food, cracked plates, and the like-- it was still too early for their to be too many stirring. Most inhabitants of Weatherton were still just waking and-- maybe-- putting a pot of water to boil on their stove for tea or coffee. The houses, despite their disheveled nature, exuded a feeling of warmth which threatened to seduce Kya into a the deep sleep which she had been recently deprived of. She stumbled a bit, took a deeper breath of the salted air, and trudged on to a small tavern on the near side of Weherton where Kya had spent the night several times before. A man who wiped tables at the downstairs bar looked at her with a quizzical expression when she nearly slurred her request for a room, but in a flash she was up the winding staircase in the dark, wooden interior of the Black Spruce Tavern, and into a spartan-style room empty save for a mirror and washstand, side table, and bed. She stripped off her clothing but kept her most precious items on her waist and chest: the invisibility shard, the seer stone, and the birch bough.

Kya did not dream, now, but experienced a six-hour spell of purity: a silent unconscious which gave her nothing but rest. When she awoke, it was nearing evening and she could hear the chatter of patrons downstairs, ordering dinner or drinks or gossiping of the world at large. Kya would join them, as she had many times before when she was off on a journey to Gelig, to deliver the money due to the happy, yurt-dwelling humans there who twice-yearly provided the island with large shipments of a rare medicinal flower which grew only in the Pale Cliffs; or when she was serving as courier for messages between tribes and peoples and headed off to locate lone houses in quiet forests or plains in order to appraise the kingdom of a certain change, joy, or fear. The peoples who came to the Black Spruce were of all sorts, or, at least, of all the sociable sorts: men were most numerous, because they loved to journey to Wetherton to see the mighty ships and to gaze off in the direction of the Island which seemed to them almost mythical; elves came next, because they often stopped there in transit to or from the Island; and occasionally, a grim (the dwarf itself would say "pragmatic") dwarf would visit, or a facetious and unusually talkative woodland sprite would come to gossip of the trees and ferns; or-- and Kya had seen this only once-- fauns would clomp in, sent out to either deceive or aid a human in some task. (It was only humans, really, who ever fell for the fuan's trickery; likewise, they were the only ones who tended to benefit from their help. Kya had never heard of elves and fauns getting along too well, but the one she had met seemed nice enough although she could sense a streak of knavery in him after he guzzled down enough mead to shake his composure.)

The Black Spruce was, really, the only tavern in town which travellers of this sort frequented. The others served as both respite to honest travellers and as bordellos, luring men and women into bed for a small price. The elves never went there, but rumors dictated that occasionally the other races would. Once, a dwarf ran its own room and served only its kind, but that was when dwarfs were more frequent travellers in the region. It had been largely mined out of its gold, silver, and iron.

Kya put her clothing back on and descended the stairs. It was a busy evening for the tavern; she'd have to ask now for her room for the next couple of days. But she could not find the proprietor  in the crowd. An elf stood nearby, in the corner of the room, and to him she walked up to. 

"Excuse me, sir, have you any idea where the proprietor is?"

"Not one. I myself have been looking for him for the past several minutes. I assume you seek to stay here for a while, as I do?"

"Yes-- if I may; this is quite a crowd tonight, though."

"And where do you come from?" 

"I am an elf of the island," she said, and only then remembered the direness of her situation. Somehow, her deadening sleep had swept her worries from her mind. She looked intently at the stranger elf's face, waiting to see if any discernible change came over his face. Maybe he had caught wind of whatever tragedy had occurred.