What Little Worlds

Twenty-Five

"Done!" Amelie shouted with glee. It had taken her three days of lunch breaks, but she had finally completed the entire one hundred piece puzzle without the use of her hands.

"What? I can't hear you from all the way over here," Theo said from the other corner of the room and blew the sound over. Amelie chucked lightly and he continued: "I think you need to vole whatever news you have."

She grinned. "If I must." She closed her eyes and connected herself to the air threads surrounding her, then said "I finished the stupid puzzle," and concentrated on letting the threads carry the sound directly to Theo, so that he heard it like she was right next to him.

"Excellent," she heard his velvety voice whisper in her ear, and shivered involuntarily.

There was a slight breeze and Amelie turned to see Theo floating gracefully through the air towards her. He landed just two feet away and stared down at the puzzle.

"Why did you have to pick on with cats on it? The glowing eyes just make it look creepy when it's in pieces. Even now finished it gives me the shivers," he said, mockingly.

"It was on sale," she said simply. "Well, what now? Do you think you can teach me how to fly like that?"

"Maybe," he said quietly.

"I've picked up every other Aleste you've taught me. Why not?" Amelie asked, using the Thamot word for air magic.

Theo smiled, "Your accent was perfect there."

Amelie froze. Her accent? How could he know she was not from the Realms? They had never spoken about her past, and there were no Elves raised outside of the Realms and she had been assuming he wouldn't come to that conclusion without help.

"What do you mean my accent?" she asked, slowly. There was no avoiding this misstep.

Theo tensed.

"I mean your Thamot accent. You spoke perfectly for someone who wasn't... raised in the Realms," he replied, quietly. Theo looked at her like she was a feral beast and he was preparing for an attack.

Amelie sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "How did you find out about it? Did someone tell you?"

"No," he said, "They have been specifically avoiding speaking of you and I caught onto that. But, there were clues when we trained that lead me to figure out you weren't raised in one of the Realms."

"Are you going to tell your government?" she said, coldly.

"I don't know yet," he replied. "I don't want to harm you though. Truly. I didn't tell you while we were training because I was waiting for you to tell me. I didn't want to pry into something you weren't ready to share."

Amelie mused, quietly, assessing what to do. Should she drop the subject and allow things to return to normal, or confess that she was clueless to her own origins and didn't want to be bothered in their political bickering.

But didn't she want to be bothered? If she was shut out of this world again she knew she would break apart.

"What things gave it away?" she grunted at him.

"It was a few little things. Like you greeted me like I was a human, not a fellow Elf every time. And you never used the Thamot names for things. You also just hold yourself....differently. I don't know. You didn't accept truths that were told to you. You asked questions about mechanisms and things. That's just not the Elven way."