Inheritance

Part 2. Chapter 5: Fallen Hero

When the Astral Elf, Tyrus, had warped Eory and Pollyanna, they entered a world that was not Yharos; it was a world where time seemed to move faster and yet slower at the same time.

Eory fell through a stream of colorful lines of rushing light in a space that was as black as the night sky for what felt like hours, and he had nothing to do but think on the past and the possible future. Tyrus had warned them to speak and move as little as possible.

And so, with little to do but think, his thoughts inevitably led him back to Pollyanna, as she was his only company now.

Eory loved Pollyanna. He had admired her for the longest time when he was younger, but that admiration had turned into love at some point. Sometimes, while Kori was away, the fairy would grab a pen in his room and pretend like he was Pollyanna—the mighty warrior-maiden—battling his own parents or battling a dragon or some of the other monsters he had read about on his shelf or that Kori had told him about.

His imagination was wild and vivid.

Every moment of battling those monsters with his pen felt completely real to him.

When Pollyanna swung her sword, he swung his pen-sword, when Pollyanna sweated with exertion, he did too. When her heart beat so loud that she could hear it, his own heart imitated that feeling.

And when his imaginary crowd cheered Pollyanna as a hero, they cheered him, too.

But this Pollyanna was not the real Pollyanna. The real Pollyanna was right next to him and falling through the same stream of pulsing lights he was.

He shivered when he looked at her and felt immense confusion and disorientation when he thought of his feelings for her.

Just hours before, he was drenched in her fresh blood from her arrow wounds. Even now, he had her dried blood all over him--and her dress was still in tatters due to her arrow wounds from earlier.

He remembered the stink and the sweat and couldn't seem to get it out of his nostrils. He seemed to be stuck in that moment with her, and found it hard to think of anything else. And his feelings about her turned from loving, to ugly. He didn't know why this brave and kind act led him to think so poorly of her when she had done things that were genuinely horrible and worthy of disgust.

Perhaps that smell had reminded him of all the other terrible things she had done and who she truly was.

She had seized him by the collar and threatened him for wanting to go to the ball to prove himself. She had shown hatred and disdain for anybody weaker than herself—including himself--even saying they deserved to be crushed. She had mercilessly killed all those guards who travelled alongside him and Kori.

Most of all, if he had only ordered her to go away and never come back, he wondered if his dog might still be alive and he would not have been sentenced to die.

He had come to accept--as he fell through that other world where he felt detached enough from his own thoughts and emotions that he could examine them objectively--that Pollyanna was a horrible person, no matter how much he wished she wasn't.

But she was a horrible person that he nonetheless had feelings for in ways that would disgust other fairies.

"Old women are sacred things; they are wise and all-knowing just like the fairy goddesses. They must remain untouched by all but their husbands and children, or else they and the one who touches them will become tainted by evil desires and their knowledge shall become corrupted—just like the third, old fairy goddess whose heart was tainted black and foolish by falling in love with a young fairy." His biological mother and Kori had told him the story so many times that he never forgot it. He took it very seriously.