Saving Exom, BTS Fantasy! AU

One: Exom

The youth shoved a green velvet tunic over his head and petted out the wrinkles. He ran fingertips over the silver threads that embroidered ivies over his shoulders, the heraldry of the Jeon family of elves. The ellon--the elf boy-- tugged at the shift that showed from beneath his fine overshirt, tucked it again and again into leather bracers, and pushed his white breeches into his knee boots. He secured his silk purse to his belt, buckling it tightly about his waist, then dabbed a scented potion behind his delicately pointed ears.

"Look at you, primping." the oldest one said, lying limp on the circular windowsill, "Pray tell, what for?"

"You know what for," Jungkook grinned secretly.

"Promenading? Aren't you a little too young?" Yoongi jeered.

"I'm going to the market. Are you coming or not?" the young one huffed.

"No," Yoongi replied, as usual.

"Oh, come on, we've got none of your favorite snacks to eat. It's so boring without you."

"My answer stays the same."

The door jingled with silver as it slammed shut.

"Cheeky kid." he continued relaxing, then fell to the floorboards, pretending he was dead.

Jungkook took his basket of carrots with him up the path and over the hill. Every tree he walked by bloomed greener. I wonder if I can make more money with carrots than with potatoes?

The polished steel toes of his boots 'ta-tumped' on the rotted wood of the docks as he walked, the thick sloshing of the ocean waves below accompanying their sound. In the ellon's first memory of the Exom Dock, he feared that he would fall through the boardwalk or a fish would break through and eat him. At that age, Jungkook was sure that he would marry a princess someday, ascend to the station of a knight, or become a renowned sorcerer.

By sixteen, his heart would not choose anyone more accessible, for it had chosen the eccentric Lord of Exom. Jungkook may as well have been trying for the attention of the queen of the isles. The Lord of Exom spoke at the Plaza every Tuesday and Friday. Poetically, rhythmically, as if singing were never possible. The lilt of his voice was as soothing as the ocean at night, and his words had centuries behind them.

His excellency had a benevolent, bulbous smile about his dented cheeks, teeth so white that they must have been brushed nine times a day. When an islander came to him in need on his rare outings, he seemed remarkably attentive to each plight. Vendors along the dock always waved for his gaze, and he somehow struck them all with that grin. It was a wonder he had time to write his erudite poems with all the close royal communications and local governances he kept.

His excellency was towering as a tree, astute as a scholar, kind as a cleric.

Red cat eyes were the last straw for Jungkook since the first poem he heard. On that night, meaningless, flowery words rang in his mind. The boy made it routine to sell his vegetables to the farmer's stand just before eleven, so he could make it to the town center when the first daily speaker did. His excellency was always at the head of the exhibition.

Jungkook was the first of many finery-clad citizens of the mercantile ocean town to gather around the stone brick diamond. As the sun shot grey columns past the bell frame, the sexton pulled the rope eleven times, and the great gold pealed low and commanded a hush of the audience.

The people clapped when the men in black arrived; the lord with his head high and uncovered carried his beautiful, polished walking cane. His excellency was fascinated by exquisite works as his cane: a rod of rosewood with thorns that prickled from the lower end. Its handle was a bulb of resin with a deep magenta rose enmeshed inside, and silver ivies sprouted from the collar twisted about his hand like the lines of a rapier guard. His servants wore white shirts visible beneath their embroidered black doublets; his excellency, as always, clad entirely in black: silk to match the humidity of the day.