Marbles: The Hawk Who Refused to Die a Virgin

Chapter 33. Wood Elves are Dicks

I mean, I'll go out describing an animal's destruction, but I balk a little about describing their capture and subjugation. What does that say about me? Both processes are so fucked up.

Each wagon creaked ominously as Cody the ogre hefted the tortoises, one per wagon, up and into them. He drew three canvas straps tightly across every wet shell. The wood elves built a bonfire to cook breakfast. They had been riding hard throughout the night, not stopping, in an effort to beat any other rival poacher tribes who might have also seen Hawk Mountain collapse.

The elves passed around fiascos of thick green glass, filled with hard, spiced, cider, and made a game of tossing the buttery, gray, fat-marbled hunks of tortoise meat into a big cast iron pot they had suspended over the bonfire. It smelled really good. Lucy thought about how that's all we really are, just machines that turn moss into meat to be eaten by other, meaner machines.

"Was that thing after you when the mountain fell down?" asked Christina Aguilera, pointing at the dead dire bear with the same branch he had used to write his name out phonetically in the sand around their campfire, pointing to every syllable like he was Lucy's schoolteacher. I swear to God this was this elf's name. Apparently it was a very weird name for anyone other than elves to pronounce so he was very exacting in his introductions.

"Yes," said Lucy. "Her two cubs were going to kill my gnome friend over there. Our elf friend died protecting him. You might have heard of him? His name was Languin."

"The pauper prince?" asked Christina, incredulous. The surrounding wood elves looked up from their stew bowls and began to laugh, puffing out their cheeks to make them chubby and waddling around with their hands in front of their bellies, mimicking a gut. "The only time that guy fights is when someone gets between him and his endless bread," said Christina.

Lucy took a deep breath. She was still mad, in some ways, at Languin, but they had loved each other, however briefly, and he had risked his life to save them whenever he wasn't risking their lives to lose his love handles. She couldn't lash out at these wood elves though, they were currently their only chance to get to civilization and some specialized medical attention for Opal. She had to say something though.

She frowned and looked right at Christina and said, "Languin was a proud warrior and he loved us all."

Christina Aguilera burst out laughing. "Dude the only thing that kid loved was eating an entire box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch on Sunday morning."

"No," Lucy continued evenly. "He got us all out that cave, and then that fucking bear ate him alive right in front of us."

"Yeah and then what'd the bear die of? High cholesterol?" asked Christina. Unbeknownst to Lucy, elves had literally a million jokes about Languin and how fat he was. When you were endlessly shallow, and only needed to sleep for an hour each night, you wind up talking an immense amount of shit about people.

"Regardless of how you feel about Languin," said Lucy, "is there any way we can hitch a ride with you to the nearest town?"

"Sure sweetheart," said Christina, proffering a fiasco to Lucy and smiling. He looked like Brad Pitt, only he was mean.

"Thanks I'll stick to water," said Lucy.

That evening, with all the obsidian bishops lashed firmly into the back of wagons, the wood elf caravan set off towards the nearest city. The wind off the plains whipped the bright silk banners that bedecked every elven wagon into a loudly flapping kaleidoscopic froth that dimmed into gray, sullen rags as the sun set and the stars began to poke through the night sky.

Lucy was sitting next to Christina in the seat of the lead wagon. Jezebel was silently gliding out over the prairie, hunting, using the lanterns on the wagon train as beacons as she made her wide circles over the big grass sea.

Marbles, who was still very salty about how the elves had laughed about Languin, was perched on top of the dire bear's skull, which was now swaying back and forth as the new codpiece for Cody the ogre.

Earlier that day, Cody had planted his right foot on the rubble of Hawk mountain for leverage, reached behind the dead dire bear's ears with both hands, and yanked its head off. He spent the afternoon diligently flensing the flesh from the skull with a sharpened hunk of obsidian bishop shell, and was now wearing the dire bear skull over his ogre nethers, a scarlet bolt of elf caravan banner silk strung through its eyeholes and tied, mawashi style, around his waist.

Marbles was using his talons and beak to scrimshaw intricate abstract patterns into the skull by moonlight. It calmed him. Immensely.

Opal was bundled up in the back of Christina Aguilera's wagon, next to a bound obsidian bishop, whose labored, panicked breathing sounded like ocean waves.

With preternaturally elven accuracy, Christina Aguilera spit out the candle flame in the lantern swaying from the pole that hung out the first pair in the wagon's team of elks, so that they could better use cider and moonlight to seduce Lucy.

Wood elves always talked to humans like they were one wink away from getting blown by them. Before turning to flirt with the bereaved priestess, he took out a bright blue tin of moontan lotion and began to coat his biceps with it. Lucy had just sat back down next to Christina after checking on Opal. Christina began his overture, as all wood elves do, by shitting on the memory of former boyfriends.

"You know that lamp Languin had could have cured cancer," said Christina, who slapped the underside of his zinc oxide slathered tricep, watched it waddle, pregnant with strength, and then flexed it solid. Wood elves loved to tan. I get it, it's a little precious, a tad cliché, to say that the sun healed elves and that the moon tanned them. But I still fall for this Alice in Wonderland- type shit and, frankly, I don't want to be the kind of person who doesn't.

"His daddy raided the royal treasury to pay for it, and his son stole it so that he could wish to be thin," snorted Christina. "You're an elf, for god sakes. Just don't eat after 8 p.m. and you'll be thin and gorgeous."

"Hmmm," said Lucy.

"FYI I don't think all fat humanoids are disgusting," said Christina, winking. "But when it happens to elves? Holy smokes is it gross."

Lucy was saved by the sound of Opal puking. She turned back around and crawled into the back of the wagon to check on him again.

"Hey Opal are you OK?" Lucy asked, feeling Opal's forehead. His fever had finally broke.

"I'm sorry," said Opal, wiping a sleeve over his mustache. "It's the motion. This always happens to me in wagons." He looked over at his own moonlit puke dripping down from the plastron of the captured tortoise. "It's good to be alive, kinda," Opal said, sighing resignedly. Lucy offered him a canteen and he drank deeply.

"Thank you," said Opal.

"This is a good sign Opal," said Lucy. "When you get past fighting your big sickness and you are free to be sick of something else." Opal grunted in agreement and fell back asleep. Lucy, relieved, took a minute to prepare herself to transition from one sick fuck to another. She pulled back the wagon's curtain and crawled back to her seat.

"We're pretty close to the city," said Christina, holding the reins between his knees and buffing his nails nonchalantly.

Lucy stood on the wagon seat and stretched up on her tiptoes, trying to see as far out as possible. They crested a little hill, and Lucy gasped when she saw an entire city on fire.