“That was no mere spat, my lady,” Serenthel argued in a calm tone that grated against Naomi’s frayed nerves.
“What do you know of Ka’veshi, sharp-ear?” she argued back while continuing forward.
Serenthel let out the smallest sigh, a restrained note of growing agitation. “Even I, a newcomer to your city, could tell the beginnings of war. I highly doubt the lines in the sand, your paradunes, will settle without a great deal of time and an even greater amount of bloodshed. Adibe wished you to be safe from the growing violence, and I have been charged with ensuring that safety.”
“I didn’t ask to be safe!” Naomi dropped the canvas bag and threw her hands up towards uncaring gods before turning her glare on Serenthel. “And what safety could some elf boy and his elk possibly provide?”
A flash of emotion broke through Serenthel’s docile expression. “I am no boy.”
A laugh blurted out of Naomi, her mind still reeling from the absolute absurdity her day had become. “Is this where you give me the ‘I’m a man!’ speech, probably the same speech you gave your sharp-eared pa before sneaking past that fancy big wall you elves hide behind?”
Red blossomed across Serenthel’s cheeks as he faced the indignities she’d slung at him. His fists clenched in their leather gloves and he closed his eyes for a moment. Naomi stood there, waiting for him to shout at her and tell her to go back to her human city. She wanted him to. She wanted him to get so angry at her, he’d hop back up on that horned beast of his and leave her alone, just like everyone else had always done. Everyone, but Adibe.
After a long inhale and a rise in his shoulders, Serenthel opened his eyes as his expression became irritatingly placid once more. “My lady, I may look no older than you, but I have seen thirty summers come and go. I did not sneak past the wall, I was sent through it by my grove, my homeland, on an important journey. Furthermore, my people are not hiding behind Lath’limnier’s Wall; its magic protects us from the dark and corrupting dreams of men.”
Despite thinking her day couldn’t possibly get any more absurd, it just had. She stood in the middle of the unnamed farmer’s road, staring at him. Thirty summers? He stood taller than her, for certain, but he had no sign of facial hair or- Did elves grow beards? It didn’t matter. Even with the shadow of a beard, he’d still look like one of those young wealthy prats from the Pillars who were wasting their days drinking and waiting for their parents to buy them a bride. Men. Sharp-eared or not, she was better off without them.
“How could you possibly be thirty summers?!” was all she could think of to say.
He measured her response calmly, giving him the air of someone who had, indeed, seen far more summers come and go than she had. “My people age more slowly than your own.”
“More slowly,” she said, one hand raising to set on her hip. At least this puzzle gave her something to think about other than the chaos back in Ka’veshi, and how Adibe had stubbornly remained behind before practically shoving her onto the back of that damn elk. “Wait. So, you are just a boy, then?”
Serenthel’s nose wrinkled. “No, that’s not-”
“You just said ‘more slowly’,” she interjected, forcing a tiny noise of frustration from him. “Which means that thirty summers for you might even make you younger than me, relatively speaking.”
His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. He held up one finger then let it drop in defeat. “You are more clever than I gave you credit for, my lady.”
“Yeah well,” she shied away from the compliment, and the way his impression of a lost fish made him look much less like a prat from the Pillars. “You have to have some wit about you if you hope to hold your own in a conversation with that old man, or survive in a city like Ka’veshi.”
Serenthel nodded at that, considering a thought. “Perhaps that is why he asked you to become my guide in this world of men. I thought it an odd request to make of a-” He stopped mid thought and swallowed his next words.
“A what?” Naomi huffed, her second hand joining the first to set on her other hip. “A dirty, barefoot street orphan?”
“No,” he argued. “A child. I was going to say child.”
“Uh-huh, I bet.” Naomi rolled her eyes up to the sky. “Cursed by Ishkar’s quill, that’s what I am, to be stuck standing in the middle of-” she paused and looked around only to curse again. “Gods know where, with an elf boy and his elk!”
Serenthel’s nose wrinkled further. “Leave Forfolyn out of this.”
Naomi snorted a barely withheld laugh and glanced past Serenthel’s shoulder. The elk looked on, patiently waiting for the two bipeds to make up their mind which direction they should go. Naomi wanted an answer to that herself.
“Look, elf-”
“Serenthel,” he said, sounding as exhausted from the conversation as she felt. “My name is Serenthel.”
“Serenthel,” she repeated, hoping to appease him because arguing over names and ages had gotten them nowhere. “Adibe had obviously lost his fool mind when he said I’m to be your guide or whatever. I don’t know this world. You heard him speak the truth of it yourself! I’ve never been outside Ka’veshi. So, why don’t you just let me go back where I came from, and you can go find some world-traveled merchant to show you around.”
“Because, Adibe said we should find strength in one another,” countered Serenthel. “That we must find answers to Ellium’s past, and hopefully its future.”
Naomi stared at him, shoulders drooping. “What does that even mean?”
“Truthfully, my
