Fraying (open)

[Lisenet]

Linweylan

I dug my toes into the warm soil of my garden--cool underneath, and prayed that none of my father's Councilmen or the people who regularly came complaining to him would today come complaining to me. Others may have used a hoe to weed out their gardens, but I found I was too likely to behead my vegetables when I used unwieldy tools. My feet worked better. Besides, the dirt was soft. I liked soft things.

Too bad thoughts could not be so easily contented. Too many fragmented, fraying opinions and ideas tangled and caught on one another inside my head where I couldn't reach them. I much preferred my garden, where when high winds flattened my potatoes I could string them like green marionettes to a stake and they would flourish for me if I asked just right.

Through the hush and murmur of a musical summer breeze, I could hear footsteps approaching. I didn't even bother looking up--my potatoes were more important--as I said "You'd best not be here to tell me someone has dislodged the stones in your walkway and they aren't paying reparations, because I simply haven't got the patience for it today."

Father had gone after Aunt Dellanir, my mother believed this was the perfect opportunity to teach me about being levelheaded when stressed, and I didn't have the faintest clue how to deal with all of these frightened people when no one was telling me how not to frighten myself.

[Lyrt]

Yren walked with a cheery bounce in his step and a smile on his lips, enjoying every moment of the bright summer sun that filtered in through the leaves. It had been already a few months since he had returned from his home in K'nas, and he had yet to see a single sight of Josk. It was not like he was searching though, he had hardly the time with the way things had been going with Dûrion-ebrithil. Since the spring he had been working like a dog to keep up with the increase in requests for the potter's work. The elderly elf wanted to be done with a sizable amount before the summer slowed their pace, and he had hardly any time to get away.

The spring slowly had snuck into summer, and the already quick pace boosted to new heights. He stayed up from dawn until dusk refining clay, crushing minerals, mixing pigments, and running deliveries of finished products. Exhausted could not even describe how he felt, but every time the blonde saw the pleased look in his stern teacher's eye from a job well done he felt compelled to continue. Anyways, Josk quite possibly could be pleased by his diligence, and that...for some reason made it only easier. For a moment he glanced out of the corner of his eye at the vase that his arm pinned to his shoulder, not really paying much attention to where he was going until a voice called out to him.

"You'd best not be here to tell me someone has dislodged the stones in your walkway and they aren't paying reparations, because I simply haven't got the patience for it today."

Blue gems snapped to stare at the woman bent over in the dirt, approaching her curiously as he shifted the vase from off his shoulder to under his arm. "Why...would you pay for stones? That is quite the silliest thing I have ever heard!" He chucked gently and ran a free hand back through his honey colored locks, surveying the dirt around them with interest before returning her gaze to her. "Ah, I may have to ask though just where in Ellesmera am I? I believe I may have strayed just a bit..."

[Lisenet]

Linweylan glanced up with interest from her place in the middle of her soft green sea. This was certainly not one of the people more willing to pester her than to solve their own petty problems. She left dirt on her forehead when she swiped the back of her hand across it. "Say someone runs their wagon over the lovely little cobblestones you spent hours pressing into your lawn. You don't want to do the work again, neither does the person who ruined your hard work, so the other person pays 'reparations' so you can either pay a third party to fix the stones, or it'll compensate you for the extra time you spend fixing the mistake that they made. It's a way for lazy men to solve disputes." She blinked curiously at him, certainly not recognizing the boy as someone she regularly saw. He may work in the market--she rarely had the time anymore to simply sit or wander as she did when she was younger. "This is the east side, Silver District. I suppose it depends on where you're going to know if you're in the wrong place. What are you looking for?"

Linweylan poked her fingers underneath her broad-leafed potato plants and felt around for their bulbs, checking to make sure none were pitted or eaten at yet. The tiny fibers of their roots were smooth and soft against her fingertips, and she thought checking on her potatoes like this felt rather like checking on tiny children, not yet ready for the world. The slightly spiced smell of her tomatoes--the tiny green fruits the size of her thumbprint still hard as marbles--was one of her favorites. Most people recognized the smell of fruits to be favorites, and they forgot to consider the scent of the leaves the fruit had come from as interesting too. It was easy to forget about the dull and green when presented with the lush and crimson.

{Pfft muses are being troublesome.}

[Lyrt]

Yren smiled a little wider and took a seat on the green carpet, watching her work for a moment with interest. K'nas did not have nearly as much vegetation as did Ellesmera, so every time he saw someone working with the land to grow it mystified him. He set the vase down beside himself and ran his fingers through the soft grass, a few strands of his hair drifting into his face as he leaned forward.

The elf nodded idly as he went through an explanation of what precisely a reparation was. He was quite familiar with the concept, and the word itself but didn't feel the need to interrupt her. She seemed a little tense on the matter, most likely needing to chatter to someone about it to deflate. "Eh...where I am going..." He tapped his chin with a narrow finger and fell silent for a few moments, trying to recall just where he had been headed. "I...don't remember, how curious~ Do you? No...of course you wouldn't." He lay back and hummed a gentle tune, lips bared in a gentle smile.

[Lisenet]

Linweylan shook her head at the gentle cheer of the newcomer, making note of how he carefully didn’t sit on any of her flowers, fruits or saplings. When he managed to miss them all—quite a feat—she decided that she liked him and let the furrow smooth from her brow. ”I’m afraid your destination is entirely up to you, Master…?” Upon his introduction she nodded and held out a painstakingly uprooted tomato plant, the smallest of the lot. ”Linweylan,” she offered, then pointed to a freshly-dug hole next to her yellow and orange marigolds. ”Plant it there, careful of the roots.” If he was going to sit he was welcome to help. She never saw gardening as a chore. Her plants were the children she hoped to have someday, the family. And they never told her she was weak. ”But if your destination does come wandering by, I’ll be sure to tell you. Do you know at least what you’re looking for?”

Linweylan dusted moist soil onto her skirt and held out a hand, murmuring for the pitcher of lemonade on the wrought-iron table at the entrance to the garden, and a second cup. She poured herself half a glass and settled the ceramic pitcher—her favorite combination of pale green and white—with the handle facing him, the second cup beside it.

Hearing a faint squeak, she bent again and squinted through the orderly tangle of stems and leaves before her, then reached gingerly in toward the mole anxiously trying to dig through them. ”You’ll upset my flowers, love,” she informed him, beckoning with her fingers. The mole clambered awkwardly into her palm and she sat back, stroking its dry, dirt-ruffled fur. ”Where have you come from?” she asked him then. ”That may help know where you’re going.”

[Lyrt]

"Yren Îdhion" he stated rather informally to the inquiry of his name, the elf seeming to hold little of the grace or the mannerisms of his people. He accepted the tomato plant and stared at it in confusion, having never really spent much time tending to plants in the past. Carefully he lowered the plant into the hole she had pointed to and brushed some soil over it's roots, imitating the way the others looked. It was oddly soothing, not as much as working with clay but somehow similar.

"I have to say I forgot where I was supposed to go" he chuckled, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. Ellesmera is so large that I often forget places that I do not go to often." With a gentle hum he leaned down to kiss the plant that he had just nestled in the soft dirt, his lips brushing the leaves before he started to sing to it gently like he had seen Josk do more than once in the past.

The words were soft, the man gently coaxing it to stand strong and bear healthy fruit. Slowly the melody drew to a close, the man sitting in silence for a few moments before pulling up his chin and glancing at Linweylan with a grin "I am from K'nas, but I have lived in Ilirea for the majority of my life. I only came to Ellesmera a handful of years ago..."

[Deleted]

LUSSEVYANA HYRROND She tip-toed around like a cat, careful and cautious, but full of hidden potential. She wasn't the sort who spent time taking walks just for the sake of the scenery, the mood, or thinking alone. She could do and experience all that without walking around pointlessly. But today she was on a mission. She did though admit that she always loved to just stop and listen to the occasional song that someone played or sang. Even to her, who had lived in this place all her long life, the music and the landscape was always so awesome and artistically beautiful. The elves' race and culture screamed perfection wherever one looked, and the proud race knew it well. But of course, most wise ones knew that no person in this world was morally, righteously perfect. That was the curse of the world - that nobody could be perfect, that everyone had some measure of evil within. She often felt a tad bit jealous of all the artistic talents that the others possessed, like singing or playing instruments or using their magic to make the trees and rocks to super cool things. But she wouldn't give up her fighting specialty for any of those. She could easily be happy to just appreciate what the others did. She was extremely appreciative of the tall, thick trees that shielded her fair face from the sun. She had hung out in those spots where the sun's harsh rays glared down on her and began to make her feel uncomfortable to no end. Life in Ellesmera was fabulous. Well, she had a mission, and now that it was over, she was returning to her home on the other side of the city with a small back-pack full of dead firewood that she found in the less populated parts of the ginormous forest. Technically, she still had the mission of returning back with them. Since the trees of Elesmera were always brimming with life enforced by magic and spells of longetivity and prosperity, their branches never grew old and broke off, and the whole city was flawlessly clean. The only debris on the ground to be found was dirt, rocks, and stray unnatural items such as loose pieces of paper or occasional dropped trash. But most of the time, her kind was very clean and tidy, and kept the streets, roads and paths trash free. So she had to take a long walk over to the forest around the edge of Elesmera where nobody grew his or her tree house to find fallen, dead branches. She wouldn't dare to take the branches of one of the living trees in Elesmera. It was then as she continued her trek back home that she heard someone singing a soft, gentle song, and she had to stop to listen. The tune came from what looked like a garden where two elves were squatted down, tending to the plants. Wordlessly, the dark haired young elf stood there and began to watch them with growing curiosity, now that she had stopped to listen to the song. my very first post on this site XD please correct me if my Eragon elf culture knowledge is flawed... it's been a while since I've read the books :'3 ★ 512 words ★ Yren and Linweylan tagged