The elf was startled. “What do you mean by ‘he can see everything?’ You mean he can see me naked? Even with clothes on?”

“Well, see is just a figure of speech. It’s the words we use when we talk. Oldbark doesn’t see with the eyes. You and I see with our eyes. But eyes can only see what’s in front of us. And it is always blocked. But Oldbark sees through everything. He sees the whole surrounding. He sees everything that is present around him. His sight can’t be blocked. Maybe, see is not a good word. He knows everything around him.”

“You are serious, aren’t you, about this whole seeing-knowing tree thing. And you can read my thought!” It took him a while but he finally noticed it.

“It’s nice to know that you know that I’m not nuts. But I can’t read your thought. And Oldbark isn’t reading your thought. He is inside your thought. Or maybe it’s more correct to say that your thought is inside his. So he knows. And when Oldbark knows, I just know. We are connected, like I’ve said. And if you still don’t believe that Oldbark exists, I can ask Oldbark to prove it to you.”

Right after that, a bud emerged from the root closest to the elf’s head. It grew and grew. It grew at a great speed. Within a couple of seconds, it reached the elf’s face and a purple flower blossomed from its tip. It looked very much like a morning glory, with bluish deep purple corolla, bright iridescent pink mid-petaline bands and a deep pink centre. The anthers and stigma were glowing, golden in colour.

“This is … beautiful.” The elf was captivated by the glowing colours. Furthermore, a flower that grew and bloomed this quickly was out of his world. “This is …. How can it grow that fast? I have lived in the forest all my life and I have never seen flower like this. It’s almost magical.” The glowing pink was alluring to the point of hypnotic. The elf was mesmerized.

And then, the flower sprayed a jet of yellowish green fume on his face. The scent was sweet and nectarous but at the same time pungent like hell. Straightaway, it attacked his eyes, his nose, his nasal cavity and all the way down into his lungs. It felt like a thousand tiny bees stinging his respiratory tract. The elf cried out in pain, tried to arch away, tried to resist, tried to struggle. But, it was no use. The fume clung to his face like tree sap. Then, it disappeared almost as sudden as it had appeared. The flower withered and fell to the ground but the elf was still convulsing and groaning, swinging from side to side. His brain was all jammed up. He could not think. He could not comprehend anything.

“Be good now. Stop fighting. It will help you.”

After a while, the pain subsided. The elf felt dizzy. His eyes were watery and phlegm oozed out from his nose flowing across his forehead. His head was spinning and then, it went swimming, bobbing up and down in an undulating sea. Slowly, dizziness turned to drowsiness. He forgot where he was. He forgot the pain, the discomfort and then, he was asleep. The roots and vines loosened up and he fell down, sleeping like a baby. Although he fell into the puddle of water, he did not wake up.

The little girl was still squatting by his side, watching the sleeping elf. He fell head down and ended with his back facing up. The right side of his face was pressed into the puddle of now muddy water. His nose was just above the water surface. He lay there like a sack of flour. A slender tree branch with little leaves grew out of the little girl’s index finger. She poked the elf’s body with it but there was no response. He just slept. He would sleep through the night.

The girl then got up and smoothed out her green dress which looked a bit too large for her small petite body. The tree branch withered and fell off her finger. She walked towards the wall of roots which moved and opened up a passage for the girl to walk through.

Please take care of my pet. I’ll come again tomorrow morning.

******

It was late. The bar was closed. The patrons were either gone, retired to their rooms or dozed off at their tables. But they were still speaking at the bar counter.

“We would like to engage your service once again,” said the bartender to the gang of lizardmen.

“Yea, yea, yea. What’s the job? What’s the job?” said one of them, evidently excited. They liked the idea of working for the boss. It gave them prestige.

“We need you to … errr … look after … the elf that the boss has just thrown out … a while ago, I mean, hmm,” said the bartender, clearing his throat and forcing a smile.

The giggling and the excited state completely went out of the gang. There was a general stupefaction in their face. The gang leader said, “What? What did you just said?”

“I said …,”

“You want us to protect the elf,” the gang leader cut him off.

“Yes, we want you to do that.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“We don’t protect elves. We are at war with the elves. We cannot protect them.”

“Just keep an eye out on him. Don’t let him get killed, or anything. That’s all.”

“Ooo… this is no good. This will give us bad name. Protecting elf. That’s shit. That’s a shitty job,” another gang member said.

“Look,” said the bartender as he put down a sapphire on the table. This was one of the gems from the pouch. “Just watch him from afar. You don’t need to go near him. Or fight for him. Just do it behind the scene. If there’s something out of the ordinary, just ask the gawk to report to us. I’ve already sent them out.”

Upon seeing the sparkle of the sapphire, the lizardmen were in awe. Their lizard eyes, already yellow, glowed. They talked among themselves in their lizardly language, which was always quite chaotic and arrived at a conclusion. “We’ll babysit your elf.” With that, the gang leader took the sapphire and put it inside his bag. One sapphire would be more than enough to pay for a year of comfortable living in the coastal cities. “But for how long?”

“I don’t know. A week maybe. Here, I’ll give you one of these gems a week. And we see how it goes.” The bartender showed the inside of his palm to the lizardmen and they were all elated. There were several nicely sized gems of all colours on his palm.

Then, a small black bug, with large beak and lengthy wings flew in. As it descended, its wings seemed to disintegrate. It rested on the bartender’s shoulder.

“Now, that’s one ugly bug,” said one of the lizardmen.

The bug was furious. It opened its beak and shrieked. The beak seemed to momentarily enlarge emitting a volume that was proportional to the size of the growing beak. The lizardmen winced as the glass trembled.

“I thought we had bad breath, eww…”

In actuality, the bug was too large to be acceptably called a bug. In flight, it looked more like a bat since it had bat-like wings and bat-like ears. And yet, it could not be called a bat since it had pronounced bug-like features: six legs, compound eyes, and antennae. Therefore, the taxonomy in practice was rather confusing, but so were the names of all the other beings that were in existence.

The bug whispered some low pitched noise into the bartender’s ear. After that, it shrieked again at the lizardmen and flew away through the window near the ceiling. Its wings became lengthier as it flew higher.

“The gawk has just reported. The elf had gone into the Forgotten Forest.”

The lizardmen seemed alarmed. “That old forest. We can’t go in there. The Forest will kill us.”

“And that poses a problem, doesn’t it,” said the bartender pensively.

Later that night, four lizardmen exited the Oxtrail Tavern and jumped into the River Arwen in one perfect arc.

******

The Oxtrail Tavern was built at the most strategic place: on the bank of the south side of River Arwen, according to the name on the elven map, the only map that was ever produced. It was about a half day walk from the Big Fork further down west where the river would split and give birth to two offspring: one would flow to the northwest into the Izkarion Sea while the other to the southwest into the Sea of Blight. In between the two little Arwens lay a vast triangular swath of watery land – marshes, bogs and swamps. The southerly one was highly fecund, giving birth to many offspring until there was no semblance of her left. The northerly Arwen, was more important for the trade route ran along its bank. It connected the Great Deserts and thus, the lands beyond the desert with the Great Plains. A few bridges were built over the two little Arwens to connect the three lands – building one over the Mother Arwen was out of the question as it was just too wide but more importantly, there existed a resistance in the form of the pointy ears.

Invariably, anyone who wanted to commute between the two great lands must go through this river trail. The caravans, the traders, the travellers, the hired-hands, the troops, the bandits, they all used the trail, the only one trail. The other option being the forest would be even more perilous. The elves were the primary architects of the trail and the bridges. They were the original settlers and this land was theirs. But they had become the predecessors. When the boss came here about one hundred and fifty years ago, there were no longer any traces of them left. They had moved further north many hundred years ago to avoid the conflicts and wars with the orcs that inhabited the south and to avoid the dealings with other beings that were not to their liking. In fact, the elves did not like much of any other beings except themselves.

Once they were gone, the business picked up. The elves seemed to have that anti-business-flourishing aura all over them. First, the travellers increased significantly. Then the caravans started. Numerous taverns, houses and villages sprang up like mushrooms along the river trail to cater for these travellers. The Oxtrail was one among the pioneers. They provided them with foods and lodgings, fodder for the pack animals, maintenance and repairs, entertainments, and ritual and medical amenities. Shops opened up to sell them all kinds of supplies. Later, there were trading stations and markets and banks and clearinghouses to facilitate trade. And they were all on the south bank of Mother Arwen.

Originally, the trail ran along the north bank but the pioneers convinced themselves to build their establishments on the south bank. They calculated that it would be much nearer to the coastal cities, not having to go all the way to Boarbourg and then made a big right turn. But more significantly, no one likes the idea of doing business on the north bank for no one likes the idea of being terrestrially connected to the elves, even though now at least 6 walkmonths of forest separated them. There was a reason why that business was down when they were about. The mere scents of them made the pioneers uneasy. Now, they had a natural barrier, the Mother Arwen and they thought, they could always burn the bridges at the Big Fork if it ever came to that.

The boss chose to build his tavern on the sloping foot of a small hill rising from the river so that his tavern would sit on an elevated ground above the bank. It also had a tower that served as the lookout station. To facilitate business, he made the existing trail on the south bank, which was only a narrow dirt road, wider and flatter, from the bridge at the Big Fork to the New Intersect, from which a traveller could go anywhere. By most commonly accepted estimates, this route shortened the trip by at least a week, depending on how fast the pack animals were going. And thereafter, the name Rock Bottom came to be in use for the area encompassed by these establishments because they were in fact at the bottom of some very big rocks.