A pair of stiff shorts hung from her waist, and an ivory tank top clung to her top half... but that was it. Elves passed by her in their many layers: long, billowing coats on top of robes on top of undershirts and undergarments and more, and she shrunk towards the wall beside her.
She was definitely still in her pajamas.
The stone beneath her was astoundingly frigid, and so was the air that brushed past her. Everything felt so different lately, so new, so enrobed in mystery. She had never known wind to carry a temperature along with it, and yet she was beginning to shiver from its chill.
She had always known that wind existed, of course, but every day now the onion was peeling back, revealing a new nuance.
Right now, in the midst of having been tossed into an unfamiliar place, she didn't have the time to start gathering the puzzle pieces and putting them together. But it was only a matter of time; when she got a few quiet moments, she would sit down and try to make sense of the fiddly little things and what they were trying to show her.
A settlement bathed in purple light was before her; it looked a lot like the place she had selected on the map she was shown. As Luke said, there were probably some implications, but with all of the elves stalling in their tracks to look her way... she had to get moving. Something was wrong.
They were gathering now, but subtly - they were trying not to make it too obvious that they were bunching up and beginning to gossip. One of them pointed towards her in a way that looked almost like they could just be readjusting the hem of their jacket, and then whispered tersely to a passing townsperson, who continued briskly on their way. There was absolutely no way that a message hadn't been passed between them, but the question was; what message?
Admittedly, Nikola hadn't left her hometown much in her life. In fact, now that she thought about it, she had never left it for longer than a few moons. As such, she couldn't even begin to imagine why these people were so scandalized by her presence. It could be her pajamas; maybe elves had a strict policy on modesty, and she was breaking it. Maybe her exposed bodyflesh disgusted them.
If that was the case, it was a shame. She had so recently made an effort to make sure her body wasn't offensive to others by washing all the gore and bits of flesh off of herself.
If the elves had a problem with her state of dress, then she would make herself scarce. It wasn't like she had asked to drop in on their city, especially without her favourite cloak and the collection of cooking implements she kept close at hand. She felt more naked without her preferred way to defend herself than she did in the tank top that showed her midriff.
She was beside a wall. It made sense to her that, if she was looking to get away from all the prying eyes of the city, then perhaps she could just climb it and put herself on the other side. It was made of varying shapes and sizes of stone, and several of them looked easy enough for her to wedge her toes between. So she did just that. She backed up just enough to get a running start, used her toes to ensure her launch upward, and hopped over the chunky wall.
The only problem was that there were more people on the other side, and they looked even less pleased to see her.
The person who had received the whispered words earlier pointed her out, and the group of people they were now speaking to all turned to face her at once. Each one's torso was encased in a black leather chest plate, and all the chest plates had purple detailing upon them that made them look like two butterfly wings unfurling against their torso and towards their collarbones. They moved towards her in an organized fashion, getting in step with one another and running towards her in a line.
Fear clawed at her chest. She had no idea what she had done to deserve being pursued like this, but she wasn't about to allow herself to be caught. The option to simply stand around and talk about what was wrong seemed to have never been an option in the first place.
Nikola whirled around and frantically clambered up the way she came. She was much less graceful this time, scraping away some of the skin on her knee this time as she struggled to do whatever she could to get away from her pursuers.
But they knew the area better than she did.
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Some of them were already whirling around the edge of the wall on foot, trying to meet her on the other side.
She leapt off the top, away from them, and stumbled for but a moment before picking up speed. Her legs felt like jelly beneath her, but she kept wobbling along away, taking the first sharp corner she could find.
They split up to cover more ground, scattering down multiple alleyways and into her peripheral vision, and then out of sight.
Clearly, they were knowledgeable about the area, so she and her skinned knee just needed to be faster than them. She braced herself to be sore later and surged forward, taking in what she could of her surroundings without slowing down to truly puzzle over them. She was in an alleyway, a path between buildings. A garbage pail was to her direct right, so she swept an arm over to topple it over, and she was breaking through to the other side of the passage before it even hit the ground.
Next, she turned right, because that was the direction that led her the furthest away from them.
It was also the most central path, and slack-jawed elves stood in place as she zipped past them and then directed her uniformed pursuers towards her.
Drat. Well, if she sped along quickly enough, it wouldn't even matter that their fingers were pointing her out. Nikola ducked into an alley to her left next, a wide one with a clear shot to the other side and potted plants decorating it. Her chest felt like it wanted to split open with all the adrenaline and air being forced through it, yet another sensation she decided she had never experienced before now, though she could take or leave this one. It was much easier to perform feats of physical endurance when your body wasn't screaming at you for them.
She rounded the corner so tightly she had to brace her face with her palm or she would have scraped her cheek too, and this time what she was greeted with were the city gates, silvery and sitting agape. Nikola widened her strides and picked up the pace then, puffing out long, gasping breath before going at full tilt towards the exit. Surely, these elves wouldn't have to chase her if she just left.
But as the distance between her and her salvation closed, something fluttered at the edge of her vision; something violently purple flapped at breakneck speeds and, without so much as a thud, a giant-ass butterfly landed in front of her and blocked her path.
It was beautiful, with an elegant, moth-like torso of onyx and dark, gradiented purple wings that reminded her of nothing she had ever seen before. The edges of its wings were lined with a purple so vibrant it threatened to vibrate to life. Now, if it were only the massive insect that had landed in front of her, she might have just been able to vault over it... but there was a dude sitting on it, and that dude had a pointy stick.
That made the whole situation very un-vaultable, and with the sheer amount of speed she had injected into her wiry limbs, she wasn't able to skid to a stop soon enough. No, instead, she simply collided with one of the very people who had been chasing her, her body crashing into the space between his arms so neatly it was almost like she wanted to be caught.
"NO," she yowled, the words ripping out of her in a roar.
He clapped a hand against her wrist, and Nikola tried furiously to pull it away, but he was just as strong as his musculature suggested and he held her there. The reality of being captured started to seep its way into her mind and she silently apologized to the beautiful specimen of a butterfly as she put her bare foot against it and pushed against it, which did serve to bring the man down from his mount and disarm him all at once.
However, it also served to bring him down on top of her, his superior weight crunching her into the rigid earth below and forcing the rest of the air out of her lungs. From there, it was easy for him to gather her wrists into one of his hands. "You are under arrest," he growled, his voice bitter and his breathing laboured from the chase.
"Un-under arrest?" Her icy blue eyes paled into more of a frigid, ghostly white; as did her skin, and she could feel the blood draining from the fingertips being held above her head. "No-- nonoNO, no! What for, what did I do?"
"Yes. You are under arrest for trespassing on lands that are not yours to tread upon, and also for resisting arrest." A thick manacle clapped around one of her wrists, followed by a second, each one closing with a chilling finality that settled into her core.
"Another human apprehended," he delivered mechanically, getting to his feet and then pulling Nikola to hers by the chain linking her manacles together. "No human can outrun the hand of the Violet Queen for long."