It took only a couple of seconds for Ari to catch up to the minstrel. He was walking slowly, seemingly without any hard aim to pursue, wandering the streets at his leisure, so to speak. As soon as she was within a couple metres of him, she stopped in her tracks and adjusted her pace to his. She didn’t, or more like she couldn’t walk side by side with him, so she settled on just being his shadow.
“If you want to follow me, just say so,” Lux said all of a sudden, without stopping or looking back. “But don’t stay behind me. People will get the wrong impression.”
Ari heard that, but couldn’t comply with his tacit invitation. Besides, she didn’t understand what he meant by ‘the wrong impression.’ Was it an odd sight for a cloaked, hooded figure to tail someone so intently? It was quite a normal thing back home, the distance between them ensuring that they wouldn’t be all in the wake of a natural hazard…
“I see. Didn’t think you’d listen, but I guess that’s fair enough…” the minstrel sighed with a frustrated, yet bemused expression on his face. “Here’s what we’ll do to not attract any attention.” He turned around to which Ari’s eyes sunk to the ground. She could hear him stepping closer to her, and her instincts and mind all told her that she should run, but she held firm. Lux only stopped when he was a metre behind her.
“We’ll walk like this. I’ll tell you when to turn or where to go, and this way people won’t question it, okay?” Ari still couldn’t comprehend, but she nodded. “All right, let’s go.”
The two started moving again, with the minstrel’s shadow barely reaching Ari’s. They continued in silence for quite a while, as they kept onto the main road without any deviations. It didn’t take long for the city’s enormous walls to finally rise from beyond the horizon.
For a while, Ari’s head was filled with all sorts of questions that she couldn’t bring herself to verbalise. After all, her nature couldn’t be helped, a nature that she very much shared with the animal she resembled. Her discomfort was all the more highlighted as she felt the many eyes of the passerby accompany her as she walked. It was odd. No one used to look so intently at her before, was it her clothing? Or was it the fact that her face was almost buried in the ground?
“Care to answer some questions?” Lux’s voice interrupted her worrying.
Nod.
“I guess only ‘yes’ or ‘no’s for now. You’re an Atavic, right?”
Nod. That might as well have been a rhetorical question.
“Figures. Do you like the city?”
Ari hesitated for a little. On the one hand, she marvelled at the beautiful contraptions humans developed, the big stacks of stone, the beautifully carved and enormous baskets that held so many fruits. But, on the other hand, the dark, safe parts of the city were teeming with fearsome looking people, all carrying those sharp, shiny and scary sticks…
“It’s quite a hard question, isn’t it? Let’s put it on hold for now. So...do you know any magic?”
A very excited, slightly proud nod.
“Heh, you are quite confident in that,” Lux warmly replied. “I’ll want to see that someday.”
Ari’s ears immediately jumped under her cloak, but that was the full extent of her excitement. Her inherent self forbade her from even turning around, to see the candid smile she was shown.
“Did you use to speak so little back home too?”
A slow, seemingly disappointed shake.
“Oh. I guess it’s to be expected. No one could just go to an entirely new place and act like they belong. Just give it time,” Lux said in a brotherly tone. To that Ari let off a shy smile underneath her hood.
“Hey, you over there!” a man’s vaguely familiar shout resonated from behind them. The two turned around to see a patrol of 4 men approaching them. Three of them wore the town’s guard uniform, a simple tunic with leather trousers and boots, and a light sprinkle of steel in the form of shoulderguards, pauldrons and greaves. The last of them carried himself in a much more distinguished manner. Although donning much of the same attire, the quality of it was cut from another cloth. Only befitting the prince of the land.
Spotting the unfortunately known face , Ari immediately hid behind Lux, as the minstrel flashed him a smile.
“Gentlemen...to what do I owe the pleasure?” The prince smirked at his remark.
“Pardon the sudden approach, minstrel. Rest assured, I carry no ill-will from last night, not to you and especially not to your beautiful companion.” The prince bowed slightly, his hand clutched to his chest.
“No problem, no foul. Alcohol does that to people. I hope that I didn’t hit you too hard last night. At least not harder than that giant you beat up before.”
“Yeah…” The prince dejectedly rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyhow, the reason I’ve tracked you down was to apologize...and to invite you to the castle.”
“Oh? What for?” Lux asked surprised, but without dropping his cheerful smile.
“Father is throwing a feast tonight in honour of my return. He would’ve done it sooner, but...unfortunate circumstances delayed it until tonight,” the prince offhandedly explained. “Since I enjoyed your music from last night, I convinced my father to hire you.”
“Oh, my! Thank you for the offer, of course I’ll accept,” Lux wholeheartedly replied.
“I wouldn’t have had it any other way.” The prince’s words were kind, but a hint of authoritarian deviousness went past the minstrel’s head. “Anyway, please be at the castle by sundown. I’ll see you there,” he continued, as he turned his back to the two. The prince’s group turned around to leave, accompanied by Lux’s warm and candid smile.
“Oh, one more thing!” the prince added. He turned his face towards the minstrel. “My father would love to meet you too, Miss Lapin. He’s been the leader of this land for a long time, so he hasn’t had the opportunity to visit the world as much as he did in his youth. Would you please do that for a kind old soul?”
Ari peeked from behind Lux for the first time in their entire conversation. She was still afraid of the prince, so the brief eye contact she made with him was cut short by an abrupt nod, followed by a strategic retreat back to the safety of the minstrel’s back.
“Wonderful! Then, I bid you a good day!” The prince gestured to them as his escorts and he passed a corner and disappeared from their sight.
“Well, that solves the problem of what we’ll eat and where we’ll sleep tonight, doesn’t it?”
Lux turned around to face the bunny girl, but she didn’t seem to be as upbeat as him. For one, she didn’t want to meet the prince again, nor be anywhere near him. His flushed, perverted expression still lingered in her mind, as she reminisced the night before. Her thoughts were interrupted by Lux’s lukewarm smile popping up in her face, as the minstrel knelt down to her level.
“Don’t worry about him, he won’t lay a finger on you,” he chuckled. “I’ll protect you.” His hand gently patted her head, as he reassured her.
Ari’s eyes glistened, as she mouthed an excited admiration. For some reason this touch wasn’t an intrusive, harmful one, but something that she’s been missing for so long. Unbecoming of her, she closed her eyes and let her senses free, as she relished the first instance of warm human contact. Was that how it felt like? Was it all right for a little bit of affection to just send her into such an euphoric state?
“Now, let’s go! I want to take you to a nice place to rest,” Lux announced as he took the lead. A bit groggy from the sensation, Ari took some time to process. When she finally came to, Lux was several steps ahead of her. Without hesitation, she ran towards him, stopping only when they were side by side. One next to the other, they made their way out of the city.
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Past the city walls, a whole new world unveiled to the two, but a world that wasn’t unknown to any of them. Outside the orderly streets and buildings lay the randomness of raw nature, at least that was what humans saw. Everyone knows that the world functions with or without our artificial presence to corrupt it, so where we see chaos, the animals, plants and various other creatures see a harmony we aren’t privy to.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
A short stretch of open fields surrounded the city, all painted in the golden colour of wheat. As noon was left behind them, the farmers that would work the ground returned from their lunch breaks. They were nothing but ripples in the sea of cereal, small ants that Ari enjoyed watching from the hill they were climbing, as she looked back at the minuscule city they left behind.
Lux didn’t tell her where he was leading her, but she couldn’t ask. She arrived in the city at night, so she hasn’t had the time to admire the beautiful, yet manmade landscape that surrounded the outer reaches of the feudal domain. Even the forest was different from the verdant ones she was used to. Not little was her wonder and confusion when she saw a weird kind of tree. Short, branchless and leafless trees that were interwoven with other normal ones that she couldn’t wrap her mind around.
“That’s a tree stump. This is what’s left after the tree is cut.”
Ari shot him a puzzled look that had a weird mixture of sadness and contempt in it. The trees were the essence of a forest. Without them, she would have no shade to hide in, no leaves to branches to sleep on when lost, no safe spots. She couldn’t understand why humans would do such a thing, nor did she want to. Unconsciously, she picked up the pace, trying to run away from a side of humanity that she considered unsightly. Lux took note of her acceleration, but couldn’t do anything but sigh understandingly.
Soon enough, the forest began to thin, as they approached what appeared to be a clearing. However, Lux’s destination wasn’t an ordinary clearing, but rather a special part of it. As they stumbled past the thick shrubbery and finally came to see the sky unobstructed, they were met by a sudden cliff, seemingly erected out of nowhere by a deity. A couple of small ledges broke the otherwise flat surface of it, making it only extremely hard to climb, but not impossible. For regular people, that was. Ari curiously looked up at the cliff, not hearing Lux rummaging in his bag. She only turned as she heard a heavy thud on the grass. She couldn’t help but recoil, as she saw a hairy snake at her feet.
“No, no, wait! It’s not a snake!” Lux cried amused, as the bunny girl had her back to the wall, staring at the imminent threat. “It’s just a piece of rope, here, touch it. It’s rough, but harmless,” he continued, as he carefully approached her. Cautiously, she reached her hand out to the weird snake, and to her delight, it remained as motionless as she first saw it.
“We’re going to use it to climb this cliff. Or more like, I’ll use it. See those small ledges that pop out every here and there? Think you can jump from one to another until the top?” Ari energetically nodded, brimming with confidence. “Great then! Hold on to this end of the rope while you jump and after you get on top, just hold on to it until...well, you’ll probably see,” Lux smiled as he stepped back.
With the rope firmly grasped in her tiny fist, Ari crouched down, eyeing the first ledge. With no apparent effort, she bounced up in the air, and quietly landed at her destination. She didn’t seem to even break a sweat as she quickly spotted her next stop and proceeded to dash towards it. Lux couldn’t help but smile as he watched his bunny friend leap with the precision of a ninja, an ability he envied, but admired. In the end, she managed to do a one hour climb in less than one minute.
At the top, she was met with a single, secular tree, whose shade enveloped a large area next to the drop. She stopped for a while to catch her breath. Even if it wasn’t something hard for her, she wasn’t really used to physical effort like this. She sat down at the cool shade, the rope still firmly held in her hand as she waited for it to do something. Curious, she playfully swung it around, and to her joy, it slithered around the grass much like a real snake, but completely harmless. She continued to toy with it, unknowingly giving Lux the signal to do his part.
He grabbed the rope in both his hands and a small, purple flame danced away from his palm. As it touched the rough thread, it transformed in a quick moving spark that travelled up its length, until it reached the curious Ari. Suddenly, she found the rope as heavy as concrete and as stiff as a branch. It fell from her weak hand and immediately stuck to the ground. Giving it a cautionary tug to test its strength, Lux proceeded to take out another device from his bag. The small contraption had two pieces of metal, small wheels on each side of them, joined together by a small hinge.
With another small flame, this time directed at the small bearings inside, and a small, careful blow, the wheels started rotating rapidly. Closing his device on the rope, the mechanism served to rappel him upwards, as he reached the top almost as fast as his companion. At the very end, he detached his device and flipped through the air once as he landed in front of an amazed Ari.
Dusting himself off, he sat next to the bunny girl, and the two took in the landscape that unraveled before them. The city was nothing but a small, grey ladybug lying inside a daffodil of fields. That's what drew her in the first time she laid eyes upon the curious boulder lit up by dancing flames. It was what made her leave the safety of the familiar forests for the first time since the beginning of her journey. It was the first human thing that made her curiosity outshine her timidness and finally stop lurking in the shadows.
They could barely discern the path they took, as the dense forest made it all the easier to lose their own trail. Still, one thing they couldn’t lose was the serenity of the cliff. Whilst the hustle and bustle of the city has its own unique charm, the peace and quiet of an isolated spot on top of the world leads one to appreciate a different thing. It’s a very particular sense of laziness, as your gaze drifts across the endless forest while you, yourself, stand underneath a denizen of the woods, enjoying the scenery at the shelter of its shade. Even for a girl like Ari, moments like these retained a homely charm, one that she wanted to thank Lux for offering her.
“I hope you like it up here. I didn’t really have a quiet and isolated place to check you, so...I figured that this one should do.” Ari didn’t wait too long to confirm it with a very adamant nod and a wide smile. “Now, if you could please take off your cloak…”
Ari immediately obliged. Sliding her hands out of her sleeves, she lifted her garment over her head. However, much to Lux’s embarrassment and shame, she was left stark naked. Beet red, the minstrel immediately looked away covering his eyes, as Ari’s ears propped up in confusion. To her, this was quite normal, since the light coat of white fur that adorned her chest, hips and shins did a lot to keep her warm, despite its appearances. Furthermore, she didn’t really know why humans would dress themselves in such weird cloths, but she figured that in order to pass she’d need something as well.
“Ahem, d-do you not have...any other clothes?” the minstrel stammered as he couldn’t really look at her for an answer. “No worries, umm, we’ll get you some before tonight’s feast! Anyway, could you...ugh...cover your chest, please?” Ari still had some questions, but seeing how uncomfortable her companion was, she decided not to voice them. Not that she could, anyway. The hearing of fabric rustling signaled Lux that it was okay, or at least easier, to look at her.
Taking his hand away from his eyes, he started investigating the girl’s fair, unblemished skin. A cursory glance showed a couple of scrapes and bruises on her forearms and knees, but nothing too serious. Thankfully, the thugs were gentler than he thought. Carefully, he touched a little below the reddened area, eliciting a small wince.
“Okay, thankfully, it’s nothing serious. Still, we wouldn’t want this area to get infected. Hang on.” Lux rummaged through his bag and pulled out a small white roll. Ari’s confused stare prompted the minstrel to explain.
“These are bandages. You usually put them on wounds. Here, but brace yourself. It might pinch a little.” With a touch as gentle as a mother’s, Lux slowly wrapped the roll around her knees, careful to ease off when her breathing came in sharper. Ari couldn’t help but feel a little flustered, as she hasn’t yet thought about how much an absolute stranger to her was dotingly taking care of her. Was that human nature? Couldn’t have been, after all she’s witnessed several specimens that were at the other end of the spectrum. He was just different.
She whimpered silently as he moved on to her forearms, his face now being so close to hers that she spotted details she has yet to see. The small bags under his eyes that were once larger, the little sundried scars that checkered his face, the little hairs poking out from his cheeks from an imperfect shave, all things he has yet to notice. She was being nursed by someone not only unknown to her, but whom she failed to even properly observe.
As he changed his focus to her other arm, she began to peruse his person. He wore a very uninteresting garb, a simple dark gray tunic with a small cape that reached to the middle of his back, complimented by a lighter pair of trousers and boots that didn’t cling to the shape of his foot. Past his physical appearance, lay a gentle aura, an atmosphere that spread out of every fiber of his being, from the gentle smile, to the tired, caring eyes, from his little, agile fingers to his calming breath.
“There you have it, all patched up,” he announced somewhat triumphantly, as he tied a small knot in the bandage. “You...you should put your cloak back on.” Lux shyly turned around, as she mindlessly obliged, still preoccupied with analysing the man in front of her. With the rustling ending, he gave her another warm look that she’s received so many of today, as his gaze drifted back towards the city. The sun had already begun its descent, and with the city West of them, it engilded the fields with a honey aura.
For a long while, they stood in silence. Lux had his eyes dancing somewhere over the horizon, whilst Ari’s jumped from the beautiful clifftop landscape to the minstrel that rested next to her. He noticed her furtive glances one time and he just smiled back at her, then resumed his meditative gazing.
“I like coming in places like this during my travels, you know. With the North being so rich in mountainous regions it’s not hard to find cliffs like these. They’re quite magical, right? Just being high above the world, but not dominating it, not looking down on it. It’s just a better vantage point. As the birds fly higher and the moles burrow deeper, I guess we just try to find a way to look at the world and actually see it as we feel it should look. For some people it’s high up in the air, for others it’s at ground level, for some it’s lit by the sun, for others it’s in the depth of caves and lairs. And even if sometimes I feel like I cannot see it properly…” The melancholic melody of Lux’s voice trailed off. Ari had listened intently as her eyes tried to join his at the invisible line he stared at so intently.
“I just find a new vantage,” he concluded his monologue, as he finally looked back at her. Ari was more voiceless than she could be, but her admiration was clearly drawn all over her face.
“I-” she tried to vocalise, but nothing came of it. The girl looked a bit disappointed in herself, that all she could mutter was only a half-spoken word. Seeing that, Lux shook his head.
“Now, now, I think that’s enough of this beautiful laziness. I think we best be heading back to the city. The stores might close if we don’t hurry and you won't get your new clothes!” At the prospect of that, her eyes lit up again. To her, the idea of getting clothes chosen with the help of a human was similar to being somewhat accepted, so she was all the more eager to go. Jumping up to her feet, she dashed towards the cliff where she waited like a child. Smiling, Lux got up as well, and prepped for their descent.
“Can I ask one more question?”
Assured nod.
“How old are you?”
Ari opened her mouth, but looking at his face froze the air in her throat. Retreating under the comfort of her hood, she shyly mumbled under her breath, “S-Seventeen s-springs.”
“Oh, how delightful. I guess that makes two of us.”