Not everything is Dark and Light

An Awkward Meal

III

Vuren yawned and his eyes watered as he as he picked away at his bottom row of teeth desperately trying to pry a piece of wayward meat from the small gap it had lodged itself in. He groaned as his nail touched it only pushing it further into the gap. He tried to use his tongue on the other end to free it but the meat had become stuck fully and Vuren resided himself to defeat. He quickly tried to flood that area of his mouth with saliva to try and release it that way but his efforts proved fruitless and he shook his head in frustration.

Vuren and Nifeerein had been travelling all day with the mountains to their side. Vuren had watched them as they proved to be a beautiful cascading backdrop for the venture they found themselves on. Nifeerein was quite the opposite as she swung about in her seat often scanning the horizon frantically at the advent of any sound. Her constant spinning had irritated Vuren to the point he had to grab her leg and hold it in place when she had done it one too many times in order to get his point across. From then on she continued to spin but only letting her head and upper body rotate while her legs remained decently set on Agro’s sturdy frame.

The day was a long one for both of them as the ride was uneventful but each and every sound perked their ears with the fear of what might be out there getting the better of their imagination. Vuren and Nifeerein rode in silence both still unsure as to how to communicate with the other. Vuren wished to calm Nifeerein, make her feel safe and secure around him but he had no clue what to say as he had never been so long with someone who did not know his way of life before. Usually he was an outsider and only had passing interactions with those that did not walk his path. Otherwise it was a case that he was with other demigods or mages who understood the unenviable job they did. Nifeerein on the other hand had so many fears and questions as to what occurred the night before. She was confused by the interactions between Jult and Vuren. Was afraid that round any bend a pack of psychotic elves would be waiting to kill her. She was scared that her parents had already been told the worst. She was worried that her lack of show would reflect badly on the dark elves for the relationship she was trying to build with the light elves. She was just so concerned with everything going on just one word of assurance would be enough to set her mind at ease but whenever she went to ask anything Vuren would look at her with a lack of empathy in his eyes and she would keep those thought internalised.

The two now sat across from one another at a low fire which was barely enough to illuminate one another’s faces let alone kept them warm. Vuren had made it clear to Nifeerein the fire was to cook and nothing else and once they had finished eating they would be on the move again save letting any light elf scouts see the flames and come and find them. Nifeerein looked down at the meal she was supposed to be eating and a winced at it. Her refined palate was not ready to experience the rabbit Vuren had skinned in front of her and cooked in barbaric fashion. He had told her this was what she missed whenever the kitchen staff at her castle prepared meals for her but it was something Nifeerein did not need to experience as the blood and organs of the poor creature were not something she needed to think about when she was eating her meal. She took small nibbles from the leg she had been provided while Vuren continued to gorge himself on it and Agro also munched away at the tall grass they were sitting beside.

“You need to eat.” Vuren said between mouthfuls as she tossed a loose bone into the fire.

“I am not hungry.” Nifeerein responded as she sat holding the leg in her hand trying to keep it from touching her clothes. Underneath the cloak she still adorned herself with Nifeerein wore a flowing green dress which fell down to her ankles. Vuren had already become angry at the dress earlier sighting it impracticality for their purposes but Nifeerein refused to remove it or have it damaged. It made the riding experience a pain as the dress needed to be rolled up in order for her to sit on Agro’s back but it was something Nifeerein was willing to do as the dress was too esteemed to let go or damage beyond repair. Nifeerein could already see the mud splatters on the dresses fringes and prayed it did not become too ingrained in the fabric to be washed off.

“You’re lying.” Vuren stated bluntly as she swallowed a large clump of meat that he had not chewed enough. “You’re just put off by the preparation of it. What you need to do is swallow your pride and eat cause that’s all you get. Out here there ain’t no chefs to make to late night snacks or giant buffets for you to fill your stomach with then throw up later to keep your waistline in check. No here it’s you eat when you can and right now you can so eat up.”

His words were firm but had a strange element of kindness behind them. Nifeerein detected this but did not ask on it as she delicately raised the rabbit to her mouth and stared it down. She understood Vuren’s point and how she needed to eat but her brain told her this was once a creature and she could not get her head round it. She smelt it and the fresh sent of blood was still lingering on it. It made Nifeerein sick as she held back a slight bit of vomit she had inadvertently puked up in the back of her throat.

“Eat it.” Vuren commanded and Nifeerein knew then she was not going to get off the hook with it. She bit into the rabbit and took a tiny chunk of flesh from it. It was less than marginal but it was still something. She chewed it and the texture was soft and surprisingly tender with the texture reminding Nifeerein of chicken. She continued to chew away finding the meat to be enjoyable but her mind always slipped back to the fact she was eating what was once a living creature. When she swallowed it Vuren could see the displeasure on her face even with the limited light and it could not help but make him chuckle.

“What is so funny?” Nifeerein bring the remainder of leg away from her face and leaning forward to see Vuren better.

“You.” Vuren said as he polished off the last of his leg and threw licked each one of his fingers individually. “Never thought I’d get to see a royal eat like us commoners.”

“Not funny.”

“Disagree. I think it’s a hoot.”

Nifeerein let the leg swing loosely in her hand but she did not fully drop it. She knew she had to eat but wished for anything else but the leg. She also had to accept that Vuren was right. When she was home she had chefs constantly in the kitchen whose sole job was to prepare the royal families meals whenever they requested it. She remembered the time she could not sleep due to a bad fever and her mother ordered a fresh bowl of broth to be prepared from her. The moon was high in the sky at that time and the memory was hazy for Nifeerein but she remember getting the soup within fifteen minutes of her mother’s demand. It was something she had not thought twice about but now that she was with Vuren, firmly outside her comfort zone, she understood that not everyone had the choice to pick and choose when they ate and some just had to take what they could get. Nifeerein with this thought in mind took another larger bite from the flesh and chewed it firmly. It was not something she enjoyed and was not something she ever intended on having again but she gulped it down none the less.

“There you go.” Vuren smiled at her as she wiped his sticky fingers on his trousers the stains just blending in with all the others than were already on his tattered legwear. Seeing her chance while Vuren was a bit more casual than usual Nifeerein jumped in with a question that was burning her mind.

“Eh, Vuren.” she timidly piped up just barely catching his attention. “How do you know the light elf?”

Vuren was caught off guard by the question. All day he had seen Nifeerein sheepishly avoid him and whenever he looked her way she would get flustered and look away. He knew himself he had his guard up in some vain attempt to impress her as Vuren’s mind, while focused on the obvious danger, still flickering towards his attraction to Nifeerein near every five minutes. Whenever he wanted to ask or tell her something he was scared in case he embarrassed himself by asking a stupid question or if he did he would often come across as mean or blunt which was something he really did not want to. He wanted Nifeerein to feel comfortable around him. He wanted her to feel safe with him but the only way he knew how to do that was to keep him guard up and be the stoic hero he had read about in the adventure stories he would read instead of the bestiaries he was made to read.

“His name’s Jult.” He answered her with a deep sigh. He scratched at his scruffy beard before letting his hand push his messy hair back. He figured that if being the strong silent type was not working, which the rest of the days events had proven, being more open was worth a shot.

“He trained with me, back at the School of the Minotaur. He was there before me. I arrived when I was around twelve with my sister and we got forced to work. I wasn’t exactly an orphanage so we had to earn our keep. My sister did that by cleaning and keeping the school tidy while my powers were discovered and I was forced into combat training which Jult was already doing so we were paired together.”

Vuren continued to scratch at his head not wanting to reveal the full extent of Jult's psychopathy both to protect Nifeerein and himself from the painful memories. He and Jult had some good memories, some of Vuren's favourites. Meaningless conversation about everything and nothing while lakeside skimming rocks. Mocking exchanges to distract themselves from the boring books they were forced to read. Pondering about their futures that kept them up till the late hours of the night. When Vuren thought about it he and Jult never had a definitive memory, not one big stand out one that defined their friendship. It was just small seemingly insignificant ones that were so important in shaping who they were. It was these memories Vuren had a hard time recalling as they used to be his favourites but they were tainted by Jult's actions.

"Powers?” Nifeerein shyly said seeing that she had caused Vuren some distress. It was written all over Vuren's face. He looked at the fire while he continued to scratch at his head. He was lost in thought and Nifeerein felt a wave of guilt wash over her as she knew she was the cause of it.

Without words Vuren took his hand from his head and looked at Nifeerein. Even in the low light of dusk and the little light the fire provided Vuren could still make out her piercing emeralds. As he gazed at them for a bit longer then he perhaps should have he turned his attention to the measly fire before them and held his hand out to it. The fire flickered and popped on the bedrock they had set in on before it finally got pulled towards Vuren's hand magnetically. He held the flame in his palm and casually bent his elbow till the fire was settled in his at rest arm. He then sent out pulses of tiny flames that danced through the gaps in his open fingers and twirled round the back of his hand before wrapping round his wrist and combining with the larger original flame once more.

"Took me years to figure that one out." Vuren said with a near gleeful expression on his face. “Unfortunately I don’t go to many parties so I can’t impress many folk with it.”

"I'm a demigod." He cleared up as he looked to Nifeerein once again who had the look of confusion and wondered blazing in her eyes.

Vuren casually allowed the flame to fall from his hand and back onto the charcoals wood below. He smiled as Nifeerein continued to stare between him and the flame for a few seconds longer as her brain tried to unravel what she had just seen.

Nifeerein was entranced. She was transfixed. She was mesmerised. She had seen mages in her lifetime as her court had a few magical advisors but she had never seen anything to that extent. Her advisors barely ever used their abilities and when they did it was usually trivial showcases of power. A smell dampener when going past corpses or an occasional candle being lit to avoid the inconvenience of lighting a match. Vuren's power however was different. It was flashy. It was mesmeric. It was captivating and Nifeerein could not help but be sucked in by it. She had never seen anything like it. The way he so casually played with it like it was nothing amazed Nifeerein and she wanted to know everything but she did not know how to ask without sounding rude so she instead sat eyes wide and jaw slack in wonder at him.

Vuren, in quite the same fashion, did the same to Nifeerein though he hid his expression better. He stared at her across the fire and studied her silky skin, her soft hair and her beautiful emerald eyes. He looked at her and felt a sense of warmth he'd never felt before.

“So yeah, me and Jult trained together for years. Learned from one another. Sparred. Wrestled. Fenced. Fought. Can’t think of any other word but if you can we did it. We were lumped together cause our ages were similar and everyone else there was a mage so he had no one else with do it with. Expect the adults but they were away all the time on missions so our actual teacher training time was limited.”

“And is Jult a…” Nifeerein asked but shied away terrified by the concept of being chased by not only a g**g of light elf killer but one that has a leader capable of magical feats like Vuren.

“Nah. Jult’s not a demigod. Most at the school’s aren’t. It’s kinda just a place where the broken souls rally to.” Vuren smiled at when he said that as his brain light up with memories of the olden days. he remembered his old teacher, Naidoo, who would say that time him whenever he asked why everyone was at the school. Vuren eventually came to know everyone’s stories at the school and how none of them were positive. It was then he realised why Naidoo said the broken souls rally there as it was easier to say that and smile than to think about how the reason they were all together was because they were from broken homes.

“Jult was… a complex guy. He lived on a light elf military camp as a child. Basically was the mascot of the place as he helped out his father who was the cook. Was pretty much bred on hatred for you, the dark elves I mean not you in particular although you are a dark and elf and he does hate you so…” Vuren felt the sentence get away from him and sighed in frustration at how stupid he looked. Gaining his composure he continued. “Can’t remember how old he was but he said he was quite young so I guess like five or six, anyway that not relevant doesn’t matter. His… his camp was attacked by dark elves one night. s*******r the whole camp. Jult hid under his father’s dead body for two days until the dark elves cleared off. Was near enough eaten by necrophages before Naidoo came by and saved him. probably didn’t help the Naidoo was a light elf too… you know kinda kept the idea in his head of the racial divide and all that stuff, I am making sense, I feel like I’m not a good story teller.”

Nifeerein sat and listened with a level of entrancement she had never felt before. While it was true that Vuren’s storytelling left a lot to be desired she was still enthralled by what he had said. Her life was one of protection and nourishment. She had been provided with everything so to learn that someone had nothing, more than nothing was so disruptive to Nifeerein’s way of thinking. She cursed herself as she had the starry-eyed wonder of a little girl. She had imagined that once she got to Ishimori it would only a quick conversation and a peace treaty to sign to stop decades of conflict. She did not understand from her castle how it was for the commoner, how they felt and the resentment they held to the light elves. She had not had to live the lives they had, like Vuren had, so she did not understand the complexity of it all. But as Vuren talked, as he told her more and more of the normal world outside of her high society she became more interested and more in engaged with him. She felt as if he was the key, he was her path to bridging the gap between where her vision of the future was and how to actually enact that future. She wanted to pick his brain learn more from him but as she was about to ask the first of her many questions Vuren stood up and stretched out his knees.

"We can talk more on the road if you want but right now we gotta go. We've been here too long. If Jult's remembered anything about his days at the school he'll be tracking Agro's hoofprints right now.”

Vuren’s voice was friendly but stern. He wanted to be more open with Nifeerein seeing that she was more comfortable around him when he opened up a bit more and let his guard down but he could not let those conversations deviate them from the task at hand, namely the safety of Nifeerein at all costs.

Vuren swung his hand down forcefully and the campfire extinguished itself. He walked over to Agro who was still happily munching away at the grass and gently clapped her back. Agro sighed and turned her head towards Vuren in begrudging disappointment before pulling her head up and preparing herself for the evenings run. Vuren swung his leg upwards and nested himself safely in Agro’s saddle before turning and offering a hand to the now standing Nifeerein.

“Come on princess. We gotta go.”

“How many times much I tell you that I am a queen?” Nifeerein asked somewhat teasingly somewhat angrily still unsure of where Vuren’s sense of humour lay.

“Until you stop making that irritated nose crinkle every time I say it.” Vuren answered smiling as he lifted Nifeerein up.

“I do not make a crinkle.”

“Yeah. Sure you don’t.” Vuren responded before kicked Agro softly in the ribs to start their nights journey.