Author: Tristraam
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V
Briel’trice Ilen’thre sits at a small writing desk by the front window. A thin frown dominates her expression as she anxiously drums her fingers on the desk’s oaken surface. She pauses, her eyes focusing on a movement in the distance.
She peers out the window a moment, then drops back into the chair. “Only a deer. Where is that girl?” she mutters in annoyance.
Leaning forward, the thread of her scowl sews itself back on her face as her sculptured nails resume their spine-clenching ‘tappity-tap, tappity-tap’.
Her guests were due in less than four hours, and Alethea had not yet returned with the shopping. If she didn’t get back soon, the dinner would have to be delayed. What would lady Brol’arn think?
The pace of her drumming fingers increases ever-so-slightly.
VI
She was not a wicked woman. In the entire eons-long history of her race, only a gnome’s handful of Koada’Dal could actually be classified as evil. Her people were, by nature, just the opposite. However, due to a number of experiences in her life, combined with an inherent racial hauteur and a thirst for social status she could, at times, give a very good impression of evil.
She had married her first husband several decades ago, and they had been happy together. He was a knight - a proud and noble defender of the Fay. They had standing, prestige and, after only a couple years of trying, an heir to carry on the family name. And then, their son barely out of infancy, her husband had died, escorting a group of humans to Qyenos. A tiny seed of resentment had been sown.
Briel’trice had grieved for him terribly, but the presence of her young son was enough to draw the poison from her body. She spent many happy years raising him, guiding him on his journey into manhood.
The impossible happened. She fell in love again – with a human. He was a bard, of late middle-age by human standards, and his travels had brought him to her village. Something about the area captured him, and he had settled there, composing many a still-famous poem and song about the Fay. Eventually, to help make ends meet, he became a teacher, giving music and writing lessons to the local children.
Wanting her son to have a well-rounded education, Briel’trice had taken him along to the bard, intent on having him trained on the harp or lute or some such instrument that would help enhance his prestige. While speaking with the human, she had become entranced by his knowledge of the world, and the tales of his travels. Entrancement became attraction, attraction developed into love and, within the space of only three years, they were married.
Her now teenage son, who had also grown fond of the man, gave her his full blessing, and accepted the human, if not as a father, then as a trusted friend and teacher.
For many years they were quite happy. They watched with pride the maturation of her son, his enlistment into the service, and his gradual climb through the officer ranks.
And then, a few months after her son’s 37th birthday, and shortly before her husband’s 78th, came the news of a new addition to the family. After many years of drought, her tree had once again born fruit. She fell pregnant. Alethea joined them in the autumn.
To say that she disliked the child would be too harsh. She was, after all, her daughter. But it was apparent that she was not on equal standing with Lorem. It could have been the surprise of her arrival. Or the amount of time she’d already invested in her firstborn. Or perhaps that seed of resentment, planted all those years ago, had finally germinated. There was no arguing that Alethea was her father’s daughter, despite the elfishness of her appearance. Her unruly hair, the fullness of her cheeks, the curve of her smile – all of these things distinguished her as not-quite Koada’Dal. This, it turned out, was enough for Briel’trice.
Still, she made an effort, if not out of obligation, then out of a wish to please her husband, and for two years Alethea grew up in a happy home.
And then, quite suddenly, as sometimes happens with humans, Alethea’s father grew ill. He was not young when they had met, and the years had finally caught up with him. After only three decades together, a mere blink of an eye by elf reckoning, he died.
Again, Briel’trice grieved. But where before she had her son to draw her back from despair, this time she found in Alethea a cold reminder of her second husband – not of his kindness and the good things her brought into their lives, but of the frail and finite nature of his entire race. A nature that lived on, at least partially, in her daughter. The seedling grew.
Still she pulled back from the darkness, for she still had her son, and the fine man he had become. She began to prod him subtly, asking when he was going to settle down, find a wife, and finally provide her with grandchildren. And it did indeed seem that his life was beginning to turn in that direction. He had become involved with a woman, whom he saw quite often. He had even brought her to meet the family – something he had never done before.
But it seems that fate enjoyed the little game it had going with Briel’trice Ilen’thre, for a little over a year ago, just before her daughter’s 11th birthday, he was taken from her. Killed while defending a human farmstead.
The seedling, after many years of wriggling subterranean growth, finally broke through the surface, and developed with the fervent pace of a cancer.
VII
She bore no malevolence for her daughter. As stated, the Koada’Dal’s capacity for such things is limited and rare. She fed the child, clothed her, sent her to school – but little more. There were no motherly chats, nor words of encouragement. While Lorem may have treated her as family, Briel’trice certainly did not. Alethea was a ghost to her, little more than another servant of the house.
To a child, apathy can be as sharp a blade as cruelty. While it is more the subtle thrust of a knife than the wild swinging of a sword, it is no less harmful. Apathy is cruelty wearing an expressionless mask.
And, like any other form of cruelty, it has the vexing tendency to come back at you when you least expect it.
--continued--
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