¤ Hostage for a Sandwich

’So it happened. Kranz appointed Aurora as mortal Advisor, breaking all tradition of the court.

None of us imagined that it would be the end of Aurora’s struggle to gain back what she had lost: if anything, it would be yet another hurdle in her way. The title she held was controversy; even the mortal blood that ran through her very veins was controversy. And if it was one thing the immortal fairies detested, it would be controversy, especially if it flew in the face of everything they had done for centuries.

Yet none of us had expected that the complications her title brought would not stop at mere controversy.’

Jaysen brushed the last of the crumbs from his Scorpio armour thoughtfully as Silver read the last words off the page. ‘That Kranz has guts,’ he marvelled.

‘No doubt. He was one of the best rulers Orbis was ever documented to have. All the books I’ve read about him mentioned that was always a mystery how his reign could result in the end of the entire fairy kingdom.’ Rei added helpfully.

‘Do you think we can get the answer to that mystery here, lady?’ Jaysen watched Silver shuffle through the parchment, arranging them neatly to place them inside the folder she had started for the facsimile pages of Salmer’s journal.

As she reached out for the notes she had made during the reading, Jaysen picked them up and presented it to her with a smile and a flourish. ‘There you go, precious opal of my affections.’

‘Thank you.’ A small smile at the corner of her lips, Silver took it from him, all the while considering his last sentence. ‘Well, we’ll never know unless we read on-‘

Rei interrupted with a mock scowl. ‘No, you have no permission to read on! You will go for dinner now, or we’ll never be able to drag you away from the pages once you start.’

‘Dinner? Now? But it’s only five! And you brought us a tray of food, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, but that bandit there ate most of it.’ At this remark, Jaysen offered Rei a sheepish smile, which Rei rolled his eyes at before continuing, ‘You’d barely touched the tray, Silver, so no excuses.’

‘Oh yeah? As long as I have the pages here in my hands, I’ll damn well read the-,’ Silver stopped her protest abruptly, and watched as Rei exchanged a look with Jaysen, who grinned mischievously in return and nodded. ‘Rei. I do not like that sneaky smile creeping across your face, not one bit of it!’

She now stared dumbly at the plate before her on the mess table. The unfortunate plate in question was loaded with what looked like a sandwich the size of Perion, stacked slightly skewed to the left.

‘But I really don’t feel hungry,’ Silver mumbled in dejected protest, glaring at the sandwich.

The oversized thing wobbled precariously in response, its equivalent of a helpless shrug.

‘Come now, my good lady. We must not let you starve to death on my behalf!’ Jaysen declared. ‘Not only that good sir there would never let me off for making you miss his brilliant culinary attempts, I’d miss your most delightful presence as well. You cannot possibly bear to let me die pining, can you?’ He clasped his hands beneath imploring brown eyes.

‘You’ll be more convincing if you didn’t have that half-eaten sandwich dangling lettuce all over the mess table in your hands,’ Silver retorted dryly.

‘I hear your rebuke, my brilliant gem of adamant,’ Jaysen made a wounded gesture, and then proceeded to devour the source of that rebuke.

‘I’ll be amazed come the day that I don’t have to be disgusted by your eating habits at least once every time we dine together.’

Jaysen chuckled through the mouthful of sandwich, then swallowed hastily before he replied, ‘Well, my lovely lady, at least you know that I will never run out of things to amaze you with.’ Then he turned to the remains of the sandwich in his hand and lifted the bread to peer underneath. ‘Gee, what in Orbis did Rei put inside. Is that teriyaki chicken… and, mmhm, some chocolate cream.’

Silver looked away pointedly from the sight of Jaysen unabashedly licking the underside of his bread slice. ‘That somehow doesn’t quite make my appetite return.’ Instead, Silver thought longing of the remaining facsimile pages of Salmer’s journal, currently safely stashed away in some unknown place after it was kidnapped from under her nose by Rei.

Said purloiner of pages appeared at the mess table now, and frowned after one look at the still untouched sandwich. ‘You eat that, or you won’t get Salmer’s journal back,’ Rei said calmly, as he set down his own plate and climbed into the seat next to Silver. ‘And you can’t make me give up the hostage until I am satisfied with your progress in your food.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ Sighing, Silver picked up the fork and began to stab half-heartedly at the sandwich.

¤ Fifty Years

Aurora and Wing walked slowly together along the garden path, hand in hand as they moved silently between the gorgeous flowering shrubs that grew in the King’s garden. The faint moonlight from the crescent moon barely chased away the shadows that lay between the garden’s flora, the thin silver layer it lent to leaves and night blooms creating a mysterious atmosphere that made any onlooker keep still and watch.

Aurora was unusually silent though, Wing thought as he looked down at the girl, puzzled. She had suddenly appeared in his study twenty minutes ago and solemnly requested for his company, even though it was barely two hours since they had parted after their usual after-dinner rendezvous. Wing agreed, since he had just finished up an inventory report on the army’s armoury, and figured he needed a break too.

But this is just too unlike Aurora, Wing frowned. She had not only kept quiet when she would normally be chattering away, but had also barely looked at him, keeping her eyes on the tiles that paved the path most of the time. But her grip on his hand was tight, and had never once loosened.

‘Do you want to find somewhere to sit, so we can talk?’ Wing tugged at her hand now. Aurora only shook her head, her long blue hair falling into her face with that motion; she did not move to brush the loose strands away though, but continued to walk, her eyes on the ground.

By the time they turned to return to the building, Wing decided that he could not tolerate the silence anymore. ‘What’s wrong, Aurora?’ He stopped walking, but Aurora continued to walk, until their joined hands stopped her from going any further. Only then, did she look back over her shoulder at him, a mild expression of surprise on her face.

‘Nothing.’ Aurora said, her voice earnest. But Wing could tell, from the way she quickly hid her troubled eyes and the tightened hold she had on his hand, that she was lying.

‘You don’t look well. Can you tell me what’s troubling you?’ Wing moved up close to her. With his free hand, he brushed away the loose strands of her hair from her face, then gently lifted her face up to him by the chin.

Forced to look at him, Aurora’s dark blue eyes searched his face, suddenly seeming as if she had never seen it before and needed desperately to capture every last detail of it. ‘Will you forgive me, if I did something so wicked that I ought to die for it?’

Taken back, Wing withdrew his hand from Aurora’s face. ‘What a question, Aurora!’ he said, perplexed. ‘Did you do something wrong?’

‘No.’ Aurora muttered almost inaudibly, turning her face away from him now. ‘Not yet.’

They walked on in further silence, slowly but surely approaching Aurora’s rooms. When they reached her door, Wing said to Aurora, his face filled with concern. ‘Hey. Don’t worry anymore, alright?’ He reached out to touch her brow, wishing he could smooth away the furrows there.

Aurora brought their linked hands up and bowed her head over them to kiss the back of his hand. But she still did not speak, only reluctantly letting Wing’s hand go after she turned the key in the lock.

But before Wing could walk more than a couple of steps away from her door, he felt Aurora touch him gently by the forearm again. ‘What-?‘ As he turned to her, Aurora had flung her arms around his neck and tiptoed to kiss him on the lips, sealing his question in with the heat of her mouth.

Stunned at first, Wing soon felt himself relax, then responded fervently to Aurora’s kiss, cradling her upturned face to his. Aurora moved backwards to lean against her door, pulling him along. Her fingers danced downwards, a coolness that trailed from Wing’s shoulders to his chest, down his stomach…

Surprised, Wing broke away from the kiss to catch Aurora’s hands in his. ‘Aurora?’ He could only ask, his head thrumming with a giddy mix of adrenaline and astonishment. Looking down at Aurora, he saw that her dark blue eyes were wet, tears threatening to spill from a corner of an eye. ‘Why are you crying?’

Aurora shook her head again, staring back at him in the short moment of calm before the storm.

Then, she reached up to twine her fingers in his hair, pulling his face down to kiss him on the lips again, more urgently than before, like a starving person searching desperately for a shred of solace. Wing tried to stop her, to ask her what was going on, but any apprehension and gentlemanly inhibition he had fled quickly as Aurora pressed her petite body up against his.

Aurora reached behind her to fumble with the doorknob, and then they were through, stumbling into her living room, moving to her bedroom to fall onto her bed, kissing hungrily as if they would never ever kiss again, their hands moving feverishly over each other, as if trying to memorise every last beloved curve of the other’s body…

’Will you forgive me, if I were to betray you?’
’Will you forgive me, if I would wrong you?’
’Will you still love me… then?’

Wing felt himself frown in his sleep, at these strange words. It sounds like Aurora, he thought drowsily.

’I love you, Wing. Remember that, even if just for my worthless sake.’ A ghost of a kiss on his cheek…

His eyes flew open then, and he flung out an arm to his side instinctively. Nothing but cold bedding.

Wing sat up hurriedly, a strangled cry tangled in his throat and his breath ragged. To his utmost relief, he found himself staring at the wooden walls of his tree house in Ellinia instead, sitting in his own bed where he had fallen asleep in the drowsy afternoon heat.

But for one painful moment, he was brought back to that very dawn, when he startled out of slumber to find Aurora not next to him, not in the room, not in the study, not anywhere.

Wing buried his face in his hands now, once again unable to keep at bay the memories that now rose unbidden in his mind. He wished, not for the first time, that there would be some truth in what they say about time healing all hurts: he was immortal, and should have more than enough time to mend even the most grievous of war wounds.

Yet, after five decades, this particular hurt that Aurora dealt him still did not heal. Some cuts simply ran too deep.

Tiredly, Wing looked up, letting his eyes wander around the thickening evening shadows. Under the setting sun, a dull glow of white paper at the windowsill made his gaze pause. It took Wing’s mind a few seconds before he recalled what it was.

He swung his legs out of bed, and walked to the window sill to retrieve the note that Silver had tucked into the hinges of his door. He had tossed it there with a bitter snort after reading its simple words once through, and had since left it untouched, unwilling to look at its contents again.

Now, however, the need for distraction overruled his qualms, and he unfolded the notepaper, smoothing it out on the surface of the sill so that it could catch the last of the evening sunlight.

I know about betrayal, too.
– Silver

Wing gave the same bitter snort again, an ironic chuckle that seemed to him the proper response to the silly words of this young mortal. She knew? This infant, whose puny mortal life so far was but a minuscule fraction in the years that he had had lived, knew?

Oh, but he did so much dishonour to her mortal memory with that thought!

Then again, why did he care about the memory of that faithless scum of a mortal? He did not want to care.

Wing gritted his teeth in frustration, fisting the notepaper in his hands. It crumpled obligingly with a soft sigh of crackles.

Fifty years. Five decades. Half a century. It was truly not enough, not at all. Oh, what he would do for a way to drive away these demons of the past!

I know about betrayal, too.

He stared at the now crumpled ball of paper in his hand, as a crazy idea came to his mind. Perhaps he should educate this mortal, to tell her about true betrayal, to disillusion her petty mortal ideas of treachery. Perhaps he could tear down this Silver’s arrogance for thinking that she would know of the true extents of being betrayed. Perhaps it would ultimately exonerate Wing from the demons’ persecution, if he could pass them on to someone else.

Perhaps then, he would finally come to cold, hard, solid terms with Aurora’s actions.

It was something the stubborn fairy would never begin to admit it to himself, even as he rummaged through his desk for a quill to draft a terse reply to Silver. But that was what Wing had struggled, and failed, to do in the last five decades of his immortal life.

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Sixtay-six~

See, I posted this chapter only one month after the last! Yay! How’s that for improvement?

Cookies for you, dear reader~ <3
(That is, if you are really there at all. )

[edit] Cool. Front-paged in less than fifteen minutes? XD You guys are too kind. :3 <3
[editedit] Uh, yeah hor, decade is ten years hor. -__-;[/embarrassed Singlish]