Teller of Fate

First Movement: The Birth of a Teller of Fate

Chapter Three

The old elf’s smile was kind as he repeated for Davida, “You’re on Ælfen, one of the Aions of the Elven Convocation.”

“I’m on an Elf world?” she asked.

“Indeed. Do you know how you got here?”

“I used the cards to open a—” her heart hammered, a thousand hot needles tickled the skin of her face, arms, hands. “My cards! He took my cards!” She was screaming the words now and thrashing in the man’s suddenly strong grip.

He held her firm until her panic subsided and her fear gave way to weeping. He stroked her back and whispered words she didn’t understand into her ear. After a time, calm returned. The pain remained, but it no longer dominated.

“How did anyone manage to part you from your Syrat, child?” he asked.

She snuggled into the warmth of his arms, was silent awhile before replying. “I was Telling for him. He used a spell. I don’t know what kind, but I felt it, I did. I made a small Portal to get away. After, I made another one to take me out of the Aion, so he couldn’t find me. I went, but the Syrat stayed, it did.”

“Where did you learn to use the cards that way?”

“My mum taught me some of it, when I was young, she did. I learned more on my own.”

Tathar smiled. “You got the Syrat from her. I assume she’s gone, then?”

“Almost ten years, now.”

“What is your world?”

“Scorn.” She went on to describe it.

“I don’t know it, which isn’t that odd. There are so many human worlds. But never mind. Tell me about this person who managed to get the Syrat from you.”

She went on to relate most of her life story. She was again weeping by the end of it, but she was in better control of herself.

After Davida was done with her tale, she said, “We haven’t been properly introduced, yet. My name’s Davida, Teller of Fate.” Already holding his hand, she gave it squeeze.

Tathar bowed his head slightly. Placing his free hand on his chest, he replied, “And I am Tathar, the Raven’s Son, master of Raven’s Aerie.”

“Is that what your home is called, then?”

Tathar nodded, “Named for my father.”

Her gaze had brushed the windows and the vista beyond often as she had told her story. When, after introductions, there was a gap in the conversation, he broke it by asking if she felt up to taking a walk.

She glanced at him, feeling a sense of wonder. He smiled in return.

A whisper of sheets and the caress of cool silk as she swung her legs to her right. With the old elf firmly grasping her waist and her raised right hand, Davida slid from the bed and onto the floor.

A rag rug in a million shades of green made from something that felt like the softest fur, felt so good on the soles of her feet it made her giggle.

The giggle turned into a cry of surprise as her legs folded under her. Tathar lifted her back up. “Do you feel strong enough to continue?” Concern only lightly textured his tone.

She saw none of it in his gaze, only good humour and an affection strange to her because, apart from her friends, it had been rare. “Yes. I feel alright. Let’s go, then.” Her smile returned the affection.

Though she’d known it since waking, it was only now, as a renewed breeze lightly slid over her breasts, belly, and thighs, that Davida noted she wore not a stitch. The young woman became intensely aware of old elf’s warm soft hand on her waist. Her upper chest felt hot as a blush bloomed there. Her face began to feel hot as well. She felt an urge, disturbing in its intensity, to pull his other hand to her left breast. Another urge almost as strong, was to cover herself.

Davida felt shame at the impulses, for she rarely had any sexual thoughts but had never been one to feel uncomfortable with nudity, hers or anyone else’s.

Her companion seemed to intuit its cause. “Oh, what am I thinking? You must be chilled, child.” Moving her hand to the closest bedpost, he left her holding herself up and returned a moment later with a white shift.

Davida let go of the post, feeling slightly apprehensive about her balance. Her weight settled under her nicely. She hardly wobbled at all. Lifting her arms, she gratefully accepted Tathar’s help in donning the garment.

She caught her breath as one of Tathar’s hands inadvertently brushed her left nipple. It immediately rose and became painfully stiff. She imagined Tathar’s lips and tongue on it and felt a pleasurable tingling in her vulva. A trickle of moisture slowly moved down her inner thigh. Shivers replaced the heat of a moment before, and a coppery taste soured her mouth. Goose-bumps tidal waved from the crown of her head.

She was glad the cotton soft garment hid her face as she slid it gratefully down. Davida hugged its warmth and softness, feeling the comforting weight of it. The chills subsided. Though plain, white, and simple in its design, the shift shimmered and felt softer than any garment she had ever worn. She thought it beautiful.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Her smile felt odd on her face. “Ready.”

He held out an arm. Davida ignored a worry that the sexual desire should return and placed her hand on it. It did not, which left her unaccountably conflicted.

After taking a few steps toward the door, she felt confident enough to stop watching her feet as she went and smiled up at her host, her momentary surge of lust remembered but no longer troubling.

The door was made of the same reddish wood as the floor. Its handle was silver, suggesting a leaf by its shape. The light through the windows sparkled along its length, inviting her touch. She reached for it unthinking and encountered Tathar’s just doing the same.

His touch felt warm and friendly, nothing more. He withdrew his hand as, with that same mixture of relief and disappointment, Davida twisted the handle.

Bright white light hit her. She beheld the view from the windows stretching forever upward and to her left. The only interruption was a high screen of wood, though that was a poor description of it.

Lace it was, grown from wood; delicate, yet with the appearance of strength and resilience. And it was entirely beautiful. At its top, living branches grew up and arched out over open air. Small delicate leaves of green, blue, yellow, white, and red gold mantled them.

An enormous freeform sculpture covered the wall of a building to her right, blocking the view. It consisted of huge vertical columns, rough-edged and layered, with deep twisty grooves between them, each one at least two yards wide.

Her mental sense of scale adjusted, and she knew she was looking at bark. The two of them stood on the side of one of the colossal trees. Craning her neck upward, Davida could just see, through the brightness and the misted distance, a limb stretching out and away from the trunk. Its end was too far away to make out in the pearlescent haze.

Lowering her eyes, she could see the walkway ahead, made of the same polished wood as the room behind her. It ran all the way to its vanishing point and, try as she might, she could make out only the slightest hint of a curve to the trunk.

The wood was warm beneath her feet and gave just a bit, as if layered with swans down. As Davida turned toward her companion to ask him one of the dozens of questions queuing up behind her tongue, when the lure of the view defeated her.

Leaving his side, the girl took several increasingly steady steps until she was at the rail. Close to, it smelled of clean, living wood with an undercurrent of something she’d always thought of as cinnamon. Dancing on the surfaces of the twisty, braided branches were Celtic knots and delicate arabesques. To Davida’s eye, the carvings seemed too precise and delicate to be natural, even as she thought they must be beyond the skill of any craftsman.

As Davida got closer to the leaves, she saw they had a metallic sheen that reflected and focused the light, like tiny concave mirrors.

She leaned against a rail. Her hands told her it was the same smooth softness as the wood under her heels. She poked her head through the pointed arch of an opening.

A soft, muted sound, like the singing of angels, was the first thing that greeted her.

A breeze, carrying those scents that so enchanted her on waking, slid their gentle fingers over her hands and brow, lifting her hair from her ears.

Trunks and branches diminished by distance, coloured in muted pastel shades, were everywhere. The nearer ones, she could see, were the homes of other elfkin. Structures covered the upper surfaces of every branch below her. The closest seemed mere yards away.

Davida could see streets lined with shops and homes and even trees. Bright towers of coloured wood wound ’round with stained glass windows like strands of gems, dotted the settlements.

Over the edges of the branches dripped ragged edged curtains of jewels, their bright winkings undiminished by distance. Dwellings too, they were, hanging out over nothing but clear air.

Markings on the trunks and the larger branches she divined as railed walkways like the one on which she stood. Many leaped from branch to branch in paired elliptical strands of delicate sparkling wire. She wondered why they didn’t fall.

Flights of birds, huge and glowing a white so bright it hurt her eyes dived, banked, and soared in their hundreds. Never did she see them alight.

The sourceless light of the place, seeming dimmer for the presence of these avians, was uniform both above and below.

⁂

Tathar leaned out an adjacent break in the timber crocheted wall to Davida’s left. “Magnificent, isn’t it?” She looked up at the sound of his voice, wonder covering her features. “Many centuries I’ve lived here, yet never have I tired of this sight.”

“How did all this come to be, then? What is this world?”  Her formerly raven coloured hair and eyebrows had begun lightening to a shade of dark red.  He could see hints of gold as well.

Davida’s skin was a bit paler than it had been only a day ago. He saw hints of silver on it, sparkling in the light. Her irises were a very dark red. He’d soon have to tell her what was happening to her.

Reluctantly, he retreated between the shining leaves. She followed suit.

As they began to walk serenely onward, the old elf answered her question. “I can answer the second question easily: this isn’t a natural world.” To the surprised look she gave, “Our ancestors made this place in the years following the end of the Templar War.”

“You made the sun, the earth, and all?”

At this he laughed. “There is neither sun nor earth here. The trees have neither roots nor crowns. They go forever from the depths to the heights and their number is without end. We are inside a synthetic Aion.”

The wonder of this washed over her expression and a delighted sounding laugh burst out of her.

Then a frown furrowed her high brow, turned down her Cupid’s bow lips. “How did I get here, then? I mean—” she gestured to include the whole of everything—“there’s no ‘outside,’ is there?” Her inflection fell on the last word.

From her reaction, she must have felt the heat of his stare. “You came via Portal. I assumed you knew.”

A smile bloomed on the young woman’s face. After a musical giggle, “Oh, I knew that, I did! I meant how did it bring me here? This place isn’t part of the Portal network unless I’m quite mistaken.”

“You’re quite knowledgeable about it, I see. Moreso than I would have thought. You must forgive me, Davida. I let your physical appearance guide my judgement of you. I assumed a human so young would have less interest in the engineering of civilization. Though, you never were quite human, were you?”  This last was a whisper, as if he spoke more to himself.

“What d’ya mean, ‘not quite human’?”

Continued here.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, July 2026

© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved