Court Elfin





I found out they resent us most profoundly for what we have done to the environment. And when I asked them why they hadn't done something about it while they still could, it was bread and water for a month. Until an invisible fey informed me of the prevailing attitude regarding meddling among us on "our turf," and the once-awestruck, now terror-filled and murderous treatment they received. It would seem that there are still some of us who can detect them easily, even in their most ingenious guises. No, they gave up on working with us centuries ago, and I dared not try to blame them for it.

. When I was released from solitary and introduced to their society, I was treated as any of us might have been--I assume. Evidently not many of them had heard of my blasphemous comments, or they just didn't care, and I was vastly ignored except by the serving fey (whose job it must have been to care for me anyway). I returned to a room more reminiscent of a cloister cell or squared-off cave each time I felt weary to find that all had been neatened during my absence. Sometimes I felt as though one or two fey may have kept lingering invisibly there to watch me. But that was really none of my business, I kept reminding myself, and went on with dull existence for awhile.

. Finally I began to pick up a few of their native words. Though I was initially shy about practicing speaking their impossibly smooth and musical tongue, the servants and children would ultimately taunt me until I had no other recourse but to speak in their language.

. I had no idea how good I was at it until I was summonsed by the queen. Let yourself know without doubt, though, that the common phrases and idioms I had to this point learned were not the sort of things one would likely find occasion to speak to the queen. Much less so than to any elven royalty, and far, far less than words any of us should ever likely dare to utter at the most removed of their kind. Nonetheless, she had wanted to hear my elfin, and so I was summonsed to her to recite things I knew such as "If I see that cat again I'll stomp its tail," and "I hope you fly into a wall." "Fly" being a most supreme insult to use in reference to elfin royalty...but I didn't know this.

. My, what raucous laughter they can produce! I had nearly wished myself into a crack in the stone floor and had sworn off using their speech entirely before being escorted back to my room.

. Before long I knew that I had made a lasting impression upon them --and especially upon their queen-- as I had begun to be assigned serving chores. I started serving at tables for the ladies-in-waiting during the queen's evening meal, and very soon was not only permitted access to all the "royal" chambers I had never before been in, but was taken on tour, even through the queen's private rooms (!!).

. I was amazed at the culture and refined tastes which prevailed. Either they had had more contact with us in the last few centuries than I had ever imagined, or their cultural evolution directly paralleled ours in outstanding ways. My vocabulary increased and, seemingly against the prevailing orders, I taught myself the subtle semantic differences between the elfin spoken among those in servitude and the relatively consonantless royal speech. I must let you know how difficult all this was, as absolutely everyone refused to coach me, and I was quite seriously rebuffed for practicing the finer language, those few times I did, with the only child of their aristocratic class.

. I began to remember times in my youth when I must have heard the fey speaking among the wind in the trees. I daresay I quickly and most truly did fall in love with the higher elfin speech. Not so surprising, then, that I should have begun to love Theleme; for her elfin was the most perfect, the most enchanting thing I have ever heard. It would seem that she arranged her words to a perfection "so"--being able to nearly sing each thing she would say. Such a melodious language it already was, but she could speak the most grave things and make one sigh with joy to hear it. And she would speak both, the more gutteral, almost english-seeming by comparison "low elfin" (sic), as I had begun to call it, and the aspirate, breathless higher elfin, with equal aptitude, though at first she too refused to speak anything but low elfin with me.

. It seemed that I was not to enjoy Theleme in any capacity once I'd realized my love for her. I hadn't known then of the fierce emotions the fey contain; and, oh yes, they always have some bubbling or seething (or both) going on within them no matter how indifferent they may seem. And I must make note, having said that, that drastic emotion can be achieved in a fey for the smallest detail. The queen had summonsed me again, only this time it was for a private audience, and I was given "court clothes."

. The queen had a fit. The first among many not strangely enough, although I didn't think that way at first. I was instantly stripped and redressed in my mismatched, badly fitting uglies from solitary and servitude. The queen, it seemed, had wanted me as "human" as was still possible (against all I had learned) to read to her from books which had been captured out of our culture while translating into low elfin.

. It was surprising to think the queen of these fey could genuinely like anything produced of our society. Perhaps she was as intrigued as I to learn how might these human thoughts translate into the elfin emotion and music which was their language. She could have done it herself'; I knew that she had full command of our American English language (if it can truly be called "a language") despite the obvious discomfort it caused any fey, though especially royal fey, to speak. Perhaps she wanted to have the translation from our point of view as well. Perhaps it was some sort of ill-conceived, secret jest to her. I very quickly learned that higher elfin was absolutely forbidden even (rather, especially) when there were specialized phrases in higher elfin which could not be either conceptualized in or expressed well in low elfin. There were many fits about this taboo, and often at the start, after only a very little transliteration, I had things thrown at me and was sent to exile in the kitchen for a week or so.

. Slowly but too soon, I discovered for myself one of the truer points of the queen's larger-than-life distress concerning myself and higher elfin. It was Theleme who had given me most insight to the variance between common and royal elfin speech which made them so distinctly (though not actually) two dialects. And why shouldn't she; I would listen to her speak whenever I could pick her voice from any sized crowd, no matter that she may be discussing needlepoint or the distinguishing points between warts on toads and warts on frogs. It was Theleme I emulated most often when I spoke higher elfin, and I could only speak as myself in low elfin. I was clearly becoming, if I was not already, the queen's most favorite of companions. Most likely only because I couldn't find the superiority about her (that she should be queen) and she seemed to like the rebellion that I could not help representing in my attitude and choice of phrase. The queen was somehow jealous of either me or Theleme, or of me and Theleme.

. Since I was not overly bright concerning the delicacy of fey, I foolishly fell into the first of the queen's traps for me. She had been listening delightedly to me transliterate for more than two hours when she suddenly asked me to stop. In higher elfin, I noticed with a shock. When I inquired as to her level of satisfaction with my reading, she began throwing things at me most violently and had me placed in solitary for two weeks. I had responded to her in higher elfin. But, I caught a glimpse of Theleme while being dragged to my cell by my feet, and, as long as I listened with my full attention, I could sometimes hear her speaking in the far away throne room, so I was consoled nicely.

. There is no need to mention each of the crafty traps that the fey queen detonated at my expense. Suffice it to say that I am quite sure I adeptly launched myself into all of them. My consolation was much the same each time though -- to hear Theleme, and come to know and deeply love her by eavesdropping from the distance.

. I began to know to myself the ideal behind citing fey as Sleagh Maith, "The Good People," to say a pleasantry rather than admit the fault -- in order that the fault be not conjured by the recitation. Yet I much preferred the name "Daemons" in my own mind. Daemons were they all, especially the queen. But Theleme was not one of them.

. She, the queen, sensed my despite, and ceased laying traps for me, but I had already known that I would need to do something. Double-con her at her own game if possible, in order to lessen her impending and undoubtedly overwhelming wrath.

. So I set my ears to the wall with a different interest in mind, I had already learned, to my inward despair, that the queen's favorite was the popular and, in fact, traditional scapegoat of all else. And that I was without doubt her favorite. Evidently the queen liked to be rabid on a regular basis. I applied each ounce of spare time to my "petty overhearing," memorizing names and voices, nuances of preference among the aristocratic fey, and degrees and areas of bias among the working fey.

. Soon, it seemed, the queen felt all was well between us. I knew that she must quickly grow bored with me unless she had some extremely dire strategy yet unhatched, and I briefly became panicky, making easy mistakes for which the queen appeared overly willing to forgive. I immediately pushed myself harder into my plan as I knew the reasons she most likely had to be so tolerant of me.

. Ever so carefully I began to place myself within the royal halls and throne room, making the most minute pains to be certain Theleme would not be about at these times. I acted nervously around the queen and often rushed to the servants, begging or bartering for any little thing the queen could have asked for. I invented several errands, but was not questioned.

. Surprisingly swift, I became "pet" to a good majority of all the fey I had known. I had thought it would be difficult to illicit pity or compassion from the fey, but I hadn't considered the frankness of all fey, especially when they truly believe that none of us could possibly be hearing them. And the queen seemed oblivious to my growing popularity; after all, it was her right to ignore everything but herself.

. Dreadfully at last, the day came when I was dressed in fey finery and brought before the queen. She did not have a fit and, in fact, appeared rather pleased at my appearance in their manner of dress. In public, I was sure (and had always been sure, since my first meeting with her), she was going to cut off my head -- or whatever was worse than that to them. I examined where I stood quite nervously, searching for a trap door or marks of workmanship to conceal unusual and unforeseen devices of torture.

. She was quick about her declaration: that I had been a pleasant enough diversion, but that I had somehow managed to far outlive any usefulness to her. She openly admitted that the tardiness of this statement could not be explained, while explaining very clearly that she didn't understand how I'd tricked her into escaping this conclusion for so long.

. Her thought here must have been to make me an ugly villain before her subject's thoughts. Except, I had tried to make sure, that her lessers loved me more in that moment of utter rejection than ever they had wanted to love any one of us.

. That I had managed to woo the queen's vassalage from her became apparent amidst their confusion for an answer once she had asked them what she should do with me. She recovered without a blink by giving me the same question: what should she do with me.

. Now was my moment to play at the game I had established. A game far more reaching than I had any notion as to the proper or most likely establishment of....Now I fell to my knees sobbing real tears (only they were actually for Theleme), and begged the mercy I knew to be so rare.

. True fear gripped me when she played my game so well as to laugh chastisingly. When I looked up she approached me and made the genuinely comforting consolation of apology in higher elfin. She then fixed me with a gaze to match it and told the court as well as me that she had meant to muse with us as friends, and had only desired to know what her gift to me should be.

. Oh, she had played very well. I knew that I must finish my game quickly before she robbed me of even the hope of playing further. I made myself painfully humble and replied to her that I would wish to marry of her people since it would be an abhorrent thought to such Shining Folk to consider pairing a human with their queen.

. I had anticipated gasps and screams at this, my last token to play, and had only scant hopes that this would not be my undoing. I had tried a game designed for the queen to win in the thought that I might reap someone in particular for myself because of my end performance. I knew the queen would have a fit.

. The queen did not become rabid. She clucked and cooed in pity of my idiot self, and explained that she could not be the sort of queen who gave away her subjects as gifts to humans. She then raised my face to her and spoke to me and the court but revealing her instant and deep hatred to me alone. She asked if I had anyone in particular in mind.

. Theleme volunteered.

. I thought I had died. Perhaps even months before. A roar of surprise filled the throne room and the queen fell back a step. But it was real; she volunteered again.

. I could not rightly contain myself, and fumbled to make my relief somehow appear as detached gratitude toward Theleme, but I know I did not do this well. I never could have fooled the queen, but I vaguely hoped to still fool the court. There was far too much real and sincere emotion in me then...I simply could not keep track of myself.

. The queen appeared to have no such problem. She told Theleme what a great loss it would be, how well Theleme was loved. Then she called for silence, and made such an innocent voice of it to be cruel when she asked me if Theleme would be acceptable to me.

. I could only nod. That must have been her ideal trap, even though it could not have been planned. Her supreme evil trick. I see now where her superiority did lie.

. Once the queen had fully begun her speech concerning her great sadness at losing Theleme, I was pummeled. They didn't have to sneak up on me, although I'm most certain that they did. When I awoke I was back on the "turf" of humans.

. After awhile I noticed Theleme sitting only a few feet away and sat up as quickly as I could. I started to speak to her, but she placed a hand on my arm to silence me, and it was only after I had taken both her hands in mine that I noticed the carefully made stitches on her throat.

. Yes, I knew at once what they had done to her. I knew also that, while the queen had thought she'd won, she truly hadn't because Theleme and I were finally together. I told Theleme this. She tried to write her response, but I had never learned the elfin cipher, just the spoken words.

. Within three days she was gone. We hadn't strayed far from where I awoke, so I think she might have gone back to them. But I believe it's more likely that they stole her away as I slept. I couldn't tell for certain whether she was happy enough to finally be with me, or whether she thought her sacrifices had been too great, but I do know that I had somehow managed to win her most sincere love.

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