Tristan's Tale Pt. 05

Jade unfurled her hand. Nestled in her palm was a small, beautiful bird of all the colors of the forest. The detail was jaw-dropping. The dips and bumps were so minute, but made it all look seamless, like there was no single color. The feather work was extraordinary, its beak bright, its eyes dark and vibrant. Alive, almost. It was a bird of gradient colors, and it glowed imperceptibly in the palm of her hand.

"It's a gift," she said, offering it to the little Stone Giant. "Can you tell him that?"

"I don't think so," I said. "But I suspect they understand."

The others had stopped their activities, and were looking our way. The little guy looked at the bird, and then he spun around again. It was an adorable thing, from him. I wasn't sure, but I felt like it meant excited.

He smoothly slid to Jade and put his hands together. Except they weren't hands — they were rocks. He seemed to become aware of this at the same time Jade did.

He knocked his hands together, and the yellow glows in his head seemed to say frustration.

The hand rocks at the end of his...well, they weren't really arms. But whatever you want to call it, his hands spun. Rotating perfectly on the ends of the chain of rocks that formed his arms, he froze them once again, satisfied with their new shape, and brought them together.

He'd matched two grooves together so they made a small kind of bowl. He gestured it expectantly toward Jade. Laughing at the wonder of this small, childlike creature, she deposited the bird in its hands.

"I hope it gives them better memories of birds," she said, and looped her arm around mine.

"I think it will," I said.

The little guy spun his hands again, just slightly, so that the bird was now concealed between the two sections that had made the bowl. He was cupping his hands around it, I realized. I wondered how they picked the rocks that made them. I knew some things implicitly, it seemed, from being stonekin, but not everything. Did they look for rocks that could serve as hands? As heads?

It brought the cupped hands to its face, to another jagged crack set into its right cheek. It spun again — that whirling little twirl it had done before to show excitement.

Except it didn't stop after one time, or even a couple. It kept spinning. Jade and I looked at each other, confused.

It froze. Its hands were still cupped near its face.

Almost immediately, a milky white glow began to emanate from that crack. I started as I realized it actually had some substance to it. It came out thick, and fluffy, like a large cluster of white dandelions.

It seeped out of the crack like molasses, and enveloped its cupped hands.

There was a brief, faint double pulse of red light. One after the other, they pulsed from a crack in the Stone Giant's head and seemed to carry through the thick white fog, ending in its hands.

And then the fluff faded, retreating back into the Stone Giant like disappearing fog.

I heard the light, fluttering sound of a bird chirping. I turned my head to look at Jade, stunned. Her eyes were glued to the Stone Giant's hands. Her jaw was wide open in astonishment.

"No way..."

I forget which one of us said it. The Stone Giant opened its hands, revealing an exquisite looking bird of many, many colors that looked like it had been hewn from wood. Except it was chirping, and hopping around in the stone bowl of the little guy's hands. The bird was angular; you could see the grain of the wood, the straight, unnatural lines. But Jade had carved it beautifully, deliberately, and they all folded into each other. The feathers were gorgeous beyond compare, seamless and magnificent. It even had golden flecks in its small, beady eyes. I'd no idea how she managed that.

The bird ruffled its feathers, and its beak rustled in between some of its plumage. It cheeped at us, cocked its head once, and then flew into the air, flying in short, graceful circles above us.

Jade's eyes tracked it, filled with wonder. One of her hands had flown to her mouth as she watched it fly, amazed. Magic. We'd just seen magic.

Down the grove, one of the Stone Giants strummed a deep, low note from its tree that reverberated through the ground, and rustled the leaves of the trees as if a wind had blown through them. It played on a tree that had been bent over so the top was buried in the ground, making an upside down U shape. And from that arch, many different colored branches grew. The branches, unlike any of the other trees in the grove, were a single, bright color.

The little guy twirled once more, his yellow eyes glowing at us with excitement, and then fled down the grove to his tree — a small thing, with a single, sparkling green limb extending to the ground. The larger ones had far more, and all were different colors.

They began to play. It was a song that matched the day — a song like summer. A light thing that uplifted your heart. A song that set the bird above us chirping all the louder as it flew in its circles above us, and then down to the small guy, perching on his rocky head.

The notes filled the grove with light and life, and I found myself laughing with the sheer joy of it all. There was a brightness in the air that defied explanation. I swept Jade into my arms and spun around in circles, like the Stone Giant, and she laughed, and laughed, until we fell to the ground, all sorts of dizzy, all sorts of tangled up in each other while the Stone Giants played their song.

This was how I hoped to remember us. Grass stains on our clothes, kisses like butterflies on each other's lips. Lightness, everywhere. A sense that we were just starting, that we were riding the cusp of something amazing and uplifting, something too joyful to be entirely known. The beautiful, tremulous ache of the beginning of things.

~

The small canvas covered caravan trundled down an old overgrown road, showing signs of wear. It passed into a part of Caer'Aton that nobody thought to look at, and came to a stop in a small forest that nobody thought to visit, though it was only a short ways outside of the Arena. Two passengers emerged from the driver's seat, a fat man in a large silk shirt and a woman dressed top to bottom in a slim gown of black velvet. They began to untie the canvas that secured the contents of the caravan.

They moved with the slow gestures of the bone-weary, and spoke little. There is often nothing to be said at the end of the road, after having traveled for so long. They pulled the canvas off, and it fell to the dusty forest ground. They smiled tiredly at each other over the contents of the caravan: books upon books lay scattered amid and inside of pieces of pottery. A few vases were intact, but the majority of them had been shards even before being loaded into the caravan. A large painting rested on its side, wrapped in cloth, and there was even a piece of a cave wall they'd cut away from the rock. A strange series of unintelligible runes written with some kind of primitive paint surrounded a central, faded image: what looked like a pool of water, reflecting a shimmering landscape.

Their smiles turned wary when the first butterfly alit on top of the caravan. Then the wariness vanished and their composures went still as stone. A bell rang in the distance, four times, and the sounds echoed in the still air, the only sounds to be heard, for of course there were no animals, no insects in the forest.

More butterflies fluttered to the caravan. And a man as well. A tall man, and old, but who moved like a retired dancer. There was something subtle about him, something no one could ever put their finger on. The moonlight illuminated his simple, loose fitting tunic and shorts. His sandals clacked as he walked.

He greeted the two newcomers with a warm smile. They nodded stiffly, their eyes tracking the fluttering of the butterflies. The man said something. When nothing happened, he repeated it again, sharper. The butterflies swirled around him in response. A few of them melded together to form a pair of sensuous lips; they gave him a floating kiss on his cheek. He would never admit to anyone how much it burned.

The butterflies left. The two newcomers relaxed, and exchanged hugs with the old man. Two more people arrived from the forest, a short woman wrapped in a crimson scarf and a man in a perfectly fitted suit. They greeted the three at the caravan, and their embraces were long and heartfelt. The affection of the dispossessed.

A shadow crossed over them. The five on the ground looked up, and saw a great, scaled beast circling slowly downwards. It alighted much softer than it ought to have -- no doubt the product of its rider, and old, tanned man in what looked to be a bathrobe. He slid off the wyvern with a grace that defied his age, grabbing his cane from the wyvern's claws. He briefly scratched its face in a soft spot by its neck, eliciting a happy snore from its nostrils. Then he came over to the others, shouting a thunderous greeting in a rich baritone. They set to laughing, and greeted him in turn. The six, reunited at last.

But their laughter soon subsided. Their eyes all came to rest on the caravan, and its contents.

They huddled around it, and a keen observer would notice how tense they all became. How anxious -- well, all except for one, a man who never seemed anything but at ease.

There was a silence in the air. Then, one of them spoke, and their conversation bloomed, hushed voices in the moonlight as they talked about the contents of the caravan, about their tales of the world outside Caer'Aton, their stories of life inside, and about a woman made of butterflies, and how they might best serve her.

~

Hey, hey! I hope you enjoyed part 5. Feel free to write, I'd love to hear from you.

It will be a while before part 6. Sorry in advance.

Again, thanks to Over_Red and John Smith.

Speaking of Over_Red: bonus points to anyone who finds the Dream Drive shoutout in part 4 ;)