Alistair
My neighbor was ina tree.
I’d smelled the perfume of her skin long before I arrived, that beguiling scent that had plagued me every night since she moved in as I worked among my plants. Splicing and budding and grafting my trees in my home was supposed to be a peaceful experience for me, but the scent of her living below me made merestless. My antennae itched with how much I enjoyed it, and I frowned at her, perched as she was in the sprawling branches of an old royal ibec tree in a field down the road from our building. I’d always appreciated the unique texture of its bark, myself.
I halted my flight to work, landing along the walkway to take a closer look at her confusing behavior. Rubbing at the base of my antenna, trying to scrub away her scent and free myself from her thrall, I thought about whether to approach. I had left a very exciting project in my lab—a scion I was trying to graft with a new technique!—and I wanted to see if the splint had held. I spread my wings to continue on my way… and then slowly folded them back again.
Why was my neighbor in the tree? I didn’t think elvish people—or whatever she was; I wasn’t particularly well-versed in the non-forest races—were tree-dwelling people. The elves I knew all tended to prefer bigger cities and more urban environments than I had much experience with, but maybe this one had a penchant for tree climbing. The way she was sprawled awkwardly within the branches, not even gripping one with her—admittedly very few—forelimbs made me doubt that she had any kind of arboreal adeptness.
I glanced forlornly in the direction of my laboratory, but I knew that my incessant curiosity and predilection for imagining the worst-case scenarios in every situation would keep me from being able to focus on my tasks without first ascertaining the well-being of this aromatically enticing neighbor.Sigh.
Picking my way across the poorly mown grass and doing my best to ignore the overly prickly feeling of the thick, rough blades between the sensitive pads of my feet, I studied the woman as I approached. Her skin was a warm golden brown, and her chin-length hair a deep chestnut with a hint of red showing in the setting sun. Her face was very expressive—an endearing trait to someone such as me without as many malleable features—clearly broadcasting her frustration and discomfort at the moment. Eyes the same reddish-chestnut color tracked my progress across the damp, horrible lawn. I could have flown, yes, but her precarious position in the branches made me loathe to risk startling her and causing her to slip.
“Hello, there,” I called to her.
“Hi,” she responded in an oddly squeaky tone. Her cheeks flushed pink immediately. She was stretched forward across two larger limbs, her legs awkwardly braced to keep her from falling, but instead of holding on to the branches as seemed appropriate for a wingless creature, she was cupping her hands in front of her and resting her elbow as another point of contact on the branch. I never did understand how these people survived with so few forelimbs.
“Do you require assistance?” I asked her, half hoping she did not so that I could see to my scions that much more quickly.
Curiously, the pink in her cheeks deepened to a ruddier hue. “Uh… Possibly. I mean, maybe? I don’t suppose you have a ladder?” She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh.
I stared at her for a beat longer than I should have, trying to make sense of her question. I’d never had need of a ladder in my life, but the ground-dwelling races obviously used them when they needed to ascend something tall that had no stairs. Perhaps a nearby construction project would have a ladder, but I didn’t really need one to get her down when I could fly.
“I’m stuck,” she clarified.
“I see that,” I assured her. “Unfortunately, I do not own a ladder. However, I am prepared to assist you down, if you would like,” I offered.
“Oh, no. I’m afraid if you climb up here it will shake the branches and I’ll fall.” Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke.
Perhaps she assumed that the wings on my back were purely for aesthetic purposes. If I could have rolled my eyes in myhead, I would have. Alas, I could not—I’d always been envious of that ability—so I snapped my wings out dramatically instead and gestured to them with all four hands. “I have no need to climb the tree. I can easily fly up and retrieve you.”
“I don’t… I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said with another short laugh, this one sounding incredibly nervous. “I’m not exactly pixie-sized, right? I’ve got thighs for days and a booty to match,” she said with another strange-sounding laugh. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll figure something out,” she finished half-heartedly.
Did she think I couldn’t lift her? It was true that she didn’t have the slender build most common to the elvish people, instead possessing a rounded softness that I found rather pleasing, personally. But unless she was made of lead, it was rather insulting to imply that I couldn’t support such a small weight. I could carry a full-grown orc if I wanted to. “Miss—”
“Lilith,” she supplied quickly. “My name is Lilith.”
I nodded. A beautiful name. “Miss Lilith, I have a fourteen-foot wingspan.” I gestured to my wings again and flared them to their fullest spread, feeling the bases of my antennae heat with embarrassment at such a forward display. “I can assure you that it would not be a problem to lift you down.”
To my confusion, she shrank back slightly, closer to the trunk of the tree, clearly uncomfortable with the idea.
“Or—” I paused to think. “—I can summon emergency services?” I offered, having no desire to pressure her. “I’m sure they would have a ladder and experience with retrieving wayward elves from ibec trees.”
“Oh, no,” she gasped, “please don’t bother them with this. That’s so embarrassing. I’m fine. I’ll just… I’m sure I can figure out how to get down,” she babbled, her fear evident in her voice. She shifted slightly on the branch, glanced down, and then promptly froze again.
The odds of her climbing down without the use of her hands seemed incredibly dubious to me. Instead of lifting her down, as would be easiest, I decided to join her in the tree. “I’m coming up,” I warned her, then beat my wings in short, forceful strokes, just enough to lift myself off the ground. Angling between a gap in the branches where I could settle myself on a nearby limb, I used my taloned feet to grip carefully close to the trunk so as not to dislodge her from her perch. Her alluring scent had clung to my densely feathered mane after she ran into me a few evenings ago, and it was overwhelming again this close to her. Her alarmed expression quickly calmed as I shifted my weight away from her to show that I wasn’t planning to snatch her out of the tree but was simply joining her. The freckles across her nose and cheekbones, which I’d noticed while staring at her under the lamplight before, were barely visible in the shadows of the tree.
“If I join you up here,” I started to explain, “then I can see to instruct you on the best footholds to climb down. Though if I may suggest, it seems like the use of your hands would be beneficial.”
“I can’t. I’ve got a frog.” She said it as though that were all the explanation required.
“A frog,” I prompted, after it became clear that was all she was going to say on the matter.
“Yeah. In my hands. I brought it out here,” she nodded at the field below us, “because I’m tired of it coming into my house, so I figured this was far enough away, you know? But then a crow snatched it up and flew up here to eat it, alive, and I can’t be responsible for that. It’d be my fault it was dead!” She clamped her mouth shut, grimacing as she realized she had been babbling again.
“So, you… climbed the tree?” I asked.
“I… Yes… Because the bird dropped the frog when I chased it, and it got caught in the crook of this branch on the way down. I couldn’t leave it like that. I felt so bad.”
