Egg. Good egg. Click is happy. Berries?
After the egg.
He hopped over, looking rather sullen as a bird could look, to feast on the egg. Crumbled yolk and whites fell to the leaves below as he pecked away, black eyes shining in the dwindling sun. When he was done and had yolk stuck on his beak, only then did he scoot closer to allow me to remove the small wooden tube tied to his leg. We had a good rapport. Click, and most ravens, were not fooled easily. They held grudges against anyone who mistreated them. If they liked you, they would bring you trinkets, rocks or buttons, rings or even coins they would find. He’d once gifted me with a lone earring, pearly white, that I wore in my left lobe.
Berries.
Sorry yes.
I placed the tube between my teeth to dig about to find the parcel of fat blackberries. He gobbled them down as I held the cloth open for him, plucking each one up and then swallowing it whole.
When he was filled, he began preening, so I uncorked the tube to remove the precisely folded note. Rolling it open against the faded wool of my breeches, I frowned to see it was not the easy-to-read letters of Pasil but the ornate scribbles of the king. Holding it up to the dwindling light, there was no making sense of it. The few lines were too curled. The letters all joined into words I could not decipher no matter how hard I squinted or taxed my lazy brain.
“Fuck,” I mumbled and glanced at Click.Can you read this?
I held out the note. He eyed it as birds do, with a tip of their head, and then gave me a throaty rattle that sounded like a laugh.
No. Berries.
Are gone.
Sad Click. Bad Beiro. More berries for Click.
Yes, of course. After I get someone to read this—
“Beiro, I see you!” The soft call of a feminine nature floated up to me from the forest floor. I knew the elf calling to me. Her name was Lyceeia Aerois. A slim, green-skinned female with long white braids who had, for some reason, settled her sights on me the first day we had met. While I found her pleasant enough company, for she was quite skilled in her studies of insects, her pursuit of me was futile. My tastes ran to men. And while many elves were happy to bed either sex, I was not one of those elves. “Why do you linger up there when the camp food is ready?”
“I was speaking to a raven from Celear,” I replied as she began to climb the tree like the mother squirrel I’d met earlier. Once she arrived, she gave me a wide smile, sat tightly beside me, and flipped her braids over a bare shoulder. They hit me in the face. Click made an amused sound as my eye began to water.
“I hope all is well in the capitol,” she said as she inched closer still. The scent of the lemongrass oil she massaged into her braids grew overpowering. Trying to wiggle away was fruitless since my arse was tight to the trunk of the tree. The only escape was down.
“I wouldn’t know as I cannot read it in this light,” I replied as Click flapped over to rest on my shoulder after hearing the call of a white-tipped owl nearby. Large owls did feast on other birds, even raptors, if they could catch them, so Click’s using me as a safe perch made sense. A small band of fireflies rose from the forest floor and settled on the uncurled sheaf of vellum. Iglanced over at Lyceeia, who smiled demurely at me, picking up a braid to twist it about her finger. “Thank you,” I whispered around Click, who was leaning forward to try to catch the little glowing bugs.
Stop. They are not for dinner.
He flapped his wings in irritation but stopped trying to feast on the insects Lyceeia had called forth to aid me. The swirling, fanciful writing began to leap about on the paper, the entangled lines confusing me as the letters all ran together. I huffed. Lyceeia swatted my thigh with the long white braid she had been toying with.
“If you wish, I can read it for you. My tutelage under my father was quite extensive. Many of the older scrolls were penned in such elegant chirography.”
“It is from the king and meant for my eyes only,” I snapped at her, my aggravation at being unable to read a message from my king making me short. She blinked large, dark eyes.
“Yes, of course. I did not mean to impose on courtly matters.”
Click bit my ear. He had good reason to do so. I had been a smacked arse. “No, I am sorry for my shortness. It is just…this regal longhand is not a common script. It is more decorative than I had been taught.” Which was not a lie. “If the letters were not connected so…”
“I understand. It is quite difficult to read such erudite penmanship. If you wish, you can take it to the warden wilder to read over for you. He’s a friend of your king and knowledgeable in reading important documents.”
“No, it is fine, I am sure.” There was only one line. A very long line with squiggly words with no starts or stops. Surely no state secrets would be revealed in one line to a ranger out in a future logging camp. “Please, if you could make sense of it, I would be grateful.”
Her face lit up to rival the soft yellow illumination of the glow bugs walking about the scroll. I passed it over with care not to disturb the insects. She held the small bit of parchment closer to her face. A firefly flew from the vellum to her cheek. She never moved to brush it off. In fairness, the maiden was always covered with insects. Various kinds, from ants, spiders, up to large stick bugs that clung to her long white braids like nettles.
“What elegant script. The Ivory King seems like a well-schooled ruler.” I nodded. The wood elves had, in the past, little to do with the pale elves, as they called elves who possessed skin the color of freshly shorn wool. Now, since Kenton was part of the royal court, the elves who lived in the forests were becoming more involved in things outside the woods. “It merely says you are to return to Avolire with undue haste.” Her face fell as she turned to look at me. “You must leave?”
“It seems so. The king has commanded it,” I softly replied, gazing down at Aelir’s signature at the bottom of the curly script.
She handed the note back. “Yes, the king has commanded it.” With a sigh, she lifted her sight from her lap, the glow bug now on her brow, and then threw her arms around my neck to kiss me with such force that Click and I nearly tumbled from the tree. If not for my grabbing a stout branch overhead, we would have fallen to our deaths. Click would not have hit the ground as he had wings, but I did not, so the landing would have been unpleasant.
“I will miss you, Pine Outrider,” she whispered. I gaped. She climbed down the tree with speed, leaving me sitting beside a stinking opossum den with pink rose oil on my lips and my eyes round as wagon wheels.
