Pretty Carvings by Luxa

Chapter 1

The Elf followed Haleth through the bushes easily, tracking the trail her people had considered secret with ease. He made her angry, the Elf did, so casually upending everything she knew. She wished the Elves had never found them sometimes, had left them alone to fend for themselves. She could do that. She knew how to fend for herself.

Instead, here she was, leading this tall surly creature of the West back to their camp. Well, camp wasn’t really the word. It was slowly becoming a permanent fixture, this place they had carved out for themselves. She rather liked that.

“And what is it you so wanted to see in my camp? We can do our business elsewhere,” she said, every vowel of the Elf’s language harsh in her throat. She’d demanded to learn it. She’d rather mutilate their words than have him crush hers.

“I wanted to see how you lived,” he said, crossing his arms.

“And what is so important about how my people live?”

“I didn’t say anything about your people.”

She snorted. “I am my people, Caranthir.”

She liked him, despite it all. He liked that he demanded respect despite knowing he did not have the charisma or natural charm of his siblings. She liked that he was shorter than the others, that his cheeks seemed permanently stained red, that the beauty of the Eldar had only served to make him passable.

They entered the camp clearing and she gestured to the rows of tents and small cluster of wooden buildings they’d begun to construct. “Here we are,” she said, eyebrow raised as she waited for him to make a comment, some kind of comment, that would make her angry.

“It’s…nice,” he said.

Well, he tried. She’d give him a prize for that if his expression didn’t infuriate her so much. “We don’t have centuries to perfect our arts,” she said harshly. “Or a thousand years to figure out how to be the most pretentious. We live, we love, we build what we can, and then we don’t wake up one morning, if we’re lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Not a lot of people make it to that point,” she said. “So don’t you go damning us with faint praise. We haven’t the time to do the pretty carvings in the buildings that we’d like.”

“I wouldn’t know how to do any pretty carvings,” said Caranthir. “That’s the business of those better at such things.”

“And what are you good at?” she said, leading him through the camp, past tents with brightly decorated flaps and intricately woven carpets laying out front. Their art was there if you knew where to look.

“Sums. Managing things.”

“Like?”

“Money. People. What I’m good at is a boring business to most.”

Caranthir said it flatly, but his dark eyes narrowed. He did not seem too pleased about the valued worth of his skills.

“It’s not boring to me,” she found herself saying, leading him to one of the more well-made buildings. “Neither are you, so I’m going to show you something before we get to our business.”

“And what could that be?”

Caranthir squinted suspiciously and followed her inside. His expression changed when he realized what the small room they were in was filled with. There were books on a small shelf to the side of the room, and the wooden floor was draped in animal furs. Small wooden carvings, some so old the features were worn off, were placed on a side table. And in the middle was one large book placed in the middle of an otherwise empty table.

“This is where our healers learn,” she said. “It is a quiet place, kept separate from our injured so that no disease my taint it. Our leaders learn here too, and anyone who is interested may come to me to see. It is not always easy to save these things when we have to move, but it’s worth it.”

The Elf approached the book in the center of the room cautiously, careful not to disturb anything as he turned the page. She knew the art in it must be crude to him, the remedies and herbs recorded obsolete, and she began to regret bringing him in here. That book was hundreds of years of lore recorded in one place. This place was special, and she did not want an Elf to ruin it with careless superiority.

He turned to her and said in a tone that was doing its best to be soft, “I underestimated you. Forgive me, for this place is sacred, and your race has more worth than I could ever have imagined, to do so much with so little time in this world.”

Caranthir was not a soft Elf. Those words had to have taken a toll on his pride, of which most Elves had boundless amounts of. But unlike most Elves, this one was willing to speak the words that took effort.

“I accept your apology,” she said. “Do better.”

She gestured towards the door. “We have work to do. We can’t wallow in the past forever.”

He let out a small smile, a crack in the mask that was his face. She returned the sentiment, needless as it was.