#juandalyn

Zizou looks at him with large eyes.

Below him is the ground, a solid weight beneath worn shoes, and above him is the sky, an endless promise of freedom. The Elf stands forlorn in the prairie. The wind whirls his robe and his immaculate hair, and the sun smiles at him kindly, its rays mirrored in his silver eyes. The world is alive around him, ground and sky and sun and wind, and yet the picture seems less than alive, in a twilight world between the planes. He blinks, and it is all gone.

The sorcerer had a strange idea of humor, they found out rather quickly after they had dispatched his underlings and ventured forth into his abode of evil. Five more-or-less humanoid creatures had gone in, and now five kittens sat on the ground, confused. Zizou was colored red from head to toe, with two little horns on top of his furry head; Daeron’s fur was long and silky and he sat looking at the sorcerer with a look that could cut through metal; Faduin was busy being licked by Melui who was now thrice his size; Yahkah was naked and shivering; and Shoo had tiny wings fluttering helplessly. The sorcerer cooed at them.

“It’s a kind of second breakfast,” Faduin explains as the sailors hand out some plates. “A meal between breaking your fast and luncheon.” The others regard him with expressions ranging from casual acceptance to open skepticism. But there is not much else to do on a boat than eat and sleep, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, and every day brunch sounds like a better idea than the day before.

Shoo looks worried. “That’s a place plagues are born.”

She scratches the dog behind his ears absent-mindedly. The blond girl sets on a set of stairs and the street mutt has settled between her legs. She chews on an old piece of bread as she watches the people out of keen blue eyes. They bustle about and sometimes, one of them catches a glimpse of her and blinks before hurrying on. One of her friends appears, waving at her happily, and the dog begins to growl.

“Now what you’ll want for this is a lot of sugar,” Hessa explains as Shoo and her two children watch her baking curiously. “It tastes better the more you got, but you know how expensive it is. Then you can also put in some berries - here, I took some elderberries - and then eat them.” She puts one cookie in each of her children’s mouths and then hands one to Shoo; he gulps it down and the warm, barely-baked dough tastes sweet and warm like a lazy summer afternoon.

In his dreams, everything was simple. He was in the wilderness and the days and nights blurred into each other. Animals gathered around him in moonlit nights and plants grew everywhere he looked. The world was at peace. Then he always woke, into the darkness, without moon and without plants, and remembered who he was.