Es stops in her tracks. The box is gone. She cannot believe it. It’s all like a dream. It’s all without color. It’s all a nightmare from six years ago, but in white this time, before the streets were cleaned of filth and thugs, before…Endeca?
Endeca, kindest of elves, the only keeper of joy and smiles in the Companionship, ever enjoying, ever curious, ever troublesome, ever exciting, ever faithful, Endeca.
Then, as now, had her elfin friend somehow made the mistake of turning down blood road. There had been a group of wanton human surrounding Es as they now surround her now…No this is too familiar…so perfectly the same… why do I dream in white?
The same thoughts pass through Es’ form as they did over half a decade ago. It would be so simple to take their little toy weapons from their infantile grasps, to bring them all to their knees. Disturbingly, there is another among them, perhaps a performer, her outfit made of scraps, standing barely over four feet, with a slight, slender frame of an elf, but then there is a flash, a burning, and like every nightmare Es is frozen by the flames. The poor fools never even had a chance to scream, to cry, to live…
Endeca couldn't let them hurt the girl that was Es, so the spellweaver did what she thought necessary. Not like they didn't deserve it anyway.
Es lives evermore in this moment. She looks to Endeca, wanting to plead for their existence before the spell is cast, to relive that single terrible moment that ended a group of lives. She knows what will happen next, she saw it all happen years ago, and for the first time in all her days, Es is to slow to react. They will die.
Es does not close her eyes. There is no flash. There is no fire. There is no stench of death. All is not as before... The ghost white humans assault with practiced speed, but they are sluggish and slow compared to her. In Es’ complacency, she is still, like the perfect girl you thought you once saw in a dream; evenly, she measures their blows, daggers or swords, appraises their thrusts, notes the markings and worn side of their sheaths and finally their defining individual facial expressions. Es knows she can leisurely dance around them or have them effortlessly cut down one another in their dawdling skill.
Then Endeca steps before her. Her friendly face smiling at her, the petite elf’s teeth glitter like small wet pearls. Her slight fair hand somehow already rests upon Es’ stomach, in the very center of her. There is a sound not unlike grinding metal as Endeca’s fine Elvin fingers dig deeply into Es’ form just below her breasts. Like butcher, she pulls at Es’ middle. Endeca watches the delicate chest and stomach crumple around her fingertips like cheap tin paper. The child in Es cannot understand, cannot retort. This simply cannot be…her friend... But enough of this, and Es shifts her weight ever so slightly, even now not wishing to draw her weapons on her friend, every movement measured Es pulls away, knowing her natural strength to be far and beyond that of her frail friend. But, impossibly, she is trapped in the tiny elf’s grasp. Es’ beautiful shape twists and surges forward. Endeca laughs and lifts her like a fragile porcelain doll. The pretty plaything almost seems to struggle as its spoiled owner holds it in the air, hammering it down repeatedly, trying to shatter its lovely head on the cobblestone street.
A daughter of Mem is not easily broken.
So the petite elf raises her fragile doll again. At times, bashing it from the side, Es’ refined, figurine like body, sometimes upside down and sometimes sideways, her innocent face always first against the stone, her fine head and shoulders smashing into the road again and again…again…
Es’ weapons come out, like thin needles from her forearms, twin rapiers, flawlessly, sleek, long, as her legs, and the ground rushes back to crush her once more, but this time she is will be no child’s rag-doll. Es, ever calm, still appreciates the dilemma and quickly formulates a cure.
As the Es’ alluring figure is slammed down yet another time, it crosses its hands above her, the Nimblewright’s weapons held downwards from its body, directly under her thumbs, the thin daggers slide out along her forearms; like a preying mantis she thrusts her arms to the earth, forcing them past the dirt, dragging them in the stones, and the doll is pulled up by its owner, likewise pulling the needle blades up into the street, right to the hilts of her fists. Her thin weapons now set in the stones, yet firstly free of Endeca’s giant like grip.
Unrealistically, a puppet slung upside down by its strings, her torso to her toes remain impossibly straight, immaculately balanced, she uncrosses her arms like a contortion artist from the east. Her legs skywards, she turns as a dancer on her hands and in one supple motion, dismounts, descending like a panther to her feet, the bottom of her fists still fixed to the ground, her blades all the same sheathed in the street. Without them touching the earth, she draws in her supple legs till her knees are bent before her, Es then lifts her childlike grey eyes, her long hair, silver straight lines before her. The whiteness gone, the street unnaturally emptied, Es glances about her for Endeca but no one is there. Like a feline stripped of her fur, both paws caught by a simple hunter’s trap and put on display, she finishes her show, sliding her knees inward crouching on her porcelain smooth haunches.
There is a whistling around the corner, a happy taunting tone and back walks carefree Endeca, her whiteness removed, her colors returned, and she strolls happily over, as if nothing had passed, just for the fun of it she is on Blood Road once more.
