Something Different;
Hi folks, I’m trying something different. I’ve written a very short story as a writing exercise in preparation for a tabletop campaign that I’m currently a part of. I needed to write more about the character I’m playing, so here’s a short story that I prepped to get into the role. It was a pretty damn fun exercise if I do say so myself.
A Red-Letter Day;
Fourtouna awakened with a start. The bear near her tree was at it again. Scratching his back against the tree had proved to be a favorite pastime of his. That old bastard.
Remembering to dunk her scaly, fishlike skin in water to prevent a slow death from suffocation, the sea elf immersed herself in the cold embrace of wakefulness. “Damn,” she thought, “My head really hurts.”
Normally hermits don’t drink, generally preferring to remain in a neverending dance of contemplative asceticism. However, yesterday was different. Fourtouna only then truly began to feel the pang of loneliness. To her it seemed as if she was continually watching a loved one slip permanently beyond her grasp. Hung over or not, her emotions still burned raw, and regret pricked at her mind like needles in a pincushion.
At this point, she was perforated in every place possible. Regret and isolation had begun to overwhelm her.
Her back had also seen better days. Sleeping with a tree root sticking into one’s back does not tend to improve one’s sleep. She really needed a hammock, and maybe someone to talk to.
Fixing herself some breakfast in the form of a few beetroots mixed with a drizzle of hand-pressed olive oil, she contemplated her next day’s routine. She scribbled it down on some paper she had handy from trading with a local merchant for some particularly sweet honey, courtesy of the bear. It was that merchant, with his kind eyes and gentle-pitying smile who gave her the main request on today’s agenda.
“First, kill the bandit plaguing the road nearby with his thievery,” she wrote.
“Second, build a damn hammock so I can finally sleep above the ground,” she scribbled hastily after logging the first request.
Gently petting the bear, she whispered into his ear.
“We’re going after that bandit today, no more trouble on the road after tonight,” she rumbled in a voice approximating something a bear would understand. He didn’t have a formal name, but she thought the big furball seemed like a “David,” so that all-too-human name would simply have to do.
David grunted in apparent agreement. As strange as it seemed for a bear to acknowledge her words, such was the nature of this part of the forest, the place where Fourtouna dwelled. There was magic in this wood, that she brought with her. A crackling, throbbing, humming energy that threatened to lash out at those who would harm her. David didn’t care. Neither did she. Either way, that bandit would pay his share. She noted his description: tall, spidery-fingered, dressed in leather armor and a tattered cloak. He seemed like a pathetic figure. That being said, he’d apparently built up a body count.
Today was a hunting day, the tension of which tainted Fourtouna’s senses with bloodlust.
They set out for the road, noticing that the bandit’s usual spot on the road remained vacant.
Noting this discrepancy, Fourtouna remained on her guard and began to scour the area for further clues. Quickly, the smell of blood in her nostrils turned to the smell of rot. Something dead lurked around her.
Soon she found the source of the smell: two bodies, stripped of valuables and their boots. Stabbed with a knife, and perforated with what looked like small bits of metal. “What kind of weapon could have done this?” she wondered aloud, forgetting herself. She motioned to David for a moment, pointing directly at the bodies. In response, David began excavating around the ditch where these unfortunate souls were dumped,filling the ditch with dirt. These folks at least deserved a proper burial.
Fourtouna clenched her fists. As lonesome as she had become, she wasn’t ready to make friends with someone who had just murdered two people in cold blood. Though she wore only a burlap sack with holes cut for her arms and a simple straw hat, a common habit for hermits of her faith, she cut an imposing figure. Even though she had no earthly idea where the bandit had run to, Fourtouna still had a few cards left to play. She would flush this bastard out, and take her forest back.
Making a sign with her hands and whispering a word of power, Fourtouna’s hair stood on end, rapidly shifting from her usual color of sea blue to a crackling electric teal. She was awake, and the storm inside her mind hungered.
Suddenly, like a burglar shattering an expensive urn at an inopportune time, the clouds above let out a loud CRACK. The storm in her mind had infected the sky. *This will flush him out,” she thought, knowing the bandit was close by.
As Fourtouna hid behind a tree, lying in wait for the bandit to appear, David slumped to the ground, disappointed at the rain which began to soak his beautiful brown fur coat. “Sorry buddy, can’t do much for you about that,” Fourtouna thought, feeling a bit sheepish.
Unfortunately, this playful balance was interrupted by another loud -CRACK-. Worse still, this wasn’t the sound of a friendly thunderclap. The explosive noise marked the telltale sound of a bomb.
Shrapnel immediately tore through the trees surrounding Fourtouna and David, peppering them with tiny pins of metal and wooden splinters. “Pincushioned again. Shit! That explains the two we just buried!” she thought, realizing that bright crimson blood had begun to bubble up from just below her ocean blue skin, creating a contrast not unlike the coloring of a prize koi that ought to be swimming at a temple somewhere.
David was much worse for wear. The pins had put out an eye, and a larger spike of metal had gashed his front right leg and paw, causing him to roar in pain and step backwards, directly into a waiting net trap. Neither able to move nor see properly, David could offer no meaningful aid except for an enraged roar which invigorated the sea elf. Fourtouna was now alone in the fight.
“Gods beneath the waves!” she swore, forgetting herself. She lashed out in the general direction of the grenade’s throwing arc. Before long a bolt of lightning struck where she guessed the bastard might be. No smell of burning flesh. A miss.
She threw another bolt, and then another, and missed each time. Each bolt draining her energy further, though the storm continued to rage. After so many misses Fourtouna had exhausted herself. She only had a single trump card left to play, a small dagger hidden above her sleeve. Now she only had to wait and feign vulnerability.
As she waited, her mind began to turn to her past for a fleeting moment.
Fourtouna thought about her birthplace, under the Emerald Lake, with the rest of her sea-elf kinfolk. She thought about her gift, the rare ability to breath above water. She thought about the title this gift bestowed upon her: Landwalker. Diving further, she remembered the occupation, nay, the vocation that her gift demanded of her: that of a diplomat. Digging deep into her memories, excavating the most personal elements, she remembered her choice.
She would not forge alliances, dine with kings, nor consort with nobles. She would seek the ascetic path of a hermit: the path of isolation, and hopefully enlightenment.
Unfortunately enlightenment never arrived, and an ache of longing for something greater never left.
Fourtouna’s muscles tensed, as she suddenly remembered herself, the sea elf waited for the inevitable attack from an unseen foe. Before long, through the pitter-patter of the rain, she heard another noise. She sensed the sound of footfalls, even lighter than the rain. This time, she was ready. For a moment, her thoughts turned to David, and she nearly missed the incoming thrust from just within her peripheral vision.
But not quite.
-CLANG!-
The sound of her final trump card clashing with the bandit’s dagger rang through the forest, seeming to drown out both the thunder and rain. Sparks of electricity flew away from where their blades had touched like little fireflies seeking shelter in a summer shower. Fourtouna finally had an opening, and she plunged her dagger deep into the bandit’s exposed throat.
She’d won this hand with her last card. Perhaps the bandit should have folded.
Still bleeding, Fourtouna rushed towards David, quickly using the meager bloodstained dagger to extricate him from the net as he roared in pain and anger. Eventually, she managed to drag him towards the tree she knew so well. Along the way, she spoke a healing word to keep him stable for a few hours, but he would need medical attention quickly.
Arriving home, she prepared a poultice from nearby herbs, slowly patching David’s wounds. He groaned in agony. Though he knew she indended to help, shrapnel still bloody hurt. Working at the highest speed the injured sea elf could feasibly manage, Fourtouna worked precisely to remove the shrapnel from David’s furry leg, choking back tears at the state of her friend.
Eventually, the pain mercifully caused David to faint, but he’d live. Her poultice had done its work. Exhausted, Fourtouna began to work on removing her own pins. No one asks the pincushion if they like being pricked, but today Fourtouna felt unnaturally empathetic towards an object so accustomed to being poked and prodded by sharp objects.
One, two, three, four, five pieces of rough, splintered shrapnel later, and her wounds were stable, but Fourtouna had completely exhausted her strength. She crawled over to David, totally drained from a hard day’s work, and fell asleep against his furry belly, knowing her neck of the woods was safe at last. Before she fell asleep, one thought kept bouncing about inside her mind.
Tomorrow she’d finally get around to building that hammock, but not today.
Fourtouna quickly pulled out the parchment, sheltering under her own straw hat to prevent it from becoming soaked through with blood and rain, and wrote the first to-do item for tomorrow.
“Build new bedding. A hammock for me, and a grass bed for David.”
Writing more and more;
Hope that turned out alright. I had a great time writing it. Here’s hoping anyone who’s reading this is doing well.
May God bless each and every one of you.
♾️ 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
-Sheena
Updates & Errata
UPDATE 08/01/2024: Fixed 2 typos plus 3 formatting errors, and reworded one sentence.
2nd UPDATE 08/01/2024: Header-Related table-of-contents bug fixed across all posts. ToC should render correctly now.