The Shining Wyrm

Gem sat in the garden with Gwenn. Her sister-aunt was heavy with her pregnancy, but she still insisted on moving about as much as possible every morning. Imre and Gem had at least managed to convince her to not spar this late into her condition, but it had been a near thing.

Together they watched the procession of her larger self and her party. The scales of the wyrm shone prominently in the late morning sun even at the outermost ‘walls’ of Mokoshbork. Gem snorted to herself.

“I really am a Shining Wyrm.”

Gwenn snorted and gently flicked her in the ear, which hardly hurt at all even without Gem’s carefully rationed store of flame. She wouldn't waste her larger self’s fire on such a frivolous excuse, not with possibly a year before Gem might rejoin with her Wyrm Self and restore her parcel of flame.

She did however raise a brow up at her sister-aunt and stuck out her significantly longer tongue.

“You’re a lot more childish this time, not anywhere near as stuffy, not even having to force yourself with it either.”

Gem sighed and shook her head.

“I am a child still Gwenn, I’ll see my sixth winter here with you. Hopefully with your first born.”

Her sister-aunt scowled at her before sticking her own significantly shorter tongue out. Poor Anna would have to accept having such a stubby tongue for the rest of her life.

“You're still too responsible for six though, and you're just as tall and built as you were in your sixteenth winter last time around.”

Gem nodded at that, then gently reached out to rest a hand on Gwenn’s belly, feeling the life that was growing inside through her maternal gown, it was really nothing at all like carrying an egg she was finding. Not from all the extremely disgusting complaints her sister had unloaded on her that Mother (or ‘babcia’ as she insisted Anna call her) had never so candidly shared.

"At least it’s not as bad as the trio have it, I grew significantly slower than they did.”

Gwenn scowled fiercely before nodding.

“Fair enough, It's bad enough having my belly bloating up so fast, but feeling it all through you? Legs, back, shoulders and everything?!”

Gem shared a shudder with her sister-aunt. No more needed to be said on that topic, it was strange with Gwenn. She was not quite a sister-self, not precisely and perfectly aligned with her, but it was a very near thing.

Would that be what it was like with Gwenn’s children? Could she teach them such? She gently tapped out the signs, not wanting to break the soothing sounds of the Mokoshbork before noon. Spring birds sang, the wind was gentle, distant clouds to the south roiled with thunder, her Wyrmself and their entourage probably would have to encamp early given the color of them hovering on the horizon.

“Is it wrong of me to be afraid?”

Her tail twitched when she felt Gwenn’s hand tap her knuckle to draw her attention then flash between the close sign before settling again.

“It’s not wrong to be afraid to do something you’ve never tried. So long as you have courage with your fear.”

Gem shuddered and then nodded, speaking softly, voice taking on the lilting trill that the Trio had no choice in sounding like. When she’d first arrived in this body she’d tried and succeeded at infuriating the local birds into an uproar with this voice.

“Father’s words. It’s strange Gwenn, when I’m apart, when I’m only myself alone? I only remember a few things about him.”

Gwenn squeezed her hand gently where it rested on the woman’s belly.

“What do you remember my sister and niece in one? Second of her name?”

Gem thought about it and smiled.

“He was warm, gentle, he was not always wise I don’t think, he acted foolish, but I know he loved me, all of me, and you too I think.”

Gwenn laughed and lightly slapped her shoulder.

“You think?!”

Gem raised her hands, gesturing for surrender before her sister-aunt used this as an excuse to try and begin a grapple there on the stone bench!

“My cup is only so big sister-aunt! It overfills so easily!”

The ‘older’ woman smirked and relented in her light attack. Gem turned back to look at the winding entourage as it made its pace into the forests south. The details blurring together, the shine of the wyrm still prominent but now all of the party was blurred together, making Jewel appear to be a much larger beast dappled in many colors, a sinuous shape of a wyrm far larger than she truly was.

“I remember his smile, some of the words he shared, one time it was in a forest, I think it was autumn? The leaves looked like autumn, He was speaking about bravery... I remember his words saying as much as you signed.”

A voice Gem had not heard except in a memory of a memory spoke softly beside them.

“A fine child he was, a child of Uruk yes, but a beautiful in his way and too quickly gone, ended far too soon as all of Uruk’s git are.”

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Gem was up from the stool with feet on the ground, her short sword (barely a dagger to the figure before her) loose and the flame of her wyrmself trembling under her skin waiting to be called. It had barely been a breath before she was interposing herself between the stranger and her sister.

The figure was a strange one, it had no scent to it, not any that Gem could distinguish from the garden around them. The skin was hard to focus on, and it was only as the leaves shifted in the wind overhead that she realized it was because the figure’s skin and hair grew dark and pale in contrast to the light falling upon them.

The eyes were peculiar, almost wolf-like in their angle, but as deeply black as her own, the face seemed hardly less youthful than her own. And she could see even in the way they stood comfortably with a sheer cloth hanging off their shoulders that a potential of terrible violence awaited beneath that skin.

But Gem did not yet move to strike, only interpose, memories fuzzily drifting in and out of her grasp the longer she looked upon the figure before they crystallized together.

“Alder.”

Gwenn gasped behind her, murmuring softly about the elf that Jewel had spoken of from her tour and other encounters.

“That is the name I gave the most of you to use, but you go by a name other than the shining wyrm who was raised by Uruk’s children?”

Gem considered the elf, she took a step back towards Gwenn but sheathed her sword. There would be no contest of martial prowess if Alder tried to strike her down. She remembered seeing how the elf could move, even if she spent all of her Wyrmflame Gem was not sure she could do more than block him.

Once.

The elf turned to watch Jewel’s entourage, seemingly content to stand there, poised and yet utterly still. Finally Gwenn broke the silence.

“So, you’re an elf? Really an elf? I thought your ears would be pointier... and longer.”

Alder smiled a bit and turned to look at Gwenn.

“Sometimes child, mine have been so, but they are the shape now that I need them to be.”

Gwenn hummed then snorted.

“So, you could also be prettier than that too?”

Gem felt a deep rush of terror that Gwenn was potentially insulting the elf. Alder however just chuckled softly and shook their head.

“I could, but by the time I’d finished doing so, what you children fancy will have changed, I’ve tried it before in my youth. I find it best to simply be how I wish and let children’s fancies settle on me how they may.”

The Elf grimaced a bit, presumably some ancient reminder coming to light.

“Besides, it would be indecent and cruel to court any child of Uruk, you are all far too young, and then you wither and die too soon. None of you ready and yet furiously you all rush through life.”

He fixedly stared at Gwenn’s belly and Gem felt fury building in her cheeks at the look of openly disgusted horror in the fae’s features. However even her spotty memory could recall that one did not openly insult an Elf.

“Alder, is there a reason you are here, now, speaking to me instead of my wyrm-self?”

The elf looked away from Gwenn, eyes passing over Gem, then peering into the distance, contemplating the horizon she suspected, although it was hard to say where exactly with eyes as dark as her own. Without the unity of her sister-selves it was rather eerie how impossible it was to read where his gaze lay.

Was that how everyone experiences her-selves?

Except Anna of course. Her eyes were as human as Paul’s.

“I did not want to disturb her mourning. To lose a father so soon? Then be spoken to by a stranger? No, it would be far too much of an intrusion.”

Gem blinked at that.

“Father, Jewel's and Gwenn’s father, that is, died many years ago... I, we’ve been making peace with it. She blamed herself at first, I blamed myself for my part in his death, but we have mourned.”

Alder nodded, but the elf’s eyes were welling with tears, the water flowing freely, pouring over its cheeks and down to drip from the chin, its lips and the creases of its too youthful face contorting awfully with misery, grief, pity.

A shuddered breath broke out with a croak.

“Still so soon, only years? No it is best that I let her find deeper solace however she may, to grieve and finish her goodbye, but let her know facet of Jewel, when she has howled out her sorrows and pain, when she has forgiven all the things she did not get to say and burned away all the anger and spite she had yet not told him, when all that is left is her warmth and memory of him, she can come to the woods where we first met. I will listen to her and we can remember the beauty of him and any other she has lost and wishes to share.”

Gem was watching the Elf, but even as she did she felt like her eyes were losing focus on it as it started walking away into the garden.

“Tell her that is a part of you, that when she needs it I will gladly hear the songs of her loved ones and sing them with her, so that she may continue to shine as a beauty made by Uruk’s accursed children.”

And then Gem lost the figure, not because he slipped around or behind anything, but simply because the fae creature had just become too hard to discern between the foliage of a bush and the sunlight through the leaves.

Gwenn was quiet alongside her for a time longer before muttering softly.

“What a rude wisp of a man.”

Gem glanced back at her sister-aunt, where she was still seated on her stone stool.

“That was an Elf, not a man.”

Her sister-aunt snorted.

“You know what I mean Gem. Now help me up, I need to use the piss pot again!”