Titled: Conflict of Interest
First chapter: Evergreen Manor
the walls of Evergreen Manor had a rather leafy appearance, the sap from the roughened bark flowing in golden currents down the side, while, despite the most rigorous clipping on the part of the maid, Linda, green leaves and shoots popped out from the side, infringing into the house mistresses living space. The aforementioned Linda hurried after her mistress, Tamer'zadi, while carrying a wastebasket full of clippings in the general direction. She knew from long experience that interrupting her mistress in mid-conversation was a bad idea, but without the Elvish gift of magic, she had to carry the basket under one arm, a small knife in the other, hacking away at the branches sticking out of the walls. Arya, she reflected, never had branches sticking out of her walls. Tamer'zadi just happened to suck at magic, Linda thought bitterly, and her servant-girl had to take the blame. How one was supposed to hack a branch off with a blunt knife with the same ease that one's pointy-eared overlord might bring to cutting her ear off or slitting her tongue for doing a job poorly, she didn't know.
"and you hear this, Girl, wait until you hear this. It's so funny, I can't believe she actually said this to me." the voice was coming from the kitchen, and Linda perked up, feeling a lot more obedient now. It was, by the Elvish timekeeper mounted o the back wall, the third hour of the latter day. She hadn't eaten since yesterday morning, which would not pose a problem for an oh-so-superior elf, but the poor lowly human felt as though her stomach was digesting itself. It must have something to do with being inferior, she thought darkly, as she entered the kitchen, thrusting the basket up still farther. The pointed ears of her owner swiveled, and the inhuman pupils dilated as she bumped into something. The woman relaxed quickly, so quickly that if Linda hadn't spent her entire life waiting on elves, learning their moods and patterns, and avoiding their capricious anger, she might not have seen it. As it was, she ripped her gaze away from the pile of seedcakes on the table-surely too many for one person?- and curtsied, the basket digging into her chest, the woven fibers imprinting themselves in the skin below her breasts. "yes, Mistress? What were you saying?"
The elven lady laughed, and her laugh was like the trilling of some sort of musical instrument, a beautiful sound to Linda, who knew it as a sign of good humor. She wondered if she could press her advantage. "oh, do you think I'm pretty? I mean, pretty enough to dine with a Rider?"
"my Lady, you are beautiful beyond the evening stars, or the wing of the hummingbird," gushed Linda, putting her suntanned hand to her white tunic, where it parted below her neck. Elvish language was imbued with magic to the point where saying what one believed to be an untruth was blatantly impossible. Therefore, in order to put her mistress in a good mood, Linda had to resort to nonsensical idioms that were not really untrue, but conveyed an impression that did not match her feelings. Next, oddly enough, she felt a poke at the fringes of her mind, and froze. This was the part she really hated about living among elves, not their strength, their decadence, their maddening superiority, their telekinesis, their immortality, their eternal beauty, their viewing of humans as sub-elvish barbarians who lived and died for their entertainment, no, the lack of privacy one had from them. One could not even nurse rebellion in one's own heart without the pointy-eared freaks finding out, and punishing you for your thoughts. Linda still bore the welts and scars from the last time she let a stray recalcitrant thought reach a casual listener, and overwhelmingly panicked at this intrusion, when she heard Lady Tamer'zadi's cheery voice in her head, with the accompanying eerie strains of music that accompanied an elf's presence. She knew humans that had purposely been driven mad by elvish minds, as a punishment for some mental crime. Quickly she looked at the lady's bouffant pink hair streaming down her shoulders, the tribal tattoo markings engraved in purple on her face, her perfect body outlined by the odd tattoos that shifted at will-when undressing her mistress for bed or bath, or simply a clothes change, Linda always noticed the changes in tattoos. They were really pretty, she thought, trying to sound awed in the confines of her skull. I wish I could look like that. I wonder how she managed to grow her fingernails into hawk talons. This last one contained a degree of revulsion, but she squashed it, and, apparently satisfied, the fell music retreated, leaving her with a dazed, dreamy feeling.
"Put the basket down", ordered Tamer'zadi imperiously. Linda looked around, and knelt down, dropping the basket of cuttings to the floor. She remained kneeling, still lightheaded, and put her head down.
"may I feed?" she asked. Tamer'zadi, for an elf, was not especially cruel. She didn't usually starve her human girl, unless she, bored perhaps by her five hundred years of age, decided to see the effects of malnutrition on the human body first-hand. In this case, however, the mistress ignored her completely. "the reason I asked that in the first place, is because Decius is apparently hosting a dinner party at the Crags of Tel'Nair, I know, right? And a shit-ton of dragon riders-with their dragons-will be there. And Arya was just telling me I shouldn't bother going because of my hair-like she knows anything about hair- and I just wanted to tell you how ridiculous that is."
"well, you should definitely go," said Linda in her special gushy voice she reserved for just such occasions. She dropped the knife into the basket, the living wood of the floor hurting her knees. If she waited, though, she might impress old pink-hair with her obedience, and actually eat today. Which would be just peachy.
"i might even bring you along with me," the elf continued, reaching out, and scratching Linda behind the ears like a dog, playing with the braid her hair was bound in. "would you like that?"
you know, Mistress, thought Linda, after checking her mental privacy, much as I'd love to wait on a group of imperious assholes who think that just because they have a giant monster between their legs somehow gives them the right to light towns on fire, while you and the other decadent pigs of Du Weldenvarden compare hairstyles for the next six hours and I get a spell put over me that prevents me from eating any of the food I'm serving you, because the Dragon Riders forgive me if I eat a mouthful of the giant shit-loads of forest life you will be shoving in your faces. Unless, of course, a dragon rider decides to rape me for fun, or just outright kill me. Because, you know, dragons need to eat too, and I'm only human, not a uber speshul elf princess.
"Girl?"
"oh, right" Linda smiled, getting to her feet as her stomach twisted in pain. "shall I get ready?"
"oh, yes. We'll see who's laughing after I show her my new look. Come by my bedroom after you finish getting ready, and come see me. This is going to be great!"
"i know right."
