The blind clairvoyant
"You owe me this." affirmed Legolas. Irony knew she owed him this. She owed him this for he had agreed to stay in Greyrock for a fortnights so to see if they could find the man who had handed her to the elf when she was drunk. She suspected that man had stolen her shiny globe.
"You saved me, I saved you. I owe you nothing." replied Irony unnerved. Knowing she had been stolen so easily from made her furious! Also, two days had already passed, and Mudbucket people had come in town to start a wild market, and among that many people, the chances that Legolas and his keen eyes recognized any one were thin, if non existent. "If anything, you owe me for making me stay with you by force." You owe me for making me break rule number 7: After the third day, keep them away. And I should have remembered that before your shit: you not killing the slave sellers, starts rubbing all over my face!
The word of the 'elf demon' had spread fast, and had now been caught up by another rumour. It was said that a wicked witch who lived under trees' roots walked with the demon elf. Irony had had to cut her hair as short as a man's, and to flatten what little breasts she had with an old cloth to look more like a young man and less like the witch people spoke of.
"I don't see chains around your wrists." he told her on the same growling tone.
Irony stopped walking, and because the street was crowded, a man making his way hit her with his shoulder by inadvertence. She thought his face was familiar, but he had left as fast as he had come, and she could not place him, so she turned back to Legolas.
"Only because you cut them a fortnights ago." she offered along with a forced smile.
"As proof that I trusted your good will." he insisted. He had told her that before. She hadn't believed him then, and she did not believe him now. By the way he sometimes discretely glanced at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention, she suspected he wished her hands were still tied together. A tied up woman could not do much DEGAT, even if she had an axe.
"Trust?" she repeated, jerking her head back. "Is that why you keep an eye on me constantly, follow me wherever I go, listen to my conversations with people? Because you trust me?" She smiled unpleasantly.
Legolasl said nothing and she heard his teeth clench together. But, he did not grab her arm violently like he had done a few times before, and like Jagah used to do. The elf had stopped doing that after he had seen that it bruised her badly. Her arms were still violet and yellow like piss from the last time he had grabbed her that way, days ago. "Besides, we need to have a look at those horses the inn keeper bought to make sure they are fit for the road. And we have to buy provisions too." And a weapon, for me. But I won't tell you that."We don't have time for those... shenanigans." She started walking again. When she realised he hadn't moved from where he was standing, she turned to him.
"Please." he insisted. He sounded like a wounded cat. "I very much desire to see her."
Irony's mouth dropped open. He was adorable. But she could not allow herself to comply to all of his senseless requests just because of his sad puppy face. Feeling irritated, she closed her eyes and sighed. "What do you want with a clairvoyant?"
"Hear her words." He sounded really excited. As if the fortune teller he spoke of would say something incredible. "I heard from Harra that this one is the wisest. And I have never seen a human with the gift of sight, before."
"Harra?" repeated Irony, not having listened to anything after the name. She blinked a few times. "Who's that?" she grounded. "Do you still speak to random people although I forbade you to?" she asked. He had talked to random people. Following what a sketchy man spent a night at in the inn, in their room, despite her protests. 'He needs shelter for only one night' the elf had told her, before leaving to do elf things, she had supposed. And as soon as he had left, the man in need of shelter had pressed a knife against her belly, claimed her boots, belt and the ring she wore. "You will get me in trouble! AGAIN!" she reproached, readjusting the sleeves of her old shirt wrapped around his face, under his pulled up hood, making sure his ears were still well hidden.
He pushed her hands away, as if she had a rare, contagious disease. He hated it when Irony touched him. And because of that, she used every excuse she could to touch him.
"You oft forget that you are my prisoner, woman, and not my road companion. You will not speak to me on that tone again." he told her, sounding like the prince she thought belonged only in a castle and not in Greyrock. "Harra is the fair maid, with green eyes, you called a harlot when you were so inebriated you tried to force your tongue in my mouth,-"
"There was no tongue involved." she argued, although, she could not say for sure she hadn't actually tried to make out with him. That whole night was still all too blurry.
Legolas paid her interruption no mind, and kept going."You told a man to stop being a pussy-cat when he told you, you had had too much to drink. And you lost all of our coppers," A pussy-cat?! You got me wrong elf!She thought without showing her amusement. "And sang so badly the inn keeper had to call me down to carry you away."
He kept remind her about all the attention she had gotten them that night every time he could. "Clairvoyants are frauds." she started changing the subject.
"Harra assured-"
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Of course, a sixteen years old waitress knows clairvoyants better than I do because her cheekbones are higher than mine!" She smirked, hoping the elf would get the sarcasm. Still she would not be surprised in the case he didn't understand it at all.
"Actually, the entirety of her face is fairer." he corrected. He smirked back at her. She punched his chest. It triggered no reaction from him. "Your knuckles will be needing tending if you insist on doing this." He said that to mock her and not as a show of worry, Irony thought. He took her still closed fist and looked at it. "They already are red." he noted, raising a brow.
She snapped her hand off his. "Clairvoyants all are charlatans who use naïve fools, like you, to earn their bread. I would know, because I pretended to be one, for a time." she told him, calmly. The elf's brows furrowed. One more thing you can add to the long list of things I've done you disapprove of. "You should not believe all of what people say. People lie. All the time." she warned him.
" It seems to me you take absolutely all you hear for lies." he told her, coldly.
" Only because it takes the truth to fool me, not long legs and a pair of teats."
The incense smelled of mystery and cinnamon and the orange-red light coming from the only candle in the room made even Legolas look like he could foretell what was to come. The fat blind woman's face was as old, round and as scarred as the moon and seemed to ready to roll down the dusty folds of her neck at any time. Her hair was covered with a kerchief and on her ears emerald encrusted jewels, that Irony was convinced were fake, hung like dead men.
The room was full of scary statuettes, human bones, pearls, parchments, and suspicious potions even Irony would not drink for all the gold and silver in the world. On the table they sat at, only a feather and an inkwell laid.
Irony felt uncomfortable here and hated that the elf had given the fraud two silver coins to hear her tell made up stories.
"First, who?" asked the old woman, with a thickest accent than the elf's, without looking at anything with her white irises. Legolas looked at Irony, with shining eyes. Irony shook her head, uninterested. "Elf hand." said the mooned face woman before either one of them could say a thing. Irony's jaw fell open in shock. How could she know he was an elf when she was blind? And even if she hadn't been blind, all she could have seen would be one of his eyes and his mouth? Legolas gasped happily. "Give hand, now, prince." asked the foreteller. The elf complied faster than he climbed up trees.
Supposing the clairvoyant had just made another lucky guess, Irony sighed and rested her head on her hand, bored, while the old lady inspected the fair creature's hand with her wrinkled sausage-like fingers and started to mutter things in a probably made up language.
The fortune-teller's voice became louder and louder and suddenly changed completely, sounding like one of a demon of old. Her, until now, empty irises now reflected the blue of the elf's eyes. Behind her stood blurry shadows that seemed to have a will of their own. Irony noticed Legolas had put on a serious look, and his free hand was wrapped tightly around one of his weapons' shaft, ready to slay the clairvoyant at any sign of aggressiveness. He also seemed unable to acknowledge anything else than the clairvoyant.
When Irony looked at the moon-faced woman again. The fortune-teller wasn't old any more, but young and gorgeous, with an ebony dark skin thick as expensive leather, full pink lips and almond shaped eyes.
This is some kind of dark magic. Irony's muscles stiffened. She wanted to stand up and leave, but something kept her still on the chair. And that something was not fear, she knew. That something didn't come from her, but from an outer force that prevented her from moving.
The leather skinned woman's right hand let go of the elf's hand to grab the feather and sink it in the dark black ink, while her left hand flattened his palm on the table. She began to write on Legolas's white skin. Then she released the elf, ant turned to Irony. Her eyes turned as dark and brown as Irony's, reflecting until the small black birth mark she had in one eye. "Your turn, little dream." she told Irony. Little dream...I have been called that before...
To Irony's dismay, her hand moved as if it had come to life, to land in the clairvoyant's. The black woman spoke the strange sounding words again, until her voice changed again, and she started writing on Irony's hand with the feather, the same way she had done on Legolas's hand. Irony could almost see spirits whisper in the woman's ear. She did not dare to look at the other woman's face, but raised her eyes when the mysterious lady suddenly stopped talking. Black blood was coming out of her mouth. Irony stood up with fright, snapping her hand out the fortune teller's.
She was now aware of her surrounding again. The wooden cabin's back wall was destroyed and half of the roof had collapsed with it. Everywhere, people were screaming, fighting, running in every directions. How could I not have noticed all this before?
She looked in front of her again. The fortune-teller's forehead was on the table. Looking at the clairvoyant's hands, Irony guessed at the sight of the wrinkled fingers, that she had become old and ugly again. It seemed that she had died of piece of wood planted in the back of her head. It had probably been projected there when the wooden wall was demolished.
"We must go." said Legolas after having knocked out an hysteric man who had come in. Two others laid on the floor, by the elf's feet. "I know not what is happening, but this place is not safe any more."
