Kiane Week Day Four: Reign/Daily Life
The merger between the Fairy and Giant Clan proves a bigger challenge than anticipated. Luckily, Diane has someone special to rekindle her optimism.
A Song to Forget All Trouble
With each sunrise, another problem awaited Diane. Or, for the sake of accuracy, a mountain of problems. Ruling an entire clan was one thing, but the management of two clans who had spent the majority of three millennia with scornful looks and cold shoulders had more in common with a wrestling match against a Tyrant Dragon. With arms tied behind the back. Giants and Fairies alike always found one little annoyance to blow out of proportion and add to the list of matters Diane needed to discuss and solve with the parties involved.
The quarrel for a resting spot on one of the Fairy King's Forest's countless clearings took her half a day to settle because both the Giant and the opposing group of Fairies claimed to have arrived there first. Around noon, Diane ordered the squabblers to find other places to sleep and opened the clearing to a horde of Giant children. At the end of their play session, a rugged crater disfigured the landscape, and smashed golem heads roasted in the sun. No one wanted to rest there anymore.
Every trampled flowerbed and every earth-made pillar became a file on Diane's metaphorical desk. Fairies liked to boast about their inability to understand concepts like possession and greed, but when someone asked them to share their precious forest with outsiders, they crossed their arms and jutted their chins faster than one could turn over a leaf.
Even if their king asked them.
But the Giants didn't cover themselves in glory with their behavior either. Their daily fighting tournaments, these days held for sport rather than war training, flattened entire areas on a regular basis. And while the Giants toasted to their displays of power, the present Fairies had little to laugh about. To them, a tree was a lifeform in the same way as a deer or a chaffinch. To a Giant, a tree was a resource for weapons and sometimes a javelin in their ego games.
Drole had assured that Diane would make for the ideal queen to their people. If only he had mentioned the massif of hurdles on the road of leadership.
Daylight was fading, and Diane more stumbled than walked towards the Great Tree. She hawked, but the lump in her throat sat on her voice like a fat, ugly toad. The avalanche of irritated 'what?' the near-deaf Giant had spat in her direction continued to ring in her ears. He had built a stone damn to turn the southern river into his private bathing lake. The shrubs and flowers he had put underwater by proxy had concerned him no more than a change in the clouds above. Diane had repeated and rerepeated herself in explaining the problem he had created, but more than another 'what?' hadn't come out of him. A wonder the old man still lived – with the philosophy of the Giants in mind, a useless member of the pack went to bed each night in expectation of a slit throat.
Diane rolled her shoulders to shake away these gloomy thoughts. The merger had its upsides too. She just needed to remind herself of them once in a while.
The stench of fire, mingled with the alluring but precarious aromas of roasted boar hit her before the massive shape of the Great Tree came into view. Not again. Diane darted into the bushes, a string of curses she had picked up from Ban on her lips.
In most cases, even the most traditionalist of Fairies looked past the campfires the Giants gathered around to exchange war stories. But when these parties involved hunted wildlife – deer, boars, or the sinfully delicious cranes found in the western lake district of the forest –, a war declaration already waved between the trees by the time King or Diane could intervene.
Along with the cackling of the fire, the sound of laughter and, strangest of all, music reached Diane's ears as she zigzagged through the pine trunks. The out of place sound almost made her stumble. Had the wind solely carried the beat of drums, she would have continued her race without a second thought. But a small orchestra of pipes and flutes gave the rhythmic pounding a melody unlike anything she had ever heard in Megadoza. If any Giant knew how to craft and play a flute, Matrona had to have hid them in the catacombs underneath the rock city during Diane's two hundred years of training there.
A final sprint brought Diane to the clearing from where the smell of meat and the sound of music originated. But instead of a pack of drunk and bellowing Giants, the last sunrays reflected from the faces of Fairies and Giants alike. And instead of accusations hurled at the other clan, laughter tied both sides together.
Above the open fire, spits laden with meat turned while a soup happily bubbled in an oversized iron cauldron. A handful of lanterns in the shape of tulips adorned the trees around. While not as golden or luxurious as the festivities Diane had visited in Liones, the clearing showed all the makings of a celebration, complete with a colorful assembly of guests.
King hovered in the middle of the illusive scenery and conversed with Matrona and Ritho, an older Giant whose passion lay with war before any other activity. All three of them were smiling.
Diane maltreated her temple with her knuckles, but the illusion refused to collapse and return to the dust of her imagination. What had happened in her absence that all conflicts between Giants and Fairies had smoothened into a pretty party with a pretty ribbon to complete the present? Had Bartra Liones foreseen the end of the world for tomorrow? Another explanation failed to arise out of the muddle of her thoughts.
She stared, and she stood, unable to move or comprehend what was playing out before her eyes.
King noticed Diane, nodded to Matrona and Ritho, and floated towards her with two minimalistic flaps of his wings.
He lifted the paralyzed fingers of her right hand with visible effort, and beamed at her. "I'm glad you made it. Gerheade was almost on her way to catch you at the Great Tree. I wasn't sure when you would return, but I guess everything worked out better than expected."
"I don't understand. Did I miss something?"
A shade of pink darkened his cheeks. The orange hues of the fire emphasized the effect. "Didn't I tell you? We want to celebrate the merger between the Fairy and Giant Clan. We got lucky with the weather tonight, otherwise the open fire might have given us some headaches. Oh, and Happy Anniversary!"
Diane blinked. "It's… been a year already?! I thought… two weeks, a month at most…"
"If Gerheade hadn't reminded me, I would have said the same, but here we are. A year later. I'm so proud of what we've built here. What you started when you told me about your idea with the merger – no one other than you could have even considered to bridge the cleft between our two clans. All because no one sees the good in others like you do." King inhaled, and his tiny hands increased their grip around Diane's fingers. "I love you so much. None of this would have been possible without you."
His touch and the warmth of his smile melted all troubles and anxiousness of the day away. Nothing else mattered, and if Diane had to put up with a thousand near-deaf Giants to earn this one moment with the one she loved, she would jump into the fray without hesitation.
She dragged him closer, intoxicated by the flowery scent of his skin, lost in his amber eyes, and cradled by all the compliments he showered her with, too generous to be true, but oh, so earnest. The cleft disappeared, and Diane covered King's face with a kiss.
Before he could pass out from a lack of oxygen, Diane pulled back. She smiled at his expression, a perfect replica of the dazzled Fairy boy before he had grown his wings.
"I love you too, King. And thank you for the party. It's perfect. When did you have time to organize all this anyway?"
"Oh, that? I really didn't do much in terms of setting up the location or preparing the meat. The others deserve all your thanks for the hard work. I just flew around a little to find some special ingredients for the stew."
Diane laughed. "Still a delivery boy at heart, I see. The Captain must have drilled this chore especially deep into your head."
"I guess he discovered this hidden talent of mine before even I could see it."
More and more Giants and Fairies followed the sound of the flutes, and soon the clearing disappeared in a crowd of feet and wings. Bowls of two different sizes wandered through the guests, a stew of turnips and roots and chanterelle. While nothing between Purgatory and the Sky Temple could match Ban's carrot soup, Diane gulped down three helpings in record time, mesmerized by the earthy taste. And she would have asked for an additional portion if King hadn't handed her a spit with her favorite type of roasted pork.
The smell of fat made her mouth watery. "Can I marry you a second time?"
"I would marry you every single day, every single year ahead of us, if I could," King said.
Diane grinned and for the next few minutes, she was too occupied with chewing to talk. The chatter of the people around her blurred into a pleasant carpet of sound. This was what she had always envisioned: Giants and Fairies united in spite of their stupid differences and their arguments, an exchange of words and food to the soft crackle of a campfire. And her and King in the middle of it all, finally side by side after all this time.
The stars stood high up in the sky, a million more than humans could ever spot in Liones or Camelot. From time to time, they winked as if to congratulate King and Diane on what they had accomplished. He leaned against her knee while she stroked the filigree ornamentations of his wings. A shudder rocked him whenever Diane found a new nerve to stimulate.
Neither of them felt the need to disturb the moment with words.
Then a single flute raised its voice above the conversations, a new tune, almost melancholic at first. A panpipe picked up where its companion had left off and gave the melody a merry spin. The flautist enticed a few more notes out of his instrument, and for a moment it and the panpipe seemed to fight a musical battle for the tone of their sonata. But then they fell into harmony, drums and chimes and a fiddle joined in, and soon the entire orchestra played a tarantella to invite the crowd to a dance.
King jerked up. After he had risen into the air, he bowed and extended a hand towards Diane. Sparks from the campfire reflected in his eyes. "May I have this dance?"
Diane took his hand with a smile. "You may."
One with the music and the rhythm of nature, King and Diane spun around the fire. Her feet bopped and arced, and he mimicked her moves midair. One moment she pulled him so close their noses almost touched, the next he guided her into another twirl and their fingers parted to finish a sequence with two claps. Other pairs skipped onto the dance floor; Matrona and Zalpa, Ende and Gerheade, and ever so rarely a Giant and Fairy together.
Although her steps lead her astray sometimes, Diane always found King's eyes in the crowd. Never more than a pirouette away, still in sync with her. The music chased them in circles, two claps of the hands, and another sequence of hops and taps and spins. The odors of cooking fat and sweat from a multitude of dancers got to Diane's head. Dizziness hijacked her senses until nothing but the next step filled her mind.
With two final claps, the dance ended. King hovered mere inches away from her, guided there by his own doing or a by a smile of fortune. His chest heaved up and down and the many turns had tousled his hair. But his grin was the incarnation of pure joy, brighter than the fire and the firmament.
Their kiss held more force this time, driven by the passion of the dance and heated by the blood rushing into both their heads. The touch of his skin and the flowery taste of his lips replaced the world around Diane, and they were one.
Yes, the merger caused them trouble every day, and Giants and Fairies alike strained their patience with a hellish desire to convince them to give up.
But King and Diane proved time and time again that beauty lay in the union between their clans. They fought for what they believed in, and they continued to push the boundaries of what Chaos' creations were meant to achieve.
For moments like this.
