[[Thanks to Penny4him for beta-reading Chapter Two!]]

Chapter 2: Loss

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"Are you ready to come in yet?" Lady Aeirlyth's musical laughter made her sarcasm all the more biting. The joking question was spoken pointedly to a certain dark elf lying on the grass of her garden behind the house. "Or are you still holding up a fight?"

Zarthaen groaned but made no move to argue. The sun was in full swing up in the sky, beating down on the back of the drow as he stubbornly fought to accustom himself to its glare. He'd have to at some point, he figured. "Just… put me… out of… my… mis—ery …" he groaned into the prickly, itchy blades of grass.

She chuckled gently before a cough shook her.

Zarthaen thought back to the whole reason he'd been inspired to face the daystar in the first place. That next morning after colliding with the infuriating girl elf, he'd strode out into the sun. How easy it'd been to forget the terrible light while locked away in the Lady's house. The sun, he realized, was a greater foe to be more carefully dealt with before he faced that silly girl and exacted revenge. He'd keep at it if it took another hundred years, he supposed. He had time. He had nothing else to do while he was here.

"Zarthaen, you're common has become impressive. I'm proud." She spoke absentmindedly as she tended to her small garden.

She sounded tired, he noticed distantly. More importantly, he glowed with pride. "Not so… complicated of a language… as you'd all… like to think," he grunted, arrogance weakly touching the edges of his tone.

This elicited another knowing chuckle from the Lady. "Such pride you dark elves have," she whispered. "It will undoubtedly always get you into trouble some day."

Zar only grunted in reply. He didn't care what she thought anyways.

When she realized he wasn't going to continue, she changed the subject. "So what was your life like in the Underdark Zar? I don't think I ever got the story out of you during our games."

Their little question-and-answer game had long since ceased in the past month. She'd grown too weary to catch him or win even a few answers out of him. Often, she spent more time sleeping than in reverie, and more time just sleeping in general. Zar knew that something was wrong with the woman, but didn't have the humility nor the passion to care. But knowing that she may be on the edges of her days, he humored an easy answer for her. Was it mercy? He almost halted in his answer to her at the thought. "I was a commoner. Nothing at all interesting. I learned to fight by the house weapons master, and was even sponsored to start at the academy. But other than that, things weren't particularly spectacular," he muttered into the grass after he'd rolled somewhere closer to a tree where there was shade.

She listened quietly, and remained quiet for a time afterwards. "You don't seem like you're in a hurry to get back," she muttered.

"Yeah… about that." He laughed quietly, a whisper on the breeze."I haven't picked up a blade in days, I don't know how to get back, and even if I did I wouldn't survive the wilds anyways." He went on, his voice growing with the irritation he'd packed away from nearly half a year. "And I can't even remember how I got here in the—" he halted, sitting upright with a newfound memory. The Lady looked at him curiously, waiting for him to continue.

"That's it! By the Goddess, that's it! Those … those mages! Agh! All this time!" Zarthaen stood up, his fists clenched as though ready for physical combat. "They did this! Oh, I should have known!"

Lady Aeirlyth looked up at him in a mixture of shock and amusement. "Zarthaen has some unfinished business?" she asked as she watched him seethe.

"Is there a training hall anywhere around here?" he whispered darkly, turning to her.

She stared up at him, watching his eyes burn with a telltale whicker of resentment, bitter rivalry, and a terrible grudge. "Certainly, although I don't know how willing the town would be to put swords in your hands."

Zar frowned, realizing his dilemma. "What would I gain from cutting off the hand that feeds me?" Zar argued.

"Drow have attacked before with little to gain from it but pleasure."

"And I would stand against an entire town?"

"Zar, I understand you have little motivation to quarrel with us, but the people would not understand," Aeirlyth tried desperately to explain, her cough acting up as she did so.

Zarthaen glared at her mercilessly. "Then I can practice here," he said, his hands resting on his hips. His eyes were elsewhere, probably envisioning a blade feeding on the heart of those mages.

"Then make yourself something to practice with," she said, pointing to the tree he took shelter under. He followed her direction, staring at it incredulously, before looking back at her with a lack of understanding. Lady Aeirlyth shook her head and rolled her eyes before setting off to the house for an ax.

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He'd been instructed to take from the tree only what he needed, and he'd done just that. It gave him something to do besides lay suffering on the lawn under the brutal destruction of the sun. It helped pass the time and keep him focused as he worked to shape the two slats of wood he had into balanced practice weapons. He'd never worked wood before, let alone heard of such a material, but had picked up the idea of it easily enough to make himself something to practice with. When finished, the weapons looked rather crude. They didn't balance well, but they were better than two sticks. Light and small, they resembled slightly curved short swords that he practiced with in the typical drow fashion of two-hand fighting. Often he shifted the left into a defensive position, leading with the right, but both blurred together equally, complimenting the other. The Lady came out to watch for some time as he practiced parries, but neither spoke. The silence was not awkward between them, merely respectful. Hours after she'd retreated wearily into the house and the sun was beginning to fall, the sweaty and dirty dark elf trudged inside to the utter horror of the house servants. When he glimpsed one of the other younger servant girls gawking, he gave her a wink, and flustered, she shooed him to his room.

"The Lady ought to send that thing back to whatever hole it crawled out of," he could hear the older servants blustering as he was ushered from the kitchen. He turned towards the servant girl just as she threw an armful of laundry at him.

"Thanks, darling," he laughed, enjoying every bit of the young human's bitterness towards him. "I find your temper overwhelmingly attractive!" he called out as he strode into his room to clean up and change.

He didn't join any of them for dinner. The Lady always had supper with her servants, and Zar just couldn't handle it. Sure, he'd been born a male commoner, not that much better than a slave other than the fact that he was drow, but the two classes mixing for supper kept him in his room until the commotion was over. When the house seemingly slumbered, he snuck his way in for a few rolls and perhaps some vegetables. As he reached the kitchen, however, he found the Lady asleep at the table. Thankfully, not in her food, but her head cradled in her arms. Zar stared at her for several moments as he broke apart a roll, deciding that the shallow movements of her back showed she was still breathing and thus alive. But still, who fell asleep at their dining table? He took several steps towards her, poking her shoulder. Nothing happened, and he proceeded to poke her a little harder. She groaned a little incoherently and he decided that was enough of a sign she still had some life in her. It was odd to see her acting so...human-ish, though. Zar was fairly sure that while he hadn't met many surface elves in his time, they were no different than any other elf.

Wait.

Zar blinked at this thought, shaking his head. Of course he shouldn't expect her to behave with the grace and dignity of a dark elf, she was a faerie. Of course. Right? Zar took another bite of his roll and stared at the mirror that covered one entire wall of the dining room. His short hair had grown quite a bit, enough to place into a small ponytail. It framed his face in soft curls, almost making his elven features seem somewhat soft. In sharp contrast, his white hair and eyebrows stood out from the dark skin he'd not seen on another soul in many months. He observed himself, his mind discerning between what he'd been taught and what him mind was trying to tell him.

Lady Aeirlyth hadn't always been this way. She was sick and dying - Zar knew this. Everyone in the house knew this. She was old. She was quite old when Zar had met her, and while it wasn't normal for elves to fall ill, she'd fallen quite ill in her age. Zar looked down at her thoughtfully and decided that she had been just as graceful as a dark elf but knew that if he ever admitted it aloud, he'd be the laughing stock of every one of his peers back home. Then why…

Zar couldn't begin to conjure any answers all on his own for the questions beginning to bubble to the surface of his mind. Besides, he was accepting enough weakness as it was. If any of his brothers and sisters back home knew about the fact that he had let her live this long, they'd string him up by his neck as a new toy for Lolth. Now thoroughly quite grumpy, Zar left the room and took a walk.

The world was at its best in the early morning a handful of hours before sunrise. There was quite a fog hanging around and made it an interesting feat for Zar whose eyes had shifted to the infrared. A coolness hung about in the air that gave an abstract grey view to everything, but he liked it. It was different. As he ventured, he watched everything that had become familiar to him. All of the night creatures that favored the shadows just as he did. He didn't know their names, had never thought to ask the Lady about them, but enjoyed observing them nonetheless. It weren't as though there were more interesting things to do about this place.

"You're always out at night, aren't you?"

Zar swung around, quite startled. Who the heck could sneak up on him like that? As he turned, he was met with a huge glare of burning light. Covering his eyes, he waited for them to shift back to the light spectrum, and his intruder gave him the time. Apparently this person thought it funny to light lanterns randomly, he thought quite bitterly. As he looked up, eyes bleary as though he'd been sobbing, he saw the face of his adversary, only several months older. Her auburn hair had grown a bit, framing her angular face in a wild but exquisite way.

Zar made a disgusted face. "It's quite enjoyable when faeries don't destroy it with light," he grumped, taking a threatening step towards her.

She made no move to back down, her eyes meeting his own with a peculiar flatness to them. "I'm not afraid of you," she whispered, holding her lantern high. A staring contest ensued, hate emanating off of one and the other holding her ground. "Why do you hate me so much?" She asked, her voice soft and wistful.

Zar's face cleared a moment, taken off guard, but he quickly replaced the fallen hate with a mask of frustration. "You almost broke my nose, what do you mean 'why do I hate you'?!" Zar exclaimed, lunging for her throat with his hands. Startled, she threw the lantern and went to withdraw a weapon. His hands found their hold before she could raise her dagger, and it too fell to the forest floor as they both went tumbling to the ground in a heap of grappling hands and flailing limbs. She choked, raising a fist to slam his jaw. It didn't have much swing behind it, but was effective in deflecting him a moment to crawl towards the dagger. He didn't allow her to get close enough, however, as he grabbed her back by the hair and pushed her against the tree. He had her pinned and they both knew it. A triumphant grin settled on his lips. She stared at his face, so close to her own, and placed a quick kiss on his lips. He dropped her in complete and utter horror, wiping his mouth and spitting. It gave her the distraction she needed as she dived for her dagger and lifted it. She came at him with it, rage splitting her face into an ugly mask of hate. The gleaming point of the dagger came towards his chest, but stopped short.

Not because he stopped it, not because the will of the gods kept his death from happening then, but because their eyes locked and for a split moment, just barely long enough, they both forgot what they were fighting for. She held it still, the tip embedded in his clothes but not yet flesh, her blue eyes locked with his red-green flecked ones. He didn't egg her on, and she didn't dare him. Zarthaen couldn't begin to translate what was crossing her mind that was keeping her from killing him, but was quite glad she'd hesitated. Feeling more and more like a fool for standing there, he was pretty sure he was acting suicidal when he reached out and took the dagger from her quivering hand.

"You've never killed someone before… have you?" he asked, quite softly, and it nearly startled him with how soft his voice was even to his own ears.

Her eyes froze in their state, staring at him, daring him to admit that he had indeed, in his young years, taken a life before. When he didn't relate with her, a crease formed between her brow. "And you have?!" she yelled unbelievingly, her raised voice startling him. When he offered no further answer, didn't deny the question, she stood stunned. "You've got to be barely older than I!"

She was aghast and Zar couldn't fathom why. The silence that followed was immediately uncomfortable, and Zar shrugged stiffly. "Why do you care?" he whispered grudgingly as he slowly turned and headed for the only sanctuary the surface had to offer him.

When he slipped back into the dining room, the morning star was just beginning its rise, and it cast a warning glow over the threshold. Zar walked past the Lady in her rather uncomfortable place at the table, but stopped short of the hallway and looked back at her. She was eerily still, and he moved to shake her awake. She didn't stir, so Zar shook her harder. He wasn't quite sure if it was his voice that was yelling, and didn't want to admit it if it was, but all he remembered after realization hit him was a servant pushing him towards the hallway. He didn't want to leave the room without seeing for himself that the Lady was surely waking up any moment. His hand rose in threat towards the servant, dagger in tow, and then the last thing he felt was a hard object at the back of his head that sent him into a reeling darkness as the floor rose up to meet him.