Only half a dozen this week because I've been hammering away at Part 2 of Silver And Gold like a demon.
As usual, Non-English translations are at the bottom, right before the "Review" button. It's such a spiffy little button, really, you should try clicking on it sometime! ;)
Update June 13th: All flashes for this shot have been approved as canon/fanon. Yay!
CHOCOLATE
Lorelei. Loved. Chocolate. Period.
Not the sickly-sweet stuff that human children always bought, oh no. Real chocolate. Chocolate so rich and dark that it nearly dilated your eyes and kicked your pulse up a notch.
But Mr. Wink had really outdone all others who had ever given her chocolate before with this gift that he held in his hand for her. It was a waterlily, neatly set in a shallow, golden box, with a delicate glass lid over it, made entirely of chocolate! Each individual petal was infused with the extract or essence of a unique taste. One was mint, another pomegranate, and yet another was essence of rose. There was cherry, vanilla, lavender, cinnamon, and others more, on into the center, which was infused with honey.
No reason. No occasion. Wink had had it made for her only to see her smile.
And smile she did.
Wink very much enjoyed watching Lorelei savor every chocolate petal as it melted in her mouth.
FLOWERS
They were lilies, dark red and elegant, like trumpet-shaped blooms of glistening blood. Very lovely. And very Geri.
"Natürlich. They would be this color, wouldn't they?" Lorelei said with wry rhetoric to Wink, who was sitting at the bar when the beautiful blood-red bouquet arrived for Lorelei, who was presently on shift but enjoying Wink's company all the same as she worked. She didn't even attempt to smell their fragrance, both troll and rhinemaiden already knew that she had no care for the scent of flowers in the family of proper lilies, the sweetness of it was much too sharp and too strong for her taste... and yet here they were... a whole bouquet of them.
Lorelei sighed, and the troll chuckled, "The boy's doing a fine job of chasing his tail, isn't he?"
The Germanic siren's obsidian eyebrows quirked. "Huh, and here I thought that he was chasing mine," she said, and both warrior and tavern-keeper laughed together at that.
FOREVER
(Long ago & far away, in Bethmoora, in the time of the royal elf twins' adolescence)
The young prince, Nuada, stood leaning against a column, firegold eyes fixed on something. The silver cave troll warrior, Wink, came up behind the prince and saw immediately what it was... and it didn't surprise him at all.
Princess Nuala.
No other thing in the world held the prince's esteem or attention so surely as she did.
The young elf-prince sighed, almost heavily. "Everything I feel, she feels," he said, knowing that the troll was there. "Everything I know, she knows." He turned his head to glance back over his shoulder to look the troll in the eye, briefly, before he returned his eyes to the princess. His voice became softer, almost as though he were talking to himself, "And yet, there are days now when it's as though she understands nothing of it. How did my twin ever become capable of being a stranger to me?"
The troll warrior laid a massive, fatherly hand on the young elf's shoulder. "I think she understands that there is no man yet born who loves her as dearly as you do, but children grow up, young Highness, they change into what they must be. Man and woman are opposites, and this is what you and your sister will only find more and more to be true."
"Opposites," echoed Nuada, softly, almost absently. After a minute, the prince turned to fully face the silver warrior. "Have you ever loved, Wink?"
Somehow staying on top of the sudden change in subject, Wink answered, "You know that I have, my prince."
The prince folded his arms tightly across his chest, almost as though he were cold. "I take it that you know, then, what loneliness is," he said softly. It was not a question.
"Aye, my prince," Wink rumbled. "That I do. Though not for the same reasons as you do, I can see." The towering warrior spared a glance in the direction of the princess. "Take heart, lad, 'tis not Time that heals all things, but what Time brings you. The world changes much in as short a span as even a single year, and no pain is forever, not even that of loneliness." Inwardly he thought, May the gods see fit to have me reminded of that truth again, someday.
WICKED
The back-bristles of a cave troll were, naturally, adapted to living in caves, and the need to sense what's behind you down in the dim of those spaces. While the bristles themselves weren't necessarily sensitive, the nerve receptors directly at the base of them were - they responded to light touch - but this wasn't a fact that many had actually proved, beyond taking a troll's word for it, because not many (if any) ever got close enough to a cave troll to touch them thusly and walk away still in one piece.
The ever-adventurous Lorelei, on the other hand, for all that she was a creature of water, seemed to rather enjoy playing with fire... as it were.
Wink curled and uncurled the fingers of both of his hands repeatedly, as the cruel Rhine daughter trailed her fingertips lightly around the base of his bristles, going in complicated patterns from one to the next over his back, smiling when she saw how they stood on end at her whisper-soft touch.
Normally, Wink would have no objection at all to her touching his back. Except that she was touching him like that. In public. Where they were anything but alone. Gods.
"Must you tease me so, Lorelei?" Wink growled low in his chest, quietly.
"Hm," snorted Lorelei, her foxy smile making itself known once more as wicked mirth glittered in her golden eyes. Softly she rejoined, "This from the same troll that strokes my eartips when I'm serving patrons, eh?"
INNOCENCE
She was always happy to see them, whenever they came. They were always happy to see her, too. She was the best reason of any for them to keep coming back to this place. A little ray of golden light in an ever-darkening world... A world that she would come to know on her own soon enough.
"Prinz Nuada!" Little Lorelei would squeal whenever she first caught sight of him, happily running up to the tall elf-prince with star-blond hair that would bend down with his arms spread wide. He would scoop her up, whirl her around, and give her a close hug like the precious little thing that she was.
She would give him a soft little kiss on his pale cheek with her rose-colored lips, and he would say something like, "Ah, my sweet little Lorelei, another kiss like that and you shall break my heart!" Whereupon all three of their company would laugh heartily at his jest, as light as spring, as deep as earth, and as full and bright as stars.
After that, Nuada would set the little Rhine girl down so that she could make a proper fuss over Herr Wink, and later on, she would sit on the cave troll's lap as she listened with wonder to all that the two men told her of where they had been and what they had done since last they saw her, firelight flickering over her wide golden eyes like the burning of time as it ate away the hours.
GIFT
It was the nicest thing that Geri had ever done for Lorelei yet. So far, he'd done all the "same old same old" of buying her flowers, dancing, and dinner.
This time was different.
Music was something that they shared in common. They found that they shared the same tastes, spanning old and new eras. Music was very integral to their sense of who they were, both of them. So when Geri got up in the rave room of Fafner's Cave, on the low stage where sometimes a hired band would play, with his electric (but not his only) guitar, Lorelei thought she had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
She knew that she was wrong the minute that she heard his skilled fingers bring the Largo from the Winter section of Vivaldi's Four Seasons - her favorite snatch of music since she was knee-high to her mother - into brilliant, glorious, and electrified life.
Lorelei's smile would have lit up the New York City night five times over, as Geri beckoned her up beside him, his copper eyes glittering and her hips swaying as she danced to the enlivened beat to which the blond fenris had bent the most beautiful melody that she had ever heard instrument play.
From the door to the tavern proper, Wink watched the scene, his one eye never once leaving the pair on stage, even as a bieresal came up to him with a mug of troll beer - which he downed in four seconds and then grunted for another.
Well played tonight, boyo, the troll thought.
A/N - VERY IMORTANT NOTE ON GIFT: It should be kept in mind that Geri is NOT playing the Largo out of any real thought for Lorelei, he's doing it to one-up any other guy that might also have his eye on her, Wink included - he's a bastard like that. And Wink is NOT actually jealous, he's just feeling some pique that the fenris actually pulled something off that truly impressed Lorelei for the first time ever so now she's all glowing and smiling and dancing because of him for the moment.
- For the BEST rendition of the Largo from the Winter section of Vivaldi's Four Seasons that I have EVER heard on an electric guitar (though my fave instrument to hear it on is a piano) go to YouTube, type the keywords winter largo vivaldi rock into the search box, and click on the video by opus13th. Two minutes and fourteen seconds of AWESOME!
- It's been mentioned previously in the fic-verse of "Once Upon a Time" and related canon (mostly by me) :/ that Wink has been in love before, but how many times remains undetermined. In Forever, he's been in love at the very least twice or thrice before at this point, and is just letting time and circumstance take him wherever it may in that regard. Everyone knows that you shouldn't try to hurry or force Love, after all. :)
- It is actually quite true that there are certain nerves in the body (the skin) that will only fire in response to light touch. Deeper, more solid touch fires a different related nerve set. Anatomy and physiology are such FUN things to know when writing such flash-shorts as Wicked, heh heh heh. It was LA Knight's idea to have the back bristles of cave trolls be endowed with any special kind of sensitivity, by the way, so all hail the Authoress-In-Chief, whoo!
TRANSLATIONS
Prinz Nuada! = Prince Nuada!
Herr Wink = Mr. Wink
Natürlich = Naturally/of course