Chapter 1: 1. A Warm Welcome

Rorri

 

“State your business!”

From inside the window cut out of the Wall’s stone, a golden-skinned elf dressed in metal looked down on the slight-statured foreigner. The sun that had so relentlessly beaten his back now glinted off of her armor and into his eyes, searing them with formless afterimages. He fluttered his eyelids, but the white splotches remained.

“I, uh…” He paused, his light blinks turning forceful and deliberate. The guard regarded him closely, brow knit with tension, hand on her sword’s hilt. “S-sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I’m here for asylum.”

“Of course,” the guard mumbled, her eyes lingering on him, breaking fleetingly as she ducked beneath the counter. She arose with a thick stack of papers, slid them across the counter, and set a strange writing utensil on top.

“Fill this out, and I’ll let you in for processing.”

He shifted his tattered, scorch-marked cloth bag around to his front and leaned in close, squinting through what traces of blindness remained. Once the print came into focus, his face flushed hot with embarrassment. For all his weeks of travel through the barren wilds, for the ages he had spent dreaming of this moment, he had never anticipated an obstacle like this – and suddenly, the dream evaporated, in the same way a dream flees upon waking, leaving the awkward, mundane nature of reality in its stead.

“I’m sorry, but I – I can’t read this,” he said with an anxious titter. “We use a different alphabet.”

The guard sighed heavily and muttered under her breath. Between her hushed volume and the harsh, staccato accent that separated the dialects of their shared language, he couldn’t be sure what she said – and perhaps he was just being sensitive – but it definitely sounded like ‘goddamned Woodies’.

“Right, then,” she grumbled, reorienting the documents to face her. “Just a few questions, ser. You must answer honestly, under penalty of perjury, a crime for which the punishment can include or exceed death, at the discretion of His Highness, King Benewick of Iridan.”

The foreigner didn’t know what ‘perjury’ was, but the thought of what punishment might possibly exceed death unsettled him greatly. He bowed his head and clasped his hands, fiddling his thumbs together, as he prepared to answer her questions with no pretense of humor whatsoever.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a voice as small as he could muster.

“State your full name, family first, given last.”

“Tipón, Rorri.”

As she scratched the tip of the pen against the paper, it deposited ink, despite not being dipped in an inkwell. It must have had some sort of self-replenishing property – probably magic, he figured, his fingers itching to try it for himself.

“Are you normally that color?”

A beat of silence followed her question before its meaning fully settled in his ears.

“…What?” He leaned forward, hoping he'd simply misheard her. The guard's eyes flashed with suspicion.

“I heard you forest elves change colors every season,” she said, flicking her sharp gaze up and down his skinny body. “I have to document what you look like, for security purposes. So, are you normally that color?” She gestured broadly in reference to his freckled, ashen-brown skin and copper-red hair, the palette of a crumbling autumn walnut tree – though it was late spring, and if such a silly notion were true, he imagined his hair should have been a bright, leafy green. Rorri blinked, then shut his eyes and shook his head.

“I’m always this color,” he said, straining to keep his voice level. She narrowed her eyes, then scrawled a lengthy series of words before continuing on.

“Date of birth?”

“Erm… I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

“How do you not…?” The guard sighed and shook her head, her golden eyelids flickering. “Does your hair work like a normal elf?”

“…I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Does it grow very slowly?”

“I guess?”

“Have you ever cut it?”

“No—”

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“Untie it and turn around, then, let me see how long it is.”

He obeyed, grimacing through the seconds he spent facing away while she evaluated his armpit-length hair. A ‘normal elf’? It was almost enough to make him want to turn back…

“About two-hundred and fifty,” she mumbled, scribbling her estimate. Rorri chewed his cheek, growing more nervous with every question, as if he might inexplicably say something wrong and be arrested at any moment.

“Kingdom of origin?” she continued.

“Belethlian.”

“Occupation?”

“...As in—”

“As in, what are you good for?”

Rorri winced. “I do art,” he said, as if confessing a shameful secret. The guard hesitated to write down his answer, as if it wasn’t a proper answer at all, but couldn’t seem to find a reason to challenge it.

“Do you intend to return home after the War?” She glanced up over the dark circles that tarnished the skin beneath her eyes, searching his face.

He dropped his head, his eyelashes casting long, feathery shadows over his cheeks. The stench of smoke still clung to his clothes, and smog still hovered in the eastern sky. The thought of home numbed him, like that spot in his mind had been incinerated with the rest of the forest. For a while, he stood in a daze. It seemed he’d forgotten that she had asked him a question, but the guard shifted, and the sunlight ricocheted into his eyes again, jolting him back to the moment.

“If I have one to return to,” Rorri said, squint-blinking the light streaks away. She wrote in a single word, then inhaled sharply before reciting the next prompt.

“In the event of a siege or other circumstance which may necessitate service in the King’s army on an involuntary basis, are you physically capable of participating in military conflict?”

Rorri snorted. “I mean, technically?” he said, glancing down at his languid form. He certainly wouldn’t fill out a suit of armor – he doubted if he’d be able to hold a sword with thick metal weighing down his weak little arms – but he had no impairment to speak of. The golden elf paused, lips pursed, as she looked him over. Her face relaxed, as if agreeing with his silent self-assessment.

“Can you do magic?” she asked without checking the document.

“No.”

“So it’s just a myth, then? That forest elves can read minds?” she asked. He hummed, scratched his chin, and gave an awkward chuckle.

“What an odd myth,” he said, averting his gaze to the stack of papers. The guard smirked.

“Well, you might want to take some magic lessons, then. Make yourself useful if you do get drafted,” she suggested as she scribbled in his ‘technically?’.

“I might just do that.”

“One of the noble houses is offering them for free. ‘Community outreach’ is what they’re calling it. I’m sure the wait list is ridiculous.” She stood up to her full height and cleared her throat, resuming her stiff, authoritative stance. “Listen closely, ser. Do you swear, under the watch of which-soever god you serve, that you are not an enemy of this city, of this Kingdom, or of this people?”

“I swear it,” Rorri said, nodding, though it was a gentle, absent bob, as if he hadn’t been listening closely at all. The guard scratched in his answer, then stacked the papers together vertically with three light taps.

“Fantastic.” She turned the stack around and pointed at a line towards the bottom. “Sign here,” she said, offering him the pen. Rorri took it, surprised and pleased by its weight, and gave it a satisfying wobble. After a beat of hesitation, he drew a meaningless squiggle on the line. The guard took the pen back and drew a similar squiggle underneath his.

“Right, then. I’ve just got to check your bag, and then Philbus over here will escort you to processing.”

Rorri plopped his bag on the counter, grateful for the relief from the strap which had cut deep into his shoulder. The guard examined its contents one at a time – drawings, brushes, jars of paints and oils and dried flora, an abundance of charcoals, a second set of filthy clothes, and a crude, sticky knife – and pushed it back to him, but not without first removing the knife and placing it under the counter. Rorri narrowed his eyes.

“No outside weapons,” she said. Rorri sighed, but took the bag back without protest. The golden elf offered a false smile, then motioned to someone outside of his view.

“Welcome to Iridan, ser,” she said as the gate rumbled across the dry ground. A human guard with a stiff black beard came into view, clutching the papers, and beckoned the elf to follow. Rorri crossed the wall’s shadow, breathing in the dusty air of his new home for the first time.

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