Triel
No one hears my fallen trunk
Though I shake the forest ground
No one hears my massive thunk
For no one is around
Triel’s twitching ears of feline shape atop her humanoid head dissected the buzz of the banquet’s diverse conversation. With her long violet lashes resting low over her eyes, she heard the dwarven ambassadors chatter in their gruff mountain dialect, a gritty but strangely attractive sound. Closer to her, some Forest Faeries gossiped in familiar ringing voices of the Lunar Prince and whether or not he might ask them to dance after dinner. Triel grimaced at her peers and trained her ears in a different direction. Her mother discussed decoration with a disinterested wood nymph--Triel chuckled at that.
“Stop that, Trie.” A low voice entered her head, and the growl carried a smile in its tone.
Triel opened her yellow eyes and looked straight across the table laden with a monstrous feast for the Forest Faeries. Grass and game alike were strewn across this part of the table for the preferences of any shape-shifting dweller. A large, jolly beast with a grizzly brown beard raised a burly eyebrow at Triel.
“Yes, Father.” She grinned playfully, and he nodded in approval of her agreement.
The bright, colorful show of gowns and suits, feathers and fur was all but dazzling to Triel, as she found herself curiously peering over at the dwarves’ end of the table, upon which a great fire blazed in a metal basin. Meat roasted slowly over the fire, and the dwarves never gave it time to cool as they plucked off chunks of it with their bare, pudgy fingers and managed to fit it between their long beards. Even the female dwarves grew beards and were just as ugly as the men. Triel wasn’t sure how there were so many dwarves with such fat, gruesome peers as mates, but she quickly recalled the thought. It is admirable that such a species exists--they must not judge their mates on perfection and beauty but instead on strength and skill. Indeed, Triel had heard of the dwarven courtship ceremonies in which, if you were not strong enough to compete in the rock-hauling contests, you found a mate by crafting the most sturdy ax and helmet.
“Do you think the Lunar Prince will ask Triel to dance?” a Faerie with bronze scales along her arms teased Triel from the chair beside her. Triel tried to ignore the taunt.
“I think she might scare him away with her sharp yellow eyes!” another with soft blue feathers along her exposed back joked playfully. Triel almost smiled, but she suppressed it.
“Nay, he might be drawn to those fine-cut gems if it weren’t for her sharper words!”
Triel couldn’t help but flush at that, though she calmed her swishing tail and spoke. “One must have some defense in the battle of love.”
The third Faerie away from Triel had soft stormcloud eyes and a luscious, velvety silver brush tipped with white fitted through a hole above her skirt. The tail was draped gracefully over the back of her chair as she turned and looked directly to Triel. “But my friend,” her voice was low and calm. “Love is merely a game of cards and dice.”
A shadow came over Triel with the vixen’s words. Still, she tried to shine against it. “I would be silly indeed to bet anyone’s heart on the roll of a die, sillier to hope the cards would play in my favor.”
Suddenly a pillar of fire blazed where the dwarves sat, but now they were standing on the table, crying out some foreign word that seemed to be of great excitement to them.
The wood nymphs, on the other hand, rolled their eyes. Triel made a curious look to Glo, one of the younger wood nymphs with emerald hair and oak-brown skin. The wood nymphs, as divine mediators of all the forest life, were fluent in all languages; perhaps Glo could tell Triel what the dwarves were saying.
The heavy little beasts’ racket was so loud that as Glo tried to say something to Triel from across the table, even the Faery ears of a cat could not catch the word. Glo tried a second time, but another voice interrupted: “Dance! They want to dance!”
The two Faery girls beside Triel bounced where they sat as the word dance began to be passed around by other creatures. The third smiled coolly and her brush eagerly twitched.
Glo motioned rapidly to Triel as the Faeries began to rise from their chairs, and the two of them weaved through the crowd as fast as they could to meet in some solitary corner. It was dark away from the center of the room, which was now being cleared for dancing, but neither needed a candle. Smell and sound gave them all the sense they needed to live. Eyes and light were just luxuries.
A large grove of wood nymphs moved past Triel and Glo towards the great copper doors, which were now slowly opening. Glo glanced at Triel. “Do you think we’ll be missed?”
Triel hesitated. The smallest part of her wanted to stay. Do you think the Lunar Prince will ask Triel to dance? Love is merely a game of cards and dice--
“Come quick,” Triel grabbed Glo’s hand and dove into the multitude of exiting wood nymphs. Come quick before I go silly.
The two young women didn’t stop running until they reached the stairwell to the Faery quarters, which was made of a special tree the wood nymphs had trained to grow into a stairwell form. Such art was important to the wood nymph kind to ensure that no trees were harmed in the construction of wooden shelters. “Shall we go to my chambers?” Triel offered without thinking.
Glo flushed, and then Triel flushed too as she remembered that young wood nymphs (who were all female) traditionally felt attraction solely for females. To be summoned to a female Faery’s private chambers must have been seen as a vastly unequal sexual gesture to the nymphs!
Triel rushed to apologize, or turn the question in a different direction, anything to redeem the situation. “I... I...”
“We’ll go out to the Wilder Orchard.” Glo turned and continued down the leafy open hallway. Triel heaved a sigh of relief and followed until they reached the wide gap in the wall. This gap led into the Skai Gardens, lit by Luna, the pure goddess of the night. The ground did not change, as even the hallway was tiled with soil, but the walls disappeared, replaced by rows and rows of glowing flowers that grew in whatever size and color the wood nymphs could design--even the texture and number of petals were customized. Morning glories acted as lamps on the side of the path, their glow igniting the way. Lavender stalks over ten feet tall were colored blue and yellow and pulled over the path in great arches. Small patches of hundreds of microscopic daffodils were guarded by little thorn fences. Tulips and roses of any color or pattern could be found in the magnificent beds that expanded over hills.
Glo didn’t give them a passing thought, not once. Triel admired the striped red-blue tulips, but she, too, wanted for trees. In her tailored suit, Triel struggled to keep up with the sprinting, long-legged nymph in the direction of the cultivated forest.
“Oh, what a wonderful thing clothes must be,” Glo mocked. “What fine fabrics the high-up Faeries get to wear, how very fine, very fine the silks and society.”
“Shut up you naked child.” Triel and Glo giggled at their differences among the magnificent trees, feeling younger than they were. All around was the forest, trunks were as thin as thread to as thick as towers, and the silver-leaf aspens shimmered in the moonlight. The fruit was not yet in bloom for it was just barely spring, but Triel could not imagine more beauty than what was before her now.
“Look at this one.” Glo knelt at the base of a small dogwood tree. It contained no magic and had no strangeness to it at all. It was a distinct tree only in this orchard.
Triel laughed. “This is the same tree you always show me.”
Glo ignored her. “I hope that someday...”
Triel joined Glo in unison: “...when I’m old and wise,”
Then they laughed together.
“I want to be like this tree,” Glo finished.
Triel found her lips parted to ask why, but she already knew what Glo would say, and it was nothing to actually answer the question. Because it's special, Glo would say. Because it is beautiful without beauty.
“Well, Mother hopes that someday when I am old and wise, I’ll marry the Lunar Prince and birth seven girls and seven boys and name them all after Faery heroes.”
Glo’s green lashes batted at Triel in genuine regret. But what do you want to be? Triel acknowledged the unspoken question but she did not answer. At first, it was painful to think of the question, to know that her destiny was decided, whether or not her mother told her of the marriage she secretly arranged. Now Triel felt nothing, not even hope or grief, for she was certain that no plausible destiny would satisfy her.
