On The Run

As the sun sets, the brisk autumn air turns from bearable to miserable. I was always a bitch about the cold, meaning that I should probably start looking for some place to settle down for six months. But for now, I just need somewhere to sleep for the night. I see some lights in the distance and start walking towards them, hoping it’s not just someone’s campsite again. That was embarrassing. If you’re going to have sex, at least do it in the tent and not the grass next to the tent. That’s how you get dirt and bugs in undesirable locations. Even though it was two years ago, that image is still burned into my mind. I eventually start to see a couple of buildings, which is a good sign. As I enter the town, I look around for anything that isn’t just a house, and I finally see a building with a sign above the door that says “Dead Man’s Pub.” It looks a bit small, which probably means there’s no inn, but at least it’s somewhere to sit down and get something to drink.

I walk inside and am immediately met with the confused and somewhat hostile looks of about thirty humans, some of them even ballsy enough to start “sneakily” conjuring spells in their hands as if I don’t know how to deal with that shit. I guess they don’t get many elven patrons here. I also find it amusing that most of the people in here are much shorter than me. I’ve been told that I have a very intimidating presence, so I guess their hostility comes from a place of fear. I sit down at an empty table, the looks of the surrounding patrons burning into my skin. My hands work themselves into fists at the fact that these dumbasses can’t just mind their own damn business. I try to relax myself as I reach into my pouch and pull out a joint. I snap my index finger and thumb together and light the joint with the candle-like flame I created on my thumb. As the child of two elven sorcerers, I’ve always had magic, but I hardly practice. To me, magic is too beautiful and practical to use for violence. I have a big-ass hammer for that. I only get to take a single drag before the bartender comes over to my table. His hair is greasy and matted against his forehead. The yellow-brown sweat stains stand out on the armpits of his white shirt. He stands at eye level with me even though I’m currently sitting. He looks annoyed.

“I don’t know where you’re blowing in from, pointy, but we don’t smoke that shit in here. Take it outside, where you tree fondlers belong.” He lets half a smirk slip out, looking so proud of himself.

“Look, if you’re going to call me slurs, at the very least make them creative,” I say as I take a long drag and blow it into his face. He goes red and starts coughing. I lean in closer. “Listen buddy. I’ve been traveling for quite some time now, and I would love nothing more than to give you my business for something to drink and maybe even something to eat. However, you instead came over and started to test my patience. If this conversation continues, I will start to lose my patience. And once I lose my patience, it will get really ugly, really fast. So the next words out of your goddamn mouth better be asking me what I want to drink or you’ll find out what happens to people when they piss me off.” He stares at me for a while, his face scrunched up like he’s trying to figure something out. Then he laughs. Not just a little chuckle. He laughs like he just heard the funniest joke of his life. Soon, the rest of the bar, who had been not-so-subtly listening in the entire time, joined him. The whole room fills with a chorus of laughter over this joke they thought they heard. No one even notices me toss my still lit joint on the wooden floor near a small puddle of freshly dripped lamp oil, so fresh that the puddle is still crawling slowly across the floor. I stand up from the table, and the tavern starts to silence as the patrons remember that I’m taller than most of them. The bartender, however, doesn’t seem to be fazed. “What’s so funny?” I ask, clenching my fists.

“You really think someone like you can threaten me? What a joke!” he says, still half chuckling to himself. I quickly grab him and swing him around, pinning him against the wall with my arm against his trachea. His face starts straining as he desperately tries to get a single breath in.

“What’s wrong?” I ask through gritted teeth. “Why’d you stop laughing, prick?” I intentionally spit in his face a little as I say this. He squirms and scratches at my hand like it’s supposed to do something. “I thought I was funny, so why the hell’d you stop laughing?” With my free hand, I reach behind me and grab the maul on my back. I swing it over my shoulder and let it smash into the ground, breaking the floorboards right beside his foot. “LAUGH!” I shouted, pressing my arm harder against his throat. The terror in his eyes amuses me, and I feel my mouth curl upward into a smirk. His movements slow, his body relaxes, and his eyes start rolling to the back of his head. The only thing on my mind was unbridled rage, but a second thought tells me that he’s not worth the trouble, and I slowly move my arm away from his throat. He stumbles forward as he regains full consciousness and doubles over, hands on his knees, coughing and gasping for air. I crouch down so I’m once again at eye level with him. “I think I’ll be taking my business elsewhere. This establishment seems to…fall short of my expectations.” As I make my way to the door, I shout at him from over my shoulder, “By the way, you might want to clean up that little lamp oil spill. Wouldn’t want to start a fire now, would we?” As I start walking away, the floor behind him erupts into flames as the crawling pool of oil finally makes contact with the joint I’d tossed on the floor a few minutes prior. I hear the panicked and angry screams of people as they scramble to put out the fire. I told him not to piss me off.

I begrudgingly travel through the night until I stumble upon a small town that looked much nicer than the one from last night. There’s a big range of people here, so I’ll blend right in. The brisk wind and salty-smelling air told me that I was near the sea. Then I turned to my right and noticed the ocean that was right there that would’ve told me the same thing. I guess I smoked one too many on the way here, but that jackass was really trying my patience, and he should be grateful that the worst thing I did was set his shitty business on fire. I honestly did him a favor. He doesn’t seem like the type who should be running a tavern; he couldn’t even handle one angry customer.

I enter a gimmicky looking tavern called “The Empty Sailboat.” It looked like half of an old ship that had been repurposed, the bow of the boat supporting a wooden sculpture of a topless mermaid. As I walk inside, I’m slapped in the face with a plethora of boat themed decorations. It’s a bit overboard, which is where I think the decorator should’ve been thrown. I walk over to the bartender and ask if she has any rooms available. She nods and grabs a room key from under the bar. Her curly brown hair perfectly frames her face, as the hair stops just at her shoulders. The brown ringlets are absolutely mesmerizing as they bounce around her shoulders. She looks young, and I happen to notice the pointy ears poking out through her hair. Hopefully she’ll make better use of her extended lifespan than I did. I manage to snap out of it and reach for the key, but she pulls it back and explains that payment for rooms is upfront. I reach into my gold pouch and pull out the last gold piece. She slides the key to me as I place the coin on the table, and I take my stuff upstairs to my room. I have been traveling for a few months consecutively now, only working odd jobs here and there, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m out of money. My body sinks into the bed as I finally lay down to rest.

I wake up a few hours later to the sound of some commotion. I pack up my gear and head downstairs. Four heavily armored soldiers bearing the king's emblem on their chests stand in the tavern, waving around a sheet of paper. I only catch the tail end of what they’re saying.

“The king is offering a reward of 10,000 gold pieces if she’s turned in alive...”

I can’t even focus on the rest of what he said. I wouldn’t have to work again for a really long time with a reward like that. The soldiers leave a stack of the wanted posters on one of the tables. The plainer-looking patrons ignore the ruckus and continue their drinks. Those who appear to be the more adventurous type start grabbing posters and leaving the tavern. I grab one for myself and return the room key to the bartender, quickly leaving the bar afterwards. As I walk out, I start examining the poster. It reads, “WANTED. DEAD OR ALIVE. OLTHANA OLDOVE.” Included is a decent looking sketch of this “Olthana” character. I’ve found someone with a worse sketch, so this should be relatively easy. Her most defining feature is her unruly, black, curly hair. If she’s smart, she’ll have cut it by now. However, the sketch is completely black and white and doesn’t include a written description of any other defining features, which will make this a little more difficult, but not impossible. I can also tell that she’s a half-elf. I haven’t seen many of them around the town, so she should stick out, even if her ears have a much shorter and more blunt point than mine. She looks young too. Probably naïve. Should be easy to manipulate when I do find her.

I decide to wander around town before I go looking for her to try and get a read on the situation. The town doesn’t seem to be in a huge panic, meaning either what she did wasn't that bad or word hasn’t spread around quite yet. Based on the size of the reward, I’d say it’s the latter. The guards also don’t seem too terribly competent either. They’re just interrogating random people on the street hoping one of them will just magically know where she is. Obviously, there hasn’t even been enough time for king douchebag to send out his best men. That’s good for me.

On the edge of town, there’s a small forest where the evergreens are the only trees that aren’t stark naked by now. Most of the leaves on the ground look relatively untouched. However, I come across a small path of crushed leaves. At first glance, it could just be written off as the path of an animal. However, I’ve been doing this for a long enough time to know that the pattern of crushed leaves is clearly caused by something that walks on two legs. I follow the path until I stumble upon a shitty looking campsite. There’s a piddly fire in front of a fallen tree branch that’s covered in moss. I don’t see any signs of food or means of getting food, like animal traps, so whoever this belongs to either already left or simply didn’t have anything. As I continue to scan the campsite for signs of life, I hear the crunching of leaves as a bald, half-elven girl enters the campsite with an armful of twigs. The sleeves of her dark purple dress, which itself is a wildly inappropriate garment for camping, sit below her shoulders. Tattoos cover her neck and shoulders, the skin around it red and irritated as if it was done recently. The cheap-looking half ring in the middle of her nose is currently sideways, and I notice her nose twitch a little, as if she still isn’t used to it. She has round glasses that are a little too big for her face, and there clearly aren’t any lenses in the frames.

“Um…hi,” she stutters. She clears her throat as she starts putting on a persona. “What brings you into these fine woods?”

“It was just a lovely day outside, so I was just going for an afternoon stroll,” I lied.

“Oh yeah. It’s such a nice day out that I decided to...to set up a little campsite.”

I step towards her. “What’s your name, halfie?”

“Oh, my name? Yeah, I have one of those. Yep. I do indeed have a name. And it’s a good one too,” she fumbles. “I’m…uhh…Faenys.”

“Faenys?” I say, throwing up one of my eyebrows.

“Yep! Faenys…Elfine. That’s me.”

I stare at her in silence for a few moments. She looks less nervous now and more just proud, as if she’s trying to convince herself more than me. “Are you sure that’s your name? You seemed to hesitate quite a bit there.”

“Yep! I’m definitely sure that that’s definitely my name!” She smiles nervously.

“Riiiiight…say you wouldn’t happen to know anyone named Olthana would you?” I ask, pulling out the poster and holding it out to her. Her face goes white as she drops her pile of sticks and starts sprinting away. She’s much faster than I am, as the only thing weighing her down are the clothes on her back, but I chase her for as long as I can. I eventually lose sight of her as she shakes me through the trees and disappears into the forest. I stop to catch my breath for a few moments before I see something out of the corner of my eye.

“I’m sorry!” I hear her shout as she swings a stick into the back of my head. It hurt like a bitch, but it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve dealt with. I quickly turn around and yank the stick out of her hands. “Huh…that worked so much better on that other guy,” she says, scratching her head. I reach for my maul and she starts fumbling around, finally pulling a second, smaller stick from behind her back and taking another swing at me. I catch it midair and yank it out of her hands. I finally just grab her hands and pull her up as I crouch down to look at her.

“They’re offering a lot of money for you right now. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t cash you in.”

“I…I can juggle for you!”

I am genuinely astonished. In all my 456 years of being alive, not once have I ever heard someone plead for their life by juggling. It takes me so off guard that I start laughing. I slowly release her hands as I sink into myself with laughter. She laughs nervously beside me. After a few moments, I finally collect myself enough to speak again.

“So what’s with this act you’ve got going on,” I say wiping the tears from my eyes. Her head cocks to one side and her eyebrows furrow together. “Look, I’m not an idiot. You’re a wanted girl. There’s no way someone so…stupid and childish could get in this much trouble. You clearly don’t hesitate to change your entire look, meaning you’ve probably done this before. You came into the woods to wait until your tattoos looked less new and your haircut looked more natural. Am I wrong?”

She paused for a few moments. “Oh…oh! Yeah that was my plan! And it was a really good one. What a great plan I came up with,” she says, beaming.

“I said drop the act.” I move closer to her, placing one of my hands on the handle of my maul.

She starts slowly backing away, putting her hands up slightly. “Ok ok…I didn’t actually have a plan when I hid in here. When I first ran away, I just found someone’s glasses, and I popped out the lenses because I couldn’t see out of them. But they still recognized me apparently. So I just…cut off my hair, got this big tattoo, which hurt very much I might add, and I got some more piercings, which didn’t hurt at all compared to the–”

“Get on with it!” I snapped.

She sunk lower and cowered. “I just came here to hide…I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have food or water or anything at all, really. I just ran as fast as I could until I thought no one could find me. I never really considered that the fire could signal where I was…I should’ve thought of that.” Her eyes shimmer and her bottom lip quivers. “I can’t stop you from turning me in. You’re much bigger and stronger and seem to have a lot of experience tracking people, so even if I run, you’ll just find me again. And you don’t really have a reason not to…I’m worth quite a lot of money right now. But please…let me go. If you need money, I can give you this.” She reaches around her head and produces a necklace with a small but ornate charm. “I don’t know how far back it goes…but I know my family has been passing it down for a really long time. It’s probably not worth nearly as much as I am, but it’s definitely worth something,” she says, cupping the necklace in her hands. I can tell she’s trying to stay calm, but a few tears manage to escape, and they cascade down her cheeks.

I let out a long, exasperated sigh and swipe the necklace out of her hands, placing it into the empty gold pouch on my hip. “Get up. If you’re gonna hide from the law, you’ll have to do much better. Follow me.” I start walking away before she has a chance to get up. I hear her behind me scrambling, and she jogs up next to me.

“Thank you,” she says, wiping the snot from her nose. I roll my eyes and continue walking deeper into the woods. “So, do you know of a good hiding place in these woods?”

“No, but I’ll find one.”

“Oh. So where are we going?”

“I’m looking for a hiding spot for you.”

“But where is it?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t found it yet,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Oh right. Duh.” She gives me a few moments of silence before she tries chirping in again. “How do you know a good spot if–”

“Do you have to talk?” I snap. She recoils a little and lowers her head. Her fake glasses slide down her nose, and she pushes them back up.

“Sorry,” she mumbles. We only walk a few more steps before I hear sniffling. I cave.

“Fine. I’m sorry I yelled just please, cut the waterworks. I don’t like that shit.”

She nods and quickly wipes her face, her walk returning to its chipper bounce. I eventually navigate us to the other side of the woods, and I can tell she’s getting nervous. I walk into the nearest town and duck into the first alley I see, which is really just a small space between two buildings. I didn’t get to check what the two buildings were, but the walls are wooden and thin. I can almost hear the people inside, and from that I gather that one is a lively tavern while the other is just someone’s home. The town itself is busy, and the commotion of life is enough to keep us hidden given Olthana doesn’t do anything stupid. “How long have they been looking for you?”

“Um…only a couple of days I think. I really did start to lose track of time in the woods. Boredom will do that to you, you know?”

“Ok, so they probably haven’t extended the search out of town yet, so you should be safe here for a while. Try to act confident, like you belong here, and only go into town if you absolutely need to. Gather up anything you might need here, and then leave as soon as you can. Don’t stay here longer than a day, and if you travel for long enough, eventually they’ll just assume you died. This only works if you keep zero ties and you leave no trace. After a couple decades, eventually people forget about you. And always remember, you look out for yourself and only yourself. Otherwise you’ll start making friends and it’ll be harder to disappear. It’s lonely at first, but after a while it’s not so bad.” I look up and see the panic in her eyes. I sort of forgot why I was telling her all this. “Well, good luck,” I say, patting her on the shoulder. I turn around to leave but she grabs my arm.

“Wait! Please don’t go…at least not yet.” I recognize the fear in her eyes. It’s the kind of fear that feels like a ton of bricks weighing on your shoulders, the kind of fear that leaves you crying in a ball on the ground because you physically can’t do anything else. I already see her starting to sink, her knees buckling under all that weight.

God, I hate empathy.

I sigh and drop my bag on the ground and sit beside it, patting the ground beside me. She sits down, and I see the relief in her face as a few of the bricks dissipate.

“You know, you remind me a lot of myself when I was younger. Weak, naïve…and scared. But eventually things happened and I just…grew out of it.” I looked over at her and see her fiddling with a loose thread from her dress. “Look, I know it feels like you’ll never not be scared, but take it from me, halfie. It’ll eventually fade, and something like this won’t seem so scary anymore.” There are a few moments of silence before she finally speaks.

“This probably won’t come as a surprise to you, but I used to be an entertainer.” She forces a laugh, still looking at the loose thread. “I can dance, sing, play an instrument, real and fake magic, you name it, I can do it. And I was good at it too. Like really good. People from all over the city would hire me to entertain their parties or their bars or whatever else needed some excitement.”

“What are you doing? Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I feel like I can trust you and—”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Yeah but— ”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut your goddamn mouth.” I stand up and grab my dagger, preparing to stop her if she tries anything.

“I was set up!” she shouts. I yank her up by her shirt collar, pinning her against the wall with my knife to her throat.

“Keep your fucking voice down. I’ve been running for too goddamn long to let some dumb twit like you be the reason I die.” I can feel her heart pounding against my hand. I swear I can almost see the knife move with her pulse.

“I used to have a partner,” she squeaked. Why does she insist on telling me her life story? At this rate, I’ll end up having no choice but to turn her in. I’m already risking myself just trying to help her run, but if what she did is as bad as it seems to be, I’ll get pinned as an accomplice just because that fat bastard king woke up in a bad mood and wanted to abuse his power some more. “We were childhood best friends, and we both had a knack for performing. So logically, we became a two-person act. I was always the dumb one who mess up the trick, on purpose of course, and then he would— ,”

“What the hell does this have to do with anything?” I snap, putting more pressure against her throat with the knife. I notice her flinching, but she continues. “Eventually, he got tired of it and wanted to be a solo act, and he just left. I just assumed he was getting on fine by himself, but apparently he never got anywhere and hated me for it.”

I don’t say anything. I’m just hoping she eventually gets to the point.

“A few years later, I was invited to New Cresthill to entertain King Roble on his birthday. On the invitation, it explained that he wanted a roast. Easy enough, I’ve done plenty of roasts before, people love them. But apparently, Elly, his name was Elric by the way. Apparently Elly now works as a servant to the king. I don’t know this for sure, but I think he told the king to hire me as a musical entertainer, and then changed the invitation before it was sent out. I showed up and after the first joke, the entire room went silent. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elly smiling at me.” She starts sobbing. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even get a chance to explain myself before the Roble sent every guard in the room after me, and I could hear Elly laughing as I ran for my life.” I just stare at her as she sobs, getting tears all over my arm. I finally pull away from her just so I can wipe my arm off.

“So you insulted the king, and now he’s throwing a temper tantrum,” I finally say. “No wonder the bounty for you is so high. I honestly just thought you killed someone.”

She looks concerned. “I would never kill anyone!”

I chuckle. “Never say never, halfie. Now pull yourself together. You gotta get out of the kingdom as soon as possible. With an offense like that, it won’t be long before king ass-sweat sends his top men after you. If you’re not outta here soon, you’ll be dead in no time.” She stares at me, looking frozen to the ground as terror washes out her face. I huff and grab her wrist. “Let’s go!” I start dragging her through the alleys until we stumble upon a big crowd. The guard in the center is giving the same speech I heard in the tavern earlier and holding up a stack of the same posters. Some of the townspeople start rushing to the front to get their hands on one while the other guards start posting them up around the town. I tighten my grip on her wrist and remind her to act confident. She stands up straight and puffs out her chest. I guide her away from the crowd, and she follows me with a cocky strut. “Not that confident,” I whisper angrily to her. She lowers into herself again, keeping her head locked towards the ground. I start dragging her out of the city when I hear a small clink. Her stupid glasses slid all the way off her face and fell on the ground. She breaks out of my grip and reaches for them before I can stop her. I turn around and as she reaches down, I see a guard standing over her, holding her fake glasses. He appears to be a lower ranking guard, as indicated by lack of decoration on his chest plate, meaning he’s probably less experienced with catching criminals. She might have a chance to get out of this if she plays her cards right. She slowly stands up.

“Are these yours?” he asks, looking at her intensely. Her mouth tries to make words, but a sound has yet to escape her throat. It looks like acting was the one performance skill she failed to master. He pulls the poster out of his pocket and studies it for a few moments, then looks back at her. He compares the two for a while before this evil grin creeps across his mouth. His hands start glowing with this golden aura as he grabs her wrists. “Olthana Oldove,” he announces, “you’re under arrest for high treason.” He casts some kind of holding spell on her, and her hands are bound together in this golden bubble. She looks back at me and starts crying. I make eye contact with the guard, and he approaches me as a group of his men swarm around us, most of them more decorated than he is. I notice him conjuring another holding spell.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!” I lie. “I found this criminal lurking in the crowd while you were giving your speech. I was so focused on turning her in and bringing her to justice that I didn’t even notice you following behind us.” I can hear Olthana screaming behind the guard as the rest of them start to escort her away, but I can’t bear to look at her. He stares at me for a few moments, then the glow around his hands dissipates and he relaxes his face.

“What is your name, elf?”

“Ruvyn,” I lied again.

“Well Ruvyn, on behalf of the king, the kingdom thanks you for your work in capturing this heinous criminal.”

“Oh, you and I both know I don’t do this kind of work for free,” I say, faking a smile. He lets out a hearty laugh, and I join him.

“I completely understand,” he says, giving me a good hard slap on the back. “Come with me, Ruvyn, and you’ll be rewarded for your services to the kingdom.” Olthana’s screams finally fade as she was taken far enough away, though I still feel them ringing in my ears.

I walk with him to the other side of town, bullshitting with him the whole way there. He tells me we’ll head to New Cresthill on horseback. There was only one time I had the misfortune of being there, and the only thing I remember about it was being surrounded by the snobby assholes found in any capital city. I snap back when he asks if I’ve ever ridden horseback before, and I tell him I have. He gestures to one of the decorated horses outside a guard post, signaling me to get on. He grabs his own horse and throws himself on top of it with ease. I struggle for a few moments to swing my leg over. That necklace in my pouch suddenly feels a lot heavier.

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