The Ancients and the Angels: Celestials

by M.C. O'Neill

  ***

  As Quen’die stuffed her gear into her satchel in the locker rooms, Lauryl’la came over and nudged her. “Hey, you need to watch out. While we were in the waterfalls, Agrat Ma’lott and Isheth Z’nunim were staring you down big time.”

  Agrat and Isheth completed Venn’lith’s terrible trio. The two maidens were nothing other than tittering sycophants that served at the Xochian’s left and right wings. Both were rather wealthy as they lived in the same beachside neighborhood as did Ferd’inn Kokoff, but neither of them shared his honest scrollsmarts. Nor were they a crafty couple as Venn’lith made all of their decisions for them and the two followed without question. Sometimes the young sun elf would buy them off with little shopping trips to the Grand Market, but such favors carried a hefty price. Both the glomming maidens knew that their tab was running up higher and higher and that they were beholden to Venn’lith by her gracious efforts at friendship.

  “Whatever,” Quen’die recoiled. “They’re total wimps. I could lick both of them easily, especially since their handler is currently being spoiled in the Academic Warden’s office, undoubtedly.” She was feeling the boost of courage from her victorious maneuvers at the runta match earlier. There was nothing quite like being good at something and winning.

  As her friend had warned, the twinning twosome headed in a beeline toward her, stepping in tandem as if they would forget how to walk if either of them broke out of their swaying stride. Quen’die realized that she sometimes played second fiddle to Lauryl’la, but she also owned her fair share of authority in their long friendship. These two were complete followers who lived their lives for a spoiled rich elfmaid who had only been in town for a mere four months.

  “Hi, Quen’die Reyliss,” Agrat had announced with pretentious scorn in her voice. Quen’die knew that Agrat had no real ill feelings toward her, but Venn’lith most likely put her up to whatever she was about to do.

  “Yeah, uh…Venn’lith Mitlan wanted us to tell you that ‘everything has been taken care of’ and that ‘being poor is gonna suck,’” Isheth completed the confrontation for her brainless friend. In that moment, the two looked at each other and smirked as if they were long-lost twins who shared a foul neural link with each other.

  Quen’die couldn’t react with any sort of decent comeback to those identical clowns. She knew what it was the two toadies were implying in that dreadful message. Venn’lith had snitched on her to her father for doing all but nothing and that sick message had been relayed to her folks. The ultimatum had been executed, signed, sealed and delivered. All was too late for her, she surmised, and whatever the Xochian said to her father was going to herald the end of her family. Quen’die fought back a floodplain of tears.

  “B-bye skank,” Agrat waved with idiotic vigor as the two walked out of the locker room in the same syncopation. Even their long braids swung in unison as they sauntered off with brisk speed while giggling at the payload of emotional pain they had just dropped on their victim.

  After the door shut, much like the fate of her family, Quen’die broke into a soulful bawl. The last thing she wanted to do now was to go home, but the final period had just ended. More than anything, she wanted to find Lauryl’la and get her unwavering support. Her parents would be so enraged with her when she got home, but most of all, her mother. Knowing this, she debated on asking her friend if she could spend another night there or perhaps even run away. Such a plan would be sure to fail as Lauryl’la’s parents would be the ones to haul her in for juvenile flight.

  In the school’s courtyard, she saw her friend’s jointed auburn topknot swaying in the heavy spring breeze. Quen’die thanked the gods that the maiden was the tallest female in class so she could see her above the heads of the other elves who were preparing to enter an early summer of locked-down woe.

  “Rylla!” Quen’die all but screamed across the courtyard through her veil of tears and snot. Although she was fast from years of runta, her journey toward the maiden’s parked coach seemed as if she were running through a sucking bog.

  “Dee! What’s wrong!” Lauryl’la’s eyes were huge with concern and her fine brows were paralyzed into a frown of vexation. It was almost as if Quen’die was the victim of some transformation which had rendered her into a hunchbacked freak.

  Mustering her words out from under the sobs and sniffles was a violent chore. Quen’die’s strong lungs were emitting choking whoops as she tried to gather air to combat the grief so that she could speak. She sounded much like an elfling with croup. “V-Venn’lith told her f-father!”

  Lauryl’la knew exactly what she meant and it was as shocking as hearing that the Gonduanna Princes had all died in a freak limmer crash. Her frown was lifted to the top of her forehead in an arc of terror that very second. “Bunny! No!”

  Quen’die could only nod with heated vigor as if doing so would expel the horrid feelings from her mind. This profound woe had become much too deep for her to speak again and her sobs intensified upon the useless release of letting someone else know that she was in trouble.

  “Hey, get in the coach and you can come over.” Lauryl’la tried to calm her down but her friend was pivoting in bewildered half-circles as she was tear-blind. “My folks are probably on patrol. Dee?”

  Under normal circumstances, the maiden would have hated the attention her sobs were attracting, but the ring of elves forming around her and Lauryl’la was not at the top of her worries. All she wanted was to be away from the shadow of Seabreeze Grand and go to an inviting home. All in all, she knew that there would not be one waiting for her.

  Before she could hop into the battered old model, the sound of her mother’s call filled her with hope by reflex. This hope was torn away in an instant as the usually familiar voice of her mother was reduced to alien rage that may as well have come from out of Venn’lith’s mouth. “Quen’die Ferd’inna Reyliss!”

  Green nails dug into her skinny arm as her mother spun her around to attention. The scowl on her face matched her livid scream. Quen’die had never seen such anger in her eyes. Not so much that she had never misbehaved and evoked those feelings from her, but because her mother was typically able to cope with any of her slight transgressions. Since Glynna Reyliss was experiencing the beginning of the end, those coping strategies were pointless and it was all Quen’die’s doing as far as she knew.

  Today, Quen’die would ride home from school with Mother.

  Blue Moonday

  Never before had Quen’die felt such a physical pain delivered by her mother. Those claws that dug into her arm would heal in a few days, but the scar would stay in her spirit for years as a dark memory. Such regret for the rash action burrowed in an instant in Mother’s brain as she had always been an advocate for sparing the rod. Corporal punishment was never the answer in the Reyliss home to the point where Glynna had even donated to anti-child abuse organizations. Ferd’inn, of course, could never deign to raise a fist or a flat palm to his children, much less connect the hit. To employ this behavior was construed as “Grey-Trash” and déclassé as far as they were concerned. Yes, Venn’lith was correct - being poor would suck and this was her first taste of poverty, so it seemed.

  “You have single-handedly destroyed my life!” Lady Reyliss screamed over to her daughter from behind the coach’s crystal trackball. “How happy are you now?” Her mother never made anger so beautiful, as if she were good at it back in her younger years and was now the expert.

  “How!” Quen’die yelped in defiance of the accusation. This was not just a knee-jerk reaction to her mother’s suspicions, but the young maiden wanted to know exactly what Venn’lith had said behind her back.

  “You know and you know very well! You should learn how to hide your jealousies of an innocent maiden and focus more on yourself!” Glynna’s searing rage was causing her to grit her teeth.

  Venn’lith? Innocent? That witch did nothing but cause foul woe for friend and foe alike. Quen’die had never bothered to speak of her or her scho
olyard antics at dinnertime just because she was not jealous of the Xochian, despite Mother’s claims. Until last week, Venn’lith Mitlan was simply the new maiden who walked the halls with a high head and thought she was entitled for worship just because of her beauty and riches. So what, Quen’die thought?

  “I am not jealous of that freak, Mother! I did nothing to her and I haven’t a clue as to what you are talking about!” It was a rarity that Quen’die had ever raised her voice to her mother in her entire life, and the last time she had tried was around ten years ago.

  “You got your father fired, Quen’die! FIRED!” Glynna’s regret for defusing an argument through physical force escaped her mind again as the emerald-tipped palm of her hand washed her daughter’s face with a stinging swipe. For the second time that day, salty anguish slid out of the maiden’s horrified eyes.

  She was paralyzed. The pain from her mother’s clutch earlier was an accident, and she knew it, but this was a deliberate strike to the body. Her face was locked with wide eyes and a jutting, lush lower lip. When all was said and done, Quen’die thought, Mother was nothing but an extension of Venn’lith’s spite and she was stuck in her coach as a captive audience to her torture.

  “You put back that lip, little maiden! All your secrets are out and I can’t believe you did this all for some stupid lad!” Mother’s rage was relayed through a deep growl. “I can’t believe you have behaved this way under our noses! Acting like a little floozie while we were at work and while you were supposed to be watching Kaedish!”

  A lad? What in the gods’ names had Venn’lith told her father, she wondered? The lies were getting deeper and all the more humiliating. Quen’die was now obligated to refute the sex life that she never had.

  “What are you talking about?” the elfmaid couldn’t contain her frustration as she barked back at Mother. It wasn’t directed at her, as she was now just a duped patsy for the sun elf’s schemes, it was a menace aimed toward the Xochian herself.

  “Does the name ‘Hyrax Arcovis’ mean anything to you? Your ‘strapping captain’ you always obsess over at dinner?” Lady Reyliss raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Let me just say that we better have you checked out at the heath wardens’ because we certainly can’t afford a new mouth at a time like this.”

  This was the worst charge Mother had ever put on her head. Quen’die had no clue that Venn’lith would dare to tell such a horrible lie to her parents, but this maiden was playing hardball, and her sick designs ran deeper than any deviation Quen’die could develop. The little beast was good at smear campaigns.

  “But Mama! I’m a good maiden!” the rebuttal was weak, but reactive. She didn’t know what else to say other than the truth. “I’ve never even been on a real date!” With that, even more tears drooled off her sharp chin in a saline curtain.

  “Which makes this all the more disgusting! Do you think you can just have lads popping over without our knowledge so they can consume you like a slab of ribs?” Mother swerved the coach around a sharp bluff in anger. Traffic was becoming more perilous as a new wave of aimless evacuees was already clogging the roads in response to this new crisis. “Those males will take advantage of you any chance they can get and if you give them one inch, they’ll…,” her blind fury only allowed her to end her angry advice in another growl.

  “I know this!” her daughter screamed back. “That’s why I haven’t ever done anything that Xochian freak accused me of!”

  “Then why did you attack her at our business dinner? In her own home?” Mother was having trouble managing the curving road as the coach skidded a bit on the rain-slicked asphalt. “That scar on your face wasn’t from a palm leaf; it was poor Venn’lith defending herself from a catfight you started over some cursed lad! She didn’t tell us at the time because, unlike you, she has some class! To add insult to injury, you publically humiliated her at that party on Saturnalia! What had she ever done to you?”

  Plenty, Quen’die thought, and she still hadn’t experienced the full effect of the sun elf’s schemes. This was going to be the end of her in such a holistic manner that she guessed that she would have to have her name changed at the royal registry, since “Quen’die Ferd’inna Reyliss” was now a nonentity.

  Mother righted herself in the coach’s bucket seat. “It’s that Lauryl’la Hay’cenn. She’s encouraging all of this. I knew it. I knew it! “ She shook her head in shame over the maiden. “Grey-trash and nothing but. I’m deleting her number from your phone and tablet when I get home and blocking it! Same goes for that Hyrax lad!”

  Quen’die shot in fear. “No, Mama! Lauryl’la isn’t like that! Just the other night she was giving me advice on…”

  “More like professional advice, apparently!” The temperature in the coach had dropped by twenty degrees with her mother’s accusation as the vehicle skidded into their courtyard to a conking halt. Glynna Reyliss, her own mother of almost sixteen years, had just implied that she was a professional. Such a remark was never uttered between females unless the relationship was to be forever sealed over. Quen’die’s paralysis was now closer to heart-rending death.

  “Get out!” her mother hissed through more gnashing teeth. “I am too young to be called ‘Nanna Glynna!’”

  It was all so unexpected. Mother tore the coach out of their courtyard at a speed that was approaching a criminal meter. The usual steady woob of the motor was a ROWR and it all made Quen’die feel disgusting. Where was she going, she wondered? Back to the lab? Away from her at any account, and she felt like the last elf on Earth as the chilly late afternoon engulfed her. Ahead of her stood the uninviting double doors to her home. If it was her home anymore.

  Her father was propped over the granite counter in the kitchen. The wine glass next to him was set on the edge of its surface and was in danger of falling off. Her mother’s report was correct as before her was an exhibit of an elflord who had just lost about everything.

  “Father?” Quen’die stumbled for proper words. She had no clue as to how he would react to her presence. He was always so logical and in control, despite his late problems with nerves. Ferd’inn Reyliss may have been skittish for the past couple of years, but he was still able to harvest reason out of most situations. His lean form jerked back in response.

  “Hi, Quen’die,” the defeated voice muttered in the blue shadows of the unlit kitchen. He was calm. So calm he seemed stupid. The maiden figured he had somehow taken himself to another reality as this one was all but rejecting him. It had already rejected her as well and, with this, she could find a common ground.

  “Father…”

  “Quen’die, we have to go to Nanna Orsi’s house,” his statement remained even and to the point. “This is all gone. I don’t know what else to say…,” he swirled his bony hand in the air as to direct her attention to all that they had earlier that morning and would never have again.

  His daughter met the gesture with her reddened eyes. “But, Papa, what is going on? How…”

  “It’s over now, my love,” he mumbled their loss. “Mother is leaving us and she’s taking Kaedish as well. She just sped off to pick him up from school.”

  The maiden couldn’t tell if Father was angry at her or not. Probably just “disappointed,” but it seemed like he was more so in between zones. Emotions were flipping through his mind and heart to the point that he couldn’t focus on just one. One could lose something, but when it was everything in such a short amount of time, it was like the complete opposite of the joy one felt on Wintersfest morning. Instead of receiving a bargeload of presents, they are all taken away from under one’s nose.

  Her face melted with salty water from the deep seas of her evolutionary ancestors as she stood there like an ivory statue honoring the more recent ones. Father turned around with his mouth agape. He couldn’t compose how he was feeling, and being a sentimental sort, that was his primary focus of communication.

  “She just took everything and left,” this was their dim epithet. It was the last declarati
on of their family before they wandered into the greatness of the fearful unknown. The media and the gossip scrolls of the day seemed to celebrate divorces and all the events that were triggered by them, but the elfmaid could not see how any glee could be a byproduct of those happenings. Shows such as A Maiden on the Verge and Die Lord, Die! were all funny comedies as seen from afar, but the living truth felt like an officer’s scimitar had been chucked through the heart and down the gut. This whole incident made her not want to ever bother getting married if it could all be thrown away in the span of one afternoon.

  Quen’die supposed that Kaedish was soon going to be dripping in tears too as Mother drove him to…wherever. Of course, she would blame the entire event on his own sister as per Venn’lith’s claims. This all made her want to punch in their manascreen, which was most likely no longer their property.

  Looking off to the side into the gloomy foyer, Quen’die saw that her bags were packed, but only hers. At that moment, nothing more needed to be said. Father would not be accompanying her in their exile.

  “You’re not coming with?” her uncontrollable plea pierced the high arch of their hall.

  “No, Quen’die. I’m going to grab a hostel or a hotel room for a bit. I need to figure out what I’m going to do from here on, but I promise that I won’t leave you. I’ll make sure to check up on you and Nanna.” He looked out into the grey of the approaching evening and wondered if the sun would ever shine again.

  Nanna Orsi was lots of fun in her ninety years, and knowing that she would end this dreadful day in her tiny but inviting home was just a miniscule lift to the maiden’s spirits . Quen’die had so many good times braiding and styling her golden hair which almost met the floor when she walked. She too had so many amazing stories to tell about her daring youth. It was a small wonder that her father became the biologist that he was as she herself once journeyed around the globe in search of ancient life and cultures. From far off cities like Shamba’la and Kalapa in Tel’lemuria, to the cold province of Ultimo, Thuless’in; Nanna Orsi had seen them all. Tonight, hearing another tale of her almost always romantic adventures would be just what the doctor ordered, even if it were nothing more than a tiny patch.

  “Look,” he began. “You know Mother has been acting kind of strange lately and none of this is your fault. It was all going to happen regardless. I could feel it in my bones and I think that had been adding to the nerves that I already have about losing you guys.”

  “But Mother said it was my total fault and that Venn’lith told her that I was a violent professional!” Quen’die felt a degree of relief now that the purple cat was out of the paper bag. “You can’t possibly believe such lies, can you?”

  “No, I…”

  “I mean, sure, I have held feelings for Hyrax Arcovis, but I have never even seen him outside of school, except for that party on Saturnalia and at runta matches! And it was Venn’lith who beat me up! She said that if I told anyone that she would ruin our family, which she has.” The elfmaid was feeling the justly-set anger rising out of her shell. She didn’t have any sort of plan for this sensation, but she was going to let her feelings out some way or another and soon.

  “Look, I really don’t want to know about any of that. I trust you, actually,” he bit his stiff lip and peered over at a bowl of oranges resting on the counter. Their simple forms calmed him but so did his state of shock. “Why this bothers your mother, I don’t know. I think it’s just incidental.”

  “What are we going to do?” Quen’die was thinking with her brain for the first time since Mother struck her, but her heart and emotions still ruled her thoughts, and she figured they would for the coming days. She thanked the gods that school was cancelled for the rest of the year. “Mother has left us!”

  “Quen’die,” he tried to muster the most sensible explanation he could figure, but he too was only led by wan suspicion regarding Mother’s detachment until this foul afternoon. “It’s just a separation. It isn’t the ‘D-word,’ if that’s what you are worried about. All of this is temporary.” He wanted to finish with “I hope,” but such uncertainty would only torture his daughter’s spirit with wishful anguish. Ferd’inn supposed this half-truth was the best answer for now, because he didn’t have a definite one either.

  “Then are you leaving me too?” her eyes began to well-up again. “Please! I can’t do all this alone!”

  The answer to this question he was certain. “No. I told you, I promise I won’t leave you. The only reason that I’m staying somewhere else right now is because Nanna’s place is too small for the three of us and I just need the peace and quiet while I try to make sense of all this. Your mother and I may only be separated, but I did indeed get fired and it’ll take some effort for me to get back on track.”

  Thoughts of that horrible slap and those morbid accusations about her behavior resurfaced and made the elfmaid ill. What was the worst was that Mother had sided with her archenemy, as if she would rather Venn’lith be her daughter. “Mother hit me! Why does she believe that little cockroach instead of me?”

  “Frankly, I think she has her own agenda right now and Mitlan’s daughter is part of that package.” Ferd’inn couldn’t view the tragic situation with true sight as he was down in it, but hearing this report from his daughter’s perspective shed a bit of light as to what was going on with his wife. It was Centeo, he guessed. He never had the nerve to confront her about the topic as she would accuse him of being jealous, though that would have been nothing but her diversion against being caught with the bag in her hand.

  Such a tactic wouldn’t have been the first time he had encountered it. Back when he was in adept’s school, he was enamored with On’dinna Ry’linn. They had been a romantic item for the majority of their study there, until she had begun to break dates with him with increasing frequency. Cor’gann Bry’klos was the runta captain of his class and she had been seen with him often and rumors had begun to fill the school’s halls. When he had decided to confront On’dinna upfront about the reported affair, she had become defensive and angry at the young Reyliss and had accused him of being a corny and jealous throwback. His suspicions, however, had rung with complete truth from his innards as instinct ruled over intellect in this matter of the heart. As rumor had it, On’dinna and Cor’gann got married and moved away to some province in Xo’chi.

  “What agenda?” Quen’die was not letting this topic go. She had her reputation as well as her family to fret over and she wanted some answers as to why they were all destroyed over the course of a single day.

  “I‘m going to tell you of a hunch that I have and I’m going to tell it to you straight,” this was almost too much for him to collect, but his daughter deserved something for all of this needless pain. “It is my fear that your mother has, shall we say, affections for Lord Mitlan.”

  Quen’die gasped wide-eyed and those eyes felt like they had alum poured into them from all the shock and tears inflicted upon her in such a short time. “But…”

  “I’ve been feeling funny about all of this for a while now, but after that dinner we had there, my mind and my heart have been nagging at me more than ever. It’s relentless.” He felt so odd confiding in his own daughter about this subject, but she needed some sort of answer.

  “I knew it! I saw his face when he kissed Mother’s hand, thinking he was all that! I just wanted to punch him in the nose right then and there!” Quen’die was gritting her teeth as hard as mother had been during their ride home. “I HATE them!”

  “Quen’die!” Perhaps this was all a bad idea, thought the elflord, but he couldn’t blame her reaction, after all. He only wished he could call up the actions required to set this horrible day straight but, in doing so, he figured they would land him in the municipal dungeons. “Look! We can make this right again, but we don’t have anything to go on more than intuition. I told you so.”

  “Maybe so, but I certainly hate Venn’lith for all the things she did to me and her stupid, suave father simply for
having made her!” her eyes were rehydrating with tears, but ones of anger this time. “Why are you such a wimp?”

  “What do you want me to do, Dee? Grab my caster and assassinate him?” His sarcastic comeback actually seemed like a good idea, but he chided himself for the notion since he considered himself rational and nonviolent.

  “Yes!” His daughter’s face formed a rictus of insane rage that would have made even Venn’lith Mitlan about-face and run away. Father was frightened by his own fruit.

  “I probably couldn’t get past his security…”

  Both were struck with the odd humor of his excuse and began to laugh like lunatics in the blue light of the dark kitchen. Father would make a terrible assassin as he would most likely ask his target if it was all right that he killed him first.

  “We should go,” he looked out the bay window once they calmed down. The evening was approaching and they were now working on a time limit due to the tense state of the nation. “I need to drop you off at Nanna’s and I need to find a place for the night before I get arrested. With all of this, I completely forgot how drastic everything has become. I saw that original transmission. It was horrible. This may be the real deal. I seriously doubt it, but whatever is in those pyramids, I hope are the good guys.”

  Quen’die too forgot all about this new crisis the kingdom was suffering. She didn’t have her father’s perspective on the situation, and to her it was just another news report that would make Quay’liss Dalian all the more famous. Her own drama had superseded the morbid worldview of earlier that day. “Wow! What exactly happened up there?”

  “Grab your things and I’ll tell you when we get in the coach. We really need to get this show on the road.”