Soft blue and green light were strewn about on wires turning Duskhovel into a miniature celestial globe and warming its normally velvet draped nights with a fae radiance. In their glass fist sized containers a powder and liquid solution I wouldn’t know to name was combined to keep those lights burning for over a week and each of the hundreds in this town had been meticulously crafted by artisans shortly before the festivities. I once asked Rayngo about the particulars of the reactions forming the “elfdust” but his explanation went entirely over my head.

  I turned my head from them and found the equal luster of two emerald jewels bathed in their ethereal light. The pale beauty of her slightly upturned gaze froze my heart as it warmed it, choking the intoxicated palpitations that reverberated into my hands that were made clammy in her embrace. Yet all she would feel from me is a firm confidant grip rather than the film of cold sweat I just barely kept at bay.

  “So much work goes into setting all of this up, yet it must seem a pittance compared to what you're used to seeing at the capital.”

  She took a look around herself to soak in the atmosphere. Her smile was the same as ever, but her eyes held a whimsical lightness I hadn’t seen from them since we returned from the front lines. I was threatened by their infectiousness as tonight the horror felt entrapped beneath a layer of warm frivolity.

  “I wouldn’t say so. Besides the parades and a few events that are mostly in places I couldn’t attend regardless, it’s really just a bigger network of what you already have here. Besides…”

  Huh?

  She grips my hand and twists her body around spinning us in a wide circle as if trying to mark as much space as possible as our own. She was a relatively petite frail looking woman, but the surprise caught me up in her momentum and naturally led me to adding my own meager strength to the current.

  “I much prefer not being packed in like sardines for the event. Monderlow turns into one massive line during Lullvienna. You’d be hard pressed to explore a quarter of the area of this town despite its size.”

  The town was far from empty, by our own standards I would call it congested, but as our short dance had displayed, there was plenty of space to stretch our legs. We settled back into a stroll not wanting to cause a scene, but neither feeling particularly abashed. A light curtain of drifting snow settled over us as we made our way forwards and a flake landed on her feathery lashes moistening them as she turned to me as if she had caught something within my expression.

  “I won’t ask you to show me a real smile like before. I know that it would be too difficult right now, but let’s enjoy ourselves tonight. I didn’t know him long, but I’m sure he was the type that would want to see you as happy as possible when he dreams of our world.”

  …………..

  Did I let something show? No, that isn’t it. I’m being paranoid. It’s common sense that I wouldn’t be able to be happy from the bottom of my heart yet. I had…almost forgotten that common sense from within my act. I have to be careful not to overcorrect. Surely the falling flakes will bring enough moisture towards my eyes.

  “Thank you.”

  “When he dreams of our world,” she said. A beautiful concept and one that was adopted from the dreamless by the common man. I have read of pagan religions in the distant past and from foreign lands in history texts, but there has been little formal religion in our region outside of the church of the dreamless for centuries. I suppose when maidens alone walked the ether ways their work was treated with religious solemnity, but even that has long since faded. Regardless people need some form of comfort, some idea of where those they lost might be found and dreamless had carried the only readily available answer even if they held nothing else of interest for ordinary folk. At this time that wasn’t a sentiment that I could disparage.

  I guided her off the directionless trajectory of our stroll to a specific booth we were passing. I wanted to display the same enthusiasm I saw in her but discovered much to my dismay that an act based around action was harder to keep properly defined inside me. My face stiffened in what I can only assume appeared as an upturned manner as I faced the small pool contained in a well lacquered and sealed wooden box under the attractions banner. It had caught my eye because of how she had reacted to the animals at Charlie’s place.

  Inside the pool were oblong squishy cephalopods with spines lining their five tentacles. The light blue nearly see through creatures were known as thornjellies.

  “They let you take them home in a bag if you can catch one. What do you think…”

  “Hmmm hmmm hmmm.”

  She was already humming with a tiny net in her hand and five bronze plats in the hand of the slightly pudgy, unevenly balding gentlemen that stood behind the counter. She swept the net through the water which created a current that propelled a thornjelly above it like a piece of algae. Only, when the net engulfed it, it immediately broke through the bottom with its spines.

  “But, the thorns?”

  “But, the thorns, is precisely it.”

  “Hmmmm hmmrgghhh grrrymmmm”

  She continued to hum as she swept newly purchased nets, but although the smile never left her lips, odd grunting sounds blended in with her humming. Over time she got closer and closer, but the damnable thing always broke through in the end. When she got it all the way above the pool and towards the bag before it broke, the proprietor took out a small bag filled with water and a thornjelly inside.

  “There you go lass. I think you’ve spent enough, have this one on the house. Don’t worry about it breaking through. The bags made out of a special material.”

  “A special material huh?”

  I eyed the nets lined up by the pool. The man obviously caught my implication but just shrugged his shoulders shaking his heavy black furred jacket as he grinned.

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  “That’s right, a special material.”

  Karen held her prize before her joyfully as we walked away but still muttered under her breath.

  “I would’ve gotten it if I had just been given a little more time.”

  “It doesn’t matter how much time you took. The games rigged. Only a few of those nets have the right material to catch a thornjelly.”

  “Hmph, you’re no fun Douglass. I know that full well, but it isn’t any fun if I can’t manage to win one anyway. It has to be possible if I got it up above the pool.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and grinned the same way the stall owner had.

  “Fair enough, but how would you know you didn’t just have the right net when you finally got it?”

  “Hmph, fair enough as well.”

  She finished admiring the thornjelly and hung it by a ribbon that was tied around her heavy black gown that both swayed lightly with layers of ruffles and managed to keep her warm while doing so.

  We kept at our exploration for many more hours, and I continued to make a point of steering us towards stalls I thought she would be interested in. The attractions were all simple and mostly consisted of making your own fun with small puzzles and crafts, but we were both thoroughly enjoying them perhaps more from the ambiance than from the activities themselves. As the night went on the flurry of snow increased. It never became a storm, but it obscured our vision just enough for the elfdust lights to create an otherworldly atmosphere hanging just above our heads. My focus was as blurred as my vision, caught as it was in that world of fairies painted by the lights and snow. I felt like a premise was slipping away from me and I was doing nothing to fight it.

  Afterall…

  “What has six legs in the morning, four during the day, and three at night.”

  We were being quizzed with simple riddles at a booth by a man with a thin black handlebar mustache, a top hat, and a red and blue striped shirt under overalls.

  “A subterrier.”

  “We’re counting that as a leg?”

  “That makes all five. Here you are ma’am.”

  Karen giggled as she accepted a small bag of assorted candies. I found her reaction to the joke cute and was glad she had a sense of humor I could appreciate.

  Afterall, wouldn’t it be all the better if nothing was a lie?

  Bennie… I…

  Suddenly a loud crash rang out somewhere nearby. Curious we gather around with all the other passersby in the direction it came from. We found Thomas knocked to the ground with his sleeves pulling across his lips to wipe a bit of blood off. Over him stood the two dreamless I met on my commute all those weeks ago. Their white tunics were mostly covered by heavier cloaks and hoods were pulled up over black earmuffs making their overall outfit appear darker than normal. Behind Thomas, Matt stood looking embarrassed to be there and to the side Chester laid collapsed with a flask in his hand. I couldn’t tell if he had been pushed over or if he had collapsed from drinking.

  Thomas stood back up, his face looking flush and a vein bulging on his temple. I assumed he had been drinking to some degree before this event had transpired.

  “You fuckin idiot. Who the hell are you to tell me how to live my life. I see you harassing this poor old man on the street and instead of feelin an ounce of shame you start going on about the wicked and the pitiful. Crazy blaggards like you are the reason all those scrubbers had to die. And I have to clean the sort of shit you spread around every night. Oh, sure you don’t go in and spread it around yourself, but worthless scum like you are the ones actually making it at the end of the day isn’t that right!”

  The dreamless closest to him, presumably the one who pushed him down looked over him cooly and addressed his accusations.

  “We were just giving this man much needed advice that he refuses to follow. But we will not abandon the stubborn. Besides it was you barreling into us that knocked him out, or were you just expecting me to stand still and accept your drunken tackle?”

  “You know damn well I’d run into him if you stepped that way. It’s what you really wanted, harassing him like that.”

  “Thomas, I think we should get out of here. They were out of line, but were gonna be seen as the ones in the wrong. Why are you so worked up over this old drunk in the first place? You don’t know these people any better than I do.”

  Matt’s nervousness began to transform into irritation. With the way he was talking he must have been celebrating Lullvienna over some drinks with Thomas. I assume they met on the job over the past few days. I do believe neither had been around the days I was working.

  “Listen to your friend and leave us be. I can’t believe a mess like you is all that stands between us and the pits. Do you people all really trust this? At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised at another outbreak slipping through the hands of you useless scrubbers.”

  “The hell did you say!”

  Thomas charged forward and took a swing at him, but that was all the excuse the dreamless needed. He fell down to plant his muscular arm on the ground and swept his leg through Thomas’ approaching legs. Thomas stupidly collapsed back to the ground with the wind knocked out of him. The dreamless walked up to him and raised his foot.

  Just as I watched them harass Chester before, I stood silent today without a word.

  “H…hey!”

  But my voice betrayed me. Only slightly, it wasn’t enough. The dreamless didn’t even look my way, yet I had still spoken and I had done so with a foot forward. This was the problem with lying through my actions. In my thoughts I could veil my words, but in my actions, I would veil my mind. I felt as if another foot might move forward and as if another exclamation would be made, but my unwanted action was supplanted by someone far more brazen. She walked up to the dreamless and slapped him in the face.

  “That’s enough. Just look at the crowd you’ve gathered. Do you think we’re all just gonna let you harass these drunks.”

  The dreamless glared at her as he grabbed the wrist of the hand that slapped him. I was surprised to find that I had stepped forward myself to glare in kind. I was not alone either. Everyone present had taken at least one step forward. It wasn’t necessarily in hostility but the enclosure around the dreamless shrunk regardless. The dreamless grabbing Karen’s wrist eyed the crowd and scoffed.

  “We haven’t done anything tonight that wasn’t in self defense.”

  I turned my eyes slightly to the left and scanned Karen’s face. Something was wrong. Despite her bravado, some unfathomable shaking of her eyes betrayed her otherwise stoic face. It clearly was something that went far beyond our current situation, and my chest suddenly tightened with a panic that was alien to me. I felt I had to find some way to extricate ourselves from the situation before her veneer could break.

  “What a joke. You could have left anytime you wanted. Thomas might have his head up his arse, but he’s right you’re trying to take advantage of this situation.”

  “We don’t need to take advantage of anything.”

  “Sure, you don’t. You want to egg on the spectacle to make scrubbers seem untrustworthy don’t you. You can fear the sullying of the ether ways all you want, but I haven’t seen anything in there as disgusting as your behavior.”

  “Listen you…”

  When it seemed as if he was going to pull at her wrist farther, I almost stepped forward, but another interjection stole our attention.

  “Now now brothers. Normally I’d be on your side against this riff raff, but I’m afraid the young woman in your grip as well as the drunk on the ground for that matter, are charges of mine.”

  It was the shadow that had stalked us since the beginning of the night and even further before. I had hoped to properly ignore him. Why hadn’t he intervened before Thomas got hit, wasn’t he supposed to be our bodyguard? I guess technically he only said he’d be guarding me, but I would think his assistance would extend to the rest of the scrubbers if he was expecting to drag them all off to the capital. Suddenly a wicked idea came over me.

  “Brother? Oh, so you’re with the church…and a royal guard at that. Very well.”

  He unhanded Karen and I started walking past him like I was uninvolved.

  “We’ll leave them be, but since its one of your charges that accosted us, I do expect…”

  I picked up Chester and loudly interjected.

  “Looks like Colonel Roy has the situation covered. Let’s book it then.”