Work started when I ran ahead and scouted out the position. A brief description that came second or third-hand narrowed it down well enough. X area around here with y feature. Elevated clearings were scattered around, but the largest was easy to find.

  To make it easier for the [Woodsmen] and [Diggers] that would be coming out to cut a road and dig I notched marks as I went, making sure to take the land into consideration.

  It was a lot of work we had before us, so I did some of the early work. Some basic set up to help out, things like get the grass out of the way and circle the hill with a few drains to divert water once we were done, drawing on [Timeless Construct]. I also flexed the soil loosening it up, encouraging the water to flow through it and out into the forest.

  The sod I tossed to the side of the would-be path, almost half of the earth would need to be removed; some of that could be used to widen and level the path.

  Once I did a bit of prep I jotted past the village marking trees to the next side and prepared it as well, a quick ten minute walk made into five by my skill enhanced stride.

  Then, it was off to the tiny folk.

  I could remember their village well. A fairie ring of mushrooms marked the edge like a border on a map, its circumference small enough to cross in only a few steps. Mushroom-caped houses, hedged huts of wildflowers and mounds built up into a tiny village.

  They were built both up and presumably down into the ground.

  There were industrious Sprites farming small growths, flowers and the like, collecting dew and harvesting buds. They wore only functional garbs, woven from silken thread to keep the water off themselves and their delicate white fluff and four wings.

  Approaching with light steps to not set the ground shaking I came to the edge and sat myself down drawing enough attention that the little folk were looking at me.

  I didn’t know the exact way I should have approached this, or how to get an audience, but the Sprites were a decent enough people, they didn’t stand on ceremony or what not.

  “I am Saphine, [Tall Friend]. I carry with me something I need to bring to your queen and seek an audience.” I told the watching Sprites.

  “Oh. Thank the ancestors.” One of the tiny folk called out in relief.

  “OI! You! Go get the Queen, you lazy git.” Another said.

  “You get the Queen. You’ve been waggling around doing a whole lot of nothing.” Another called back.

  “Shut it! Can’t you-” “Will you lot all-” “Bloody lout-” “You’re a-” “Surely-” “Where-” “Can I-” “Ruckus-” “Break your shins-” “Deck you one-” “Philly can-” a dozen voices started to call out.

  Not just the sprites in the field but those in the houses. They came out from inside, tucked beneath the eves and bickered amongst each other, loud despite their size, though not as loud as Selly. They were smaller, shorter than her, however, perhaps by as much as an inch.

  They were a loud group, for sure, the funny little things. They were also just getting louder to speak over one another, drawing more attention.

  Confused child sprites walked outside with tiny bumble bees, holding them like pets, confused by the shouting but not overly worried, a tiny fear that fell into calm quickly as the sight of people arguing resolved itself into a simple civil disturbance.

  It was a funny sight; the little ones were quite cute; holding a bumble bee that was as big as their head made them look like a mother holding a child, just that the child was as large as a wolf pup, and she had four arms. They had a massive face plate that was full-sized compared to their diminutive form, which stood as more fluff than carapace.

  They were awfully cute, with their big heads and tiny hands.

  They were also like me, staring at the shouting about shouting until it drew taller sprites toward the commotion, tall knightly sprites like Selly, white chitin looking like armour on their forms, tufts of fur spurting out from the joints of the armour. They walked with a blade on their hips, a spear of glinting metal, a cloak of woven fibres dyed expertly in what I could only guess was her house’s colours a sky blue, escorting a shorter Sprite of a scholarly persuasion.

  “Shut it!” the knight shouted into the crowd, her voice covering the rest of the crowd with the authority of her command.

  The closest Sprite turned and bowed with deference, “Sorry for the commotion, Lady Azure; this one is a [Tall Friend] here to speak to the Queen on behalf of the tall folk.”

  The Sprites in attendance grumbled in the affirmative, and the Azure Sprite, her movement measured, walked toward me, parting the crowd of her shorter kin without answering.

  “[Tall Friend], if you speak true, then welcome to the lands of our newly returned Queen,” she said, her voice cool as a pond, her form dropping a hair in a small bow.

  “I do. My name is Saphine, a [Tall Friend], and I carry word from the current Mynes. There's been an incident, and the young [Lord] Mynes has drafted a proposal for your Queen,” I told her.

  “They have much to answer for,” the scholar provided, “They’ve let us soak in dark hours more often than naught.”

  They seemed an irate sprite to me, their demeanour not making sense until I remembered that there were sprites whose entire job it was to remember their grudges.

  “This may indeed be true… Why should we hear out this strange Mynes fellow? If they have their sins unanswered for? Why do you bring this before us, friend of my people?” she said, her words dismissive.

  I… I hadn’t expected that. I had kind of expected that the queen might come out, and I could explain everything, and we would all have a moment of understanding so I could get back to the team.

  “Because he’s trying to make up for failing you? It’s a grant of land for… You know what? It would be easier if I could just tell her. There are a whole bunch of details around it. Context, you know?” I told her, not wanting to go over everything I needed to more than once because I doubted I could get it right twice.

  The [Grudge Bearer] huffed in disbelief, though the Azure Sprite did not react, her unflinching frigid demeanour giving her all the reaction of a statue.

  She was like a bizarro mirror world of Selly.

  There was no fire in her, not a spark.

  “Ey. A grant of land in tithe for a grudge of yesteryear? So close on the heels of our hour of need? I have half a mind to turn you away.” She said.

  “Can you?” I asked her, “It’s important, and this is just an initial offer. It’s the kind of thing the queen should probably look at.”

  “I am the hand that holds the page, the eye that reads her missives. I am the quill that scribes and the wind beneath her wing. I can and will turn you away if I am unsatisfied as her highnesses word, her eyes and tongue,” the cold Sprite told me without a shred of budge.

  “I have more than my word alone that the queen would want to accept it. Selliban believed she might,” I told her, trying to sidestep explaining the entire deal.

  “Selliban… Selliban of Clan Citrtan… Heir to the clan, even in exile… I see; I shall render that to my Queen along with the missive.” She said in an agreement.

  “Clans. Right. Not houses but clans. Strange to hear she’s the heir even in exile or that she really is exiled,” I thought to myself.

  Normally, exile was bye-bye for good, but her word still seemed to hold weight. I carefully extracted the small parchment from my pouch, the roll as long and thick as my finger, and she took it carefully, slipping it beneath her cloak like a length of timber.

  Without so much as a single ‘goodbye,’ she turned and fluttered off toward the center of the gathered buildings, a cluster of multiple large mushroom caps, their wide brims forming a multi-layered palace.

  Sprites were funny things sometimes. An edible palace… Probably edible, anyway.

  I looked down at the gathering, the folk looking back up at me, a scowling sprite huffing as she stomped back to the center.

  “Sorry for bothering you guys so much,” I told the crowd.

  “Were you the tall folk who saved our Queen?” one of the children asked me, cradling a bee like a stuffed animal. Is it buzzing in time with her little back-and-forth sway?

  “Yeh, I did. Me and Selly both,” I told her, “She got nabbed by a Monster and dragged away into its dungeon. He was a nasty thing. I couldn’t kill him, not even with magic; he just healed too fast,” I told her.

  “Wow, t’hat sounds scary… How did you beat him?” she asked.

  I went to answer, but a taller sprite spoke up, “Now, Lidya, don’t bother the tall friend. Thank you, kind friend, but you don’t need to indulge her none.”

  “It's not a problem, mam. I could entertain them for a few minutes. I’m comfy enough as is in my cloak, and I need to wait here besides, though I’m sorry to tell you, it’s not much of a story either,” I told her, then the younger Sprite.

  The younger Sprite, the tallest among the young, with several tiny forms that started peeking out from the buildings, granting her their innumerable power, pointed at me like I was a guiding light.

  “See. She’s ok with it. Can I, please? I could look after the other younglings. Make sure none of em eat a clod or get soaked. It’s all boring out here.” Lidya told her.

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  “There’s no room for all of 'em, not under the eaves, and you know how they get when it’s raining,” a second tall sprite chimed in.

  “What? Mah, you too?” the sprite asked.

  “I could let them sit on my lap; it's bigger than a castle here,” I told her. “My cloak could keep out the rain.”

  “And she’s got a cloak,” the little Lidya pointed out.

  The older sprites were a bit hesitant at trying to push them off on me, even if it was only for a little longer than a moment.

  “I really don’t mind; it’s only for a while. Perhaps it will settle them, give them some excitement to focus on so they stay out of your hair?” I told them.

  At that, the good-hearted folk caved, looking around at their kids and realizing that letting the little ones have some story time where they remained dry and no one died was the lesser evil between it and the idea of telling them that they couldn’t.

  The sprites called out their young with a sigh, and a host of tiny fuzzy forms, smaller than the bumble bee, some small enough to ride on their backs, started coming out from their homes.

  Getting them into my cloak went from a way to let me spend my time to a genuinely hard feat. There were a lot of them.

  I had no idea how the humble homes fit a legion of this size, but regardless, they came, buzzing, climbing, or carried under my cloak until my lap was covered in its totality by the tiny forms of Sprites.

  “I am going to have to tweak the truth on this one…” I thought to myself. “I don’t want to wind up giving a poor story and being drowned in a tide of disappointed children.”

  “So, where was I,” I asked them to buy me some time to think.

  “The beginning,” Lidya told me.

  “Oh boy,” I sighed quietly before giving a retelling… Or a somewhat dramatized retelling.

  ***

  I ran out of stories to tell the little ones before I got any word on the request. Even drawing it out with the skill of all of my Charisma, dramatic pauses, internal monologue, exaggeration, and the story itself were not enough to buy me time.

  At least I had a few other stories to tell them. I told them the origin myth about the Kirin and how each of our cousin races sprung from their flesh. That one got some reaction out of the little ones, who went from thinking it was dumb that people came from horns or muscles to thinking that the heart was the best and it was a perfectly reasonable proposition.

  “Must have had small hearts,” Lidya said from the middle of the crowd.

  “Do we have a heart?” A smaller one asked.

  “How do you even tell? You would have to see it,” another told them.

  The younger children were blissfully silent, grouped up, their antennae waggling. I did my best not to stick my nose too close; sneezing on them would be like throwing them into a tempest.

  “Maybe the first sprites were just really big? I mean, the queen is bigger than you; maybe the first queens were bigger than she is,” I told Lidya. While the shorter kids were arguing about the possibility of having or lacking a heart and what that meant.

  “Who knows? Either they had tiny hearts, the old [Queen Mothers] were big, or your story is just a story. Crazy idea, but I don’t personally buy it.” Lidya told me, petting the bee in her lap while watching the young in her care.

  One of the children, the small nonverbal ones, got up from the group and wiggled its antenna when it got to Lidya, who waggled her antenna back.

  “No!” she told the little form with a sudden force, “No, you may not do t’hat. No one is going to check if we have hearts the hard way! You silly little things.”

  The little form seemed to pout, as did the rest of the congregation of similarly tiny sprites.

  “I’m not going to let you crack each other open to check. No. T’hat’s my final answer. If you try, I’ll get your mothers,” Lidya warned them, which sent the tiny ones together again in a huff.

  “Silly little things,” I told her.

  “Little monsters more like it,” she confided, “It's like they have no understanding of what t’hat would do; then again, perhaps they don’t.”

  “I could try another story? Distract them, maybe. I’m somewhat surprised that I’ve not received a reply, if not from the Queen, from that cold Lady,” I told her, a slight shiver running down my spine at the memory of the dead woman.

  “She’s got you quaking in your boots? I’ve got three mums who want the most of me, and they couldn’t put chills on me like they could. A frosty lot the Azure, but they’re great flyers. I would certainly prefer the other clans for conversation if I had the opportunity…” She told me with a sigh.

  “Three moms seems like a lot of expectations,” I told her, “and one of those is the Queen if memory serves.”

  “Ay. A distant mother, but to be fair, she’s all our mothers can’t wean us all equal. We’re all sisters, or half-sisters, at any rate. It just feels wrong to call the women t’hat raised you as ‘sister,’” she told me.

  “She must have weaned the Azure ones with something chill then,” I told her, which got a chuckle from Lidya.

  It didn’t get a chuckle from the woman who had trodden all the way here, silent as the morning chill and twice as cold. Or the Queen who was next to her. I had been paying attention to the children and their murmuring and not to dainty little footsteps from dainty little feet.

  “Nothing of the sort,” the Queen told us, her voice causing me to sit straight up, ears standing to attention like a hound.

  “A ha ha. Ahh. Hello. Sorry about that; I didn’t hear your approach, you’re majesty.” I told her, the little sprites, drawn to the edge of my cloak, each climbing atop the other to peek out from the dry confine of my cloak only to be taped by water.

  It was like watching a bucket splash a man, each of the tiny ones giving a little “A” of disgruntlement but looking out any way to get a look at their towering mother.

  I held a hand out to shadow them from the rain.

  The Queen turned to her stoic party of one, who held an umbrella above her despite the silken cloak she wore, a beautiful silken cloak that looked like a white doily, with the transparent bits a yellow and green so fine it might have been spun from gold and leaf.

  “There, there, Brook,” she told her like a doting mother, “don’t let their words sway you.”

  “I am not so easily swayed,” she told her, “Tis but a ripple.”

  The little ones made further noises of amusement, and the Queen waved at them, which drew further attention.

  “Hmm,” I coughed, “You’re looking well, your majesty. Can I assume you’ve recovered from your ordeal?”

  “I have, noble [Tall Friend]. Now that I have returned and we have returned our fallen warriors to the earth, the colony can begin to recover,” she told me, though in a way that told me other things were not so recovered.

  “I am both glad and saddened to hear that. It seems the entire region is grieving. I am sorry for your loss. I would offer my services as a [Gravedigger], but you’ve already buried them,” I told her.

  “They are buried, their rites given, their deeds recorded. Each loss is felt. I am sorry to hear that the land of the tall witnesses a pain like our own. That is why you have brought this to me, yes? This missive from the young Lord Mynes?” She asked me, quickly getting to the point of the matter.

  She was busy, no doubt; she had a lot on her plate, so I got to explaining.

  “Indeed. The same monster that stole you led a raid on the nearby city last night. There are many dead. Humans burn their dead here, but there are too many dead to burn, and all the wood will be poor kindling. I convinced him to select two nearby spots to dig because I knew you could watch over them to make sure they remained untampered. I also know you wouldn’t do it right after all of this, not without concessions for their failure to protect you and yours. The idea I asked Selly about was granting you more land so you can expand. You made a deal for some land a long time ago, but it’s not enough. The idea was to let you get enough Sprites so you would never be entirely reliant on them. Clause also seemed to think highly of the thread and honey. He was thinking about buying some, and I have no doubt you could get a lot of material for anything that requires fine work on account of your size.”

  “I see.” She said thoughtfully.

  There was a lot of feeling in that ‘I see,’ but not necessarily any agreement. She was unsure. I had pushed the idea, but I might have pushed a little too hard.

  Maybe give it a wiggle? Give the idea a rocking. It was a trade of sorts, there was back and forth. I just had to know what to say. I did not know what to say, but I could always try.

  “I understand if you’re hesitant to take the deal. If you don’t think those concessions are reasonable for the task, I think Clause might be willing to offer more, assuming you think what is being asked is something you could agree to; it’s up to negotiation if you feel like that for the best. I can’t stay for long, but I could carry a note back,” I told her.

  I didn’t want to push her on it. She was friendly, and while I thought this was the best-case scenario for them, I wasn’t going to stick my nose out for Clause to strong-arm them somehow. I had more loyalty to them than to Clause, for starters.

  “I would like time to think further on this. I believe the idea is not without merit. However, I feel about it. Thank you for thinking about our future; I am glad you continue to think of us; I couldn’t have chosen a better [Tall Friend],” the [Queen] told me.

  “What's a little endling to do but to think about her cousins?” I asked her, “Besides, if I’m going to give advice, I should give the best advice I can. For the graves, that’s you guys, for what you should be given in trade, land. If you want time to think it over, but you’re ok with the premise, I could tell Clause later, and you could send someone to the estate with counter. The graves are being dug today; he can’t exactly wait you out; just… be reasonable? Give the poor guy some slack. He might be a Mynes, but he’s dealing with the entire valley exploding while his fathers out on campaign.” I told her.

  “So he is not truly the [Lord]?” the Queen asked a question that was obviously pointed for what I could only assume was my benefit.

  “He’s the interim and future [Lord]. His word is his fathers. Even if his father comes back and puts the deal in the dirt, he’ll honour it when he starts his reign. I think he actually wants to work with you now that he knows you exist, and that’s without the prospect of backing out of it in front of his family. If nothing else, I would make sure it goes through,” I told her, being open but reassuring.

  “You believe him to be of reasonable character then?” she asked.

  “This morning,” I started, “he admitted to me that I had broken a law that could see me publicly punished while also being in the position to be granted land. Instead of taking the land and punishing me, he convinced me to help dig a hole as punishment. I’m a [Gravedigger], I would have done it anyway. He didn’t care because the only thing that mattered was that the rules mattered and things didn’t slip further into the pit. He cares what people think of him, and he cares about the valley not exploding even more than it has. While a little stubborn, he can at least see the bigger picture if you draw it out for him. I don’t think he’s without faults, but he’s not the kind of Lord I would be rooting to lynch.”

  “Do you think about lynching the nobility often,” the cool sprite asked me.

  “Recently? Not really, but before… Well. Before, there was enough bad blood for them to happen. Nobles sometimes forget that a few swords won’t save them when people are angry enough to die if it means the noble dies with them. There was a riot before everything ended; I wouldn’t be surprised if there's an icebox buried out there with his freshly preserved corpse in a block of ice inside it,” I told her, a terrible sliver of glee at the idea.

  I could picture it like a scene of a play: on stage right, an explorer finds an ancient magical item and opens it only to find a shocked noble frozen inside.

  Fucking Quintus.

  “Brook dear, I’ll need you to run a missive to this Lord tomorrow. Do get some sleep,” the Queen told her.

  “I’m fine. I could fly there now if-” Brook the cold started.

  “Not another word, young lady. Off to bed with you. I will be safe. Young Lidya, can you come down here and hold this for her? She insists I not get rained on,” the Queen asked.

  Lidya panicked for a moment but quickly hopped down; pet held in two arms as she fluttered over and took up the parasol, grasping it in two hands, its size more unwieldy with her smaller form.

  Brook left without another word, not even a word of agreement.

  “She should not have cast doubt or asked that from you,” she told me as the cold sprite left earshot, “It is not becoming of one of mine to do so. I am sorry for her doing so.”

  “It’s no problem,” I told her.

  Her reply came quickly, though not sharply. “It is not a matter of your feelings toward the topic, I’m afraid, so much as it is a matter of decorum. I will not have her cast shade your way. There in lays division. I would, however, ask that you do not judge her by her demeanour in future. The Azure flight are trained to make themselves empty and cold, but they are not so different from others like young Selliban.”

  I picked up something there, something unsaid. A mother standing up for her child, one politely asking for me to not bad mouth them.

  “I’ll try to keep that in mine. I didn’t mean offence exactly, but I understand malice isn’t required where thoughtlessness will serve,” I told her.

  “Good. I will not hold you long. I have others to talk to. Give my best to Selliban; she is missed,” the Queen told me before calling out, “Come out, little ones. Our [Tall Friend] must leave, and Lidya needs to walk me back. Return to your mothers.”

  The little forms dispersed, a complicated look on the Queen's face as the little ones left, many of them watching her as they did so.

  It was a look I couldn’t place, not even with the walk back to the graves. It stuck with me anyway, though I didn’t have a lot of time to think on it. It was a look a mother might know, but I was not a mother.

  that your actions have consequences?

  At least its a longer chapter this time.

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