6.

PRESENT DAY

Lotte strength enchantment broke before she reached the cover of trees. No matter how much she walked, they always seemed to be out of her reach. She wondered if this was some kind of magic. If this night and this war had stretched space and warped perception so badly that she was trying to reach a forest that was half a continent away.

With a pop, the pain in her leg where the enchantment had been disappeared, and her limbs began weighing down. She crouched in the dirt, unable to move another inch.
Fintan twilled in her ear.

"I can't," she whispered. She hadn't even had breakfast before she went out to get the post that morning. She was hungry, thirsty and remarkably hopeless. Dawn was getting closer every minute and she was nowhere near any semblance of safety.

"I can't," she whispered again even though Fintan hadn't said anything.

She couldn't, truly.

But she did.

She got up, feeling even more tired than she had before she sat down, and trudged on.

The trees... would never come close enough to her.

That is, she'd never come among them. Even if they seemed to be getting larger, it was just wishful thinking on her part.

She was forcing them to seem nearer, just as she was forcing her legs to move.

But then... but then weeds were crunching underfoot. And the next thing she knew, she was leaning her weight against tree trunks with course bark underneath her fingers.
And she was halfway into a dream already when she fell to her hands and knees deep within the woods. There, she saw a tree with  its boughs evenly spaced all along its length so climbing it would be as simple as climbing a ladder.
Hah. It looked just like a Solles tree—the trees in the elven forest that was fighting the humans—but much too short to actually be one. The earth around its roots was particularly loamy and soft. Lotte threw down her pack and cradled against the tree, finding a root just the right height to make a perfect pillow.

She was asleep the moment she lay down her head.

And then she was somewhere else.

It was a lonely hill upon which sat a tower, as tall as Sullivan tower, but made out of old grey stones, like the ones that surround a well in old pictures.

There was lichen growing up the tower walls, along with a snaking spidery creeper, its black stems digging into the crags in the stone. Despite having no leaves to speak of, morbid-looking flowers grew on the creeper, ghastly violet on the outside and vibrant blood-red within. They were a shock of colour amid all the grey and black.
Lotte looked up at the overcast sky, at the ashen soil under her feet, and finally decided to enter the tower.
Inside there was nothing but a spiralling staircase, made of grey stone so worn that its surface was as slick as satin.

She began to climb, taking extra care not to slip.

"Hello?" she said. "Is anyone up there?"

Her voice echoed up and up. She didn't expect a reply, of course, she was just testing the acoustics of this place. She wondered what happened to the thicket she was sleeping in. How did she get here—

"Hello," someone said from upstairs.

"Who's there?" Lotte asked. "Where are you?"

"I'm up here."

She continued climbing. "Where? Can you show yourself?"

"I can't come down."

Lotte hurried her steps. Her heart, from some odd reason, sped with excitement. "Why not?" she asked. "Are you hurt?"

"I can't talk about it," replied the voice. It was a male voice, but a pleasant one. Lotte was tremendously curious who it belonged to.

"Where are you?" She climbed and climbed, but the tower didn't seem to have any flights. Just stairs. Many, many stairs.

"I'm all the way at the top."

Lotte stopped short. She was in a strange, desolate tower in a grey world and she had no memory of getting there. Running up towards the disembodied voice at the top of the tower didn't seem like the brightest idea. "And why are you there?" she asked.

"I can't—"

"You can't talk about it," she said.

"Exactly."

She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. "I'm not sure this is the best idea."

"That's... I suppose that's sensible." He sounded sourly let down.

There was silence in the tower. Well, as silent as it could be with the wind howling up it like a wounded ghost.

"Well," he said softly after a long moment. "For what it's worth, Lotte, I'm glad you're here."

Lotte straightened, hugging herself. "How do you know who I am?"

"I can't..." he began, sounding very close despite being far, far overhead.

"...talk about it," she completed the sentence for him.

"You know what this means, right?"

"I might know a little."

"Do you mind getting off of me?" said a new voice. A high childish voice coming from a very distant place outside the tower.

Lotte opened her eyes, sitting up.

It was day, she was surrounded by trees and the tower was completely gone. Instead of the tower, sitting before her was a very familiar boy.
A Yomi elven boy with dark smoky skin who couldn't be older than ten years old. Lotte sat and blinked at him. He, in turn, seemed as fascinated by her as she felt by him.
The boy's face broke into a wide grin. "Did you... did you come to take me with you?" He looked so overjoyed it was obvious he was on the verge of tears.

She dug her hand into her pocket, relieved to find that the weight she felt there was Fintan sleeping soundly.

Where did she meet this elven boy before and why was he speaking human?

"Take you with me?" she asked in elven, even though the boy spoke in human. "Where?"

He lowered his head dejectedly, and then repeated himself, still speaking in human. "Did you come to take me with you? They said... I thought they said that—"

"Who said?" Lotte asked, this time trying in human.

"The...the others, they said that I..." He stiffened suddenly, head whipping up. "Never-mind."

"What others?" Lotte said, trying this time in elven.

He heard her, but said nothing.

"Do you not speak elven?" she asked him in elven.

He said nothing, looking more and more worried.

Worried? His eyes were completely elven. Skin such a deep colour it was almost completely black, aside from the green veins that passed through it in a beautifully intricate pattern. His ears were so long that the tips poked out of his hair, which wasn't plaited like she remembered, but in a soft-looking cloud of midnight black coils.

His expression, though...it was like a human looking out at her from within an elf.

"I know you," she said, still in elven, as a face came forward from the farthest reaches of her memory.

He continued to look worried but blank.

It didn't really make sense. It had been years and years ago when she'd met him but this boy looked almost exactly the same. Elves grew slightly slower than humans and they aged even slower than dragons, but any elf reached full physical maturity after twenty or thirty years.

Still...

"Maloru?" she tried.

He gasped, face brimming with what was doubtlessly hope. "Yes, yes, that's me," he said in human. "I'm Maloru. I'm the one who contacted you..."

Lotte shook her head. "That was ten years ago," she said in human. "And I was the one who summoned you."

Maloru's smile turned upside-down into a confused frown. "You summoned me? Ten years ago?"

"Into my drawing," Lotte said. "But back then... you spoke elven and you knew I wasn't an elf myself."

"You're not an... then what are you?"

"Lotte," she replied.

He crossed his arms, taking a step back in surprise. He was quite a gangly little creature, and would've seemed frail if it wasn't for the sunlight that clung to him like honey, making him shimmer as if his skin contained emeralds.

Lotte only then realised that she was in a clearing and the tree she had nestled underneath—the one that looked like a small Solles tree—was nowhere to be seen.

Had she imagined it?

"How could you be a Lotte?" Maloru's angry question cut her line of thought. He wasn't just angry, he was positively in a storm of emotion, lips pursed, body shaking.

"I'm a Leilan Lotte," she said.

"Oh...I suppose there should be Leilan Lotte if there're Yomi ones," he said, but he didn't look appeased at all. He watched her darkly. "I thought... I thought Lottes can't do magic."

"Lottes have their own tricks," Lotte said, trying not to sound defensive.

"So... so they..." Tears sparkled in Maloru's eyes. "They really did leave?"

He was probably talking about the elven army. Lotte wasn't quite sure where the Yomi were during the night time while the Leilan elves fought, but they must've been somewhere inside the forest. "Did...did they forget you behind?"

Maloru sat down hard on the ground and gathered his long legs to his chest. "No," he said, voice choked with tears. "They didn't want me."

Tears pooled out of his eyes and instead of falling rose into the air, fluttering up and up until they vanished into the sunlight.
Lotte attacked her pack, finding an empty vial and uncorked it. She was puzzling over what Maloru was saying, but elven tears were valuable. What, with just one of those tears she'd make excellent ink. She'd mix it with phoenix ash as a binding agent and... and yes, primrose oil would have to do to stop the tears from drying, but just a little bit and...

She handed him the vial. "You can't let your tears wander off like that," she said sagely. "It's dangerous."

He nodded grimly, taking the vial without comment. He was no stranger to collecting his tears, stopping the vial with his thumb so they wouldn't escape before catching the next tear. It looked that doing it helped him calm.

"Thank you," he said in a small voice when Lotte handed him the vial stopper.

She sat down next to him. "Can I see?"

He showed her the vial without a word and she tried to hold back a gasp, but naturally, she failed.

His tears were painfully bright, like diamonds that glowed from within. The tiny beams they projected appeared as rainbow sparks when they met a surface.

Lotte passed her hand near the vial to look at the tiny rainbows on her palm. "I've never seen a whole vial filled with tears," she said while watching the rainbows blink in and out of existence.

"Are Leilan tears different?"

"Leilan tears are red and they fall and turn into gemstones...like rubies," she said. "I imagine when Leilans cry in earnest, they look like their eyes are bleeding."

Maloru grunted, looking at his vial of tears. "They don't want me," he said quietly, "because I was raised by humans. I... I tried to run with them tonight, but I don't know how they do it, how they run at night."

"But if you can't go with them, where do they expect you to be?" Lotte asked, exasperated. She was one thing—she wasn't an elf or a human—but Maloru was one of them. He should be able to go to his own home.

"They don't care..." he began but stopped himself, burying his hands in his hair. "But they will. This isn't the end. I belong in the Lasuran. I'll make them care."

He sounded a lot older than a ten year old boy.

A shadow passed overhead, blocking the sun from view. They both looked up at the massive belly of a human airship. If there was one, more would come. "We can't stay here," Lotte said.

Maloru nodded his head, pocketing the vial of tears. He had his own pack, and by the look of it, he was better equipped for a journey than Lotte was.

Her arms were as heavy as rocks when she heaved her pack onto her back. Even though she didn't think she had it in her, she was somehow moving again.