“I can never say quite as much as I know” (Robert Olen Butler)
Riley doesn’t sleep very well when the full moon is out. The moon no longer draws the animal out of him, the way it did when he was first bitten, but it does make him restless, and he often goes for long walks on those silver nights.
He walks for several hours, and when he returns to the campsite, he finds an elf sitting on the fence near their tent. That it’s an elf doesn’t surprise Riley- the Rockies are a popular home for Mountain and Forest Elves. What does bother him is that it’s a Blue Elf, and there isn’t a drop of salt water until you get to the aquarium in Denver. This far out in the woods, this can’t be right. Still, it could just be coincidence, so Riley approaches quietly but casually, just returning from his walk. The elf doesn’t turn to look at him.
The moonlight turns the elf’s white hair to mercury, hanging down his back in dozens of thin braids. Charms and trinkets hang from them, and it is not until Riley gets closer that he sees that they are made of bone. His arms are left bare, and the dusky gray skin is patterned with every-shifting lines of ink in many colors. It is these moving tattoos that make Riley stiffen.
“Figured it out, have you?” the elf asks, turning on his perch to regard Riley with intelligent golden eyes.
Riley bows quickly, the deepest he can manage.
“May I ask why we are blessed with your presence?” he asks.
The elf shrugs.
“I’ve been following you this whole time,” he says, drawing a leg up onto the top of the fence and resting his chin on his knees. “Or rather, I’ve been following them. You were quite the unexpected addition. And you may speak freely. I’m not your god, after all.”
“Why are you here?”
“Do you object?”
Riley snorts. “It’s never a good thing to have a god following you around. Your kind like getting in the way.”
“You can’t blame me for that. It’s in my nature.”
“Are you trying to keep Hughnin from succeeding?”
The elf laughs, a truly delighted, completely honest laugh that makes Riley frown at him.
“Trying to hinder him? Never! I want the silly boy to complete his tasks. It wasn’t his fault, after all. He would have gone on and done things, had he not died so early.”
“Don’t try to tell me you weren’t behind some of the screw-ups and delays we’ve had,” Riley growls. He hates tricksters, partially because Yuri is one herself, and partially because they’re so hard to pin down. And they’re always causing trouble.
“I am what I am, little wolf. But I have tried to contain myself. This is so unlike the other trials I have watched. He is not like the others. It pleases me.”
“What about it pleases you?”
The elf smiles fondly and toys with one of his braids, tugging at the heart-shaped pendant hanging from it.
“I have never seen the soul fall in love with the guide. Ever. Sometimes, the guide loves the soul, but that love has never been returned, even as friendship. All of the guides have seen the souls as a burden and the souls have seen the guides as a necessary evil. But this.” He waves a hand at the tent, and the side facing them goes transparent. Inside, Victoria and Hughnin sleep together, back to back, with Everest tucked under Hughnin’s chin. “This is beautiful. It is pure. And it is terribly sad.”
“You already know what’s going to happen, don’t you? You’ve spoken with Kitza.”
“My dear sister hates it when I share secrets, so I can never say quite as much as I know,” the god says, but his smile tells Riley all he needs to know. “Let them be for now. Even they don’t understand what it is that they have, and it is such a precious, fragile thing.”
“I wouldn’t have told them,” Riley huffs. “I don’t like to interfere.”
“Good boy.” A long hand reaches out and ruffles Riley’s hair. “Go to bed and dream of the hunt. You will need to be on your guard tomorrow.”
“For wh-“
But the elf is already gone.
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