Chapter 4 #2
“Have something to drink!” Sylvie appeared out of the crowd, thrusting a flagon of mead into my hand, its sloshing contents barely missing my too-long sleeves.
She donned a small flower crown made of buttercups and dandelions, and her cheeks were flushed with drink already. “How’s your head?!” she screamed.
“Fine!”
“You took quite the hit. Good thing they got you before you were passed out in horse shite for too long!” A few people around us turned their heads at that but became quickly distracted by other festivities.
“Speaking of that”—I began to shout as noise levels rose—“who brought me to you?”
“Who was huh?”
“Who saved me?” I put air quotes around the word saved.
“I did!” Her words were slurring into one another. She started to leave, but I grabbed her hand.
“No, not you. The person in the corner?” I spoke slowly, emphasizing every word like talking to a child.
“I’m always in your corner, darling!” She pulled my head down to meet her short frame and placed a slobbery kiss right on my forehead. “Get into some trouble for me!”
“Sylvie, wait!” But she faded into the crowd before I could stop her.
Well, if I couldn’t beat them, I might as well join them.
I took a long swig of mead, savoring the honey-sweet flavor coating my tongue. The effects were almost immediate, my senses becoming dulled and alive all at once. I finished the whole thing in the next gulp, relishing the prickles it sent all over my body.
The music started sounding like magic, and my body moved in rhythm.
A few wily pixies surrounded me as we danced together, one of them shoving another drink into my hand.
The drink, colored bright red, tasted like tart cherries.
I downed it immediately. When I finished, I threw my hands into the air, giving a hearty WAHOO as I tossed my glass up high.
The pixies caught it… I think. Or someone’s head met with my glass.
I began to dance harder, sweat dripping down the back of my neck, my feet aching from jumping up and down to the beat.
A sharp pang of humiliation coursed through me as I remembered almost ruining Eldrene’s entrance, so I muted it with a greenish drink that could barely be considered a mouthful but had a strong effect—an Orc Shot, as Rosie so fondly called it.
And the embarrassment effectively got shot down.
“Oh my Goddess, Clara, you’re right well plastered!
” a voice squealed from behind me. Rosie spun me around, her face sweaty and flushed.
She boasted two full pints of ale in one hand and an entire turkey leg in the other.
Her delicate, frilly yellow dress and braided pigtails complete with red ribbons tying off the ends directly opposed her beefy muscles.
Then there were two lovely Rosies. No, three lovely Rosies.
“Yes, I am that!” I screamed. The now four Rosies converged back into one full Rosie.
There were lightweights, and then there was me: a featherweight.
Rosie had witnessed me drink a singular glass of mead six years ago when my curiosity to see what all the fuss was about overrode my fear of vomiting up regrets.
I woke up the next day covered in my own sick.
Tonight would be different. I’d worked up a tiny tolerance—enough to survive the party, at least.
“Best night ever!” She cleaned her turkey leg in one bite, leaving nothing but a gleaming bone. “Do you want to survey the folk with me?” she screamed in between double fisting her ales, her tusks dripping with drink.
“Like a bird!” I squealed in excitement. But I couldn’t do so with my average human stature. “Rosie!” I tugged on her braid, and she leaned in close. “Can you do that shoulder thing?” I yelled far too loudly directly into her ear. She winced at the volume but nodded.
Downing both pints of ale quickly, she discarded the cups on the ground and then offered her palms to me. I used them as ladders until she could place me on her shoulders with ease.
My vision went between double and triple, but even still, I saw the tall tales unfolding nine feet up in the air.
“Unholy Goddesses, Rosie, do you see this?” I pointed to the back of the crowd.
“Holy Goddess, Fates, and Mother Earth herself. Is that…”
“Sylvie is HAVING HER WAY WITH REMI THE DWARF.” I bounced up and down on Rosie’s shoulders in elation.
“EWWWW,” Rosie and I said in unison.
“To your left!” I screamed.
Rosie turned.
“No to the other left,” I corrected.
She did so.
“No, the OTHER other left!”
“Clara! You’re too drunk to give me directions!”
I started laughing.
“What do you see? What are you laughing at?” Rosie cried out. She began jumping up and down, trying to see whatever had me hooting. She cleared at least six feet when she jumped. The whole Clearing shook a bit with each bounce, and the airtime I received while up there only made me laugh harder.
“WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?” she asked, beginning to turn in circles.
“I don’t know! My tongue feels funny!”
“Ah, damn, you had me all excited,” she roared.
“Wait!” I squeezed her ears. “Captain, I sense a wench at the dessert table!” I called out, putting my hand over my brow as if scoping out the coast.
“Ah, ye spot a perty wee lass on the shore?”
“Nay, Captain, I spot a common strumpet!”
Rosie spotted precisely whom I spoke of.
“Clara, you are ruthless.”
Helda, in all her pinked-out, gaudy glory, was sampling pastry delicacies at the dessert table. She almost looked like a cake herself, her ballet-slipper-pink dress adorned with tufted green ribbons on the hem like icing.
Another girl, also clad in pink, came up to the dessert table. Helda clocked that their dresses were similar, and we watched as Helda adeptly pretended to trip and spill mead all over the poor pink victim.
Rosie and I moaned together, commiserating for the now-crying girl. But there were more sights to see from up here.
“The jam lady is sucking on her fingers again,” I called out.
“Oh no, did she stick her fingers in all the open jams? Why does she do that?”
But then I saw a short, moonfaced woman quickly make her way through the crowd. I frantically patted Rosie’s head.
“Patti, it’s Patti!” I whispered. Or I think I whispered; I might have yelled.
“What? Where?” Rosie moved so abruptly, I fell sideways off her shoulders onto the ground. I landed dazed but chuckling. Rosie finally looked down, horror-struck at me spread-eagle at her feet.
Somehow, I was always the one who ended up in compromising positions when it came to Patti and Rosie.
Those two had been in love with each other ever since Patti arrived in Moss a decade ago.
She, like me, came here for refuge. Her family was lost a hundred years ago in the great fire that destroyed Fennings Forest—a home to all nymphs and dryads alike.
For nine decades, she’d wandered that forest alone, searching every burnt tree for signs of life.
Finally, when all she knew was ash and decay, she left.
When she arrived here, everyone took her in immediately as Moss is wont to do, and she opened up a flower shoppe in a matter of days.
When Rosie saw her for the first time, we were in the middle of heaving quite a heavy cart full of squash around town for my weekly deliveries.
Patti emerged from her shoppe and waved tentatively at Rosie.
The next thing I knew, the cart was on my foot, and squash were rolling along the cobblestones.
At first, when each of them was struggling to speak to the other, I feared that Patti might be avoiding Rosie due to the substantial age difference.
It really is quite disconcerting when a centuries-old being takes up with a nineteen-year-old.
But after so long watching those two together, the problem was clear.
They adored each other, and they just couldn’t manage to stifle their nerves long enough to have a conversation that comprised more than a struggling greeting.
Tonight, maybe that could change. Maybe that was the tug at my heart I’d been feeling for months.
Rosie was the closest person to my soul.
When good things were coming for her, sometimes it was almost like they happened to me, too.
And tonight, on this delightful Celebration evening, they might talk.
Be together. Fall in love. I never wanted it for myself, but oh, how I’d love to see Rosie happy.
“I’m so sorry! Are you okay? Are you hurt?” She picked me back up and examined me. I swatted her hand away.
“Rosie, go talk to Patti before she leaves. She hates parties even more than I do.” Rosie bit her lip, her nerves clearly on fire already.
“Love, you’ve got this. You are so beautiful, you are so lovely, you are all the good things wrapped up into one.
And you look like sunshine in your dress,” I implored Rosie, but for all the brute strength that orc possessed, her insides were a puddle of soft, earthy moss.
I took her face in my hands and said, “Go. Now. There’s nothing to lose!
Just say hi. It’ll make her night, I’m sure of it.
” And with that, Rosie gave me a swift kiss on the forehead and left to find her Patti.
Did I just successfully matchmake? After ten years of failure…
The crowd somehow grew louder than before, the music all-encompassing, and Eldrene kept watching it all unfold.
I began dancing again, relief flooding through my system.
I wouldn’t have to do this for another three years.
I could enjoy a few weeks’ rest, I could maybe even paint my cottage, and I could certainly make headway on my book.
The raucous, infectious buzz of the crowd suddenly dropped out, an all-consuming silence left in its wake.
Eldrene stood.
My vision blurred, and I couldn’t keep my head in the same position without it wobbling, but my senses homed in on her.
“The Crown Jewel Tulip,” she announced, her voice filling up the vast Clearing.