Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Laurel
On the day before Everend Market's opening ceremony, endless grey clouds span the early morning sky, and an uninspiring drizzle seeps from the heavens.
Despite the weather, Laurel Lushroot walks between the Market grounds and his workshop, pushing his cart by hand.
The breeze turns the smattering of raindrops into a refreshing spray.
Emberleigh, where Laurel was born and raised, has a great many places to walk, especially this time of year, so the trek isn't a hardship.
While steering his empty cart around a rock wedged into the middle of a dirt-packed road, Laurel is already taking stock of what he has to do next. There’s much to take care of before the events officially begin, and Laurel won’t have time for more intensive tasks after tomorrow.
Today is his last day of freedom.
As Laurel approaches his tiny shop, the clouds part like a smiling mouth.
They release a sunshower that sees Laurel and his cart turned into a sopping mess.
Like the sky, Laurel can’t help but smile at the sight of a rainbow arching over the thatched roof and plunging behind the shaggy leaflets of the bushy honeylocust tree that shadows his workplace from the summer sun.
It makes it worth the amount of water he has to squeeze out of his long, black braid before crossing the threshold.
Tracking water inside can’t be helped, but Laurel does his best to avoid getting the floor too wet by shucking his shoes and shirt immediately once inside.
He is more precious while removing his pants, taking care to navigate his long, prehensile tail from the slit in the backside.
Left to his undergarments, Laurel stalks to the closet—stuffed with apothecary shelves, hefty storage boxes, and pounds of sculpting clay—to fetch a smock. It’ll do until his clothes dry.
Having already set up his stall at the Market, Laurel now confronts the large pile of completed custom orders.
Laurel didn’t invent body modification among various elfin cultures, but with magic and passion, he has pushed himself to extremes.
While at first this was met with alarm, his evolution piqued the interest of other elves.
People who wanted to express themselves beyond the boundaries of what they thought was possible.
Somehow Laurel’s personal experimentation turned from a passion project into a business—an identity. The Anatomancer.
Years spent apprenticing at a smithy gave him the skills to make his own wares and design a marketing strategy, brand new innovations in self-expression for elves from all settlements and walks of life.
Laurel has spent countless hours on research, brewing, and sculpting.
Trial and error, more failures than successes.
But he’s figured it out, and now, in the months leading up to Everend Market, dozens of special requests have come in.
It’s freeing, operating as the business owner rather than as a slip of an apprentice, no more than another tool. Laurel takes pride in his accomplishments as his own craftsman, and he no longer cringes at the sight of himself.
Many do not approve, but Laurel ignores them.
Mostly.
The fine wisps of his bangs have glued themselves to his forehead. Laurel pushes them back, banishing the flicker of insecurity. He fetches brown wax paper, soot ink, and cardstock, then loses himself in wrapping his custom orders, signing each one with a note of heartfelt gratitude.
Sudden knocking at the front door startles him out of the fugue.
Laurel’s father, Rodney Lushroot, stalks inside without waiting for an invitation. He takes in the clutter around the shop—normally quite tidy!—and Laurel’s state of undress.
“Son,” Rodney Lushroot says with urgency, pushing his own dampened black braid over his shoulder.
”Yes, Papa?” Laurel glances down at the half-wrapped package in his hands, palms itching to finish the final folds.
“We’ve an issue. Your clothing for tomorrow was dropped off late, and the tailor’s assistant mismeasured the linen trousers. They’re too short.”
Laurel turns back to his work bench so his face doesn’t expose him—he was the reason the trousers were short.
He made the request to remove several inches from the hem, hoping his father wouldn’t notice.
“Can I wear a different outfit?” He tries not to sound distracted as he meticulously reinforces the brown paper’s folds, then tilts wax from the burning candle over the space where they meet.
Despite Laurel’s efforts, Rodney’s voice gains an edge. “This was carefully planned. Now you must come to the tailor for alterations of another garment.”
A soft gasp passes his lips. The stamp he was positioning over the puddle of wax falls from his hand, landing sideways.
Laurel stares at the splattered mess, gripping his work bench with brightly-colored fingers that pale from the pressure.
“Papa, we agreed I would have today to prepare my stall before the Market.”
“It can’t be helped. You can’t look sloppy the first time you meet your betrothed.”
Ah, yes. Yet another man Laurel has been expected to sacrifice everything for.
“You promised,” he whispers, so low Rodney might not even hear. It won’t matter; he’s certain his father will ignore it either way. His trembling fingers attempt to fix the botched seal.
“Laurel,” Rodney says, tone properly sharpened.
Nodding with false resolve, Laurel flips the package to keep the paper from falling apart. “Yes, Papa, you’re right.” His last day of freedom crumbles to ash, as black as the smudge on his dark fuchsia fingertips when he pinches the flame from the candle.
Sparing one more lingering look at the unfinished work on his bench, Laurel fetches the clothes he hung up to dry, finding the fabric still damp. He exhales a spell that trickles from his ash-stained fingertips, drying his clothes the rest of the way.
After a moment of hesitation, he says, “Papa, can you wait outside?”
Laurel isn’t embarrassed by the way he looks.
He modified his body for a reason—well, reasons—and the changes were primarily for himself.
Drawing attention was an unavoidable consequence, but not one he minds.
It pleases him to have total control over his appearance and advertise his skills in the same glance.
Body modification has grown in popularity amongst elfkind, and Laurel has become incredibly skilled at wielding magic to give his clients nearly anything they could dream of.
Laurel’s father doesn’t approve, of course. He pays rent for the workshop and could easily take it away, provided he be willing to deal with Laurel’s despondent languishing afterward, but that’s exactly why he allows Laurel the workshop. So he’ll stay away.
“Don’t take long,” Rodney says. “I know your propensity for distraction. It’s the last thing we need today.”
“I’ll hurry, Papa.”
The loss of personal time might have hurt less had his father seemed apologetic or sympathetic to Laurel’s distress. But he’s not, and on his way out, he disturbs a broom that was hanging on the wall beside the door.
Laurel hovers in place for several seconds, just in case. When he appears to be truly alone, he tosses a spell toward the broom with a half-hearted gesture. A silvery thread of magic wraps around the handle, returning it to its place.
Movement brings Laurel’s exposed skin into the light, rays of sun hitting the flecks of green quartz he embedded into his limbs and cheeks.
At the moment, all he wants is to hide, so he sighs and covers the bright freckles with his palm, smothering them until all that’s visible is the skin he’d accidentally turned fuchsia years ago.
He’d loved the shade so much he made it permanent…
And then Rodney had blamed him for the loss of his mother a month later, claiming her weak heart couldn’t handle the shock of their son’s mad experimentation.
There was no point arguing with him. Not then, not now.
Disinclined to stoke Rodney’s frustration any higher, Laurel changes quickly.
His tail lashes as he approaches the door—Laurel has never figured out how to stop it from channeling his emotions so vividly, and it’s a permanent installation, fused to his spinal column.
He’s learned to deal with the way it has turned his mental state transparent, like a temperamental housecat.
All Laurel wants is to finish his work, but he locks the workshop and follows his father to the horse-pulled rickshaw he brought, even though he knows they make Laurel nervous.
Must be his punishment for pretending to have autonomy.
The rain is falling even harder when Laurel exits the tailor’s shop, and the clouds have stopped smiling. Behind him, Rodney is arguing with the tailor, claiming he should receive a discount due to the last-minute debacle.
Laurel shakes his head in exasperation, then pulls his hood down nearly to his nose, and steps into the downpour. The raindrops are so fat and heavy, they might as well be tiny fireworks with how they burst against Laurel’s cloak, magically-reinforced to repel water.
Everything he can do, and all his father wants is to see him married off so he’s no longer his responsibility.
“Laurel!”
But until then.
“Where are you going?” Rodney calls, still under the relative safety of the shop’s awning.
“Back to my workshop,” Laurel responds. “You interrupted while I was only partway through wrapping my orders.”
Rodney’s expression grows thunderous. Fortunately, when he speaks, his voice raises only enough to be heard through the rain, not because he’s preparing to yell. Laurel hates when he yells. “You’ll have to make sense of it tomorrow, after you meet Slight-of-Foot.”
Laurel blinks, taking a few steps closer to the awning so he can lower his voice, preventing anyone from overhearing his father use the wrong clan name for his intended. “Sure-of-Foot, Papa. Not slight. Beacon Sure-of-Foot.”