Sole Wolfess and Kid
© 2022 by M. Mitch Marmel and Walter Reimer

(The Sole Wolfess and Aedith ‘Sunny’ Winterbough are courtesy of E.O. Costello.  Thanks!)
Thumbnail art by :icontegerio:, color by :iconmarmelmm:

Part Two.

My ears and tail went straight down.
And stayed there.
Elves Don’t Lie, I almost drew one of my swords from my Elfintory.
“What do you know of Artemisiaford?” I gasped.  Aedith heard the change in my voice and edged a little closer to me.
The fennec chuckled.  “Your accent, young wolfess.  It’s the same as mine.”  He must have seen the look on my face because he grinned and waved us closer.  “Elves Don’t Lie, youngsters.  I mean neither of you any harm.”
I locked my Elf-mind down tight.  I had been Artemisiaford’s last Chief Constable for years before the Master destroyed the place, and I had taken pride in the fact that no mel had ever managed to get out of the underground city.
Alive, that is.
“How did you get out?” I asked.
“’Get out?’  I walked, young wolfess – you know, calling you ‘young wolfess’ is terribly poor manners.  What’s your name?”
“I’m Aedith,” my daughter said cheerfully.
The fennec grinned.  “Well met, Aedith.  My name’s Artabanus, but my friends called me either Arty or Tabby.”  He leaned forward a little conspiratorially.  “I’m partial to Arty, myself.  And you?” he asked me.
“Missy,” I replied warily.
“Pleased to meet a fellow citizen.”
“You say you walked out?”
He nodded placidly.  “Right out through the Western Gate, never looking back, and after ten days I could still see the spire of the Temple to the Pantheon.”  He glanced at Aedith.  “It was so beautiful.”  He brought an arm up from the water and indicated a length from his middle finger to his elbow.  “It was over a hundred ells tall and plated all over with silver – what?” he asked, seeing the expression on my face.
“You – Artemisiaford was above ground when you left?” I asked, my tail starting to tuck.  He twitched an ear and frowned up at me, and I explained, “The city had been under the desert for over eight thousand years before I was born.”
“Well yes, it’s been a while,” the fennec said with a casual gesture of his paws.  “I know there’d been some loose talk about going underground before I left.”
I took a deep breath.  I had met only a few Elves from the Long Ago – the Zimbars, Estvan Silverbrush, and Archmage Indulf, and I knew that you had to tread very carefully.  Elves of the Long Ago are incredibly powerful, notoriously unpredictable, and quite a bit more than half-mad in certain cases.  “Why did you leave, sir?” I asked in a much more respectful tone.
“Now, now,” and he wagged a finger at me.  “I said you could call me Arty, Missy.  Now, you and little Aedith here come and have a seat.  I’ve been out here by myself for a long time, bit of a hermit really, and I haven’t had anyone to talk to.  So rest your tired feet in the water, and we’ll have a chat.  Please?” he asked.
I was thinking this over when I heard a soft splash and saw that Aedith had shucked off her boots, rolled up her trouser legs, and had her feet in the water up to her ankles.  The fox grinned at my daughter and twitched his whiskers.  A six-inch tall effigy made of water rose from the surface of the pool, formed itself into a tiny wolfess wearing a skirt and blouse, and curtsied to Aedith.  She laughed and clapped her paws, and the little effigy started to dance.
I guess my decision had been made for me, so I followed suit.  The water did feel good.  “So, why did you leave, Arty?” I asked again.
Arty sighed and leaned back in the water.  “I had gotten tired with the place; old and tired.  New leaders were in power, and I thought that it was time for me to leave before anything bad happened.  So, I felt that it was high time for me to take my Long Walk.”  He saw the look on my face.  “Yes?”
“I apologize for intruding, Arty.”  An Elf takes their Long Walk when they feel that they have achieved the end of their long lives, and will go off to seek their Embrace.  “I never met an Elf on their Long Walk before.”
He smiled.  “No intrusion, Missy.”  He leaned back.  “Elves Don’t Lie, and I don’t mind telling you that I failed at finding the Embrace of the Pantheon that I had hoped for.  So, I settled down here and chose to try something else.”
“What was that?” Aedith asked.
“Dissolution,” Arty said promptly.  “I would sit here in the water, and see if maybe I could dissolve myself into the Shining Land like a dollop of honey dissolves into tea.”  He sighed.  "Sometimes it's best for a fur to dissolve himself and elect another form.”  He sighed.  “A thousand years or so I’ve been at it, but I haven’t gotten very far.”  He caught my eye as I raised a paw, and he nodded.  “Go ahead, have a look.”
I cast detect-magicks.  The entire valley glowed with magic, with Arty glowing brighter still, but I could distinctly see two streams of magic leaching away from him and carried away by the stream.
I also saw that his legs were missing just above the knees.
[Note appended to manuscript:  “By the Lady . . . “]
[Note appended to manuscript:  “I know.  That’s about how I felt.”]
“So!” he suddenly exclaimed.  “Tell me, Missy: How are things in Artemisiaford these days?”
I cleared my throat.  “Elves Don’t Lie, Arty, but after the city went underground it and its inhabitants became Unseelie.”
He frowned.  “Unseelie?”
I nodded.  “Were the ‘new leaders’ you spoke of femmes?”  He nodded.  “They enslaved the mels, forcing them to tend to a vast machine under the city that sustained the society while they were underground,” and I told him about the apparatus that the Master called the Moloch-machine.
Arty looked grim and his big ears went back.  “Yes?” I asked.
“I was the best artificer in the city at the time,” he growled.  “I had designed a machine to help the city, not to have it fall into the clutches of the Unseelie who would use it to enslave its population.  I wish I had burned the plans before I left.”
“You designed the Moloch-machine?” I gasped.
He nodded.  “Now that you tell me this, my failure to find my Embrace now makes sense.  Please, go on.”
I found myself telling him everything; my birth and education, becoming the Chief Constable and possible candidate to become the next Elector, and I sensed his mood darkening.  “I confess that I was Unseelie,” I said, “but please allow me to finish my story.”  He nodded, and I told him about finding the Master prowling near the entrance, and how I had my name stripped from me after I lost to him.
His expression was still solemn, but I caught a twinkle in his eye.  “So . . . this roebuck.  I take it that he proved that the smallest pebble can cause the greatest landslide?”
I laughed, and he laughed with me.  “You could say that,” and I related how the Master had organized a unit of soldiers that we’d captured to foment a slave rebellion that caused the destruction of the fell machine and, by extension, the city itself.
“I had wondered what those lights were in the sky,” Arty said.  “Completely destroyed, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if they were as Unseelie as you say, it was Justice.  I sense, though, that you, at least, have changed your ways.”
“I have,” and I told him about my tenure as the Wolf Queen.  He seemed very pleased that the Regalia had apparently thought me salvageable enough to become the champion of the Seelie.
“And you,” and here Arty turned to Aedith, who had been watching the little water-effigy dancing, “I’m sure your story’s not as long as your mother’s.”
“We’re going to Eastness!” Aedith replied with a happy grin.
“Oh, Eastness!”  Arty said.  “I passed by there once.  It wasn’t a very nice place.”
“It’s changed,” I said.  “That’s another story.” 
“Then we should have refreshments,” the ancient fennec said.  He brought his paws out of the water and clapped his fingertips together.
There was a small hut a short distance away, surrounded by several trees, and out of it ambled several low tables bearing cups and plates, with a larger table trudging along after them.  The larger table bore a loaf of bread and a pitcher.  “Eala,” Aedith said, clapping her paws happily at the spectacle.
“Made them myself,” Arty said proudly as Aedith and I served him before serving ourselves.  I was very proud of Aedith; she was hungry, but politely had only a few slices of bread with butter and jam, washed down with water.  “Much simpler versions of a hut I designed for a lady, quite a while back.  I'm keen on design, as you know."  He smiled.
I recalled the walking house I had encountered on my previous quest.  If he’d designed or built that, he certainly had wandered far afield in search of his Embrace.
I gave him a condensed version of what I had done at Eastness, and what the Master had done, and how Aedith became my daughter.  At the mention of the fell beast, Artabanus clutched at his chest and whispered, “Pantheon preserve us.  I knew that the King was bad – which one was he, now?”
“Alastair,” I replied.  “Sixth of his name and sixty-sixth – and last - of his line.”
The fennec shuddered.  “Angus the Third and Forty-fifth was King there when I passed through, and a right piece of work he was, I’ll tell you.”  A sniffle made his huge ears flick, and he saw Aedith with her ears back and her eyes welling up.  “Here, little snowflake, what’s the matter?”
“Mommy – “
“She’s right there, child.  Go to her,” and my daughter fairly launched herself into my arms, and I hugged her and stroked her ears as Artabanus said quietly, “Even though she was too young to know what was going on, still it touched her.  Do you love her, Missy?”
“Yes,” I whispered, looking down at Aedith as she gazed up at me.
“More than your own life?”
“Yes.”
“She will use your love as a wall against what she experienced as an infant,” Artabanus said, his voice sounding hollow and distant, giving me a deeper sense of his far greater age as a cloud passed overhead and things seemed to darken slightly.
As quickly as it came, though, the moment passed and I nuzzled my daughter as the sun warmed her fur once more, restoring her good humor.  “That was a dark tale, young wolfess,” Arty said, settling himself a little further in the water.  “Come, tell me another, preferably a little funnier.”
I thought for a moment, stroking Aedith’s fur, and I suddenly grinned.  “I’ll tell you a story of the Master of Elfhame then, Artabanus once of Artemisiaford, and you can judge for yourself if it was funny enough for you.”
With that, I launched into a tale recounting how the Master had asserted his rights in Elfhame, according to his King’s Deed of Gift, and how the real powers in the land, the roe-does, had reacted to it.  Aedith had been there, but had been a little younger, and she laughed along with Arty as I spun out the story, volleys of overripe persimmons and all, culminating in the Ashearth Sisters claiming the right to consecrate the altar to Fuma.  Despite all attempts, it appeared, they had still been intact when they led Sylvester to the altar.
When I was finished, Arty clapped his paws while Sunny giggled.  “A wonderful story,” the fennec said.  “It had everything,” and he winked, “but the day’s drawing toward its end, and if I remember rightly, young little wolfesses are always hungry,” and he eyed Aedith, who giggled.  “The Gate will not open again until mid-day tomorrow, so for your company and tales I will offer you fire and bread, as all good Elves should, within their means.”
“I don’t have much – “
His ears dipped.  “Your company and tales are payment enough, Missy.  You and your daughter may sleep in my hut yonder, and I’ll stay here.  I generally do, most nights this time of year, looking up at the stars and singing to them.”  He pooked, and while Aedith and I looked around we heard a wooden clattering sound.
Arty came around the corner of his hut, riding an ant crafted of pieces of wood.  It looked like a walking pile of firewood, but it had a padded leather seat and the fennec was securely strapped in.  “I’ll go get something for dinner.  Ride on, Kindling,” and with that he scuttled off into the woods.
‘Kindling.’  Recall my earlier description of Elves of the Long Ago as “a bit more than half mad.”
By the time Artabanus returned with a feral sheep, Aedith and I had the table prepared and the hut cleaned.  A short cantrip or two sufficed to send a few small bugs scurrying.  While Aedith relaxed, I helped the fennec skin and dress the sheep, and set it out to cook over the fire I’d set.  “You’ve done this before,” he commented once while I worked.  He’d pooked into a comfortable-looking chair that had walked out to him, leaving ‘Kindling’ squatting frozen like a wooden statue – which it was, without his magic animating it.
“I did some wandering, as the Wolf Queen,” I admitted as I cleaned my paws with a few cantrips.
We shared funny stories over dinner, Arty laughing until he almost teetered and fell out of his chair, and I cleared the table and cleaned things up as the stars began to appear.  “Goodnight, Arty,” I said as I ushered a yawning Aedith into the hut.  “Thank you for your hospitality.”
The fennec smiled.  “My thanks to you for coming to my valley, young Missy.  You and your daughter have been like a fresh breeze through the woods, and I’m grateful to share.  Now,” and he made a shooing motion with a paw, “get you to bed.  You and Aedith must resume your travels.”
“May I help you – “  He pooked and I heard a splash.  “I guess not,” and went into the hut after banking the fire.
Aedith was fast asleep and I was starting to drift off when I heard Artabanus’ voice carrying through the trees, singing softly.
“Would the Pantheon  ::  Let me start anew
Same choices I’d make  ::  Same roads I’d travel
The same roads that  ::  May or may not lead
To Artemisiaford  ::  Fair, many-spired beauty
I would lay me down  ::  Shadow-diminished
Buried ‘neath my bulk  ::  Till I became a willow
Tall bough-bearer  ::  Haven to singing birds
My shade I’d shatter  ::  Floating as a dust-cloud
Growing weary  ::  Draw near to me, listen
Share my bread  ::  Fruit of earth-grown wheat
Drink my wine  ::  Nectar of sun-kissed grape
Leave me not alone  ::  As a tired, weary willow
Land I love no longer  ::  Bears the tread of feet
Land I love no longer  ::  Hears cries of passion
Would the Pantheon  ::  Let me start anew
Same choices I’d make  ::  Same roads I’d travel
But never again  ::  To Artemisiaford.”