The Keeper

I didn’t trust him, the elf. Senalyn. As the three of us walked silently through the forest I was able to observe him. Tall, muscly, with cropped brown curly hair and I'd noticed his green eyes. All in all he wasn’t ugly I supposed. However he could very well be a spy for Alucar so it was best to keep my guard up. My grip of my staff tightened at the thought of Alucar, he would pay for killing Father. Looking down at it brought back painful memories; Father had been teaching me how to fight with a staff since I was a child.

"I suppose you two need rest and food," Senalyn said, turning around to face Sira and I. I was glad he said that, I wasn’t used to walking so far. Tomorrow I was definitely flying. "This is a good place to stop. We can start a fire here without harming the forest too much, and it won't attract any attention."

Sira nodded. "I'll begin setting up some protective barriers just in case. I won't take any chances."

Senalyn looked angry for a moment, before assuming a relaxed position against a tree. "Great. I'll look for firewood." He turned to me. "And you can… you can sit here and look pretty."

I glared at him. I would not be spoken to like that. "No, no I will not. I'm going to accompany you and then go hunting."

He shook his head. "You're not coming with me." There was a certain finality to his voice.

Sira spoke in my mind. "Please trust me, Lilivia. Don't go with him."

I ignored Sira as she had done nothing to earn my trust. "Or else what?"

"I just don’t want you to come," he said.

"How mature." I unsheathed my knife and set off in a direction of some fallen logs. "We're wasting daylight."

"Lilivia, please listen to me. Don't talk to him." I heard the sound of Senalyn following behind me and I kept a tight grip on my knife.

"Just use your magic to protect us like you didn’t protect Father."

"Lilivia." Her voice was stern, like a mother scolding a child. "You are a Keeper, and I am your Goddess. Stop this."

I resisted the urge to submit; to go back to camp and just twiddle my thumbs. I may be the Keeper but it was my life. "And I refuse to let you rule me. Goddess or not what happened today was your fault, and I'll never forgive you for that." I severed the mental link between us as best I could and merely ignored everything else I couldn’t tune out. I turned my attention to the elf who was beginning to climb a nearby tree, which surprised me. Surely an elf wouldn’t take anything from a tree. Was he trying to get a vantage point so he could stealthily kill me? Well he would be very surprised, and dead, if he tried. "What are you doing? There won't be any decent wood up there."

"I'm trying to see where we are," he responded. "Might take me a while."

I rolled my eyes and shifted, my knife shifting with me. After only three flaps of my small wings I was higher than Senalyn and soon I was above the tree-line. Far off in the distance was a huge stone wall, however it was not so large as to obscure the black castle within it. Liotin. I flew back down to the branch above the one Senalyn was on and shifted so that I was now seated on it. "Liotin is about half a days walk away."

He eyed me curiously as I shifted. "You're a shapeshifter," he said, as though answering a question. Though what I wasn’t sure.

I pointed to my eyes which were the same blue as my wings and if watched for long enough showed a bird flapping. "I'd have thought that this gave me away. And I wouldn’t have thought it surprising, the original Keeper was a shapeshifter after all."

He lowered his head. "I haven't exactly learnt much about the keepers, except that my father was one." He pulled himself up onto the branch so that he was next to me. My muscles tightened as I readied myself for an attack that didn’t come. His posture was completely relaxed, and very slowly my own did. "I suppose you've been told those stories all your life."

A lump lodged itself in my throat and I turned my face from him. "My Father only told the story of the Keepers a few times…" Though I knew that I should be wary and distrustful I couldn’t help but feel relaxed in his company. I wasn’t sure if it was because he had made no move to attack me or because, perhaps, he could understand my pain. "I could tell you sometime if you liked." Not now though, that would be too painful and I doubted that I'd be able to finish.

"Wait… you speak sadly of your father. Is he...?" The sentence was never finished.

"Yes. Earlier today we were attacked by Alucar." I blinked rapidly and laughed slightly. "It's best not to dwell on things that cannot be changed though. I understand that you're probably angry at me for being the Keeper now instead of your Father, don't try to deny it, but just keep in mind that you're not the only one who has lost someone today."

He shifted uncomfortably next to me. "Wow," he said under his breath. "Uh, I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at… other things."

"Sira?"

"I can't believe she's taking you to Liotin. Especially a Keeper as young as you. You scared?" Not the subtest topic change ever.

"Ha! Of course not. And you're not much older than I am, if not the same." He raised his eyebrows knowingly which made me roll my eyes. "So what does being an elf mean, I've never heard much of your race."

"Not much to tell," he said with a half-chuckle. "I mean, we're basically human." He glanced at me hesitantly, as if wondering if he should go on.

"Basically doesn’t mean exactly."

"Well, I can kind of talk to animals," he explained, a smirk forming on his lips. "Also, we're generally a very silent, agile species. It's pretty useful when we're hunting."

"See, basically doesn't equate to exactly."

He nodded. "Yeah..." he said vaguely. "And what about you? What's it like, being a shapeshifter?"

"Amazing, the feel of the wind beneath my wings is pure freedom. However I only have one form, my Blue Jay. And it's not exactly a strong one." But I could never wish for any form other than Mother and Father's though… Not only was it my last connection to them but I was a Blue Jay.

"I'd have to disagree with you there. The Blue Jay is very strong."

"Oh? How do you think?"

"Blue Jays are very intelligent birds, for one thing. They're good at finding what they're looking for. They're always aware of what's going on around them. They're always prepared to adapt." His voice got quieter as he spoke.

"Indeed we are," I could tell that neither of us truly wanted to continue with the conversation so I shifted and flew down. Before I hit the ground I shifted back so that I was standing but I didn’t turn to face him. "We have firewood to gather."

***

I couldn’t deal with another day of walking so I flew. I let my bird form take over almost completely; only keeping the human thought of which direction I was going in. If I tried to keep my mind fully human I would tire far quicker and would have to rest before we arrived. Plus with my backpack, staff and knife all shifted with me I needed all the energy I could muster. Around midday we arrived at the outer walls, after shifting back I looked up to the top of wall which was heavily patrolled. "How are we going to get inside?"

Sira folded her arms. "You tell me. Think of this as your first test. Use what you know and what I've told you about Liotin to get in."

I nodded slowly as I thought. "Well. Liotin is full of slaves so… What if you were to pretend that you were a slave trader who's caravan had been attacked and we were your only slaves left? So you'd come to sell us in the hopes of slowly rebuilding what you lost. That way we don’t run the risk of having to pretend to be slaves and traders wondering why they have more than they began with. As well as eliminating the risk of actually being sold. Also no one will question why there is only three of us if you were attacked."

Sira seemed to be thinking the plan over but otherwise stayed quiet. "It's a smart plan," Senalyn said, giving me a small smile. "It will get us in there without being noticed too much. Attacks happen all the time, right? It's a sound excuse."

Sira nodded in agreement. "Okay, well done Lilivia. The only fault I can find is that we need to get close to the High Priest of Alucar. There are over a thousand slaves in Liotin. How can you get close to the High Priest?"

"I'll sing for a Priest."