Slowly his cerulean eyes opened to take in the morning light. His breaths came in in shallow gasps. He looked around in confusion. He was in a room. Small and simple. Yellow wicker furniture dotted the confines, dirty and ragged from overuse. He looked to the floor. It was dirt. How had he come to be here? What had happened?
Then he remembered the fog. A heavy pervasive miasma that covered his body, and soaked him to the bone. There was more too…A battle. A final battle.
The old man blinked away the thoughts of the terrible fighting. He tried to ignore the smells of blood and feces that lingered in his nostrils heavily like smoke on clothing. A ghost of a memory haunted his mind.
It was over now. The battle done. How was this possible?
He tried to sit up, but his body groaned in protest. He grunted and fell back onto the cot in ragged breaths.
A squeaky, mouse-like voice seemed to answer his very thoughts, “Yes, you be alive. Sort of.”
Surprised, the old man turned his head, following the peculiar sound. Bent over a brass contraption of some sort was a curious creature. Overly large almond-shaped hazel eyes stared back at the old man, just over the top of the bizarre apparatus it was working on.
It had beige colored skin and was incredibly small. Like a very young child. Its frame was petite, reminding him of the lithe form of an Elf. Large pointed ears stuck out from underneath thick brown plumes. Not plumes. Quills. As if a porcupine lain recumbent against its head.
The creature waved a three-fingered hand, “Woo-hoo.”
The man sighed and leaned his head back against the cot, muttering, “A spriggan.”
“Correction!” The spriggan said holding up a finger. “A spriggan who you owe your life hue-mon.”
The old man sighed once more as he shook his head, “How long have I been out?”
The creature shrugged. “Few weeks. Month maybe.”
“A month!”
The spriggan held his hands up helplessly. “Cannot say for certain. Time not be so important to me. It is something that you always chase and can never catch. Something you try to slow down, but can never stop. Time be always plodding forward, an unstoppable juggernaut. It will either be the instrument of our destruction, or the agent of our glory. So, I says why be dwelling on such things. Let it flow and enjoy the ride.”
The human grumbled as he struggled to get up once more. Again, he fell panting upon the cot. He was so weak. He looked angrily towards the diminutive creature. “There is too much that needs to be done! There are forces at play, and I have wasted away too much time as it is.”
“Time does not waste away hue-mon, only people do,” the spriggan replied. “And you are here, un-wasted, you should be happy now. What presses you so, that the epiphany of your resurrection is lost upon you?”
The man did not answer right away, but turned his cold blue eyes to the thatch-work ceiling. He was alive when he should be dead. It defied everything he had ever been taught. It defied the logic of his body. Yet here he was, and though the spriggan before him was taking claim for it, he wondered if the truth of why there was still life in him lay with the boy.
“Tell me what happened after I fell.”
The spriggan bounded around the strange device and moved in front of the prostate man, smiling widely with pointed teeth. The human was surprised to see the creature not only fully clothed, but with an oculus dangling precariously from a pocket on his tunic. It rubbed its hands together eagerly and then sat on the side of the cot to tell its tale.
~ ~ ~
The old man had listened to the spriggan’s recounting in great detail. It surprised him to know exactly how big the New Wasteland, as the spriggan called it, was now.
“Afterwards, when all is long done, I come out from my home to investigates and claim trinkets. Not be long before I be upon your body, and as I begin to remove things, you make single breath.”
“A single breath?”
The spriggan nodded fervently. “So I place ear to cold chest, may have poked you once or twices, so sorry. Anyhows, I listen and at first I hear nothing. Then when I think your breath be all in my head I hears it. A lump-dump in your chest. One heartbeat. So much time passes, but then I hear it again. Two heartbeats. I realize, amazingly, that you are alive. Not much alive, mostly dead, yes, but somewhat alive. So, I takes you before anything can gobble you up. Good thing too because these last weeks, I’ve even seen a dragon in these parts.”
“Excuse me?”
The spriggan nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes! It’s true! A dragon of red I did spot. If I knew better, which I know much methinks, I would say the dragon be looking for the boy.”
The old man fell back into the bed trying to process it all. A dragon. The elves. Ashyn’s survival.
“You have a name, magic man?” The spriggan asked him.
“Xexial,” he responded hoarsely. “My name is Xexial Bontain.”