It's hard not to think about how well Vesna handles a crowd relative to you.
As you expected, news of Vesna's arrival in Caelon spread to the rest of the village very shortly after you disentangled yourself from Margery, and while the village managed to leave her and your family be for a day, it only serves to keep a lid on the excitement that was boiling over, and it is impossible to keep Vesna in your house for a month, nor is it possible to keep your neighbors out. By the next morning, there's a conspicuous concentration of villagers on your side of the village, and before Vesna even wakes, your family is bombarded by a barrage of questions involving your new visitor, something that your family largely handles with good grace, albeit perhaps with - at least in the case of Elana and your mother - a roll of their eyes in mild exasperation.
But then Vesna appears, and although she seems a bit surprised - if not overwhelmed - at the attention at first, it's almost frustrating to see how she comes to lead the crowd, smiling and laughing and telling her stories even as questions come from almost every corner of the crowd. You yourself are quite happy not quite being at the center of attention for a little bit, although you still try to remain relatively close to Vesna to ensure no one gets too excessive with their questions. She holds the crowd's attention in a manner unlike Aphelia - with regal majesty - or Azalea - with poised grace - but with a kind of enthusiastic earnestness that endears her to your fellow villagers of Caelon, something you are relieved by...and maybe just a little jealous of.
You shift your weight onto your toes in preparation to possibly intervene when Vesna gets to the story about Roldharen - something that isn't missed by your sister - but mercifully, Vesna has not forgotten your request to keep certain detail private, and you breathe a small sigh of relief as any mention of clothes removal is excised from the story, only to have that relief cruelly taken away when attention re-centers on you once more, if only for a little bit.
If it were you, you would've appreciated it to a certain degree if the Roldharen story - in which you have been designated as a protagonist, much to your consternation - isn't brought up so often, but as the days go by, you do sort of understand why Vesna defaults to it when it comes to sharing an exciting episode of life at Faulkren. It becomes clear that the other "exciting" event for you and Vesna is the Squirrel attack on the academy, and to you - someone who has known Vesna for a while now - it's clear she'd rather just move on from that topic, trying to shift the story to something else instead. Thankfully, she succeeds most of the time, although usually not fast enough for dark clouds to not develop in your head, for the corner of your eyes to tighten ever so slightly at the periphery of the crowd's attention..
It's not anger at your neighbors for bringing up the story, but anger at the Tenereians for attacking. For killing not only Caldrans who haven't even started fighting in a war yet, but also Caldrans who never meant to fight in a war.
You're not naive. You know that innocent people die when wars happen, in spite of any good intentions armies have. But the deaths at Faulkren were deliberate. The Tenereians thought it was just fine to murder apprentices and maidservants. That's something you won't forgive.
"Neianne?" Vesna asks, poking her face in front of yours, and you squeak and jump a bit in surprise.
The human girl in question pouts, but she isn't really annoyed. "You're daydreaming again," she declares in a teasing, singsong voice, returning to her upright posture, walking forward once more and allowing you to catch up on your walk around Caelon.
"S-Sorry," you mumble, returning to her side once more and keeping pace as you skirt the wheat fields. It's rained a few times during the two weeks in which Vesna has stayed in Caelon - and attention has only slightly died down - but now the summer sun is out once more amidst the few puffs of cloud drifting lazily across the sky, and the fields look especially golden. A relaxing stroll in the pleasant weather right after the midday meal is a perfect way to help work out any extra fat.
Vesna merely smiles forgivingly, asking you, "What are you thinking about?"
"It's n-nothing."
Vesna doesn't roll her eyes, but she smiles in a way that strikes you as particularly indulgent. "It's never 'nothing'."
You hesitate for a moment - wondering whether or not it's a good idea to share these traitorous thoughts of yours - before Vesna's smile causes you to relent. "I just d-don't like how everyone keeps bringing up the S-Squirrels."
Vesna's smile turns just a touch sad. "I think people will always ask. I...don't think most people understand the terror of the moment, just that it was an exciting victory against the Tennies." She shakes her head in a way that seems somewhat resigned, but that only lasts for a moment as she looks at your expression and realizes she's not saying something that necessarily resonates directly with you. "That's...not what you're talking about, are you?" she asks; it's her turn to sound hesitant.
"I-It is," you insist. Unconvincingly, perhaps, given the way Vesna continues to look at you. Relenting, you resignedly sigh, "I'm just...angry."
Vesna blinks and stares. "You're angry?"
You sound just a tiny bit pouty when you note, "Yes. I-I'm allowed to be angry."
"Of course you are," Vesna quickly says placatingly. "I'm just...surprised, I guess. I didn't really think of you as the type of person that gets angry." She smiles sheepishly. "Sorry."
Your shoulders slump a little as some of that earlier tension leaves you. The weather in Apaloft is altogether too sunny and pleasant to stay too angry for long. "I didn't th-think so either. Life and d-death changes that, I guess."
The healer's awkward smile turns into a beaming once, and she announces, "Well, then, let's try not to make this about life and death, shall we?"
"Hello, girls!" calls out a voice from the wheat fields; an adult elven woman emerges from the rows of wheat, her hands smeared with dirt from arduous farmwork.
"H-Hello, Nel," you greet the older woman politely.
"Good morning," Vesna similarly says with a bow of her head. Nel must've heard her earlier explanation, although she fortunately seems largely alone; there isn't a small crowd suddenly flocking in your direction, so there's no ruining this quiet walk between the two of you, at least not yet.
"Where are you girls off to?" Nel asks, placing her hands on her hips and stretching her back after bending over in the fields for goodness knows how long.
"J-Just taking a walk," you explain.
Nel smiles at you impishly. "Trying to get away from your gossipy neighbors, aren't you?"
"N-No, I'm not!" you protest, your face coloring.
Turning to Vesna as if you aren't there, your neighbor continues in amused, conspiratorial faux-whispers, "Dryads are so private. Kaia and Rianne thought we were nosy too when they first moved in. It's been, what, ten years?"
"T-Twelve. And I-I'm not really that private!"
"Twelve years," Nel whistles. "Time flies" She sizes you up and grins broadly. "And look at you! A Caldran mercenary apprentice now."
You feel like you've already received your lifetime's worth of this particular reaction over the last month and a half. "Vesna is one too!" you say, trying to divert the attention away from yourself.
"As you are," Nel smiles at Vesna. "Did you know Neianne is the first girl we've sent to Faulkren in a century and a half?"
"Really?" Vesna asks politely but also with genuine interest.
"Oh, yes. The last one we sent was a local heroine too. Bards still sing songs about Emeline around these parts, you know? The adventures she went on, the legendary sword she left behind, the girls she took to bed..."
You face flushes crimson again. "N-N-Nel!" you squeak; this is not the topic you want your neighbors to start sharing with a friend that has come all this way to visit you in Caelon.
But Vesna isn't actually paying attention to the last part. Rather, her eyes have lit up earnestly on another subject entirely. "She left behind a legendary sword?" she asks, her interest piqued.
"It's a story p-people made up," you explain. "The adults would t-tell us the story when we were young, a-and then we'd go off looking for it. It was just a g-game."
"Neianne," Nel clicks her tongue, almost as if admonishing you, or perhaps just making fun of you, "why would you think it's made up?"
"Someone would've f-found it by now!"
Unabated and certainly not discouraged by your statements to the contrary, Vesna asks, "How did the story go?"
Nel smiles in the way adults tend to smile when children are interested in the stories they have to tell. "They say Emeline returned to Caelon once with a sword, exquisitely crafted by the best blacksmiths in the employ of House Cenoryn at the time. But when she left to fight distant wars and earn her fortune, it was a different sword she carried, so that beautiful sword must've remained in Caelon. Yet our ancestors never found it when Emeline returned to the Spring and her remaining wealth spent on building a small little shrine right here in Caelon." She pauses for a moment then adds, "Did you know Emeline was one of the last famous Conceptualists in Apaloft?" The juxtaposition of saying Emeline "returned to the Spring" while also pointing out she was a Conceptualist seems to be lost on Nel.
Vesna too, her tone almost childishly excited as she asks, "So the sword must still be somewhere here in Caelon?"
"Or she c-could've given it to someone else," you point out, a little bit alarmed by how enthusiastic Vesna is becoming. Why is Nel trying to draw Vesna in with a story the adults made up to keep you children occupied? "We don't even know the sword exists!"
"Oh, don't be such a downer, Neianne," laughs Nel before turning back to Vesna. "I bet the sword is still somewhere in the area."
"You're just making f-fun of me," you pout, deciding to start walking away from a laughing Nel. Vesna stays behind as you leave - you hope that the fact you're moving away gives Vesna a chance to disentagle from the crowd - but as you round the corner of the wheat field, you realize Vesna is taking a long time to catch up.
You're beginning to worry that Nel still has Vesna as a captive audience - or perhaps a captive storyteller - and are thinking about heading back to drag Vesna away from Nel when the human girl in question rounds the corner of the fields, her eyes alight with excitement in a way that overwhelms you a little.
"I want to look for it," Vesna declares breathlessly.
You blink. "For what?"
"Emeline's sword!"
You blink again. "You think it's r-real?" Because you sure don't.
"I'm sure it's real!" Vesna insists.
"You know that i-it's something the adults made up when we were ch-children, right?"
"But Emeline was real, wasn't she?"
You hesitate. "Well, yes, b-but..."
"It's a way to spend our time together," Vesna points out gently.
It's hard to argue with that. "Oh, alright. I-I don't know where to look, though."
But now that you're tentatively aboard this endeavor, Vesna is undeterred. "Didn't Nel say that Emeline was one of the region's last famous Conceptualists, and that the remainder of her wealth had been spent on building a shrine here?"
"So...you want to s-start from the shrine?"
Vesna smiles. "I don't have anything better to do."
You've always known about the shrine at the outskirts of town, of course. The story, at least so it was told, was that Emeline had it built in a rather inconspicuous corner of town where it wouldn't trouble a village full of Primordians. It was a private point of congregation for Emeline and what few Conceptualists still remained in Caelon at the time. When they passed, their Primordian daughters did not maintain the upkeep of the shrine, and so it fell into disrepair.
The shrine itself still stood, a relatively modest open-air structure of stone just a bit smaller yet just a bit taller than your family's modest cottage, built in the relatively harder lines of typical Treiden architecture rather than the smooth, rounded domes that came with the Primordial faith. Here, in a lonely corner of the village, the sounds of Caelon rumbled softly in the distance. There are no doors to open or windows to close, merely a collection of pillars and walls and a roof overhead with enough gaps in between for a breeze to ruffle the grass and flowers growing between the gaps of stone tiles. Similarly, with no one to look after it, moss and vines have long stretched their way up shrine.
As you and Vesna approach the main arch leading into the shrine, a slightly awkward question strikes you. "Are you a P-Primordian?" you ask. Entering a shrine of a faith that isn't yours isn't exactly a huge taboo in Caldrein, but it's also not exactly courteous.
But Vesna passes through the arch easily and answers with a smile, "Conceptualist, actually. I take to the old faith."
"O-Oh," you say, both a little surprised and also a bit relieved. At least one of you belongs here. You awkwardly step under the stone roof as well.
"What about you? Are you a Gaianist?"
"I'm...in between," you explain after a moment of careful thought. It's a little difficult to explain that although your parents are Gaianist and that you spent the first five years in a commune where all dryads are Gaianist, leaving Thionval at so early an age made it difficult to really keep the faith of "your people", not that you ever really understood it after being removed from that environment at five summers old. And that transition - the culture shock, what felt like excessive familiarity of the plainsfolk at the time - similarly made it difficult to become a Primordian or a Conceptualist or even an Indigenist. By and large, you just want to live in the now and be a good person, whatever that entails.
Vesna, thankfully, has the good grace not to inquire further. Or perhaps she's merely too taken with trying to proceed with your little adventure. "Let's split up and look for clues. I'll look around inside and you check outside, will you please?"
"O-Okay."
"Call out if you find anything!"
Your slow walk around the outside walls of the shrine, honestly, is really more about indulging Vesna rather than any real effort to look for "clues". After all, it's not like you and the other children of Caelon haven't already spent the younger years of your lives convinced that you will finally be the ones to find that supposed legendary sword Emeline left behind, scouring the entire village for clues until your parents reminded you it was time was supper. Part of growing up, you suppose, is that all your aunties - not your parents, at least, because this isn't part of their folklore as it will become yours, but they didn't dispel the fantasy either - were leading you around the nose with fantastical but ultimately false stories.
Still, you take your time walking around the decrepit temple, left unattended for more than a hundred years. You wonder if even the oldest elves of Caelon - those who have lived longer than a century and a half - remember Emeline. All that remains of her is this shrine overrun by the local plantlife. In a way, it appeals to your inner dryad instincts, but years of living in Caelon - among the plainsfolk - incurs just a modicum of sadness when you lay lies upon what you suppose is the remnants of a dead, abandoned legacy.
In the end, even Caldran mercenary fade away to dust and memories. Eventually this, too, will fade away.
After a respectable three minutes circling a perimeter that really isn't actually more than even fifty meters long, you finally return inside, expecting to find Vesna at least a little frustrated by the lack of any hint as to where to find the object of her treasure hunt.
Instead, she's looking intensely at a wall.
"Vesna?" you call out, walking up behind her at a respectful pace so as to not break her concentration on...well, a wall.
Vesna, however, seems pleased at your return as she points at the wall. "Take a look at this," she says, beckoning you closer.
Looking at the spot she's pointing at, you find yourself looking at an inscription that looks hand-chiseled, one among several on the walls of the shrine. This has always been here, of course, for far longer than you've been alive, something that has always been tacitly accepted by the people of Caelon as most likely Conceptualist religious verses written in its original, unintelligible form. You know very little about Old Treiden - what Caldrans very insistently call what the rest of the world refers to as "Old Tenereian" - aside from the fact it's a fairly antiquated language that predated both the Confederacy of Caldrein and the Tenereian Union, stretching back to the days of the Tenereian Empire. Many of those surviving texts from far back in that point in history of the Treiden people were Conceptualist texts, smuggled to Caldrein by the old guard of the empire during the Tenereian Civil War and the Rose Revolution, and thus spared the fate of the other texts that were lost when the Three Great Libraries in Brycott burned down..
Although modern Treiden shares the same alphabet as its predecessor - with a few exceptions - it's almost entirely a different language, with only the slightest of resemblances to the language it was born from. It used to be that Conceptualist priestess who wanted to rise the ranks of the clergy needed to learn Old Treiden to read the original religious texts, although with the rise of Primordiality, fewer and fewer people have any reason to study the ancient language.
You point out the obvious: "I can't r-read that." Nor can anyone in Caelon, but since it has always been assumed to be something significant to Conceptualism, no one really ever paid it too much attention.
"I can," Vesna says in the kind of tone that one uses to point out it's sunny today. "It's talking about a tree nearby."
You blink. "You can read Old Treiden?" Sieglinde herself once mentioned in passing having learned a bit of Old Treiden, albeit not at a particularly proficient level.
"A little." And when Vesna catches the skeptical look on your face, she sheepishly explains, "My father made me learn a little so I could read a bit of the original Conceptualist texts. And it's useful for selling antiques! You know, to make sure they aren't fakes or anything."
"Oh." You suppose that makes sense. It's just surprising. But you suppose it makes sense for Vesna to know "a little" as the daughter of a merchant family. It's actually kind of impressive, and it makes you feel a bit inadequate as to how little you have learned and studied through your childhood.
"I can't understand all of it," Vesna admits, "but I think it's saying there's a clue in a tree nearby."
"We're...C-Caelon is next to woodlands. That's a l-lot of trees."
Vesna smiles knowingly. "I think I know which one it's talking about."
"Are y-you sure there's anything out here?" you ask from the ground, calling up to the branches of a maple tree, concern evident in your voice as you watch Vesna's ascent with obvious nervousness.
Energy seems to almost tangibly exude out of Vesna's slender frame even from about six, maybe seven meters up. "This is definitely the right way," she declares, brushing aside another thicket of leaves, her enthusiasm for the adventure is infectious enough that you find yourself smiling back, even if you're more than a little skeptical.
"There's n-nothing out here for kilometers," you nonetheless point out. Indeed, this particular maple tree is actually one of the few out in the plains, quite some distance away from the woodlands Caelon is situated right next to, the woodlands where your mother works. "I-If it is out here, it's not just going to be in a-any tree."
"Are you sure?" Vesna asks, good-naturedly. "We could check them all."
That may take a while. While not exactly the woodland next to your mother's workshop, the plains around Caelon are hardly lacking in isolated trees either; you can see twenty around you at a glance, many of them hundreds of meters from each other.
Still, you concentrate on this one as you call up, "Please be c-careful!" Vesna does not seem like the most athletic of humans, after all, and she has gotten pretty high.
"I'll be fine!" Vesna calls out as she disappears amidst the leaves, too high for you to properly see her. "What's the worst that can happen?"
Moments later, there is a loud cracking sound of a branch up above. You tense, suddenly fearful that something Vesna is using to support her weight has snapped away, that she's about to fall, and you need to catch her. And indeed, a split-second later, Vesna reppears from the foliage, dropping at a rapid speed. But then you realize she isn't dropping; she's sliding and scrambling down the tree, her descent only barely arrested by fleeing footfalls on a few branches in the way. She lands haphazardly on the ground, looking ready to bolt, and it's only as she urges "run, run, run" that you realize that is a furious black cloud buzzing angrily towards you...from a beehive on the ground that had also fallen down from the branches with Vesna, connected to a broken branch.
The two of you run as fast as you legs can carry you, until your lungs are burning with the effort. When Vesna finally slows to a stop, there is no sign of pursuit, and you're forced to bend over with your hands on your knees to catch your breath. Vesna simply puts her back to a tree - perhaps not the wisest idea, given what happened the last time she had contact with a tree - and slumps to the ground. For a long moment, the only sounds are gasping, Vesna's coughing laughter, and a woodpecker overhead, stubbornly ignoring you as it digs in the bark of Vesna's tree.
Eventually, she sits up, and turns to you, a concerned expression on her face. "Sorry!" she says. "Did they get you? I got away fast enough, but you were pretty far behind me. I can heal you up if they did."
You blink at her. "G-Get?" you ask, uncertainly.
"Sting you," she clarifies. "I'm good at bee stings. I helped some of the farmers around Faulkren while I was practicing my spells for cleansing away poisons."
"Oh," you say, momentarily uncertain how to explain. "Um..." you flush red as she looks at you quizzically, not that you weren't already red from exertion. "B-Bees like dryads."
Vesna blinks. "...'Like'?" she echoes.
"Th-They don't sting us," you say, awkwardly. "Th-They like...hair flowers, but i-insects don't...pay a lot of attention to us."
Vesna blinks some more. "But bugs are icky."
"They a-are! But they don't...r-really bother us."
Vesna's expression is blankly surprised, until all at once her expression is lost in deep confusion. "Neianne?" she asks.
"Y-Yes?"
"If bees don't sting you...why did you even run?"
"You were running first!" you say, a little absurdly.
The two of you stare at each other in awkward silence for a moment.
"Neianne?"
"Y-Yes?"
"Next time, you're climbing the tree."
"Are you s-sure they're clues?" you ask Vesna an hour later. "And not...just C-Conceptualist sayings?"
"I'm a Conceptualist, remember?" Vesna points out even as she surveys the ground around a boulder at the edge of the wheat fields, not too far from where you talked to Nel earlier in the day, the trigger for the day's events thus far. "I'm pretty sure they're not Conceptualist verses. Not strictly, anyways."
After the incident with the bees, Vesna promptly decided to give up on trees, returning to the shrine once more; the human "may have misread the clue", or so she said, so after giving her some time to re-decipher the clue, the two of you are back out looking for boulders. You're not entirely sure how similar the word "tree" is from "boulder" in Old Tenereian, but you supposed Vesna is the expert here. Or perhaps just desperate to do something with her time.
It's not an interesting boulder, you suppose, and you have no idea what Vesna sees with it that's so captivating. It's not like there's any hints here; it's just a boulder that's large enough for you and some of the other children of the village to climb up and sit on as you watched the adults tend to the fields. You've outgrown that pastime, and now it's mostly your sister and her friends who sit upon that vantage point above the rows of wheat.
You suppose you're still content just waiting around for Vesna to lose interest in this boulder - even if it just means she'll look for clues around the next boulder - but your complacency is tragically interrupted by a familiar voice asking, "What are you two doing?"
If Margery is what Elana terms "the bossy the elven girl" of her generation, Silva is yours. In a way, the elven girl just a year or two older than you - now standing in front of you after having rounded the boulder, looking on in mild but perplexed interest - is almost like a villager-version of Aphelia, except without that easy grace that your lady of Arnheim has. If anything, although you used to look up to her a bit as someone who was confident and poised and elegant, now that you've met Aphelia, Silva just feels like she's trying too hard.
Perhaps it's partly for that reason that you're quick to deny that you and Vesna are doing anything. "N-Nothing!" you insist, trying to sound as unsuspicious as possible.
Of course, Vesna ruins the charade immediately by standing up and declaring happily, "We're looking for Emeline's legendary sword!"
Silva raises an eyebrow, condescending in the manner that an older sister would take to a particularly foolish younger sister. "Seriously?" she asks, but the statement is obviously directed more at you than at Vesna, which makes you feel a little annoyed and embarrassed. "You're still looking for it? We're not children anymore, you know."
"I think it's real," Vesna offers innocently.
"Mm." The elf clearly thinks little of what the two of you are doing, but then she smiles slightly with a hint of amusement as she returns her attention to Vesna. "Did you know when we were children and still looking for the sword, Neianne tried to pray really hard so she could talk to the fae?"
Your face heats up. "S-S-Silva!" you protest ineffectually.
"She did?" Vesna asks, fortunately sounding like she's more interested than she is amused. It's still embarrassing nonetheless.
"Why, yes," sniffs Silva, subtly pleased with herself, ignoring your stuttering attempts at shutting down this story. "She even tried to ask the fae who could hear her to waylay my own attempts to ask the fae." Looking at your patronizingly, she notes, "You really need not have bothered; the fae are kind of useless for things like this. You can never get them to understand what you're really looking for, nor can you ever really understand what they're trying to say."
Vesna's tone seems rather subdued as she thoughtfully says, "That a bit sad to hear, isn't it? It sounds like a waste of a gift to be able to see the fae."
Silva shrugs. "Well, I didn't set the rules." She blinks, and the next moment, her eyes glaze over a bit in the way many elven eyes do when they're looking at another layer of reality, the layer where the fae are supposed to reside in. In spite of this, she seems just a tiny bit surprised as she looks in the direction past your shoulder - or perhaps above your shoulder - and she suddenly asks, "Do you remember the time Neianne asked one of you to help you look for Emeline's 'legendary sword'?" You feel the heat in your cheeks as Silva's gaze refocuses a moment later on Vesna. "See?" she shrugs again, as if Vesna somehow had the ability to see the fae Silva did. "It has no idea what I'm talking about."
Puffing up your cheeks and ignoring a smile from Vesna, you decide to retaliate: "W-Well, you tried to get a dog to f-find it for you! It wasn't even y-your dog! You b-borrowed my mother's dog and didn't t-tell her either."
Silva blushes a bit; she obviously didn't expect a comeback from you. "Well, she was just running around the village!" she mutters defensively. "I didn't think it'd trouble anyone if I...played around with her for a while."
"And because our dog d-didn't know what she was supposed to be l-looking for," you continue, speaking more to Vesna than Silva herself at this point, the latter who is flushing redder and redder by the second, "she ended up stealing p-pie from Nel's kitchen," who, of course, ran a bakery. "Silva t-tried to stop her, but ended up getting c-cream all over herself."
"Okay, Neianne," interrupts Silva, trying to sound imperious instead of embarrassed, and frankly not doing a very good job at it, "that's enough."
"And th-then her parents found out about it," you continue, unabated, "and then Silva got s-spanked by her mother. We didn't see it, b-but you could hear it r-really loudly outside the windo..."
Which is about as far as you get before Silva starts pinching you by the cheeks and tugging them apart really hard to stop you from speaking, at which point your words become unintelligible. You, of course, start tugging on the elf's cheeks as well; you're stronger and tears are welling in the corner of her eyes, but she refuses to let go, not with her pride on the line.
Fortunately, your pinching and tugging duel doesn't last long; Vesna suddenly laughs with unrestrained delight, hugging her stomach and doubling over as she does so. To her credit, she doesn't seem to be laughing at the two of you insomuch as she's mirthful over the stories shared. Still, it takes a lot of the wind out of you and Silva, and the two of you let go of each other's cheeks, blushing quietly and determined not to look at anyone in particular as you wait out Vesna's giggling.
"Let's never speak of this ever again," Silva mutters.
"Never ever," you agree.
"S-So, as you can see," you explain as you hold your skirt tightly down, or perhaps up in this case, "Selma often sets up th-these kinds of traps. Mostly for w-wolves, but sometimes for other p-pests."
"I see," Vesna nods, looking up at you. Which is a rare enough occurrence, given the human is actually just a bit taller than you are. "Sorry. Thanks for pushing me out of the way."
"You're welcome," you nod politely from where you're hanging upside-down from a tree branch. Unwillingly, in part because there's a loop of rope tangled around your angle, dangling you. You're not hurt, not even from the whiplash, save for your pride, you suppose. Still, there are worse outcomes than having to hold up your skirt to your knees so no one can see your unmentionables. With this awkward thought in mind, you ask, "H-Help me down?"
"Yeah," Vesna nods, moving immediately for the tree trunk. Although she hesitates for a moment when she actually gets there. "There's...no beehive on this tree, is there?"
"N-No."
Vesna looks at you and then up the tree suspiciously. "Really?"
"I don't th-think so."
"So you're not sure?"
"Vesna."
"Yes, yes," Vesna pretends to sigh, smiling as she starts climbing up the second tree of the day, "I'm going up."
"And d-don't peek under my dress!" you cry as she gets close to the branch where upon which the rope is looped around.
"You mean 'over' your dress."
"What?"
"Because you're upside-down."
"Vesna."
"I'm working on it!"
And so she is, trying to work on loosening the knot around your ankle. Strong though you are - at least relative to the other races of Iuryis - you don't have the kind of endurance humans do, and hope you don't have to try to hold down - or up, if you want to get into technicalities like Vesna - your dress for too long.
"White," Vesna suddenly murmurs.
"Vesna!" you protest, your face flushing as you press your dress tighter against your legs.
"I was just guessing!" she laughs. "I didn't look!"
You pout, waiting for Vesna to finish undoing the knot around your ankle. You hope she'll actually warn you ahead of time so you can catch your fall.
"So it is white," Vesna confirms.
Vesna has to flee for a while before you've expended enough energy chasing her to not want to throw her into something.
Vesna, in a way, amazes you. It's well into the afternoon at this point, the sun is setting - although not quite enough yet to turn warm the sky into an orange glow - yet although it's literally been hours on a fruitless search, her enthusiasm has yet to wane. You've thus far looked around trees, boulders, houses, farmlands, and just about everything in between. She has now wandered into the woodlands, swerving left and right between the trees, with you awkwardly in tow.
Somehow, it feels like the two of you have strayed a long way from the hint that directed you towards trees. Or boulders. Something.
But even as you feel a little exasperated by what seems like Vesna's boundless interest for a stupid children's story about a legendary sword, you can't deny it's been fun. The two of you have walked around, chatted, gotten into silly little hijinks, and generally had a pleasant time with little stories in between. Honestly, you would've been fine just staying home and spending your summer vacation relaxing before the burdens of your second year at Faulkren continues; by contrast, you've just spent what feels like an entire vacation's worth of energy on today.
You don't dislike this.
"It's somewhere around here," Vesna declares in an entirely ordinary and unremarkable spot in the woodlands, a spot filled with trees and leaves like any other.
"Here?" you echo. Then, a bit more hesitantly, "Wh-What are we looking for again?" It's a bit difficult to tell at this point.
Instead of answering, Vesna suddenly starts hopping around, in almost random directions, jumping from and landing on both feet in a manner that's almost like a bunny hop. It's actually a bit awkward to watch as she stomps on the ground here and there.
This goes on for half a minute and you're about to ask what she's doing again - and maybe tell her she's looking a bit silly - when Vesna lands, and suddenly she yelps in alarm as the ground beneath her gives out.
You rush over with concern, but Vesna's already picking herself up from the hole that has materialized beneath her feet; she landed at an angle, so she isn't in any real danger of falling into the hole. Still, you pull her away from it, although you need not really have bothered; as you look into the hole, you realize that it is not a huge cavern below as you may have feared, but merely a small cavity in the land, something about the size of a small carriage, perhaps. Dirt from the ground Vesna has created has fallen in, piling at the bottom, and already Vesna is jumping in immediately after you pulled her back, an excited tempo to her movements.
"It's in here!" Vesna declared, beginning to dig away at the dirt. And despite knowing that this may simply be a natural geographical formation, despite not having any evidence that this hole you've found yourself in is actually home to an abandoned legendary sword, you find yourself caught up in the moment as you start digging away with Vesna, sifting away the dirt with dirty fingers, reaching desperately into the ground until...
"Here!" you cry, excitement overtaking you despite yourself as a swipe of your hand clears dirt away from a glimpse of something that's clearly metallic. The both of you keep digging away, clearing away the soil, until the glimpse of metal clearly becomes a metallic bar. Or, more precisely, a hilt.
"Pull it out!" Vesna gushes gleefully, which she needn't have done, seeing how you've already begun to tug on it now that the thrill of the moment has overtaken you. You tighten your grip on the hilt, expecting resistance from the soil that has kept this sword here for a hundred and fifty years, pulling with all your might...
...And promptly fall backwards unceremoniously as the force with which you pulled turns out to be entirely excessive, and you end up losing your balance, the hilt still in hand.
And only the hilt.
You blink and stare at the "sword" in your hand. Maybe "only the hilt" is an exaggeration; after the hilt in your hand comes the pommel, and then after the pommel is clearly a length of metal forged into the shape of a blade. But as both you and Vesna continue to stare at the weapon in your hand, it's clear that the "blade" part of the sword has cracked off, leaving merely twenty centimeters of blade before it ends abruptly in a jagged crack. And even if the sword itself wasn't clearly broken, the metal looks old, worn, and entirely corroded, a useless antique rather than a sword of legend.
"Um," Vesna offers after a long moment of awkward silence, realizing what you hold in your hand is a defect. "So...this is Emeline's sword...?"
"It's fake."
"It's what?" you and Vesna echo in surprise, standing on the porch of Glinda's house, which also functions as her smithy.
"Look," the older aseri woman points at where the blade has cracked, holding it at an angle so the torch at her door provides the light for you to see. It's gotten late enough that the sun has turned orange, supper is being eaten, and it's mostly by the respect for two Caldran mercenary apprentices that she has stepped away from the dinner table to appraise the "artifact" you've found in the woodland. The forge has been allowed to cool to a smoulder today, making it bearable to group around a table in her workshop. The scents of soot, sulfur, and hot metal still linger nonetheless. The finger that traces the sword fragment is worn, scarred, burned to the bone multiple times. "Worn" describes Glinda, the town blacksmith, in general. Like an old tool rendered ugly by years of use, but still sharp and very functional. You remember asking her shyly once as a child, about what happened to her missing ear tip, hoping for some kind of adventurous response. The actual answer - "a very mean horse" - made you wide-eyed and fearful of the large animals for years afterward.
"This is unquestionably blacksteel," Glinda explains as she traces the outer perimeter of the cracked blade, speaking of one of the best metals to use for crafting strong, durable swords, something that even you know costs a small fortune. "But see how thin the black is? Inside, where it's all gray, it's all iron inside."
Glinda is correct. The black portion of the blade is incredibly thin, measured in perhaps only two or three millimeters, surrounding a far larger portion of gray metal at the center. If Glinda hadn't told you, you might've very well assumed that someone had applied a layer of paint onto an iron sword. "So th-that means..." you murmur.
"She was probably cheated," Glinda shrugs. She herself doesn't craft weapons despite being a blacksmith - it's mostly just nails and hinges and horseshoes for her - but she does trade enough in the nearby city of Bresdal to know about all the business practices that go on in her trade. "The blacksmith probably cast a thin layer of blacksteel over an existing iron blade. And no one exactly splits a sword to see what's inside."
"Oh," you say blankly; it's a bit hard to mask the disappointment in your voice after having gotten all excited just previously.
"Why would she even put it there, though?" Vesna asks.
"I have no idea," Glinda admits, shrugging her shoulders. "If I had to guess, just out of frustration? She must've paid a fortune for that." She shrugs again. "But I don't have any better idea. It was hundred and fifty years ago. I'm old, but I'm not that old. It's a shame, though. The amount of blacksteel used is still a tiny fortune. If it wasn't corroded, I would've melted it down and sold it."
Vesna looks at the sword thoughtfully, her expression so carefully policed - or perhaps she's just thoughtful - before she merely shrugs and easily admits with a small smile, "That's too bad."
"It is," you agree, and you can't help but share a small smile in return. All these hours spent to find what was ultimately an old, cheap, and broken sword. Still, you don't feel too bad. You didn't really lose anything, and it's been fun, spending the entire day on a small adventure with Vesna. And you suppose not every adventure needs to end with great treasures and vast wealth.
The two of you return home, eat dinner cooked by your mother, wash up, and chat quietly in bed until you're tired enough to drift to a gentle sleep. You can always tell your friends how you found the object of your childhood adventures on the morrow.
