Location: Monthaven.
Timeline: Sixth Age, Year 52, Early Spring.
The Hunt
The morning began with the sounds of a violence too trivial for my tastes…
Fssssssssstt. Schooct!
“I got him!” Emcorae grinned fiendishly, before giving Curk a playful shove that sent the larger man sprawling. The would-be Azora then raced ahead to collect his prize.
In the athletic prime of his short mortal life, I will admit that Emcorae covered the short distance in a flash. His thoughts, instead of being on tactical maneuvers against the forces of Chaos, were consumed by vanity: Speed kills – that’s what El-Janus says – and nobody is quicker than Emcorae Azop!
He arrived to inspect his work, pleased that his arrow had flown true, piercing a large hare right above its left shoulder—a clean kill. The ritual of the hunt demanded observance, and Emcorae, having spent time with the nature-revering elves, silently offered a prayer to the god Pan for the soul of the animal.
(The delicious irony: he prayed to the very god who foiled Alyssa’s diabolical plans for Emcorae, thereby starting the young man on his quest for another’s heart).
As Emcorae finished his prayer, he was blindsided Curk.
“Nice shot,” Curk laughed, standing over his vanquished friend. “But we both know that I’ve bagged bigger. Do you remember wh–“
“When you got the eight-pointer?” Emcorae coughed, recovering the wind Curk had knocked out of him. “Yes I do remember… Although I still say it was more luck than anything else!”
The two men laughed. It was turning out to be a good day for them – or so they thought.
“Look at us, what a sorry pair we make,” Curk chuckled. “Here it is almost high sun and yet we only have one little rabbit to show for our efforts!”
Emcorae, seizing the opportunity to boast of his superior elven training, tapped his ear. “All you gotta do is listen. Believe it or not, a nice doe was approaching, but when you got up to take a pee she ran away.”
Curk laughed. “Well, buddy, maybe you’re right, but let’s take our catch back to my mom to cook? I’m hungry.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and carry the hare home, that way it’ll look like you were the winning hunter today.” Emcorae grinned wickedly, a flash of his old competitiveness surfacing as he raced ahead. .
Curk shouted towards Emcore, yet if the latter he gave no indication for his form quickly faded from sight whilst the bigger man plodded after him. “Gee, he sure is fast, but I’ll never admit it to him.”
The Fateful Encounter
A few nights later, Emcorae slipped through the night, having performed his second, ridiculous trespass at the Finch estate. He successfully placed another token of affection and was now back in the forest. He called for his horse, Joanne, expecting her to appear from her hiding spot, but unlike before, his horse did not come.
“Jo-Jo, where are you?” Emcorae whispered, trying not to alert any of the Finch warders. The cloud cover that had aided his trespass now hampered his search. “She probably found some little honey hole of thistles… Jo, is this your way of getting back at me?”
The minutes stretched into candlemarks. As he waited, Emcorae reminisced about the old childhood game Leped in the Graveyard – that contest of stealth and speed that had turned into real terror the last time he’d played it when a horrifying gargoyle chased him from the air. Thankfully his grandfather Alfranco had saved him on the steps of the church – but Al-Corragio was no where in sight – and neither was his horse.
A cold shiver ran up Emcorae’s spine. “Ok, Jo, you win. Where are you?”
Dead silence. Emcorae began to regret leaving his weapons at home—all but his grandfather’s dagger he wore just for show.
El-Janus would kill me if he knew I was without my katana!
He fought back the nightmares of a past, but suddenly a cracking sound to his right made him bolt away in fright.
After passing a few trees, he forced himself to walk back, determined not to be tricked by his mare. “This has gone far enough. I’m coming for you now, Jo-Jo.”
Relying on his Azora tracking skills, he kept to the mason wall of the Finch’s estate and began searching north and west. Another candlemark passed. The darkness was now total.
Ach! I should have stayed put; by the time I get home it will be almost morning. Chichi will be sure to be up and if she hears anything she’ll bark waking up everybody in the house! Then I’ll have to try to explain what the heck I was doing out so late.
Then it was that he heard a noise to his left—not his horse. Cautiously, dagger drawn, he advanced, letting his Azora training take over. He crept closer to the source of the sound, and then: Is that someone crying?
He arrived at a small clearing of pine trees and spied a figure under the boughs of a fir. Fear gave way to curiosity. He sheathed his blade and tred closer, but the crunch of a twig betrayed his position.
A young woman rose, startled, fearfully brushing her brown locks. “Is someone there?”
Emcorae recognized her. It’s one of the girls from Rock Run! She’s the one who helped Lynsy; the one they were teasing. Tiffania!
Realizing he was as foolishly exposed as she was, Emcorae stepped out, hands raised in peace.
“Don’t come any closer! What do you want? I don’t have anything!” Tiffania moaned.
Emcorae quickly launched into a ridiculous stammering lie about losing his horse. Tiffania, recognizing the blatant absurdity of the story, cut him off: “I get it. But tell me this; if you were searching for your horse, then how comes I didn’t hear you calling her name?”
“Because I didn’t want to… scare her off?” Emcorae smiled, hoping his feigned innocence would suffice.
They both burst out laughing, easing the tension.
“My name’s Tiffania,” the girl offered. “I don’t believe your story, but just the same I don’t think you’re here to hurt me either.”
“I am Emcorae Azop.” He sat down nearby.
After a brief exchange involving Emcorae lying about attending “school” in Primcitta, the young man asked. “Why are you out in these words at night? Do you need some kind of help?”
Tiffania’s smile faded. “Thanks, Emcorae, but my tears cannot be washed away by you…by you or anybody else.”
Emcorae tenderly implored, “Try me.”
Tiffania let down her guard and told him her own pathetic tale of forbidden, complicated love with a man named Darril.
It seems her lover wanted them to run away, but Tiffania felt bound by an oath of loyalty to her mistress, Lynsy Finch. She feared leaving Lynsy, especially with the approaching marriage to the detestable Diked Dinus. Darril was afraid of being caught sneaking around by his employer – the maniacally religious Farmer Pryde – who would surely tell Pastor Kastelli and thus cause Darril’s banishment. So Darril had told Tiffania that he couldn’t risk seeing her anymore unless she ran away with him.
Emcorae saw his own self-fulfilling prophecy in her dilemma. “Tiff, you have to do what’s best for you. How can you just let love walk away?”
She turned the tables. “Well, that’s my love life. What about yours?”
Emcorae realized he owed her the same honesty she had just given him. “Well, there is one woman that I am truly in love with.”
Tiffania was eager to help. “Really, who is it? Does she live in Monthaven?”
Emcorae let himself drop slowly backwards onto the ground. “Lynsy…”
Tiffania erupted in laughter, thinking it was a joke. But Emcorae’s serious expression told her the appalling truth.
“But, Emcorae Azop, why… no, HOW did you ever fall in love with my mistress?” Then, sudden revelation struck her. “Oh my god, was that YOU who has been leaving all those little presents for her? That ring of flowers? The basket of honeysuckles? And that mirror…?”
“–‘to find the true love she seeks’” Emcorae finished for her. “Yes, that was all me. I am Lynsy’s secret admirer.”
Tiffania, now seeing him in a new, admiring, and purely romantic light, confirmed his desires: “Oh, you got her attention all right! How very romantic you have been!” But the servant had to deliver the cold reality. “But Emcorae, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but my mistress Lynsy is already engaged to be married to someone else. The Prince of Orkney! The wedding date has already been set: it’s supposed to take place on her 20th birthday – next autumn!”
Emcorae, crestfallen, admitted he knew, yet, still he insisted: “I just wanted to do those things for her to let her know that I cared. Even if I can never be with her, if those gifts brought a smile to her face just for a moment then it was worth it.”
Tiffania confessed the situation was indeed worse than her own, then revealed the vile truth about the Prince. “Diked Dinus! Hel, that man doesn’t care about Lynsy at all. Why, if he did, he and Lynsy would be getting married later this spring, but instead we got a letter telling up the wedding was postponed!”
She continued, painting the vile portrait of the fiancé: in her words Prince Diked was a jerk who only wanted the Finch’s money, using Dugan Finch as a pawn. Lynsy knew he was using her too, but felt resigned to her fate, unwilling to upset her father, whose health was apparently failing. All the more reason why Tiffania couldn’t leave her, knowing Lynsy would be alone with a husband who didn’t really love her and abandoned in far away Fubar.
Emcorae seized the moment to preach the gospel of his own destiny. “No, this is not right. We can’t just let the rest of the world tell us how OUR lives are going to turn out. Tiff, we have to take control. We have to make our lives extraordinary. Together we can make our dreams come true.”
“Whoa, slow down, Em. What on Terra are you talking about?”
That’s when Emcorae suggested the four of them run away together—to Primcitta, or even the Arbola Forest. Here he was forced to confess his true history: “For the past six years I’ve lived with the Amorosi, the elves, in Arbola… The rest of it is all true. I really do have a horse and yes, she was a gift from the elves.” He implored her to look into his eyes and see the truth of his love for Lynsy.
Tiffania, amidst her own desperation, quickly surrendered to the fantasy . She hugged her new friend. “Ok, I will help you, Emcorae Azop. I don’t know what it is about you, but even though I’ve only just met, I feel as if you have been my friend all my life. Yes, I will help you and together we four will make our lives wonderful.”
“I’m so glad I meant you out here.” Emcorae sighed. “And I’m so glad that Joanne wandered off to–“
Just then, Joanne came charging up to their clearing, nostrils flared in anger, steam smoking off her sweaty coat. She almost bowled them over, snorting furiously at Emcorae as if to ask: Where in Illusia have you been?!?
Emcorae, unconcerned, introduced the elvish mare to Tiffania. Joanne skittishly backed away from Tiffania’s attempt to pet her.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. She’s not scared. She’s just mad because she’s ready to go to sleep and now she’s probably also got a stomach ache from eating too many thistles.”
Tiffania laughed: “Meet me here tomorrow evening and we will devise a plan on how you can get to meet Lynsy so that you can use some of that charm in your eyes on her!”
“Thank you, Tiff. You’ll see, everything will be ok. Trust me.”
As Tiffania walked off to sneak back into the estate, Joanne nudged Emcorae hard in the back. Ouch! Ok, ok.
As they began to leave, Emcorae caught a rancid odor.
“Hey, what’s that smell? Yuck” Em sniffed and covered his nose.
Joanne only turned away and trotted ahead toward the bridge.
“Aw, Jo, did you fart?… Damn! And a thistle fart too, those are the worst! Just great, I’m gonna have to smell that all the way home? You’re gonna wake up the whole town.” Emcorae laughed and covered his face as he tried to keep upwind.
The Price of Secrecy
That night – four hours later than planned, Emcoraesilently inched his way back in through his bedroom window. He needed every ounce of his supposed Azora stealth to avoid waking his sister, Teree, who slept only a few feet away.
He reached his cot, convinced the gods favored his ridiculous quest, when he heard a small, clear voice.
“Comfortable, Em?”
It was Teree, sitting up, staring right at him.
“Huh?!? Teree!” Em whispered. “What are you doing up? Where have you been?”
Emcorae was speechless.
“Well?” she pressed. “Should I get mama here to ask you?”
He to lie: “What do you mean? I’ve been here in bed the whole night.”
“Oh, gimme a break, Emcorae Azop. Tell me the truth or I’ll wake up the whole house.”
He paused. Teree began to count: “One… Two….”
“No, no, Teree, hold on, now. Look, I was out, OK?”
“Doing what?” Teree queried. “And don’t lie again, Em, because you know I’m smarter than that.”
Recognizing her superior intelligence, Em sighed in defeat. “Ok, Teree, what do you want from me?”
His sister smiled—the self-satisfied grin of a predator.
“As I figure it,” Teree announced, “my silence is worth at least a week’s worth of chores.”
“OK, OK. Whatever you—“
“Ah, ah, ah, Em, that’s not all.” She cut him off. “This must be something big. Since you won’t tell me what you were doing, I should be compensated for that too… I think I’ll just take your desserts for the rest of the week as well!”
Em groaned, completely beaten.
“Whatever you say, sis.” Em replied, too weary for resistance. He rolled over, forced to admit: Boy oh boy, I trained her well! Too well!
Teree went back to bed, satisfied with her win, yet Emcorae didn’t mind – for he was lost in his own dreams about the future – sadly for him, one that had no chance of ever becoming a reality.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 