true colors ...

[This is an ongoing chapter a week story that began with the first Words for Wednesday for 2025 on 1 January. I'm hoping to continue it through 31 December, the last Wednesday of the year. To start from the beginning, click here to be taken back to 1 January 2025, and then look for chapters to appear weekly between Tu-W-Th]

  Shoving the other wood elves out of his way with his elbows Thal rushed to where Kael was standing with a stunned look on his face, staring into the bonfire.  He appeared to be talking to himself, and when Thal finally reached him, he leaned forward to hear what Kael was whispering.

  "I never imagined.  I never knew.  I didn't think.  What if we hadn't been attacked?  They all would have been killed."

  Thal shook him harshly until Kael finally focused on him.  Bursting into tears, Kael threw his arms around him in a hard hug.  Lyri and El joined them, and shielding him as much as possible, they took him to Thal's cottage where they waited for Kael to compose himself enough to talk.

  He filled in what Thal couldn't remember about the attack on the gnolls, and the human that controlled the ones that had attacked.  He talked about the house he woke up outside of, his encounter with Alexander, and his eventual escape.  He had been forced to swim across a murky canal, heavily filled with a population of wicked water nymphs that grabbed his legs and tried to pull him under.  Nights spent in total darkness where ghosts and evil spirits mocked his cries for help.  He'd been gone for almost three months, but in his mind, it felt like a decade.

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  Alexander hated being made to look like a fool.  More than he hated being cheated out of cheating someone else.  Kael had made him look like not only a fool, but a liar, a trickster, and someone trying to cheat the bidders who had come to see the wood elf.

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  Finding the gnolls had been a one-off happenstance that he didn't expect to ever happen again.  Getting them under his control was simply achieved for the price of a few cheap pounds of raw meat occasionally.  Understanding them and keeping them contained was a different story.  They knew he wanted to exchange the meat for what they could bring him, or do for him, but exactly what he wanted was not translatable.  So, they brought him values found in their raids.  Gold.  Jewels.  Precious stones.  Pure silver.

  One evening the chief gnoll that Alexander had been dealing with drew an image in the sand that they used as a way to communicate an image that was distinctly humanoid, and different from the gnolls.  Alexander pointed to himself with a questioning look on his face, that the gnoll shook his head no.  He then drew an image of a gnoll larger than the figure and pointed to himself, followed by a much larger image of a human and pointed to Alexander.  

  The meaning was clear.  Something else lived in the forest besides the gnolls.  Something smaller, something humanoid.  Something that his business associates at the annex might be willing to bid on.  Dollars, pounds, and Euros danced in his head as he tried to calculate how much just a find could contribute to supporting the lifestyle that he wanted to become accustomed to.  Would it be enough to fly him to Monaco to spend a year playing in the casinos?  Or perhaps to buy his own island casino?

  Alexander pointed to the smaller figure, then gestured with his hands to "bring to me" and nodded fiercely.  The gnoll nodded once to show he understood, then disappeared into the darkness.

Image Source:
Pixabay.com

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  Now, that priceless commodity had vanished and he was a laughingstock.  This would not do.  No longer seeing money signs, Alexander's true face began to reveal itself.

The Words for Wednesday can be found here.