Never Realizing

Chapter 5 : Zing!

Elfaer stared at the fire without actually seeing it. He had spent the whole night with Tathen, smiling with her laughing with her, and following her wherever she went, trailing her flowery scent.

He had clearly drank too much.

Every once and a while she would look up at him in the middle of chattering away animatedly, flipping her silvery blonde hair out of her face, and something within him would ‘zing!’

Yes. He had clearly drank too much. Things did not go ‘zing’. Not anything that was supposed to, anyway.

The flames were starting to fade when he remembered why he had lit the fire in the first place. ‘No… it’s too late to eat, anyway.’ He decided to bypass cooking something and instead chewed on a piece of bread that was nearly stale. Tathen and her mother had made it and Tathen had given some to Elfaer because she knew how much he liked his mother’s recipe.

Zing!

“Stop that,” he said to the zing. “You don’t exist.”

Elfaer did not rest that night, or what was left of it. He instead grabbed his bow and headed to the archery range. He was very similar to his father in many ways, both in looks and in habits. One particular habit that Elfaer had picked up from his father was to head to the archery range when in thoughts conflicted. The way he could lose himself somewhere in between the ‘twang’ of the bow and the soft ‘thwup’ of the arrow hitting the target was a high that little else could achieve.

When Elfaer reached the range he found himself quite alone. This was to be expected, as Anor’s light had barely just begun to brighten the Eastern horizon. It was enough light for Elfaer to see.

Elfaer strung his first arrow heavily.

He let it go.

‘Zing!’

“No,” he said as the arrow slashed through the air into the outer rings of the target. “You do not exist.” He strung another arrow.

‘Zing!’

“You do NOT exist.”

Another arrow.

‘Zing!’

“You do not EXIST.”

Another arrow. And another. And another, until the last one was gone. He finally surfaced from his reverie and allowed himself to see his shoddy work. Not one even had made it to the center circle. The feathers on the ends rustled in the morning breeze.

“You mock me,” Elfaer growled at them. He marched over to the arrows, wrenched them all out, and stomped back to repeat the process all over again. He shot arrows until he was no longer missing the target and until the arrows no longer ‘zinged’.

“Zings do not exist, anyway,” Elfaer grumbled as finally other elves started to trickle onto the range.

He left not feeling any better.