Still Living By The Sword
An aging adventurer laments his newfound independence, while being harassed and/or cheered up by his longtime miniature winged "friend." (updated story)
“She did WHAT?!” The tiny figure said, buzzing around the man’s head. The man waved his hand irritably at the smaller figure, without any malice. Like in a dance, the tiny one evaded his hand with ease.
“Don’t do that. I’ve told you that your wings aggravate my tinnitus when you fly so close to my ears.” The man grumbled. The little figure laughed at the man’s irritation, but flew away from his ears. He eyed her with suspicion.
“Your old man ears aren’t what they used to be,” the little figure trilled. The man winced at her high pitched voice, which only further amused the little fairy.
“Av Thor! Have mercy on me. I feel like you’ve been intentionally pitching your voice in soprano ever since I told you about my hearing injury.” He said, his baritone voice rumbling with mixed exasperation and amusement.
“I dontttttt know what you’re talkkkinngggg about!” The fairy sang - in soprano. “But youuuuu neeeed to spill the beannnnssssssss!” She said, her wings fluttered at a pace that would give a hummingbird anxiety.
The man garumphed. He fixed his one good eye on his companion and glared. Well, half a glare. She laughed at him. He sighed and shook his head.
“You heard me. She kicked me out of the house because she thought I was having an affair with you,” the man said, and looked at her with awkward frustration.
The tiny fairy spun in a circle and howled with laughter and delight. A malicious delight if we’re being honest. The kind of laughter that you have at an old friend who has got themselves in the kind of trouble that *shouldn’t be* - and yet was expected.
“You. Having an affair with ME. Right?” She held her hands around her chest, as she wheezed with laughter. “She does know that’s, like, anatomically impossible right. Like… what the hell would I do… with… that??!” She stopped, looked at him, and then burst out in laughter again. He was trying to look unimpressed, but was clearly holding back his laughter as well.
“And you are WAYYYYyyyy too young for me,” She said to the man with one eye and about 30% of his once glorious black hair replaced by dull grey, “I don’t date sub-centennials.”
She fixed him with a look, “I warned you she was trouble. You need to go find some sexy forest witch or a sorceress or something. Someone who actually knows something about anything. Merchant’s daughter? Doesn’t matter if she’s pretty and wants to ‘settle down’… she doesn’t know anything about the life you lead.”
The man sighed, “Yeah that was the point. I’m OLD, by human standards. I’m tired of looting crypts and avenging wrongs. It’d be nice to just… you know… plant a crop in a field…”
“Or a woman!” the fairy said, interrupting him. The man rolled his eye.
“Yes or a woman. I like eating. Ok? I’m tired of killing people to earn my food. I thought it’d be a nice change of pace to be with a civilized woman. Forest witches have such… high… expectations.” He said, kicking a rock on the side of the road like a heartbroken man that still laments the one that got away. Only in his case it was probably closer to the ten.
It’s hard to sustain a healthy relationship while sleeping in forests and graveyards.
“What tipped her off to our scandalous inter-species affair?” The fairy asked.
The man sighed, “She got annoyed at me for not taking my boots off when I came into her house. I tracked mud onto some rug she’d had imported from one of the cities from far east Targannon. I forget the name. Apparently it was ‘expensive and one of a kind.’”
“So?” The fairy said, “Doesn’t she have servants?”
The man coughed, looking embarrassed, “Well… yes…”
The fairy brightened up, “Ohhh… you sassed her back. Didn’t you. What’d you say?”
“Uhhh….” The man said, looking at the sky.
“SPILL IT.” The fairy said, flying up to his nose.
He jerked back, waving his hands defensively, “Cut that out!”
“Only if you SPILL IT!” the fairy said. She was clearly the bully in this relationship.
“Fine! I said she was riding my ass harder than you do. And why should she care, she wasn’t going to clean it, she’d just get the servants to do it.” He said, sighing. His shoulders slumping in defeat.
“Is that all?” The fairy said, eyeing him. The man shook his head.
“No… I was still in my outdoor clothes when I slumped down into one of her designer chairs and put my boots up on an ottoman imported from Montaigne.” He said, looking miserable.
“I was tired!” He said, throwing up his hands at the fairy’s look of disgust, “I’d just returned home after subduing those horse raiders who had been robbing caravans on the road to Don Tac. There were 6 of them! I took down 6 of them! In the rain! And mud! Alive! I was exhausted and deserved a break.”
The fairy laughed. “And this is why you can’t be with a woman who cares more about stuff than your gallant heroism.” The man just looked miserable. His clothes were still dirty and damaged from his fight with the raiders. It was, also, still raining.
“I liked her. I could see a future with her.” He said, sadly. The fairy flew at him, punching him in the shoulder.
“Stop that!” He said, annoyed, but obviously unhurt.
“Stop being such a whiner. You would have gone crazy in such a sedentary lifestyle,” the fairy said, avoiding his clumsy human hands.
“That was the point! Get fat, go crazy, have kids. Like the rest of them!” He said, now laughing.
“You’re not like the rest of them and never will be. I watched you hack off the leg off a giant and then kick him in the balls when he fell over. No human who does that ‘retires to the countryside’.” The Fairy said, also laughing. The man kept laughing, clearly indicating this was a special memory for both of them.
“Now come on! I heard rumours there was a necromancer trying to raise an army of the dead out west. Lets go kick his ass.” The fairy said.
The man looked grim and spat. “Av Thor, I hate necromancers. The wankers never learn.”
“That’s the spirit!” the fairy said, as they wandered down the road. The man’s romantic troubles momentarily forgotten in the face of yet another villain begging for justice.
Editorial Note;
Happy new year!
This story is a re-post from earlier in the year when I was still finding my footing on this platform, and before I’d figured out how to use Chat-GPT’s Dall-E to illustrate this story. I’d thought of going back to illustrate this story before, but just adding photos to the story without re-posting the whole thing didn’t feel right.
But I was away at my annual new years eve retreat “Intention Alberta” and I needed a story to share during the Passion Show.
The key that distinguishes a passion show from a talent show is that we don’t care if you’re good at it, only that you love what you’re doing.
Being good at something but not passionate lands with performative inauthenticity. Whereas being BAD at something but wildly passionate about it has an endearing quality to it where you’re right there *with* the performer, cheering them on. Some of the best performances I’ve seen are when someone is fighting through their fear and anxiety to share their passion, and manage to overcome their resistance to ‘just do it.’
I’ve been on both ends of the performance scale, knocking it out of the park with my comedic story about the time I got carjacked by a man named “David Wells,” to the time I almost melted down from anxiety while trying to play the guitar and sing “Such Great Heights” by Iron and Wine. I usually try to do something new every time so I always ride that edge of performance anxiety. The more I ride that edge, the easier it is to do incredibly stupid stuff in front of a crowd.
Not to say that I’m *bad* at storytelling… though I may be bad at playing the guitar and singing… Ultimately I’ll leave that judgement up to you, and will learn if that’s true or not by whether or not you stick around to keep listening to my stories.
But I discovered I had to turn a 7 minute story into a 5 minute story, and so hacked away at “Still living by the sword” to tighten it up. Given that effort, and that I’m still suffering from significant sleep deprivation from helping organize a 7 day retreat with mediocre mattresses… I figured now was the time to re-post “Still Living by the Sword.”
Plus I’ve been killing a lot of people lately.
Time for less tragic tales.
Enjoyed the characters.