The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (14 page)

“
Would you want to live
forever?” Anya suddenly asked, remembering what Nin had said
earlier. With their magical abilities and intelligence, she was
quite certain the elves would be able to extend the length of their
physical lives.

“
I’ll take it as it is,”
Nin replied simply. “There’s an Elven legend about
Na’urtha,
for the purest
of souls. So they’re technically not dead, even though they can
expire physically.”

Anya nodded. “A little like…Avalon, and King
Arthur?” The final resting place of the legendary king of Great
Britain.

“
A little bit.”

Nin was serene, tranquil, as he mused on
Anya’s words. “I’ve always liked this spot,” he said quietly. He
thought of the stone church where he had met Anya and Leticia, for
a moment. He felt at peace there as well. “I used to come out all
the time here, just to…think. Gather my thoughts on things.”

He came here when he didn’t want to be seen
by anyone. The times he felt misunderstood weren’t infrequent.
After a while, he’d learned to keep most of his deeper thoughts to
himself. There’d be less explaining and reiteration to do, that
way.

Anya sat down beside Nin, trying not to
crush or wrinkle the superlatively smooth cloak.

“
Why did you leave?” Then
Anya remembered some of the things he had said. “Right, the
marriage, the wedding.” That must have been one grand event his
family had been planning for. Anya knew of some couples who had
called off their weddings, because the preparations had gotten out
of hand. The brides suffered meltdowns; the grooms got cold feet
and just took off.

“
It wasn’t just that.” Nin
clasped his hands in front of him, resting them on one propped up
knee. It seemed like just a day ago that he had taken off from
Helli’sandur, to seek something new. “I felt…unfulfilled…” He
looked intently at the ice palace. “I wanted more out of life…I
wanted to be something…be the best one can be…”

“
Even if that meant being a
thief?” Anya said half in jest, and then wondered if she had
insulted him. If she did, she didn’t mean to. After all it made
perfect sense to her. She too, had been tired of the status quo and
the continual enforcement by The Establishment.

Nin gave a half-smirk. There were two sides
to him: a free-spirited, adventurous side, which didn’t care what
anyone thought, and a philosophical, dreamy side, which he usually
kept fiercely guarded.

“
My life as a prince was
meaningless. The indulgent dinners…glorified hunting trips…the
gold, glory, and luxuries…I wanted to see what lay beyond the icy
walls.” Nin recalled the years he’d spend as a vagabond
recluse.

Anya listened to the sound of Nin’s soft
breathing, as she waited for him to tell her more about
himself.

“
You know, a long time ago,
humans and elves co-existed, side by side.”

Anya gazed at him. He was many years older
by Elven standards, but the same age as she and Leticia, by their
standards. “That must have been, many years ago,” she said.

“
Yes.”
How sweet the sound of her words by the moonlight, like the
voice of an angel…
more words from an Elven
poem Nin tried to stamp out of his mind.

A snow hare ran up to Nin, twitching its
nose at one of Nin’s leather boots, like it was saying hello. Nin
stroked the fur on its back, before the hare bounded off back into
the woods. “Then humans started to rely too heavily on
science…magic was inferior, they said. It was something the Elven
world refused to accept. The humans wanted it their way, and were
willing to shed blood for it.” Nin shifted his gaze to Anya, for a
moment. “Blood on both sides. So the elves chose to be
marginalized, banished even…to live in the outer regions, where
they could be invisible and undisturbed. It’d be as if we never
existed.”

Anya noted how “they” had shifted to “we” by
the end of Nin’s semi-soliloquy, which showed the strong ties he
still had to his ancestry.

Anya processed all that he just said.
“Actually,” she said unhurriedly, “why bother with us humans? We’re
selfish, and destructive.”

It was a subject Nin spent a significant
amount of his thoughts and time on.

“
Half of all species of
life on earth are extinct,” he began. “Scientists and leaders have
been arguing about global warming for the past one hundred years,
as temperatures continually rise worldwide. Plant species never
discovered are destroyed everyday a new part of a protected
rainforest is cleared by corporations with extraterritorial rights.
People knew what wild mushrooms were, long ago—these days it’s just
another drug. Do you know that 2.5 billion people eat too much and
2.5 billion don’t have enough to eat?” He stuck his tongue in one
of his cheeks. “Humans are the species most responsible for
violating the planet.”

The high elves had wanted to dispose of the
human race several times already—but they never could, because the
two species were counterparts of each other. Each needed the other
to survive, whether or not either was bothered to acknowledge one
another’s existence.

Anya found she couldn’t disagree. “In that
case, why concern yourself with humans at all?” she asked again, in
a way directed more personally at Nin, this time. She was
discouraged with most of the human species herself, apart from the
few people she could call real friends or family.

Nin swung his neck back
slightly, looking at the moon. “‘You do your thing, and we do
ours’…that was the Elven view, when they broke off all human
contact. Remember one of the pieces of the poem, the one
titled
lir?
”

Elven for ‘life,’ Anya recalled.

“
In your wanderings and
dealings,” Nin recited by heart, poetically, “neglect not, the
other side of life.”

Anya felt something pass over her, or
through her—something magical, powerful—a glimpse of something
bigger, that was worth fighting for.

“
I felt the Elven view
didn’t go in line, with that part of the poem.” Nin’s subdued tone
was resolute. He wondered if he should elaborate more—if it didn’t
bore Anya, of course. He could also leave it for another day,
perhaps over a future late-night tea session.

The night sky had taken on
a shimmer while Anya and Nin were talking, which made the
surroundings all the more enchanting. Anya ruminated on Nin’s
opinion, on the poem titled
lir.
He was a dreamer, an idealist, in that sense. He
believed in something greater, something better, than what had been
established. He’d even sacrifice himself, to save all of his kind,
just like the maiden in the Bloodstar legend.

“
Diamond dust.” Nin held a
hand out, collecting the little bits of ice that fell. “This isn’t
exactly snow—the air is so cold, that water falls as ice. Pretty,
hmm?”

Anya wanted to agree. Instead, she was
rubbing her hands together. Her teeth were almost beginning to
chatter. She glanced down at her fingernails, which looked several
shades bluer than before.

“
Getting cold?” Nin asked
kindly. He went forward, lifting up the hood over Anya’s head.
“Better?”

Anya pulled the cloak down over her ears—it
was warmer that way. “Should’ve done that earlier,” she commented
with a slight giggle. “I forgot it was there.”

She was shivering slightly. Nin pulled her
in closer, in an embrace. “Warmer now?”

Nin held her hands in his, massaging them.
“You’re absolutely freezing. The cold doesn’t get to me too much,
if I’m out for a short while.”

Twenty or so human minutes was more than a
short while, by Anya’s standards, under the present
circumstances.

Anya tugged on one of Nin’s shirt sleeves.
“You don’t need a magic cloak?”

Nin tucked his hair back behind his ears.
Anya realized, not for the first time, that he had all the fine
features of a classic elf. “Elves can withstand extreme
temperatures. Our blood temperature adjusts, accordingly.”

He stood up, checking his wrist device. “We
should go. They’ll be waiting for us.”

He walked off to one of the nearby trees,
and brought out a pocketknife. He sliced two vines, then reached
under a big leaf, where icicle drops had crystallized. He carefully
broke two of the drops off.

“
What’re you doing?” Anya
stood near him, hands in her cloak’s pockets, pressing against her
thighs for more warmth.

Nin held the two icicles up to the sky, a
moonbeam shining through and onto the ice crystals. Anya saw some
of the diamond dust pieces settle within the icicles.

“
Helklimbe, giliath,
ilmen,
” Nin muttered over the two icicles
in his palm, before attaching the cords of vine to them.

“
For you and Leticia.” He
handed the icicles, which had taken the form of smoothened
pendants, to Anya. “Icicles with the stars of the night
sky.”

Aya looked at him with a
face of pure gratitude.
How sweet he
is.
“Thank you very much,” she said,
putting it on, despite the frostiness that started to bite at her
fingertips again. But just thinking of his touch made some of the
cold dissipate.

Taking a last look at Helli’sandur, Nin
retrieved a small key he had in his N-Gage, and opened a door in
the tree they had entered by.

Anya went down the stairs, looking out for
the blue portal. She was expecting to find the portal and train
carriage there, waiting for them, just as they had left it. If Nin
wanted to, he could leave her stranded at Helli’sandur for as long
as he intended, his little captive.

Anya stopped dead in her tracks, when she
couldn’t see the portal or train. She clutched at the cloak around
her neck, scrunching up the fabric with a nervous hand.

“
Where’s the train?” she
whispered. She’d left the deep pink goggles behind, and squinted in
the dark, trying to make out where it had mysteriously vanished
to.

“
Don’t worry,”—Anya turned
towards Nin’s voice—“everything’s just as we left it.”

Nin waved his hand out in front of them, and
the blue portal and train came into view.

“
Safer when it’s
‘undetectable’,” Nin said to Anya, as he stood beside her. “It’s
what we call Shadow Hiding—a spell to hide an object or
person.”

“
So you could hide me?”
Anya asked, impressed.

Nin nodded. “Though I’d still be able to
hear you, or pick up on your unique…scent.”

He stepped into the train carriage, standing
before the control panel.

“
Still cold?” Nin asked
with a roguishly charming wink that would warm the coldest
heart.

“
Nope.” Anya removed the
cloak, once she stepped into the carriage. She felt a wave of
nervous tension go over her body.
He could
trap me right here, in their hi-tech train magic system thing…and I
wouldn’t even know it!
The elves blended
art and science—magic and logic—forces Anya could not fight
against, not by herself.

Nin looked at the cloak for a moment, before
folding and replacing it in the overhead compartment. “Mine works
fine for me.”

“
I liked your hug better
than the coat,” Anya said in good humor. “You’re warmer than the
coat.”

Nin laughed, then put his arms around Anya,
as he gave her a playful hug. “Like…this?”

“
Yeah,” Anya smiled,
leaning against his chest. “Just like that.” She just realized how
good he smelled—clean, fresh, and mysteriously alluring, like the
night air of Helli’sandur. She wrapped her hands loosely around
him, resting them where she could feel the slight inward curve of
the small of his back.

Something changed in his hug—he brought her
in a little closer—and it wasn’t so playful, this time. He wasn’t
really thinking about what he was doing. He was just going with the
flow. It was good to be spontaneous, once in a while.

Anya hesitated, as they stood together. She
thought she could hear the sound of her heart beating against
Nin’s. She stared at his shirt, and his smooth skin.

“
You’re so…” Anya tried to
find the right words, but none would come.

Then he kissed her. It was a tentative,
curious, lighthearted kiss. She was caught off guard, and stood
still, a glazed look over her eyes.

“
Stolen kiss,” Nin
whispered into her hair. There was a mild, sinking feeling in his
heart, which he didn’t quite know the cause of. It was because a
part of him—the sardonic part of him—already felt as if the moment
was over. Love was a game, and so was this.

He unlocked his arms from behind Anya, and
took a short step back. He wore a shy smile, or a smug grin—Anya
couldn’t tell.

So,
Anya thought,
this is Nin. The one
with a “cold heart.”

Anya closed half of the short distance
between them. “Returned kiss,” she replied, and stood on tiptoe,
planting a soft kiss on his even softer lips.

His dusky violet eyes searched hers, seeking
her truest and deepest desires.

She had her hands under his
shirt, and she rested her hands on his lower back muscle. She felt
like she was about to go freefalling.
Lift
me up,
said her touch on his bare
skin.
Let me go…

Then they were locked in an
embrace again, like lovers, except they weren’t, and kissing each
other…slowly at first, feeling their bones melt, one by one…then
like their very hearts and lives depended on it. They warmed each
other with searing, tender touches. They reveled in the heady rush,
which was more invigorating than everything Anya had gone through
so far—discovering The Velvet Underground, meeting an Elven band of
thieves, being aware elves
existed
at all, being recruited for a break-in to the
prestigious Gilbreth Institute, riding on an underground train
system hidden from humans, listening to all Nin had to say at his
special place in Helli’sandur.