Jaresh peeked through the tiny gap in his curtains, looking out of his window and into the square. The statue of the Warlock, Froll, stood towering above the buildings as usual, casting a withering glare over those who crossed his immeasurable shadow. Froll was the last Warlock, the one who had founded the basis of Elvin philosophy, who had been imperative in constructing their modern way of life, who had discovered this place, now the Elves’ home. It was he who had given his life’s core in order to surround the Refuge, as they called it, to protect his people and their remarkable power. He did his duty, committed his every part to the highest good, and, most importantly in this culture, he gave his life for the sake of his kind. He was what the Elves stood for; in fact he was the reason that they still existed to stand for anything.
So why was it that as Jaresh stood staring at Froll’s figure he felt a strange sense of foreboding? It was always like this when he got in trouble. He’d receive the same speech from his mother that he heard every time. He’d be forced to attend an additional Psychological Structure Inductive study course for yet another semester. That was just what he needed- a fatiguing study group to subject him to every psychosomatic test they could think of, probing his mind and behavioral missteps, trying to uncover the secret to his peace-breaking mentality, and how to cure him of trouble-making. He grunted softly, humorlessly. Everything is a study to them, he thought.
Jaresh sighed and allowed the curtain to slip back into place, so that even the tiny shaft of light that had shone through was now gone. He paced beside his bookshelf, letting his eyes wander over the books, whose covers were so worn that there was despairingly little left of them. He tried to decide which would best soothe his mother’s disgruntled temper when she called for him; she loved to see him reading. All of Jaresh’s books had been picked apart and pored over, leaving him abuzz with intellectual activity. Many people said it was the only semi-average thing about him, though even an ordinary thing like reading became unnatural where Jaresh was concerned, because instead of reading a healthy amount of say, a book a week, he read to excess, so that there was not a book in his village that he hadn’t read countless times. Jaresh didn’t read books; rather he consumed them. Above all others, it was his sister, Thara, who found his recurring strange habits irritating.
Yes, Jaresh’s reading abilities did little to avert suspicion, and only managed to add to his peculiarity.
He jumped slightly, interrupted in his thoughts by a knock at the door. His sister, Thara, entered quietly and placed herself gracefully on the bed.
"What have you done this time?" she asked. Jaresh grimaced and turned back to the window.
"It was nothing," he muttered.
"Surely you're being modest. You didn't set light to anything?"
"Of course not," he snorted, turned to face her again, and finished reluctantly, "I didn't actually set light to anything. Only told a Professor that someone else had."
"And why would you do that, Jaresh?"
"The topic of discussion was incorrigable."
"Meaning?"
He sighed, "I was bored out of my mind."
"Jaresh, you cannot lead yourself down this path. You realize you do nothing for yourself through these pranks, only cause more trouble for yourself." Thara's eyes saddened, and she broke eye contact. "I fear," she said, "that you will hurt yourself more than you believe." Jaresh couldn't help hut believe her, but he doubted there was anything he could do to save himself. He could not change the way he was made.
As I have attempted to establish, Jaresh was not like other Elves. When the others spoke up, he chose to sulk silently in a corner. He became excessively cheerful at solemn occasions, such as the funeral of his Aunt Gett’laire (it was not his Aunt’s passing he found humorous, it was the way in which it was received by the family. He found it odd that the very people who claimed to find fulfillment in “moving on to the outer rims of sentiency” were disgusted by the fact of Aunt Gett’laire’s physical body having to be disposed of. He was actually quite fond of his Aunt, but she had reassured him many times that she had no doubts about where her spirit would journey to). While many were content to accept the words of their professors, no matter how absurd or astonishing they were, Jaresh analyzed every sentence spoken to him, attempting to find reason in what he considered a conflicting and bewildering world. Words spoken by someone with an educational degree were divinity to their student’s minds. A teacher could tell his pupil that rubbing poison ivy in his own eyes was a logical and rational thing to do, and the pupil would nod enthusiastically, swooning with admiration.
But by far the greatest difference between Jaresh and the vast majority of the Elvin population was that Jaresh enjoyed shocking people. Elves have always been amiable and unadventurous, polite and cordial to the core, uninterested in exploring anything but the far corners of the mind. They found pleasure in a dry discussion of the exotic manner of the common housefly when under the influence of noxious gases.
Jaresh, however, was excited about new possibilities and more than anything he loved playing pranks on people. He enjoyed watching the stony, grave expression on a Grand Elder’s face crease into a rigid frown as Jaresh began to publicly recite poetry (written by himself) to the only girl he found at all appealing, who happened to be in his Ancient Literature class. This unashamed display of his feelings (which were always meant to be repressed, as emotion interrupts logical reasoning) was highly discouraged. In fact, it was so disconcerting to the Grand Elders that Jaresh was made the primary subject of a community examination of the troubled mind. Normally Jaresh would have been flattered to have a chance to prove to his people just how different he was, but in this exclusive assessment, he was not allowed to move, nor was he allowed to speak unless asked a specific question, and even then he was permitted only the simplest answer.
He was interrupted in his reminisce by the sound of his mother calling to him from her lounge. He snatched up a first-edition copy of Martle’s Fundamental Character Analysis (it was a gift from his belated father, along with its’ companion, the Character Synthesis) and ran out of his room, down the passage, across the hall, and over to the lounge. He knocked softly, and prepared to meet his fate.
◊◊◊
After a grueling conversation with his mother, and a swift kiss and soft “goodbye” whispered in his ear from Thara, Jaresh was surprised to find himself standing on what was formerly his front step, with a small pack on his back, a cloak slung around his shoulders, cane in hand and a small pouch of gold hidden on a cord tied around his neck. The door closed tightly with a rap behind him. He stared out into the world before him, suddenly a strange, threatening place. Before the world had been safe territory, where he was able to sit on his high horse and criticize the rest of the world for being less fortunate than he; it was a land filled with mysteries that he intended to solve, puzzles he could decipher, codes he could crack. Life had been a game, and he had been the chief player. But now as he opened new eyes to the world he saw something very different: a frightening, forbidding place, somewhere he was not welcome. The world was no longer his oyster, and if it was he no longer possessed the tools to open it.
Jaresh was no longer the propitious son of a wealthy widow who had been endowed with property and money; he was the renegade son of an unfortunate woman who had wasted her money trying to fix him up.
He had been disowned. Pushed away, denied, disclaimed, or rejected: no matter how you worded it, it still meant the end for Jaresh. And the worst part of his demise was that it was entirely his fault. Since his father’s death he had pushed his mother to the edge of sanity. He had done everything in his power to cause trouble and difficulty for her, not intentionally to wound her, but to get attention in one form or another. Well, he had finally gotten not only what he deserved, but also what he had always acted like he wanted: the chance to be a free spirit, a suffering artist, and an independent wanderer. His mother had said that she no longer wanted to bind him to the responsibility that he so obviously disdained, or the duties that he constantly shirked. He was free from that life now, and he wasn’t quite sure that he liked that fact.
He sighed and walked down the steps that were no longer his; past a fountain he could not call his own, and strode around a tree that he realized he might never see again. He turned despondently and faced the building that was his home no more. Then, with another sigh, he turned back and walked away.[/pre]
