Fait Accompli: An Unwilling Tutelage

[Seperallis]

"I would be more surprised were you not," said Nevina, two fingers running under Elke's jaw and stopping on her pulse. "You thankfully managed Betton's Decoction a few times. Still, it is no replacement for proper nutrition; I will have a dinner for you as soon as I can. But first..."

The crimson mage released Elke, and for the first time she received a full, clear view of the women's face: slightly puffed and heavy-lidded, her eyes tinged bloodshot at the edges, brow creased down and face pulled back in deliberate concentration. She sat back and upright, pushing her frizzing and slightly matted hair behind her shoulders, then holding one finger up and moving it in slow, swirling motions before the young woman.

"First, follow the tip of my finger with your eyes," she said, "and only your eyes. What do you remember of...that night?"

[Sal]

Elke shifted, straightening her back and crossing her legs under her, and then followed Nevina's finger with just her eyes - as instructed.

"Well, not much," she admitted, her eyes tracking slowly back and forth and around. "I remember arriving at the witch's house - Millie. Her name was Millie." Back and forth and around. "She had," Elke paused to think. "She had a garden that was a sort of booby trap. It took some time to get through it." Back and forth. Elke furrowed her brow a bit without letting her eyes break away from Nevina's finger.

In the part of her mind not dedicated to recalling the night's events, she noted that the rest of the room seemed hazier, darker. Perhaps like it was further away, or that Nevina was in a spotlight. It wasn't important. "But we made it. She invited us inside and it -- ugh, it stank, I remember that!" Back and forth, back and forth... "We talked, the three of us. We wanted to ask her about the werewolves. You two had history." Elke scowled again. The conversations three nights prior were like a distant and barely visible star in the night sky - out of the corner of her consciousness, she knew the vagueness of it, could barely make out the pinprick of faint light. But when she tried to focus in on it, it disappeared under her full scrutiny.

"I don't remember the specifics," she decided at last. Around her, Forlag's cozy room had receded into darkness and Nevina and her smoothly twirling finger became Elke's entire world. It was calming, for some reason, and at the same time, it pulled up the sounds and scents and feelings of that night. "And after that..." The creases between her eyes deepened. Numbness, a sense of falling upward, insidious darkness creeping in. "I cannot..." Pain, heat, the roar of something deadly, the solid earth under her in an instant. The hairs on the back of Elke's neck prickled. "She did something to me."

At that, Elke's eyes finally broke away from Nevina's finger and snapped, instead, to the woman's face. The room came back into full view, the sounds of birds chirping outside the window arriving with her vision. "What did she do to me?"

[Seperallis]

Nevina's trademark sigh accompanied her formerly hypnotic finger as it came to rest upon her lap. Though elves were known for not being nearly so beholden to a full night's rest, she visibly struggled to maintain concentration through the dissociative haze of exhaustion brought on by several successive days of continuous exertion, her eyes widening as much in response to the question as it was to ground her mind in the present moment.

"Physically, you seem well; in need of a good meal, but well. Though otherwise, who's to really know, Elke!" The elf's voice concluded an airy crescendo into a raspy screech as her hands shot forth to squeeze around the girl's neck. "I'm still heeere, Elkeee! Hehee!"

[Sal]

The part of Elke's mind that normally sat in the esteemed position of making rational choices based on a bumper crop of information, important and superfluous alike, found itself sprawled undignified on the floor of her skull as Nevina's hands met her throat.

For one half second, she sat frozen, the fading late autumn warmth of a smile still cooling from her lips. Her eyes still on the chair - now empty - where Nevina sat until just moments ago until becoming eclipsed by a blaze of red hair and a blur of creamy skin.

Then a pressure in her head, like a rhythmic hammering in time with her pulse, and the heat of panic spreading from somewhere around her liver took over.

"Nev--!" Elke rasped, unable to convey the rest of her assailant's name. "Sto--!"

In one fluid motion, Elke's hands came up to Nevina's wrists to tug them away and her knees curled up to her chest. Part of the movement was an attempt to keep Nevina from coming any closer, and part of it was to afford Elke an amount of potential energy that she converted to kinetic as she struck out with her momentum centered in her heels and directed at any part of Nevina - chest, collarbone, neck, jaw - within striking distance.

[Seperallis]

Nevina's grip responded to Elke's tugging with near-superhuman force, clamping harder around the front of her neck as a painful twinge crawled down the back of her shoulder to join the other sensations.

"Elkeeee," the witch's voice grated through Nevina's widening grin.

The mageling's instinctive thrashing failed to find a solid purchase on the woman. As tingling began in Elke's crown and her vision began to narrow, the first kick lost itself in the layered cushions of the elf's robes, and a second struck low and deflected down and across her reaching abdomen.

And in a blink, the scene changed.

"Elke!"

Nevina's voice was fully her own, edging on desperation, eyes wide through a deep frown as her magically enhanced strength seemed close to shattering Elke's wrists in vain attempts to free the girl from her self-strangulation just before a third kick straddled her sternum and vaulted her petite form inches above the floor. Grip broken by the surprise of her sudden trajectory, she scrambled for purchase in a half-second slow somersault before her legs caught on the stool she had been using some moments earlier, which tipped under her weight and rotated the hapless flier on her axis until her back connected suddenly and flatly with the floor.

A high-pitched squealing wheeze popped from the woman, as a soft cackling vanished into the corners of the room.

[Sal]

Once free, Elke drew in deep, shaking gasps of air, stopping only to cough. Tears stung her eyes and she could feel the heat of bruises forming around her neck like a collar.

Distracted by her regained ability to breathe, she almost forgot the threat of Nevina across the room, temporarily waylaid but very much alive. Sliding quickly off of the bed and onto her feet, she assessed her ability to escape. She could make it to the door if she was fast. Seizing the opportunity, she bolted.

[Seperallis]

The dash to the door of the room was made in two quick bounds. In barely a second, Elke had flung open the door to make her escape and cross into the hallway, when-

"-Oof!"

Elke ran straight into a short, hunched form, and the two very nearly tumbled to the floor for her efforts. The exclamation became a series of squeals and chittering as the form blocking her path vanished with an audible pop, replaced by a red blur scurrying up the walls. All around her rang the heavy gong crashes of a serving tray pierced by the staccato crashes of scattered dinnerware, their contents turned out in random assortment for nearly a dozen feet in any direction. From above rang the tiny, familiar voice, "Oh ho! Young miss, you're so lively today, what a pleasantly unexpected surprise!"