rix_scaedu

I wrote this to ysabetwordsmith's second prompt.

Once the dokk alfar half breeds were out of the way, the Tupenes was easy to pick up.  He was in the hotel and the bounty hunters had known it because of some interesting little talismans they were carrying.  Maired had pounced on them and carried them off for investigation.  She was distinctly heard to say, “Now that’s interesting.”

The Tupenes was deposited in the same lockup as his kinsmen and the bounty hunters were in the hands of the regular police who had many questions about the shorter one’s collection of useful items.  Gwaiva had stayed well out of the way once Hladvic and Mannix had bundled up the bounty hunters but she’d also had Vasa, Brise and a sympathetic female police sergeant help her check herself for anything they might have managed to tag her with.

Back in the base, over coffee and freshly baked biscuits, Gwaiva regained her equilibrium.  “I’ve never offered myself up on a plate to a bounty hunter before,” she commented as she hesitated over a choice between honey creams, something flavoured with rosewater and chocolate coconut roughs, “and if this is what it feels like I don’t think I’ll do it again, thank you.”

“I was wondering,” Bolt sat down with his own mug of coffee and picked up a honey cream biscuit, “why those two bounty hunters have such dark skin.  Humans with dark skin, like mine, have ancestors from the tropics but all the elven kindred come from the high northern hemisphere and most of them from northern Europe.  It doesn’t make sense.”

“Ah,” Gwaiva selected a rosewater thing and sat back.  “That was explained to me when I was a child.  You’ve probably been told that you have black skin, right?”

“Yes, quite a number of times.”  He ate half the biscuit and washed it down with coffee.

“You don’t of course.  Very few humans do and most of those who do are carrying a tan.  Your skin tones are based on melanin and the intensity of the colour is the result of a sensible multigenerational response to specific light stimuli.”  She ate a bite from her biscuit and went on, “The skin tones of the elven kindreds are based on their elements.  The two base-stock kindreds from which all other elves diverged are the ljos alfar and the dokk alfar.  The element of the ljos alfar is light, thus they have light skin, yellow to white hair and pale eyes.  The element of the dokk alfar is darkness or the absence of light thus their skin, hair and eyes come in shades of black.”

“So you have blue hair not because it’s the dominant gene but because you’re half ice elf?”  Bolt ate the other half of his biscuit.

“Yes, and my skin is pale and not pale blue because I’m half ljos alfar.  Essentially, I have two elements.”  She grinned and finished off her own biscuit before reaching for another.  “Sometimes I think those bounty placing jarls might be afraid of something.”

I wrote this for lilfluff's seventh prompt.

“Has anyone found out yet just how many contracts they have out there on the elf?”  Brise was doing something with her feathers as she spoke, stretching each wing forward and holding it in that apparently awkward position for a few minutes each time while she checked each flight feather for security and condition.

“There’s no way to tell.”  Calhoun was cleaning his handguns again.  There was a drop cloth on the table in front of him and the cloths, solvents, lubricant and tools he needed were neatly arranged around his work area.  He sighted down the barrel section of the weapon he was working on.  “We can’t tell how many people they contacted or how many took up the offer.  It not generally a subject for public discussion and it’s not like there’s a pub or a bar everyone goes to and talks shop.”

“I would imagine that the ones that do talk shop in a pub don’t last very long,” suggested Kaye idly as she knitted, well out of any possible splash range from Calhoun.

“True,” Calhoun smiled but it was a humourless grin.  “Talk can make you fatally unpopular with clients, competitors, targets, even partners and associates.”

“Spouses, family, in-laws?”  Kaye made that suggestion with a smile of her own.

“Why do you say that?”  Brise was grooming a couple of feathers she seemed a little dissatisfied with.

“Oh,” Kaye looked up and continued knitting, “I think-.  Amanda volunteered me to help go through the lists of overseas arrivals for oddities, names that looked obviously made up, that sort of thing.  There was one name that’s stuck with me - none of us could pick the source for Tupenes.”

Calhoun sharply shifted his full attention to her.  “Tupenes is a name with a reputation, in professional circles.  Untraceable, unstoppable, varied methods and virtually unknown outside our circles.  Which flight or ship was he on?”

Kaye blinked and her hands stopped.  “I saw the name at least half a dozen times, both genders, on multiple flights.”

Calhoun whistled admiringly.  “So that’s how part of it’s done.  Not one person, but a group, maybe a family.”  He looked at the work in front of him.  “One of you tell Amanda we might have a wolf pack inside the gate while I finish up here?”