Whimsical Tales of Woe

The Heart is Blind

Part Two: The Heart is Blind

Part two here we gooo! This one has a bit of time skipping (just a heads up). Thank you for coming along with me on this short story trip. Let me know which one of them is your favourite. All the best and happy reading!

Prompt: Best friends and young love.

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It started when they met at the oak tree.

"You're late again." Emela called to him from her usual branch as he ran across the field toward their meeting spot outside the battlements.

The boy glared up at her, his hands on his hips and only slightly out of breath. He was dressed in training gear and had thrown his wooden sword to the side along with a worn leather satchel.

"It's not my fault your father insists we clean up the sparring grounds before and after every session." He had started attending Emela's father's classes at the age of thirteen, now two years on, the extra work at least helped him scale the tree faster, even if it did nothing to temper his brash attitude as her father put it.

Emela grinned at him and swung backwards, hanging from the branch by her legs, blue skirts falling round her head.

"What did you do this time Ed? Grease all the hilts again?" She laughed when he took the time to pause in his climb and scowl at her. This only caused her to laugh harder and she had to grip the branch with her hands to keep from falling off it.

"He told me to be creative in how I bring down my opponents." Ed lifted himself up on to the branch next to her, making it shake dangerously. "You can't tell me that was not creative."

With a cheerful smile, Emela pulled herself back up and tossed him an apple from her dress pocket.

"How did this not slip out when you were upside down?"

She waved her fingers in the air. "Magic."

The sun was starting to sink in the grey sky, but the heat it provided was nice. Their conversation was nothing different from any other day. Edwin told her about his new fighting patterns and she told him how she had started to count the stones in the battlement walls while he practiced his fancy swishing of the blade.

"I got to about four hounded and sixty-two before you showed up." She told him, taking a bite of her apple.

"You know for a daughter of the Captain of the Guard, you are pretty useless."

Emela gave a dramatic gasp and shoved him off her branch. He had been expecting it, of course, and landed in a neat roll before jumping to his feet with a wicked smirk.

"You're one to talk!"

"Why don't you get down here and tell that to my face?"

"Because it is much more satisfying yelling down at you from above." They shared a smile that spoke of the many times when she had jumped down, only for him to dart off before she could utter a single word.

It had been that way since they were old enough to yell at each other while their fathers negotiated the cost of blades.

"Emela!" The two friends turned their heads to the sound of an intruder. "Emela, mother wants to know why you are not home yet."

Raylen, three years their senior, looked exactly like the perfect lady Emela's mother insisted apon. But where her sister took to needle work, like a duck to water, Emela had always been more interested in her father's training and he had encouraged it. Bringing her along to his trips to small villages for recruitment, showing her the process behind the changing of the guard and even allowing her to polish his students weapons before returning the dented ones to the blacksmith. That had been where she'd met her partner in crime.