(Not) a clichéd fairy tale

Chapter 7

Liarya

After a while, he seemed to realise that I was no longer walking behind him and he turned around.

"Does that surprise you that much? Or are you scared of me now, princess?" His question surprised me a little.

"Not at all. I just didn't expect to meet someone from Nearon, probably the most mysterious land in all of Avaglade. They say that the king ordered the only connection to Thales to be sunk in the sea," I replied and we continued on our way.

"How are we going to get across the border?" I asked after a few minutes and Tirian shrugged his shoulders. "Via Thales, how else?"

"How are we supposed to get past the border guards and onto one of the ships unnoticed?" Tirian snorted, but said nothing more and continued walking.

After a while, the trees thinned and the snow melted. Thales was a neutral island. While Nularis was always freezing cold, Eldarmar always had very high temperatures and Aqarin had a coastal climate, the weather in Tahles alternated between all these extremes.

After a few more minutes, the watchtowers of the border came into view. "We need a plan now at the latest. How are we supposed to get past the guards if they're looking for me all over Nularis?" I shouted in shock, but received no real response from Tirian.

"God you're such a boring travelling companion," I groaned, to which he just said dryly that he didn't think he should reply to my complaint, as he called it.

We were now getting closer and closer to the border and my anxiety grew with every step, but Tirian stopped me without further ado by walking over to the few trees still remaining this close to the border.

"Do you know pitch?" the man in front of me wanted to know and turned to me. "Pitch? You mean bad luck?" I asked, confused, but he just looked at me and shook his head. "No, the resin from the black pines. You dye your hair with it and no one will recognise you," he explained and now I stared at him.

"Dye my hair with pitch? It'll never come out!" I shouted indignantly, but Tirian ignored my protests and went to a black pine a few metres away from us to get some of the black tree resin. "If you're caught with me for company, I'll be locked up or, worse, executed and you will have to go back marry Orion.

Maybe you don't know it, but white hair and pale skin are extremely rare. And by extremely rare I mean that only inhabitants of Nularis can look like that, only the royal family to be precise," he said dryly, holding out a kind of bowl made of tree bark.

I shuddered at the thought of smearing my hair with this sticky stuff and when I hesitated, he added, "If we get caught, not only will I be dead, but you'll have to go back and marry Orion. 

Which do you prefer?" He sounded a little annoyed and as his reasoning suddenly made a lot of sense, I took the tree bark bowl and dipped my fingers into the pitch first and then my whole hand.

Little by little, I brushed more and more of the black tree resin onto my hair and when there was nothing left, the black-haired man in front of me nodded in satisfaction and continued walking again.

"I can already feel my hair sticking together," I complained, whining.

"Don't cry princess" snorted Tirian and rolled his eyes. For the next few minutes he more or less ignored me. Little by little, my hair became more and more sticky and the pitch slowly hardened.

Rest in peace, hair...

Instead of continuing to walk towards the official border, Tirian led us further towards the beach. The waves were quite low and the water was icy cold, just like the sand was frozen.