Vajra An Elven Tale

Prologue

Bonds mend and broken

Canada, 31st October 2005

The winter was losing its hold on the urban skies. It had turned a dull sort of white, with straps of rather cold sunlight playing across its surface. The wind, muffling the sounds of the engines complaining in the long queue of traffic below, caressed the branches of a random tree, left in the roadside. People, in their cars, trapped within the traffic itself could not; would not; spare a glance to the children's playground that formed the background for their confinement. It was already alive with toddling feet and chortling smiles, a crackling of a swing as a child swung faster yet, or the "swish" of the slides as another went whooping down, enwrapped them in a bubble of buzzing activities.

There was a man, in the opposite side of the bustling road, distanced by the playground not only from the traffic that stayed unmoving between them but also from the aura he seemed to emit. The playground was, even in the winter; warm with juvenile giggles, the man on the opposite end, squinting focused at the scene before him was cold and silent.

He seemed to be in his late twenties, with sharp black eyes and a mop of jet black hair. He was a lean built man, a hard jaw line tracing the edge of his rather tanned face. His ears were punctured a shimmer of stud hung there, a tattoo with a complex pattern of lines chasing each other ran down his neck, starting from his jaw, beginnings of a similar one was visible from the ham of his sleeve running alone his forearm. The man was dressed in a Gothic taste, his clothes a shade of darkest black and his boots high. There was still that cold look in his squinted black eyes; they were empty of any other emotion than the concentration reflected in there as he continued to watch, in mild interest.

What captured his vision, on the other side of the road, in the play ground, was a woman. Approximately of a parallel age to the man in dark outfit, she sat in a bench at the far end of the park, watching the children closest to her play a very intense ball game.

Even from a far, the woman had an Asian origin to her look. Her skin tanned pleasantly and her eyes and hair a darker tone of color. She wore a casual attire befitting the winter surrounding her and her eyes remained fixed on the children, her lips curled in to a pleasant smile.

The ball, the children had been playing with, bounced over the head of the boy hoping to catch it and rolled to the fenced side of the playground, where the park and the street were separated from steel net. A girl, trotted after it, her cheeks rosy from all the excitement and her eyes following the ball. It stopped at the net, where the girl bent down to pick it up. As she did so, the man on the opposite end, moved a deliberate step forward, his eyes still fixed upon the girl, who looked up, as if sensing his eyes upon her. In a one fleeting moment their eyes met, one dark and cold pair on another dark and warm set of eyes. The woman watching from the bench stood up, as if electrified. It took her only a moment to reach the girl still staring at the man and grip her arm. Bending down, she muttered something in the girl's ear and dragged her along, without a backward glance at the man staring at them still.

As they reached her playmates, the girl returned the ball, her hand still securely gripped by the woman, waved at her friends and left, jogging to keep up with the speed of her companion. As they reached the point of walking out of the man's vision, the girl looked back, her dark eyes slightly curious and saw that the man was there no more.

*

Vajrateerta, 31st October 2005

'Clunk! Clunk! '

A flash of silver brushed past his vision. Donning robes of silence and nothingness, his opponent had vanished. Taking a lung full of frosty air and tightening his grip around the hilt of his sward, the crowned prince of Vajras looked around. His ears picked up the rustling breeze made around him, the twisting twigs underneath his feet as he moved. The wind had turned colder yet, making the beads of sweat running from his temples down his cheeks along his jaw line, feel like ice against his skin. His breathing was catching up; his ears were straining against the silence. Somewhere here, sometime from now, his opponent would appear.