Tue Oct 25, 2011 2:27 am
Growing boys should have healthy support structures. Parents. Grandparents. Siblings. Friends. Teachers. Mentors. Reasonable dalliances with the opposite sex. Elliot once had all of these things and more. A large family and the extended outreach of closely-knit neighbors that came from being a Myrken farmboy. Then later an entire conclave of knights and squires, staunch, brave men and boys his own age who were united due to common purpose and common need. And even later still, the staff of the Dagger, Catch, Dulcie, and a primarily platonic dalliance with Niall.
The last of it all had spiraled out of control due to the tainted elements in the chocolate, however, and the boy had been quested through a year's litany of bizarre misadventures at the side of the tattooed, magical girl. Now he looked less like a boy than ever before. He had gained a few more inches to go along with his few years gained since joining the knighthood. There was an element in his eyes, both rambunctious and skittish that experience, whether phantasied or real, had developed within him. Carrying the large sword of a knight-to-be around had made him more strapping than not.
Today, as he walked through the streets of Myrken, streets he had come to know quite well, it was WITHOUT the sword, however, and that added both a bit of caution and a great deal of haste to his step. He was as strengthened by lugging the item as he was by swinging it, and without the sword, he was able to dart through the streets with a surprising amount of awkward agility.
So even after getting lost twice, he arrived at his destination with time to spare. It was a house. It had a door. He knocked upon it, repeatedly and a bit irritatingly, six, seven times, with the purple hilt of a dagger. It was the sort of childish behavior that had 'earned' him the dagger in the first place, and it was a sign of the foolish immaturity that had led him to this very door on this very morning, to this peculiar opportunity.