Sandra stood over where Charlie had been caught by the students who formed the circle around where the fight had been happening. She stood seemingly at ease. Her arms were at her side and she looked relaxed and rested. Her blurring movements and attacking of Charlie was not evident from the way she looked now. Her head was tilted and she looked down at Charlie with an unreadable expression in her face.

Sandra knew what she had to do from the start of the fight. She was not sure how or why she knew, but she knew. She was as curious as everyone else to see the outcome. The only thing she did know was what she was supposed to do. It was a strange way to live a life: to always know the right choice, but not be sure what would happen after she made that choice. She sometimes felt like a voyeur in her own life. She would watch the film reel roll and wonder where it was heading and where it would end.

Not all decisions came with insight into what choices she should make. The larger ones did, but once she made them, there were still myriad of decisions that baked within her mind. She tried to be scientific about the ones she chose to follow. If she made the right big decision, the smaller decisions had a way of working out, even if she chose outrageously.

As she stood over Charlie, she watched as his face turned from outrage into disgust and finally violence. She stepped back as he hurdled his body against her. For all their massive bodies, humans were not fast, certainly not as fast as an elf. She side stepped his attack and found her back against another large man behind her.

“Not so fast,” she heard the man whisper into her ear. He had grabbed her shoulders with his two massive fists and held her tight. She tried to spin away from him, and then to drop lower, but his hands continued to crush her shoulder blades. She looked up and saw that the man was not looking at her. He was looking ahead at Charlie.

Charlie dusted his pants legs and walked slowly toward Sandra. His face no longer looked angry. He looked relieved and incredibly excited. He rolled up his sleeves and twisted his neck until he cracked it on each side. Sandra squirmed and tried to turn to face the man that held her shoulders, but she could get no traction. He had lifted her up in the air and her limbs could not reach him.

Tsomis saw the crowd part a bit further as the large man grabbed Sandra by the shoulders and slowly lifted her into the air. He had made a comment into her air as he did so, but Tsomis was too far away. Charlie approached Sandra in a slow dramatic fashion. He was going to beat her. Tsomis had no doubts about his intentions.

Tsomis looked around the room at the stunned faces of the crowd. For all of their speed and agility, he knew the elves were not strong and she might not hold up to whatever punishment Charlie was about to dole out. The unfairness of the scene was not lost on him. When it was Charlie against Sandra, for all of the fighting, they were two people. That she was a woman and Charlie had decided to pick a fight with a woman that was more than half his size.

Tsomis knew what he had to do. He did not recognize the large man holding Sandra. As Charlie approached Sandra’s struggling form, Tsomis launched himself at Charlie. Charlie spun around and saw Tsomis but he did not have any time to react. For the second time in that morning, Charlie fell to the ground in front of Sandra.

Tsomis landed on top of Charlie as he tackled to him ground before he reached Sandra.

“Elf lover,” Charlie yelled from underneath Tsomis’s sprawled form. Tsomis was not a large boy, but he did spend many hours in the gym training to be a wrestler and fencer. In the upper society, violence was not celebrated but it was honored for its noble traditions. They survived the valley because of the walls around the town. The walls kept most of the outsiders out of town. The caves were patrolled by the elves, and nobody in their right mind would head down there.

The only way up and over the mountains was the valley where their goods were delivered. Other things came down from the valley, but Tsomis did not know that yet. It would be sometime before he learned of the presence of the outsiders and the payment the valley made for their dust-free food.

The front door slammed open and two guards entered the coffee house. The crowd made room for them and they approached the middle of the circle where Tsomis sat on top of Charlie. The man dropped Sandra, and Sandra fell roughly to the ground. She was up before Tsomis had a chance to help her, rubbing her shoulder and taking a step away from the man who had grabbed her.

Tsomis studied the man. He was not a university student as he had expected. He was older with a gray fuzzy goatee. His clothing looked working class, and he wore a green armband around his left arm. Tsomis had not seen the armband before. He had seen the armbands used in the past by the union workers as they attempted to organize. They mostly failed in their attempt, working against the government and the ruling class was not worthwhile, especially when the king was the ultimate arbitrator in these matters. While he did not always find in favor of the employers, this king did often enough to make it less interesting for the unions to organize.

“That is enough,” one of the guards said. He slammed the butt of his polearm against the ground. “What is going on in here?”

The man who had held Sandra stepped forward. “Just a fight between children,” the man said. He stepped toward the guard and whispered something into his ear. The guard started to laugh and pulled the other guard over. He said something to him that Tsomis could not hear and the guard nodded his head.

“Okay,” the guard said. “Show is over. Go about your business.” He looked around the coffee house. “It looks like many of you are going to be late for school if you do not get a move on it.”

He turned and grabbed the arm of the other guard and they exited the coffee house. The crowd was silent and did not move after the guards left the coffee house.

Tsomis pulled himself off of Charlie, using his stomach to push himself off the floor. Charlie let out an exclamation as Tsomis pushed down a little harder than necessary to pull himself up. Tsomis glared down at Charlie, and Charlie remained on the ground, refusing to look up at Tsomis or Sandra. Tsomis knew he made an enemy today. This did not worry him. He never considered Charlie to be in the same class as he was. It was not a great loss in his mind. He knew that there were others in the coffee house and in the university who would not be easy to dismiss when the story went around.

Tsomis went over to Sandra and put his arm around her and guided her toward the door. Charlie glared at him as he past. Tsomis did his best to ignore the glares of Charlie and the rest of the patrons. When he arrived at the door, he saw the man that had held Sandra standing in front of it.

“And where do you think you’re going?” the man asked.

“Step aside,” Tsomis said, looking up at the man. He still did not recognize him. The tone of his voice seemed clear, however. Tsomis glared at him and stared him down. Very few people could look into the eyes of the son of a councilmember and not cower. There were worse things than guards in town, and the rumors about the council’s powers over those things should have indicated something to the man. It did not, however.

“Hand over the elf, and then you can go on your way,” the man said.

“I am Tsomis DeVillain,” Tsomis said by way of introduction. He cut of the sounds of his last name as he had heard father do when he intimidated people who did not agree with his policies.

“I know who you are,” the man said with a snide look.

The coffee house owner approached the door. “Haven’t you done enough already? Take it outside!” he said. The coffee house owner pushed past the man and opened the door. A large group of students streamed out the door. Tsomis continued to stare down the man until he felt the tug of Sandra’s hand on his own, pulling him outside.

When he was outside the door and the man was no longer in sight, they fell within the crowd heading back to the school.

“Why did you pull me away?” Tsomis asked Sandra.

“I wanted to thank you,” Sandra said rather simply. She was looking up at him as they walked, her hand still in his. “You barely know me and you stepped in to stop them. You also respected me enough not to interfere when it was just Charlie.”

“Did you know that man at the door?” Tsomis asked. He was still livid about the man. He had shown him up in public, and that was not done in Tsomis’s world. There was honor in this world, and for that man, clearly a commoner, to have attacked him in that way, and threatened him in front of those people. He thought of challenging him to a duel, but knew that such actions were greatly frowned upon by his father’s council. While it still happened behind his back, Tsomis would never outwardly challenge his father’s authority.

“That was my second time seeing him,” Sandra said. “When I first came to town, I presented myself to the king and the prophet. He was in the audience chamber that day. He had other friends with him and they had the same purple armbands.”

“I will ask my father and get to the bottom of this,” Tsomis said. “A spat between friends is one thing.”

“What do you mean between friends,” Sandra asked, dropping Tsomis’s hand and stopping her walk abruptly. A couple of students followed closely, clearly trying to overhear their conversation. One of them bumped into Tsomis and Sandra’s backs and apologized as he stepped around them toward the university.

“Charlie does not always make the best choices,” Tsomis said. “He does not have the culture to understand what the elves have done for our society. He is not a bad student, but a misinformed one, with the racism built in through his family. It is not easy to escape that racism, to understand why you are here or what you are doing to help us.”

“Do you even know why I am here or what I am doing to help you?” Sandra asked, a guilty grin appearing on her face. She figured if Tsomis wanted to play games about his knowledge, she would certainly oblige and play her own games.

“No, as matter of fact, I do not,” Tsomis said. “That was something we were going to learn at the coffee house.”

“I never did get my coffee,” Sandra said.

Tsomis checked his pocket watch. “As much as I would want to,” Tsomis said. “We don’t have time to return to the coffee house before school starts. I have many people I need to introduce you to if you are going to join our school.”

Sandra nodded and followed the students heading back to the school. Tsomis sighed and ran a bit to catch up. For such a small elf, she certainly moved fast.

Word count: 2,020 (22,885)

Words remaining: 27,115

I’m approaching the halfway mark. This year’s story is very similar to my 2006 story. If I put both of them together, there may something be there. Throw in a bit of the Pink Sweater and . . . okay, that last part was a joke.