“That could have gone better.” The Necrophos leaned against the fountain on the edge of the square as he and the half deer next to him waited for their allies. He always looked scary, but now he was scowling more than usual, his eyes glowing in an eerie white light.
The Enchantress was a creature of the forest, a creature of life and joy. There was always a spring to her steps and some plants clinging to her clothes. Rotund’jere in contrast was a creature of the dead, or at least the dying. His skin was sickly green, as if he was always ill, and he spread this illness wherever he walked. Aiushtha could feel it and how it pulled on her but didn’t let it drag her down. So she grinned now and raised the hand that wasn’t holding her spear. It was closed into a loose fist.
“I was able to save this from the middle of our fight.” She opened her hand and there, on her palm, sat a small yellow butterfly, slowly moving its wings up and down. “It would’ve been trampled otherwise. So I grabbed it and protected it.”
The scowl on Rotund’jeres face deepened even more, something Aiushtha would’ve thought impossible. He pushed away from the fountain but before he could move closer to the Enchantress, the butterfly fluttered into the air and away from them. “You saved a stupid butterfly while we were fighting?”
With a sigh, the Enchantress moved around the Necrophos and dipped her hand into the water of the fountain. It hadn’t taken any of the illness from the plague-mage. Yet. “Yeah, it was so small and there was so much danger around it.” Her fingers created waves as they moved round and round. “We had already lost the fight when I caught it and I don’t need both of my hands to throw my spear anyway.” Of course she had known that Rotund’jere wouldn’t care about a butterfly. She didn’t mind. She smiled, glad that she had been able to help the small and fragile creature.
“If you had concentrated more on the fight instead of something unimportant as this insect maybe we would’ve won. We could be destroying the fountain of the enemy instead of sitting here, all beaten up.”
The soft laugh of the Enchantress filled the air. “Maybe.” Her legs twitched. Aiushtha was restless, the same as Rotund’jere. She liked losing a fight just as much as the mage. The difference was that he got grumpy when he was defeated while the Enchantress tried to go into the next fight motivated and with a positive attitude. Saving a butterfly might be the only good thing about the last fight, but it made her smile. And contrary to what she had just said, she didn’t believe that saving a butterfly had been the reason they had lost the fight. She was able to keep smiling now, so she’d be able to keep fighting.
A flick of her fingers sent the last drops of water that clung to her skin back into the fountain. And in that moment, their allies arrived. “Let’s do this!” Aiushtha exclaimed excitedly as she bounced forward without pause, towards the next fight.
When it was quiet around the fountain, the butterfly landed on the rim of it. A droplet of water had landed there and the small creature used it to take a drink.