It takes only a short time for Ryssa to realise that the elf girl is terrible.
She'd thought, she supposes, that she would simply provide this way to escape a dismal life; without even having to point out that even very dull people eventually get to thinking that an old woman in a swamp has lived a strangely long time, and that whoever might be looking for an elf in hiding might listen for that kind of rumour. The Oracle could go along with them, dispense some crypticisms, then simply be indisposed to travel further when they reached a town where any young hopeful could find work and remain entirely anonymous.
That would have been fine, if only the girl weren't enjoying herself. And when she's not bored and mouldering away in a hermit's hut, she's good at gnomic, evocative utterances; which Ryssa should have expected, given that an elf's life is eventually composed of almost nothing but classical references.
Their travelling companions are led by Hanssen, a large and stereotypical man called to the martial service of one of the large and stereotypical sorts of god, whose mission to protect the downtrodden ends somewhat short of wondering why peasants are poor and miserable, and ensures principally that they are protected from disruptive changes in whom they tithe to — including, of course, the religious infrastructure of faiths that see their god's paladins armed, horsed, and equipped with a glittering panoply of battle.
He would never suspect Ryssa has ever been anything but a grimly efficient sellsword. That alone makes his dull vanity bearable to her. He is also pathetically easy for the girl to manipulate, which is less bearable, because the Oracle will not stop slyly bringing Ryssa into her prognostications.
Thankfully, the excuse of "delicate sisterly topics" buys from the likes of Hanssen some measure of temporary privacy.
"You were in favour of lying, I recall," the elf says lightly, seated on a fallen tree out of earshot of their companions.
"Indifferent," Ryssa corrects, "to you lying, child; if you won't keep me out of it, you're done. Tomorrow we'll reach the river, and some place or other on it; and the Oracle will see our threads sadly diverge. Whatever parting wisdom you might wish to tug Hanssen around with, think on it."
It does not, she can see, come as any surprise. The girl is gleefully pleased to have stung her feelings.
"I am still, lady knight," she says, idly kicking her heels, "older than a child. Of an age to be in the world, should I wish it. Of an age that if I were to die with a blade in my hand, no mother could wail my bairn! more than properly grieve an honour-bound death."
Ryssa snorts. "Child enough, that thinks there's such an age," and she sees the girl's eye flash an absolute determination.
"Am I young?" she says. "Fine, then, I am young! You're not so far removed from me, for all the hardness you parade."
It would be easy, Ryssa thinks, it would be very easy to succumb to feeling, in the face of this new tack, this familiar petulance. The cat-feeling of drawing back a paw to bat around a panic-frenzied vole, calculating whether to hold or extend deadly sharpness, solely on the weight of her own amusement. She rolls her shoulders, and swallows it down into the dark; because the elf is wrong.
"Old enough," she says. "Sufficient to take a tone of voice with you that can reduce you in your own skin to a youngster at knee, quivering, shamed before authority in the knowledge of your own misdeeds, be it pilfered cakes or pummeled sibling. Child."
The elf obligingly shudders, then bares teeth. "Old enough to quiver so in certain ways that call you a liar, knight," she says, low, in a hot joy that drags mercilessly on the cat-feeling, daring Ryssa to pounce.
She tightens a fist, nails nipping at her own skin, and breathes around it.
"This," she says finally, placing her words out into the air with a final and delicate care, "this is a subject that is very wrong, and we will not pursue it."
"Wrong." The elf rolls the word around her mouth, as if it tastes fascinating. "But, lady knight, you began it. Didn't you threaten to put me across your knee?"
Ryssa's breath stops. Her skin prickles; she is, she thinks, she must be blushing, a condition entirely unaccustomed. She had— she hadn't meant— which the elf knows—
And there is only one recourse.
Slow, with infinite precision, she takes the knee, as solemn and impassive as before the highest king, the truest vow, the most terrible of duties.
"Then that was wrong," she says, each word as neat and cold as a stone monument to the honoured dead. "Because this subject is wrong. You are not a child, I will acknowledge this; but that is not sufficient to make such a thing correct, because you are still, in your way, innocent. And I, lady elf, am not in any way."
The elf stares at her, eyes huge. Eventually, with no more joy nor heat, she whispers, "And you say you're not a paladin."
"I am not a paladin," Ryssa says, and gets to her feet under the weight of the world. "We part ways with the Oracle at the next town."
She retreats at the measured pace of someone who must, must — desperately — not be seen to be fleeing.
The Oracle tells Hanssen that the threads of fate weave where they must, and that having imparted him with the wisdom he needs to carry, she must walk a different path.
Instead, she goes on to tell him, in lightly obscured ways he is terribly pleased with himself to decipher, and even more pleased to then boast to everyone about, fate will replace the Oracle with a different travelling companion.
"An elf, you say?" Ryssa says, concentrating so very hard on keeping her face still that it comes out even more murderously stiff than if she hadn't. She spares no glance for the Oracle's bent and robe-shrouded form, her piously clasped hands. "My, that's a trial. I hate elves."
