Page 26 of Pixie Problems
She nodded. “My thanks. He was fetching to look upon, but I could see he was lacking in just about everything else.”
I grinned.Oooh, I liked her!
“Now,” she continued, “give me a male who can hold a sword or weapon, who looks at me as though I hang the moon in the night sky, and with two brain cells to rub together, and I might take a second look at him.” She looked at me, her aquamarine eyes piercingly clear despite the amount of alcohol she’d consumed in the last hour or so. “But they don’t exist.”
“A good man?”
She nodded. “I am not . . . what do they call them these days? A feminine wench?”
My lips twitched. “A feminist?” I hazarded a guess.
She slammed her glass down on the bar-top, and her seltzer water sloshed out and fizzed onto the counter. “Yes! A feminist! Even though I’m a warrior, and have skill and strength on my side and believe in equality between men and women, I don’t believe that men and women should have exactly the same traits and be treated precisely the same.” She gestured with the hand holding the glass and more spilled out over the bar. I grabbed a towel to mop it up as she continued to illuminate me on her views of women and men.
“I yearn to be treated like a female! Where are the men who hold out chairs for females, or hold the door open for them? Where is kindness? Where is courtesy? They either stare at their phone or stare at my breasts, as if I don’t have a face or a soul within me. And mark me, the next man that does this I’m going to run him through with my sword.”
All of the men in a twenty foot radius suddenly found the bar to be too crowded and headed deeper into the club, leaving the stools around the dryad hilariously empty. “Males aplenty, but none worth the price of my golden pauldrons.” She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “How am I to finish the quest that my queen has given me with such a mediocre sampling of males?”
I gave her my hand across the bar-top. “Dice.”
She shook my hand, her grip firm but not vice-like. “Arenaria, but you can call me Aren. Lovely to meet you.” She pursed her coral lips at me. “You’re a powerful little thing, aren’t you?”
On cultural bias, I hated being calledlittle,but I let my irritation go. She was just plain spoken. I loved those kinds of beings. Sometimes what they said stung, but you always knew where you stood with them. They didn’t play the guessing games that so many other beings played.
“Not particularly,” I answered. Unless you counted my shooting ability, but paranormals rarely did. And she would be happy to know she was in the peak of health. My Insight was blaring in my head, loud and overwhelming, and had been since she’d sat down. And it wasn’t listening to me when I’d told it to chill, though I could find nothing wrong with the dryad.
I sighed.
It must mean that I was meant to help her.
I refilled the pretzel bowl she’d been steadily munching on and got her another icy seltzer water. She’d sloshed the contents of the other one all over the bar-top with all of her gesticulating.
She nodded in thanks. “My queen has decided to reward me,” she said sourly.
“That’s probably a good thing?” Or maybe not if her fierce frown was any indicator.
Arenaria sighed. “I thought so at first. I have served my queen for five years as an ambassador. I am a warrior, as all among my kind are, but I am among my queen’s fiercest.”
She wasn’t emptily boasting, I could tell.
“As a reward for my last five years of service, my queen has bade me go into the human and paranormal world to find a mate.”
Okay, I wasn’t seeing why she was looking like her favorite puppy had just died. “Why is that a bad thing? Did you want to stay single?” No judgement if she did. Relationships were tough. Sometimes we just weren’t ready for them and needed to grow up some more before we attempted to put someone else’s needs on par with our own needs. I knew three-hundred-year-old paranormals that couldn’t do that yet.
She shook her head. “Nay. I’m open to the idea of a mate, but my queen has bade me to live with my new mate and spread her goodwill among others. I am to be an ambassador still, but I will be unable to go home.” She looked morosely into her drink.
I was really confused. “Why would she wish that?”
Aren’s beautiful aquamarine eyes looked at me steadily as she raised the glass to her lips and took a small sip. “’Tis our way. The dryad way. Most handmaidens—those that aren’t necessary for the protection of our forest—serve my queen for a period of five winters and no longer. And when their service is through, they are called to go into the world of men and paranormals, take a mate, and continue to work for all of dryad kind in spreading goodwill.”
I leaned on the bar-top, captivated despite myself. I wasn’t even pretending to work, and so far Rhys hadn’t complained, so I didn’t worry about it.
“That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.” Rhys brought me a lemon-lime soda and I gave him a nod in gratitude. Apparently, I was taking my break. He made a face at me, and I chuckled. The last few days he’d been a little softer than when I’d first met him, and calmer. I think his swix was having an effect on him.
“I had heard my sisters and family before speak of this, and I’d taken their words seriously. But obviously not seriously enough. The problem of the modern male is a puzzle that I can’t seem to solve.”
“Ahh.” I took a sip, the tart flavor refreshing on my tongue. I loved human soda. It was a serious weakness. “You know, I’m loathe to admit it, but not all males are like that,” I said, nodding my head at the path the sorcerer had taken to beat a hasty retreat. “There are honorable ones. And to be fair, there are many terrible females as well. I just think you’re used to your dryad sisters being females of high moral character.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “’Tis true, my sisters are as you’ve said. I thought—perhaps in error—that such was the way of mankind and paranormals. In my calling as ambassador I encountered many closed minded individuals, but many wonderful ones. I guess I was hoping that society at large would be different.”
