~o0o~

Three hundred and thirty years before Quaraun met Unicorn...

Quaraun returned to the Moon Elf Valley in the deepest, darkest and most extreme region of the Deep North.

The Deep North was cold.

Cold and silent.

Silent and cold.

Cold and quiet, quiet and cold.

The crisp, clean, cold smell of snow was everywhere. The cold was all over, every which way, everyplace, far and near, far and wide, high and low, left and right, right and left, throughout. The brisk, bitter cold bore a distinctive smell. It smelt of crisp, clean, empty nothingness.

The taste of cold hung in the air. It was as bland and flavourless as the frozen water it is.

The cold was as smooth and tasteless as ice water.

All Quaraun could think of was the cold and how cold the cold was.

“I forgot how cold it was here,” the Moon Elf announced to no one in particular. There abided no one to talk with. It had been days since the last person he’d seen. Weeks since the last village.

In his years spent with the Di’Jinn, Quaraun became accustomed to the sweltering desert. Now he was back home for the first time since childhood. He had forgotten how bitterly cold his snow filled homelands were. He further forgot how contemptuous, stuck up, and snobby his people transpired to be. And how much they detested any, even trivial, break from consistency.

While the Moon Elves could tell one from another, no one else could tell the Moon Elves apart. Their need for consistency reached an alarming level.

Every Elf wore indistinguishable tunics of silvery, icy robin’s egg blue with white embroidery. Every she-Elf wore dresses of silver-blue colours. Every Elf had shoulder-length hair of identical cut. Every she-Elf kept their long locks piled high on their heads.

No one ever thought of not dressing exactly like everyone else.

No one ever thought of not looking like everyone else.

It wasn’t done.

It wasn’t allowed.

In their minds, they achieved perfection.

Obviously, to deviate from perfection is to be inferior.

Inferiority could not tolerated.

The Moon Elves possessed cult-like adhesion to doing everything exactly the same as each other. They were more than willing to kill any Moon Elf that dared stray from their carbon copy existence.

But Quaraun had forgotten this.

Thus, Quaraun thought nothing wrong with wearing a long, flamingo pink dress. He liked pink. He disliked male fashion. He saw no reason a woman could not wear a man’s clothes or a man could not wear a woman’s clothes.

And he forgot Moon Elves were not allowed to be different or look different or act different.

Pink was not a colour Moon Elves could wear.

It simply was not allowed.

Furthermore, punishment for a male Moon Elf to wear a she-Elf’s dress was flogging and prison.

And then there was Quaraun’s hair.

Moon Elves all had white hair. And there were only two hairstyles. One for the males and one for the females. Nothing else was allowed.

But, Quaraun had neither hairstyle.

Quaraun, being a wizard, he believed he would lose his ability to use magic if he cut his hair. And so 70 years passed since Quaraun’s hair had last been cut. Quaraun’s hair was a sight to behold. It reached to the ground, and he frequently tripped over it, for it often got under his feet.

Quaraun could not care for his luxuriant locks on his own. He had required servants to both help him wash and brush his hair. The servants also had to carry his hair over their shoulders when he walked.

Among the many things Moon Elf law forbade Moon Elfs from doing, was also going outside in the sunlight. A Moon Elf’s pure white hair would discolour in the sunlight, becoming darker.

Having lived in the deserts of Persia for so many years, Quaraun had spent a great deal of his life outside in the sun. Quaraun loved the feel of the sun’s warmth kissing his skin. Quaraun’s white hair had taken a silver grey tint over the years.

At times his hair looked almost violet-blue.

It was a beautiful shade of icy blue, silvery steel grey. It gleamed in the sun, like liquid mercury.

Likewise, Quaraun’s skin had grown dark from the sun. While still paler than everyone else, still whiter than even the whitest Human, he was much darker than any other Moon Elf.

All these things were forbidden.

Wearing pink.

A male, dressing like a female.

And wearing pink.

Letting his silken silver hair grow long.

Styling his hair in an unauthorized fashion. Or rather refusing to style his hair at all. Instead, letting it hang, long, loose, seductive, and earthy around his feet.

Going outside while the sun was up.

Letting his hair darken to a colour other than white.

Letting his skin grow tan in the sunlight.

And of course wearing pink.

Quaraun was a forgetful Elf.

His brain had been damaged long ago when he was still a small child. Only 3 years old. He and his mother had been out on the shore, watching the harbour seals. A stranger attacked them. Quaraun had slipped on the ice covered kelp and hit his head on a rock in the icy tidal pool. He did not remember this. He had been too young. But remember it or not, he had suffered brain damage still the same. It made him slow and somewhat stupid. Intelligence and logic were things Quaraun lacked.

There were many things Quaraun could not do, much to his frustration.

The Di’Jinn had tried to teach him numbers and equations, science and medicine. They had high hopes of raising him as a great mathematician or scientist.

Instead, Quaraun was a tailor.

He spun wool and silk into thread. Then wove the thread into soft delicate silk. Then embroidered the shimmering silk with dainty flowers. Then added tiny glass seed beads. And then finally, cut the soft, slippery silk, and sewed it into fabulous glistening dresses, scarfs, sari, veils, hijab, hats, bags, and slippers. And all in shades of pink.

This was Quaraun’s talent.

Weaving silk, embroidering silk, and sewing luxuriant silk dresses. Quaraun was exceptionally good at what he did, but he wasn’t good at anything else.

He possessed no head for numbers or science. He could not remember dates or histories or equations or calculations. Philosophies, theologies, and politics were too deep for him to understand.

The Di’Jinn found Quaraun to be an overly sensitive Elf. Sights, sounds, smells, all sent him screaming for the safety of hiding under pillows. They tried to teach him music, but he complained that the sound of music hurt his ears. Most strong scents irritated his nose. Highly seasoned flavours and spicy foods, overpowered his senses. Fast movements and energetic activities terrified Quaraun, making him nervously tremble with fear. Dancing, running, and playing were all activities he refused to do. Nor could not bear others around him doing either.

The Di’Jinn tried as best they could to teach Quaraun everything they knew. But none of it stuck in Quaraun’s dim, slow-witted little brain.

After decades of fruitless effort to teach Quaraun the knowledge that wise old sages, mages, and wizards were supposed to know, they finally gave up. The Di'Jinn concluded that Quaraun was just too stupid to be taught. Something was desperately wrong with his brain.

Quaraun was savant. He had a few things he could do, and those things he did immeasurably well. But everything moved through Quaraun’s brain like water in a sieve. He retained nothing and forgot everything.

But he could embroider beautifully.

And so the Di’Jinn worked with what they had. And they taught Quaraun to use magic, not through mathematics, star charts, planetary movements, words written on scrolls, numbers, or science. Instead, they taught Quaraun magic through sigils, veve, runes, hieroglyphs, and picture art. Things Quaraun could draw with yellow chalk on his handwoven pink silks, then embroider into the cloth.

They later discovered the young Elf had a talent for glass-work as well. He took to making his own glass beads. Quaraun obsessed over colours and lined things up in rainbow colour order. Quaraun spent hours making beads, then stringing beads, carefully sorting them by colours. So the Di’Jinn taught him colour magic, and the magic of prayer beads.

Before long, Quaraun progressed from making tiny colour blown glass beads, to also making tiny colour blown glass bottles. And these, the Di’Jinn taught Quaraun how to capture Genies and trap them in bottles and force them to grant wishes.

The Di’Jinn lost hope of Quaraun ever becoming the powerful wizard they had hoped he could be. Until the day they all died and realized the error of what they had done.

Without mathematics, without science, without star charts, without calculations, armed only with coloured glass bottles for of wish granting genie and wearing carnation pink silk, embroidered with colourful magic bead sigils, Quaraun became the most powerful being the world had ever known.

And this had attracted the attention of the world’s other most powerful wizard.

Quaraun, with his fractured skull and damaged brain, was prone to forget things.

And so he forgot that he had killed the Di’Jinn, and he forgot the laws of the Moon Elves, and he forgot how truly evil his father really was.

And thus he now trended through the icy cold snow on the Eastern shores of Lake Gitchigumi, leaning heavily on a wooden staff, in search of the only town in the region with a name: Ivujivik.

He forgot many things.

He often forgot things only a few hours after they had happened.

Seventy years passed since Quaraun last visited Ivujivik, Quebec, the town where he had been born. A town that sat on top of the Earth, devoid of anything but ice and snow.

And more ice and snow.

And spotted grey harbour seals.

And ivory white polar bears.

And pristine, sparkling white snow.

And shimmering silvery ice.

And blustery winds.

And snow.

And ice.

And more snow.

“Why is there so much snow?”

No one answered him.

There was no one to answer him, nor did he actually want an answer.

Quaraun was just frustrated by how wet his dress was and cold his feet were.

He forgot about the snow.

Or rather he had forgotten how much snow there was.

And he had forgotten how cold the snow was.

And wet.

Snow was wet.

Quaraun had forgotten snow was wet.

“Why is snow wet?” Quaraun asked himself as he stared down at his wet shocking pink silks. “I’m cold and wet and I hate it.”

Quaraun sighed a deep sigh and stood up to his knees in snow and wondering if he was even going the right way. Ivujivik was North. He could remember that much. But it wasn’t on any map. No place around here was. In fact, this entire country wasn’t on the map. Humans in Europe refused to believe anything existed on the West side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Quaraun had been born in Ivujivik.

His family lived there.

His father.

His father’s brother.

His older sisters.

This much he could remember.

But Quaraun had been 9 years old when they sent him away to live with the Di’Jinn in Persia on the other side of the planet.

Quaraun could not remember exactly where Ivujivik was.

He also could not remember his father’s name.

Or his uncle’s name.

Or the names of his sisters.

He couldn’t remember how many sisters he had.

Or his mother’s name.

She was dead.

He missed his mother.

She loved him.

His father hated him.

Quaraun dreaded going back home to see his father. But a glimmer of hope that maybe his father had changed, drove him onward through the snow, in search of Ivujivik.

Ivujivik was the furthest North one could go by, going straight up and slightly West from Saco Bay. Which is what Quaraun was doing. He’d arrived at Saco Bay a month ago. Was it a month ago? Quaraun wasn’t sure. He wasn’t good with dates and times, or even numbers in general. He wasn’t even sure what year it was or how old he was.

He calculated it would take somewhere between 1 to 3 months from Saco Bay to Ivujivik if he walked the entire way. Shorter if weather was agreeable - it was not. Longer if weather was bad - which it was. Weather was very abominable. Plus, there were other issues besides weather, slowing him down.

Namely, his hair.

He pulled a brush out of his bag and nervously brushed his hair.

Quaraun got great satisfaction from brushing his hair.

It soothed him. Relaxed him. Calmed him. Excited him.

Quaraun’s love for his hair bordered on being a fetish.

He brushed his hair when he was upset to sooth his anger.

He brushed his hair when he was aroused to quell his erection. Most would have found the sexual pleasure Quaraun took from brushing his hair as deeply disturbing, had they known just how much satisfaction Quaraun got out of simply running his fingers through his long silken hair.

To say that Quaraun was in love with his hair was an understatement. And the hours he spent each day, doing nothing but brushing and stroking his hair, had often left the Di’Jinn at their wit’s end. For once Quaraun began brushing his hair, he would sit for hours and do nothing but. And no one could bring him out of the self-induced erotic state he put himself into while brushing his hair.

Quaraun had never had a lover. He’d never had a need for one. The affair he had with his own hair was more than enough.

He brushed his hair whenever he was nervous, as a way to calm his nerves and ease his nauseated stomach.

Brushing his hair, however, was not an easy feat.

With hair like Rapunzel, it took more than one person to brush Quaraun’s hair.

Quaraun’s white hair was over five feet long and dragged on the ground.

Back in Persia, Quaraun used to have servants to brush his hair for him.

It took them 3 hours every morning to brush the Elf’s mind-mindbogglingly long hair.

“My hair is wet,” Quaraun sputtered as he put his silver brush away. It was pointless to try to brush it while the lower 3 feet of it were dragging in the snow. He knew if he tried to brush his hair while it was wet and caked with snow and ice, he would damage it. Split ends were enough of an issue, as it was without doing more damage.

Quaraun’s fetish for hair led Quaraun to have strange thoughts about strange things. Like Cotswold Sheep and their long, luxuriant ivory wool, which he often spun into thread for his embroidery. Quaraun was prone to sit for hours, half buried in piles of fresh sheered Cotswold Sheep wool, touching it and rubbing in his hair.

Quaraun was an Elf of strange habits and his fetish for long hair was perhaps his strangest. His fetish for long hair is what had led to his most alarming obsession of all: his inexplicable lust for The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley.

Quaraun grumbled and complained to himself about all the reasons the snow was messing with his hair, and took comfort in cursing the snow as he was currently unable to take comfort in brushing his hair.

A more logical person would have cut their hair to a more manageable length while travelling, but Quaraun was neither a smart nor logical person. He was very vain and very superstitious.

He was in love with the beauty of himself, spent endless hours fussing over the glory that was his silver hair, and had read in several tomes that the world’s most powerful wizards were powerful because they never cut their hair. In fact, Quaraun had only become a wizard so that he could have an excuse for why his hair was so long.

It was easier to say: “I’m a wizard. We wizards don’t cut our hair” than it was to try to explain the unhealthy obsessive love affair Quaraun had with his own hair.

Plus, being a wizard gave Quaraun an excuse to be close to other men who had incredibly long hair.

Quaraun had joined The Guild of Wizardry grudgingly.

He had no interest in sitting at stuffy meetings listening to rules and regulations being made about magic.

However, it only took one Guild meeting to change his mind. The Guild was filled with hundreds of beautiful men, all with long, luxuriant hair. Quaraun took to attending every Guild meeting just so he sat in a room full of gorgeous long-haired men and lust after them.

Lusting after long-haired men or every race and species had become a bad habit for Quaraun.

Elves.

Dwarves.

Humans.

Gnomes.

Demons.

Faeries.

Merrow.

Trolls.

Goblins.

Merfolk.

Ursiug.

Diontites.

Ptarmagins.

Pixies.

“God I hate Pixies,” Quaraun muttered. “Why am I thinking about Pixies?”

Quaraun looked down at the paper in his hand.

How long had he been holding it?

He didn’t know.

He could not remember taking it out of his bag.

Quaraun had absentmindedly pulled out a scroll and had been writing down a list of names of every race he could think of, whom had hair that he liked.

He put the scroll back in his bag.

Quaraun didn’t care what they were, so long as they were males with long, gorgeous hair.

“Ursiug has beautiful hair. Probably the most beautiful hair of anyone. I have never met an Ursiug. I wish I knew an Ursiug. It would be nice to meet one someday, just to see their hair in person.”

Ursiug were sheep people. A type of chaos demon, with the upper body of a humanoid-Elf-like being and the lower body of a Cotswold Sheep.

The hair on their heads and the fur on their legs grew into long ivory ropes of wool. It was luxuriant and soft and Quaraun wanted one for a pet.

Quaraun spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about hair.

His hair.

And everyone else’s hair.