Jedi by Knight

Here is a fun little elf sketch from my high school sketchbook!  I drew this in conjunction with a short story I wrote around the same time, “Celestial Balance.”  The elf in the story has curly hair, but there was no way I was going to be able to draw that!

Keep reading for the story!

Celestial Balance

by Mei-Mei

Everyone has two sides.  Yin and yang.  Dark and light.  To live we must find the balance between them.

Branwyn was no different.  She was sun and she was moon.

Tonight was a moon night.  As she climbed over the small rocks, her bare feet treading lightly on the grassy knoll, she reached for the round stone pendant at her neck.  It glowed hot in her hand, terribly warm in that chill night.  Too much sun-power, she thought again.  Tonight was a moon night.

She pushed a lock of curly red hair out of her eyes and continued the steep climb up the dark, green hill.  The cold shadows of night did not bother her; she was part moonchild after all.

Finally she reached the top.  A gentle breeze played through her mass of fiery curls and whipped at her small, thin, tan-colored garment as she looked down on the forest, at the surrounding hills.  And then she sat, wiggling her toes through the cool grass, staring dreamily at the moon.  The full, perfectly round orb stood out bright against the velvet sky, and the twinkling pinpricks of stars danced around it.

From nowhere the girl suddenly produced a flute, small and wooden, beautifully crafted.  She lifted it to her soft lips and blew.  The clear tone of the ancient instrument floated on the wind, over the hills, down, down to the village Llandrindod.  Those who lay unable to sleep there listened to the sweet, haunting melody.  “That’ll be the Hill-Faerie again,” they whispered to sleeping spouses.

Note after note, phrase after phrase Branwyn played.  Time was lost in her moonsong.  The music grew louder and faster as she drank up more moonrays; it grew and grew and grew and then…

it stopped.

With one last, long, soft, pure note, she lowered the flute.  She touched her pendant again.  The smooth stone was comfortably lukewarm.  Much better.  The wooden flute vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.  She raised herself to her feet fluidly.  Her freckled face was calm and relaxed and her green eyes looked bright and refreshed.  There was always such peace on her hill.

Her halves were balanced, her powers in equilibrium.  She moved lightly and quietly back down the hillock, and then Branwyn, moonchild, sundaughter, hill faerie, melted away into the black forest.