Dell the Elf - a story scrap

Dell the elf was pretty much a jerk. That’s most of what I remember of him from college. I met him on a late February day; a day when the snow had melted and refrozen so many time that it no longer looked like snow. Caked with sand and strewn upon the brown grass, it looked more like chunks of broken buildings. The temperature of the air had slithered up into the 40s and so my long winter coat had been set aside in favor of my blue quilted jacket. I was walking to class, alone in a crowd as usual, lost in thought-also as usual. I spent a lot of my college years wandering around in a haze, mindlessly day tripping in some fantasy world. Looking back now, I should have spent less time drugged out on pirate ships and pixie dust and more time fretting about things like whether my course work would lead me to the correct career path and doing stuff like joining the sailing club. Of course if I’d done that, I’d never have met Dell, and I wouldn’t be one of only three known Americans ever to travel “Over There” (I was the Student. The others were the Warrior, the Explorer and the Healer. More about them later.)

Dell was under a bridge. It was a pedestrian bridge which led from a walkway down a steep incline and into the Communications Hall building. I wasn’t looking for him or anything, which of course is the reason I could see him. I was actually momentarily distracted from the internal chaos of my head by a dirty pile of snow someone had modeled into the semblance of a snowman. It had caution tape wrapped around its neck for a scarf and wore a traffic cone hat.

Now, college kids are weird, and normally I probably would have glanced up and seen the figure and just kept walking, but Dell’s position under the bridge was just a little too perfect. Wedge a human up under the concrete where the walkway meets the hill and he would be crouched and bent and trying desperately to appear cool and affecting while lounging in a precarious and utterly pretentious pose. A human would also be in shadow, whereas Dell seemed to be lit from some unseen source.

And, weirder than weird, I instantly knew his name was Dell.

I stopped in my tracks and blurted out, “Dell? What are you doing here?”

He looked up. His face was dark skinned with large bright eyes, and his hair scrubby and short. His nose, mouth and chin were small though, giving him an unearthly almost alien appearance. He slid down the embankment calmly and shut the small book he’d been reading in my face.

He seemed much too tall to be an elf, but then I had to remind myself that elves were not, as Rankin Bass would like us to believe, little guys in green that make toys for Santa. They are a race spoken of in German stories that are usually portrayed as young, attractive forest folk. Dell wore a tight-fitting blue and black jerkin with a dark green vest and black leather pants. His boots were also black and looked like they were made of suede. He’s movements didn’t make a sound.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked. His voice was mellow and whispery and, well, fae.

“No,” I said, coming at least partially back to my senses. “I’m going to class. Sorry.” I hunched over and started walking away, deciding to just ignore the incident as my imagination running away from me.

I only took about four paces though, before a hole seemed to open up in the pavement in front of me. My heart skipped as I teetered on the edge for a split second. Other students didn’t even pay me heed and just walked straight on over the gaping blackness. Dell walked up behind me and I felt his hand touch me lightly on the back.

“Jump or be dumped, your choice.”

“No! I don’t want to go!” My mind was rather surprised at this reaction. Hadn’t I been wishing for years to be able to step through a door and escape the mundane world? Okay, this was a little scarier than a door, but here was my chance to travel to another world! Why would I hesitate? “Will I be able to come back?”

Dell rolled his eyes. “Yessss” he hissed, and shoved.

I wasn’t ready to go yet, though, and I swung around and dug my fingernails into his sleeve. “Wait! Don’t push me!” He was more than annoyed that I was not only holding onto him, but I had also thrown him off balance and he had to struggle to stay upright which broke his aura of perfection. “You promise you’ll answer all my questions?”

“Yeah yeah, whatever.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, now let go of me!” He tore his arm away from me and I fell backwards through the void.