"Upside down
Boy, you turn me
Inside out
And round and round"
(Diana Ross)

Amtril spent his early childhood in the cradle. When he was around 20... well, elves and vampires live about 3-4 times longer than us humans, so when an elf turns 70 it's like 20 for a human, so do the math

After he got out of the cradle he was instantly kidnapped by the wandering circus of the half-elf gypsies who kept him for 15 years until they arrived in Norrendor where the soldiers took the boy away right after his performance (the half-elf gypsies trained him to be an acrobat).

He was taken to the palace, washed, polished and given fancy clothes and an earring with a real diamond, but he asked if he could please keep his old gypsy earring.

In general, he was pretty much upset and tried to sneak away a couple of times, but then in a few days he saw Arisha, the Norrendor princess, and since then for some weird reason he never tried to run anymore, quite the contrary, he always tried to sneak closer to the princess when she was in the garden... there was a beautiful garden near the palace, full of the ornamental cherry trees, so the boy would hide behind a tree and watch the princess, and she watched him back because actually it's hard to hide behind a sakura tree, and they would just watch each other like idiots... but then Arisha asked if he would want to get out or something, and she told him it's her who ordered to take him away from the half-elf gypsies because she was there and loved his strange twisty performance and wanted to ask him how he could bend like that but the gypsies were already leaving, so she ordered to take him to the palace.

He couldn't stop smiling and rolling his eyes as she was talking. Her voice was something he had never heard before, it was so...noble, but soft. "You have no bones?" she poked his shoulder slightly. The boy shuddered and blushed. "No, I do... it's just fun to do these things", the boy giggled softly. "But I guess it must hurt a lot?" -- "Not at all, my dad...I mean Casspar, maybe you haven't seen him, he's like a dad to me... he's very strong and I cried a lot... but he'd put balsam on my back and massage and it stopped aching... made me feel like a jelly", he chuckled.

"When they first showed me in the market I could do all this but it wasn't any painful anymore, like, Casspar and Tahlhar hold me and I do the arch and they ask the crowd if they want more and some people are like Yeah, so they push me from both sides and ask again, and people are like yeah, give us more, and I keep smiling because honestly it's all so silly, Casspar asks again but I guess my arch looks so wild that the whole market is silent and staring at us, someone in the crowd is like 'show us more!' and so they squeeze me in half...to me it's not painful at all but the whole crowd sighs and moans and women scream, that part of the show always scared me but they give us money after all...

Usually it's how it ends, but once... we have...well, had this minstrel, Yaffus, he's a funny man so once he just bursts on to the stage and asks people if they want to see a 'bend-through'!? Talhhar and Casspar laugh and make those evil faces and it's totally scary, I'm like wait a second, how is that...through?? What through what? And then some dirty dog in the crowd is like 'go for it!' and I'm not giggling anymore, like at all, I want to get out but those two hold me and I don't know what to do, there's nowhere to bend more and I have no idea what they mean by 'through' but I really, really don't like it, and then that fool Yaffus laughs really loud at the man in the crowd and yells something like 'Excuse me, mister, but you're asking for the impossible!!' and he runs off laughing, but...it made me so nervous, I think it's the first time I felt really...squeezed" the boy shook his head and suddenly felt the girl's hand through his hair.

"You are so amusing... don't worry" she said.
"Princess Arisha..." he blushed.
"Just Arisha. Ammy, I think you're so adorable! Wanna go dance?" --
"Princess...I mean Arisha...I wonder..." he looked aside.
"You don't dance?" --
"Well...I never tried" --
"Hee, I should have figured, beside the whole bending thing you were so clumsy on the stage, to say the least" she raised a brow.
"Let's go to the dance hall, I'll show you some of my moves," she winked and grabbed his hand.
"And I will make sure you start taking lessons at our school, too, you sound so...uneducated." --
"Oh..." the boy sighed as she pulled at his hand, and they headed to the palace...

In the next 15 years Amtril became an excellent dancer, he learned the classic elven dance for Arisha but kept working on his own performance with the royal choreographer and made a lot of shows just as a jester.

People of the friendly realms would visit Norrendor just to look at this new dance unknown to the elves, so gracefully flowing, soft like a willow and wavy like a river, so close to nature...

Soon they opened the first schools that taught the new dance and it started getting very popular among the elven youth. A rare elf of his age gets mentioned in the Book of Time, but Amtril got a whole big page just like a king or a hero, and they asked me to paint him, so we attached some silky ribbons to the trees and tied his legs because we wanted to make something special out of his Bendiness, so he literally was just hanging there upside down, between the trees, and then he'd rock and arch his back and somehow grab his own legs and then get himself all the way up there and lean his arms on his legs simply as if they were some kind of a gate or something.

I said I needed something more...steady for a portrait, but he chuckled and said he could just hang like that for hours, so I shrugged, threw my ass on the rock and started sketching. And what's weird about that brat is that he can never stop giggling and he keeps pulling jokes on me, like, how am I supposed to kiss a girl with that horn in my forehead and how am I not embarassed to stroll around all naked. And he calls himself an elf! Seriously, they need to be smarter in their 50s. And who was the one who said they're the race closest to nature, unicorns at least wouldn't put on any fancy pants like that, I mean I adore my loin-cloth, but some itchy pants? Thank you very much. And tell me about kissing, whenever I decide to walk my hooves thru' the garden, those two are always there making out, so go, tell me everything about 'embarassed'. Though when I was finally alone I actually tried to pull one of his tricks and I almost managed to put my leg behind my head, it was so silly but felt sort of refreshing.

So, well, here's the portrait of that brat, Amtril, I wonder what you think of it?

p.s. The pic itself is kinda like a parody on all the 'just standing there' character sheets, so there

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Tags: Contortion Backbend Elf Amtril