I’ve lived in a studied nature for several years and one of the most important things I’ve learned is that it’s not so much the strongest who survive so much as it’s the most cunning. Sometime nature helps out, changing an animal’s appearance over time, allowing it to better adapt to it’s surrounding, giving it better vision at night, changing the color of it’s fur or body; even giving it a tail to hang from trees while sleeping. More often it is the creature that understands and therefore adapts to its surroundings who survive the longest. I’m at a loss however, to explain the elves. How a nation as bigoted and unwilling to change as them continues to exist, I do not know.
After meeting with the elven king, Dalenurell, I’m at a loss for words to understand how creatures who live purportedly for thousands of years can be so dimwitted and closed-minded. I mean to see how the world changes in such an intimate way and timely way should keep the from forming such hostile and ignorant opinions. I understand, their king was murdered, the current kings father, by a human. But to blame an entire race on it is an absurd concept to me.
I know I can’t take the kings words as that of every elf. But every elf met us with distrusting gazes, hateful words and sometimes even more hateful silence. They treated us as if we were Common beasts. They defined an entire race based on the actions of one of its members. You’d think that beings as “wise” as the elves would be able to see that there is such a wide variety of humans. To see that there are all kinds. Well I suppose it would have helped had they allowed us to know of them so that they would have met some of us and therefore known of the variety and have been able to identify the impossibility of classifying such a diverse group. But then again who am I, to question such “wise” decisions?
Alawan immediately fell to his knee giving him every ounce of respect that he had to give. Varian spoke in tones fitting that of a king’s advisor. Jerick never raised his voice, arguing the plight of our situation, pointing out how we need to end the war. Marrol and Dean gave their support, while Elana seemed troubled, remaining quiet the whole time. I was respectful to him at first but quickly saw that this king was looking only to place blame for his father’s death. When I leaned back on the wall, tired of hearing what he said. He asked me who I thought I was. I told him. The heir to a throne, a throne that as the elven king said means nothing to him and his people. I don’t think he quite expected me to tell him how little his throne meant to my people. I went in there respecting him because of his position, and then seeing that he was not a person deserving my respect, I took it back. He did seem to warm up after I pointed this out to him.
He asked us to swear fealty to him. I could not. If I truly am an heir to a throne than I can swear fealty to no ONE man. I swore to help him if I could, but nothing more than allies. He cast some sort of magic on us and I couldn’t help but feel as if something had just been set in stone. I don’t know how to describe it, but I feel as if I owe this man something and I do not like it. After arguing his point for quite sometime and having his argument reasoned into oblivion, the king grew weary and sort of accepted us. I can’t help but feel as if he believes more that since he can’t back his point that we did something to wrong him, that he means to use us to his own ends instead.
This man unsettles me. He is the first king I’ve ever known, except Daniel, whom I’ve apparently taken the place of. Which apparently, as the elven king pointed out, doesn’t mean very much. Anyways, I don’t know what all of this means but, I don’t know if we just made a new friend, or a new enemy. |
