cw: violence mention

Sunbeams poured out from between parted clouds, and danced upon the garden. For a summer’s day the wind was quite gentle through the flowers; and atop the highest tower in the Lurlyin — the last city of any import along the road north toward the ocean (though even for an Elven settlement, Lurlyin was hardly a city by proper rights) — an old man pulled aside a curtain to peer out upon the greenery.

The rain had been sudden and fierce: an hour ago it drove the man indoors — along with his charges, three children, whom were now tucked behind his robes — to the warm and dry of his little cottage amid the garden on the tower’s top, where they all peered out from behind the curtain. The sudden downpour had only just stopped. Wet droplets slid down leaves and petals and coalesced into puddles that drained into natural rivulets in the dirt: rivulets that had been carefully tended this very morning and were meant for irrigation of this very sort.

Elder Luthas gave a nod to the children, and they tested the garden, to discover all the ways in which the sudden rain had changed it. One child, a girl, stuck close to Luthas as he picked up his robes and strode along a narrow cobble path to the patio they’d been driven from only an hour before, while a young boy sprinted past them in a straight line to the stone patio where he examined a half-full tea cup that the rain had refilled on a table. And lagging behind, the last child, who had not decided whether they were a boy, or a girl, or neither, splashed into puddles, which coated their lower legs in mud.

Luthas sat down heavily in the slightly damp chair at the side of the patio, and before he called the children to his side, each was given time to play in the warm sun and the cool breeze, all swirled with the rainfresh scent of flora. He toweled off the smooth marble blocks they used for seating, and sent each child to fetch a pillow from the various purple and yellow and green cushions within the cottage; which, of course, the children argued over fiercely before they settled down and took their seats before him.

“In spite of the rain, there could be no nicer day for a history lesson, wouldn’t you agree?” Elder Luthas said once they’d all gotten cozy. The girl nodded eagerly. The neither-yet exchanged a giggle with the boy next to them, as they picked off flakes of dried mud from their spindly little legs. Whether it was the mud or the giggling, the girl cast a frown at the other two children.

“Can our lesson be about adventure today?” the boy asked, oblivious to the disapproval.

“Oh, and danger!” the muddy scamp said.

"I’ve had enough of adventure,” the frowning girl said.

Elder Luthas stroked his chin, and leaned back upon his high-backed wooden chair. He cast a cursory glance at the tea cup, and picked up a little, silver stirring spoon that lay upon the teapot nearby on the small, circular table beside him.

“You’ve always had enough adventure,” said the neither-yet, “you won’t even let us explore the nalon orchard without complaining.”

“It’s dangerous to go so far south without someone to keep an eye on you,” the frowning girl shot back, with all the emphasis and concern of a strict mother.

“It’s not so dangerous,” the boy said. “My brother took me as far as the Crossing, to see all the Saurans, and he’s even gone past that.”

“Oh dear children, you should listen. You must beware the lands further south, even they so near as the Ethyin Grove and likewise Oryisren Chasms,” Elder Luthas said in his creaky-timber voice. The three little saplings turned from their squabble to look up at him.

The boy raised his wispy hand, urgent, energetic, bouncing on his heels so much he nearly slipped from his cushion, “yes, Kael?”

“Because there are monsters!” Kael shouted eagerly.

The other children giggled, and Elder Luthas nodded with a bright, glittering smile, “just so, dearlings. Monsters of the most fearsome kind.”

“Dragons?” said the frowning girl, with an edge of fear, and Luthas quirked his eyebrow in surprise.

“Oho, I’d quite forgotten about our dear Saurans’ fearsome cousins, those nasty dragons, Faya. Hmm, no, the monsters to the south are not so terrible as that: perhaps I mean the second or third most fearsome, then?”

The girl, Fayathein (though usually just Faya), beamed in pride, the fear all gone: after all, she’d remembered something even Elder Luthas had forgot, and Elder Luthas usually remembered quite a lot. That reflected well upon her, and she’d be certain to tell her father all about it, Luthas was sure.

“What’s th’ second most fearsome monster!”

Faya glared at the muddy youngster who had just trampled all over her time in the spotlight. But scoundrels often had an insatiable curiosity, and just as was to be expected, this one was drooling for an answer: the two children could hardly be more different.

Faya bore all the markings of a regal young Elven girl: the curls of her hair were neat and well kept, her frame was spindly but not gangly. Whether Sun or Moon graced the sky, Faya always had an otherworldly radiance about her, much like her mother. As true an Elf, as they tell of in the histories.

Whereas this curious little mouse was more akin to a fairy or a dryad, with leaves braided through their messy hair, grass stains rubbed into their knees, and streaks of dirt up and down their legs and arms. Their robes fared no better.

“Well, Velyin,” Elder Luthas grinned, “I think that is what I would teach you all today, if you would be so kind as to indulge me. Have I told you three the tale of Lady Eldathmir?”

The Tale of Lady Eldathmir was a moral story, well known among the Elves — any elf over the age of fifteen, so long as they were from the north, could recite it by heart — but for these elflings, barely in their fourth year, there were so many first-times yet to be had. In unison, they shook their heads.

“Aha! Well then, well then! Gather close, you’ll not want to miss a single word of this — not if you value your nesas, at least,” Elder Luthas said, and the children hushed as he told his story.

“Lady Eldathmir,” Luthas began, “was an ancestor to the Elves of the Lurlyin and the Asyi Spire, and she came from a place deep within the oceans north and deeper still, within the mists of Ethar. Very, very far away. With her people, she came in search of safe harbor from the fires of the deep. With her family, she helped to found the haven in Lurlyin–”

“Elder Luthas! All your stories start this way,” Velyin whined with an eyeroll so deep it reached their broad little shoulders, “can’t you skip to th’good parts?”

Luthas frowned and so Faya began to frown as well, but Kael seemed to agree with Velyin.

“I wanna hear about the monsters!” he said with a pout; Faya frowned even deeper at them both, with the occasional inquiring glance to Elder Luthas, as if to silently urge him to chastise the interrupters.

So Faya’s look of surprise was nearly as expressive as their giggles when Elder Luthas’s frown turned sharply into a grin, and he said, “Alright, alright, just this once I suppose.”

Many would tell you that Lady Eldathmir’s story was a short and simple one, but for inquisitive young elves a story for a quick afternoon could wear well into a long evening if the storyteller wasn’t careful. Luckily, Luthas was well-versed in his role. He did his best to answer the children’s questions concisely, especially in the beginning when he described Lady Eldathmir’s beauty, her noble mercy, her incredible grace. They were all curious what she was like, and he knew that they wanted to picture in her little bits and pieces of themselves.

Luthas was so gracious as to portion out fair helpings of personality traits for each of the elflings to admire, and once he began to describe Lady Eldathmir’s heroic deeds, the children cooed and ah’ed. That is until Luthas described one last adventure: the crux of the tale.

“One night a youngling, much like yourselves, had been exploring the Ethyin grove and plied its depths. Miles and miles from here, so far from home that even from this tower we cannot see all the way to the spot, this child wandered too close to the southern border, and became lost.”

“Which southern border?” Faya asked, the hint of concern knit in her brow.

“Why, child,” Luthas stroked his chin, “can you not guess?”

“Grigaur…” Velyin hissed, and Faya’s eyes shot open wide. The trio shuddered despite the warm summer sun. Birds chirped, breeze whispered, Luthas waited.

And then he sucked in a deep breath.

“To the south, where the Ethyin Grove falls into Oryisren Chasms, at the cliffs where verdant green fades to the pitiless gray of the Grigaur, a child, so wild and free, much like yourselves,” Velyin and Kael beamed, “had ventured too deep and become lost.

“They cried and cried and cried for help, for someone to find them, and their voice was tossed up into the sky, carried away by the wind, north to Lady Eldathmir…

“But so too it carried south, into the Grigaur.”

“Oh no…” whispered Faya, and the children huddled together as Luthas reared up to his full height and towered over the little saplings.

“Yes, in fact. On the salt plains of the Grigaur,” he said quietly, “the twisted, pearly shapes of ruined creatures, full of cold and evil, caught the sound.”

“Orks?” Kael asked as he clutched Faya’s sleeve, his knees drawn up tight beneath his chin and under his arms.

Luthas’s eyes gleamed and his grin looked oddly vicious beneath that ordinarily serene gaze of his. “Not quite, Kael. Not yet,” he explained, “these creatures were the descendants of Scaled Saurans, wretched and malformed within the white ash of the Vouun.

“Goblins. Withered of body, but sharpened of cunning. Wiry, white-haired, red-eyed creatures. More Rat than lizard, some might say. But twice as hungry, and thrice as fierce.”

The children leaned forward despite themselves, as Luthas lowered his voice to an urgent whisper.

“And fast!” Luthas hissed and the children collapsed backward with a chorus of squeaks, “they could sprint from the north shore to the Haven, where we sit right here, in but a single breath.”

“Oh no…” Faya whispered even more fervently.

“You understand,” Luthas nodded his approval, “these Goblins heard the child’s cries for help, and those very cries sang to the evil deep within their hearts, and beckoned. Before Lady Eldathmir could even reach the place from where the cries for help had come, the child’s wails turned to screams. Desperation to save a life willed her body into power and speed the likes of which no one ever before her had shown. She became as a stag, bounding through the wood: and when she burst forth through the trees, she came upon the child just as the Goblins crawled over the cliffs and onto the forest floor to surround the child.

“Heroically, Lady Eldathmir drew her blade and dove between the goblins and the babe; she battled with the Goblins long and hard throughout that night, with no rest, and no one stronger to call for aid. Only weapon and wits to guide her, she swung back and forth to fend off the encroaching horde, yet the moment there was an opening, she pushed the child into the thicket of trees from which she’d sprung, and urged them to run. To cover their escape, Lady Eldathmir stayed by the cliffs and fought not just with grace, but with ferocity.”

Velyin cheered loudly at that, and swung their arms in broad arcs from the sudden burst of heroic energy. Blinded by their own enthusiasm, only Faya and Kael saw the sadness that yet lingered in Elder Luthas’s eyes, and Kael tugged at Velyin’s sleeve.

“What–” Velyin said as they calmed enough to realize that something in the story was amiss.

“What happened then?” Faya interrupted in a rush.

Luthas looked down gravely upon the children and said, “in the hour before dawn, she fell from the cliffs.”

“What!” Kael cried out.

“No!” Velyin echoed.

Luthas nodded to confirm that the worst had come to pass. “One drop of a single Goblin’s poisonous sweat touched her tongue, and it was enough to dizzy her. She slipped and fell off the cliffs, then.”

Faya whispered, her brow furrowed, her eyes wide, “one drop?”

“That’s right,” Luthas nodded and then added for emphasis, “she fought hundreds that night.”

Elder Luthas gave the children time to ponder that before he continued: “and with that, an Elf was bathed in the salt of the Grigaur, in the ash of Vouun.”

Kael gasped at the realization, “and then came the Orks. From Lady Eldathmir.”

Luthas nodded wryly, “yes, I’m afraid so.”

The children were clouded in melancholy for what must have felt like hours, but which lasted only so long for the sun to dip a grassblade’s width deeper into the sky. 

“So!” Luthas said with a sudden clap of his hands, “what can you tell me of the moral to this story, children?”

Before anyone else, Velyin declared: “Lady Eldathmir wasn’t strong enough!”

Luthas chuckled, but had no time to point out that Lady Eldathmir’s strength had not once wavered; Kael already had his own interpretation to offer.

“She didn’t run away soon enough?” he said.

“Perhaps,” Luthas replied, “but would she not have led the Goblins back to the Haven? We were not so strong then as we are now. She knew that well, and chose to fight in the hopes that dawn would drive the Goblins back into the Grigaur, so she could return home without endangering her people.”

Kael nodded slowly at first, then a little faster as the elder’s words sank in, then turned to look at Velyin and together they turned to look at Faya, who was deeply lost in thought.

When Faya looked up she did so with a start, and then pushed past her nerves to say, slowly, carefully, “she fell… because of one drop of poisonous sweat.”

“Very good Faya,” Luthas said with a deep nod, “yes, the moral of the story is in one drop. Merely one drop of evil is all that it took to separate the purity and goodness of an Elf, from the filth and despair of an Ork. One drop of cruelty, one drop of darkness in one Elf’s heart, is all that it took to create the monsters that threaten our borders even to this day. One drop of filth is all it takes.”