Mari

They revealed themselves in the flashing light of the storm. They were not what one might expect when picturing elves. 

Green and brown clothing was ragged and bore stains of dirt and grass. Weapons were simply made and there was no metal. Instead of swords, they wielded spears with stone heads. A couple had bows.

Most telling and worrisome of all, the rain trickled down gaunt features: hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, bony arms and legs. Grayish skin was pallid and unhealthy.

“Undead!” Marian screamed, fear running through her. She flung the side cover of the wagon open and frantically began to cast magic. 

The elves rushed the wagon.

Hadiin leapt to his feet and imperiously threw his hand up at the charging group, his voice ringing out, “Stop!” 

There was some kind of power in his voice; even Marian felt herself holding back from unleashing her spell.

She and the elves looked up at him, somewhat stunned.

“They’re not undead,” Hadiin softly said to Marian, his voice difficult to hear over the weather. 

Marian took another look. Now that they were closer and the initial shock had worn off, she saw the truth. They were not undead, merely starving. And their gray skin… “Moon elves?” she muttered.

An elf in the lead, spear aimed at her chest, narrowed his eyes at her. 

She triggered her fan of flames spell. Orange fire washed through the air over the heads of the elves, driving them back a step.

They growled in anger and readied to attack again.

“Hold!” Hadiin told them. “There’s no reason to fight!”

Once more, something in his voice checked them all.

The leader spat at Hadiin’s feet. “You are human. It’s reason enough.”

“OK, that’s just outright discrimination. Didn’t your parents teach you better?”

“My parents are dead! Killed — murdered — by your kind!” He rattled the stone head of his spear in the man’s direction.

Hadiin held his hands up in defence. “I don’t see what that has to do with us. We certainly didn’t do it.”

There was a deep anger, a hatred in the elf’s eyes. “You kind is guilty. Humans have been slaughtering us for over two hundred years. You expand your cities, build towns, cut down the forests, till every open spot of land. And you send your bloodthirsty adventurers against us, time and time again, murdering us all and cutting off our ears as trophies.”

Hadiin looked disgusted. “Ew. Really?” He turned to Marian with a frown. “People do this? Seriously?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I think I heard someone talking about how the adventurer’s guild in the city does have some quests against elves though.”

“That’s deplorable!” Hadiin scowled. “Elves are noble. Kind. Wise. And elf girls are hot.”

A female elf with a bow sidled forward, pointing her drawn arrow towards him. Her thin clothing clung to her too-thin body. “We’ve suffered enough at the hands of your rapist adventurers!”

Hadiin looked at her. “Hey. Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m simply appreciative of your refined features and gracefulness. And that lovely skin. Is it so wrong to see beauty in someone who looks a little different from oneself?”

She sneered. “Humans look like overgrown maggots stuffed into clothing.”

Hadiin opened his mouth to reply, then shrugged, apologetic. “Yes, some do. Obesity has become a problem, I admit. It’s all-too common. But we, as a society, are working on it. Some of us, anyway.”

Marian found her voice. “Why do you look like you’re starving?” she asked the leader.

His head whipped around in her direction. “Because we are! Because you humans have taken all of our food! You hunt the animals to extinction, take all the fish, rip every herb and wild vegetable you find out of the ground so that it can’t spread. And where we might cultivate the soil, you storm in with your knights and mages and take the land, fertilizing it with our blood and corpses.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ok… That’s dramatic.”

He bared his teeth at her. 

She raised her hands at him, flames dancing between her fingers. “Want to see what burning alive feels like? I just did it to someone yesterday. Smelled super disgusting. But I’ll do it again.”

Hadiin waved his hands in a downward motion. “Come now! Good elves, neither I, nor Marian here,” he gestured at her, “bear you any ill will. Of course we don’t! Neither side has drawn blood yet, so why don’t we just calm down?”

Another male elf, with feathers braided into his limp, wet hair, nodded towards the wagon. “We’re here to take everything you carry. Hand it over to us, and maybe we’ll let you live.”

Hadiin tilted his head in thought. “You have a use for cryo slime too?”

The elf looked confused. “Slime? What?”

“Oh! You probably want the deer jerky. That makes more sense.” He studied the elven bandits before him. “Tell you what, I’ll trade you for it.”

The leader looked appalled. “Trade? With you?”

“Yes. Trade,” Hadiin said matter-of-factly. “Exchange. I give you the jerky, you give me something in return.”

“You’d deal with us after we’ve just killed one of your own kind, a human?” The leader pointed to the corpse still dangling from the nearby tree branch. “You think we could trust someone who would think so little of their own as to betray them?”

Hadiin shook his head. “Oh, I’m not racial. Or specisial? Is that a word? Speciesist? Politically correct vocabulary is so confusing. Whatever. What I mean is that I don’t give a damn about a person’s so-called kind. I don’t care about their skin colour, their ear shape, their culture, or creed. Frankly, it’s all superficial, isn’t it? I mean, it’s really no different than wearing different clothes. Except it’s harder to take off and change or to put in the wash, I suppose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Friendship! That’s all I care about. Whether you’re elf or dwarf or giant ant, I don’t care. If we’re friends, that’s all that matters. And if we can’t be friends, then if we can at least cooperate in a civil and mutually profitable manner, whereby both of us happily benefit from association with the other, then what’s the problem? Why should we focus so much on grouping ourselves by physical characteristics or giving ourselves these silly labels of one kind or another when what really matters is whether we can help each other? Aren’t values a far more important part of one’s identity than skin colour or who you have sex with or what your grandparents did to someone else’s grandparents before you were born? Surely cooperation is more valuable, is it not? Surely a person’s values are more important than the shell we wear?”

The female archer looked askance at him. “So you don’t care that we killed a human?”

He hesitated. “Well, I wouldn’t say it speaks highly of you. Unless the human personally did you wrong. I mean, let’s face it, how much would you trust another elf that went around murdering people willy-nilly just for fun or because they got angry, hmm? But as far as that individual goes, I did not know him, so I have no particular regret that he’s dead other than in a general sense that indiscriminate killing is wrong and that it’s a shame that someone had to lose their life for no good reason.”

“And if we kill her?” The leader pointed at Marian.

Hadiin’s eyes turned flat. “Marian is a friend. So I’d burn your forest down and turn everyone in it to ash.”

Marian looked at him in surprise. He’d really do that? She…hadn’t expected him to feel so strongly. 

Hadiin’s smile reappeared. “Enough murder for today. It’s raining, it’s cold, and we all have better places to be, yes? So, I propose a trade. I’ve got enough deer jerky in the wagon that it would take all of you to carry it off.” He paused, thoughtful, then resumed. “I’ll give it you now, all of it. And in a week’s time, I’ll return. You can give me something in exchange for it then. I mean, obviously you don’t look like you’re carrying anything valuable with you at the moment. Unless you have coin hidden somewhere?”