“As children our parents tell us fables to teach us from right and wrong, what we should or should not do. Usually those tales are only allegorical, but sometimes those fanciful tales are all too real.”

“Klavis!”

Begrudgingly Klavis opened his eyes and rolled over looking at Kamilis. His brother sat there quietly reading a book, his back up against a tree. “What?”

Kamilis ever so slightly glanced towards Klavis and continued to study his book. “It wasn’t me; it was Xecran”.

As if on cue Klavis once again heard his name being called. Klavis rolled his eyes as he sat up, a big yawn escaping his mouth. He sighed as he pointed at the small fire with his open hand. He clinched his fist, and the fire died down for a moment. With his fist still clinched he pulled his arm back and mimed throwing an invisible ball. When his arm was fully extended, he opened his hand, and a ball of light went flying towards his yelling cousin. It flew a good distance out before there was a bright flash as the glowing ball expanded. Glowing particles slowly drifted down and settled on the forest floor leaving a glowing path for Xecran to follow.

Klavis reached over to his pack and pulled out a water skin and took a deep drink. He put the stopper back on and tossed it towards Kamilis, hitting him on the side. “Is that a different book than the one you were reading last night? How many of those did you bring?!”

Kamilis looked over at Klavis frowning. “Some people take their studies seriously.” He put a marker in the book, closed it and set it on his lap. “Not everyone has your knack for magic, some of us actually have to work at it.” He picked up the water skin, took a drink, put the stopper on and threw it back, hitting Klavis on the chest and having the water skin land on his lap.

Klavis smiled “Still the jealous older brother?”

Kamilis lips curled slightly into a small smile “Talent will only take you so far. It won’t be too long till you find that out.”

Klavis reached into his pack pulling out a pouch of assorted nuts. “We’ll see. Coasting on my talents has done me well so far. Besides, you make it sound like I’ve done nothing but play around.”

Kamilis raised an eyebrow “Haven’t you?”

Klavis laughed “Yeah, I guess you got me there.” He tossed a few nuts into his mouth, chewed them and took a drink to help swallow it all down. “But it’s not like I don’t have several hundred more years to get serious. We might be grown, but we’re still young, we’re supposed to be playing around having fun, pushing our limits and annoying our parents.”

“You do more than enough of that for both of us.” Kamilis grinned, “besides, I’m here, aren’t I? No one else in living memory dared go into the edge of the forest, not to mention camping in it. If our parents knew how often we’ve passed the Beacon Trees, they’d never let us out of their sight again.”

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Smiling, Klavis added a bit of lighthearted sarcasm to his voice “We’re such rebels, camping near some trees!” Just as another person walked into the camp. He was a bit shorter than Klavis and Kamilis, but he still shared the smooth skin, fair hair and slightly sloping, pointed ears that Klavis and Kamilis had, marking him too as an elf. Other than height they all had similar features, with the exception of Kamilis’s white hair, pale skin and red eyes that marked him as an albino.

Klavis waved his right arm in an exaggerated fashion towards the newcomer “There he is, the most rebellious of us all, Xecran the troublemaker!”

Xecran scowled at Klavis “I can’t believe you guys, you keep going further into the forest, passed the Beacon Trees even! I wouldn’t have dared pass them if you hadn’t sent me that path. One of these days, I’m not going to cover for you guys and just let you get what’s coming to you.” He paused and nervously looked deeper into the forest and quickly jerked his head back to his cousins. “It’s not safe.”

“Bah, that’s just an old story our parents tell us. We’ve found nothing but peace out here. Besides, Kamilis brought enough books to crush a small army. The most dangerous creature we’ve faced was a rabbit and the snare and knife took care of that quick enough. If you want, you can keep the fur as a trophy and tell everyone you bested the furry beast of the forest. Better yet, if you don’t want to cover for us anymore, you should just come with us next time. It’s not like you don’t end up wondering out here anyways.”

Xecran replied with a snort. Then he sighed and slowly shook his head and sat down on an overturned tree near the fire. “You’re hopeless. And you, Kam, I can’t believe you let him talk you into all this foolishness.”

Kamilis started to say something but was interrupted by Klavis “Me convince him? I couldn’t convince him to do a darn thing. This was all his idea. He reads those books all day and can’t stop talking about escaping our little part of the world and seeing what’s out there, beyond this forest, with his own eyes. I’m only here to make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

Xecran cracked up laughing and managed to say a few words between his laughter “You, responsible, that’ll be the day.”

Kamilis sent a glare to his little brother. “As I was going to say when I was so rudely interrupted, he didn’t talk me into anything. I don’t believe that the forest is as dangerous as our parents, or their parents before them, have claimed. They probably just say that to keep little kids from going and getting themselves lost. We’ve certainly not seen anything dangerous, no one in living memory has. Really, it has all been kind of boring.” He looked over at Klavis’ smirk. “It’s so quiet I can get more studying done here in a day than I could in a week at home.”

Xecran chuckled. “Next, you’re going to say you only come out here because it’s the one place you can try and teach Klavis how to read. Still…” He paused as his smile faded as he glanced back to the forest and involuntarily shivered. He wasn’t sure if it was from the chill breeze, or the thought that the nameless enemy, the devourer of all realms, would jump out of the forest to claim his soul.

It took a moment, but Klavis realized what Xecran said. He started to express his indignation, but Xecran ignored him, continuing as if Klavis wasn’t there.” …It doesn’t feel right, the forest. It feels like it’s always watching me.”

Klavis and Kamilis continued sitting there, they both silently looked toward the forest, the joviality of the morning forgotten.