Noel covered her face with her hands. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she tried to recover her breath. I frowned. She wasn’t responding to my words. I wasn’t sure if she was too tired to speak, or if she was just trying to catch her breath before starting another fight. I stood over her, sharp rock at the ready, unsure about how I could win this fight if Noel refused to surrender.
If only I’d come up with some sort of restraining magic. Maybe I could use magic hands? Or I could create cuffs out of earth? No, nothing that came to mind could weather Noel’s magic. I made a few more comments. I told her we could learn more about what happened to the elfin Jora tribe. Elves lived for a long time. Maybe if we found the other tribes from the Plains of Serenity, they could tell us more about the Jora.
I told her we needed to investigate the role of the immortals in what had happened to the elfin Jora tribe. The God of Evil was clearly involved with the human Jora tribe, but there was no guarantee that he had been the only one behind the elfin Jora tribe’s demise. After all, it was the Immortal of Madness who had sent us into the future. Maybe we could find the Immortal of Desire, and get some answers from them.
I even told her that if she truly could not let it go, we could demand justice from the human Jora tribe in other ways. Compensation in the form of items or service, an apology or ritualized commemoration of the tragedy. We could definitely get them to overlook the old priest’s death, I told her. She didn’t need to insist upon blood. Her family could get be avenged through other means. Her own happiness, I told her, was the greatest revenge she could present to the long-dead killers of her family.
If we played our cards right, generations of humans would view the human Jora tribe’s ancestors as evil murderers, and could look upon Noel as a paragon of forgiveness and kindness. After all, what else could we take from the dead but their legacies? Killing their descendants was only one form of ruining their legacy, and it wasn’t even the most effective. People could forget a tribe that was wiped out. We could make sure nobody ever forgot what those people had done. An everlasting negative legacy trumps one that was forgotten, I told her.
At this point, it was clear that I was rambling. I was grasping at straws, hoping I would say something that would get a response from her. The silence was the part that filled me with the most dread. I was regaining my energy too, and was sure I could beat Noel down again, but all that would accomplish is putting me back in the same position that I was in right now.
And despite what I was saying to Noel, the question of justice was a complicated one that I had no easy answers to, especially in a world like this one. Contrary to what edge-lords on the internet loved to suggest back on my Earth, societies like these did not run on a ‘survival of the strongest’ system where might was right and justice was in the hands of the victor. ‘Survival of the fittest’ for social beings like humans and elves meant a focus on the collective, not the individual. This meant that justice was often a communal issue, not an individual one. Despite knowing this fact in the abstract, it was impossible for someone like me, who had lived in a modern, hyper-individualistic society, to truly understand what a life and world-view like that meant for Noel.
I had been lulled into a sense of complacency, and had been assuming many things about the way Noel and the other tribesmen looked at the world. It was obvious that questions like justice involved a complicated web of norms and traditions, all of which were mediated by matters of family and myth. It was impossible for me, an outsider, to completely understand why Noel felt compelled to avenge her family by killing off the human Jora tribe. All of my impassioned pleas or rational arguments might not sway her, because emotion and reason were only part of the picture. My trouble was, I had no idea how to envision the rest of the picture, even though Noel had it all in view as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
I remembered what she said, about me not hearing the voices of her family and ancestors, or not seeing what she was seeing. For someone like me, not being able to understand something was incredibly frustrating. To be so blatantly ignorant of something that someone regarding as so painstakingly obvious, was a very strange feeling for me. And I had no idea how to cope with that, so all I did was ramble about ‘other ways’ and ‘justice’ while second-guessing my ramblings in my head.
“...we’ll get them to recite the names of every fallen elfin Jora tribesmen on the summer solstice, and turn the whole festival into a somber day of remembrance. We’ll teach them that the God of Evil is not to be trusted, and punish anyone who tries to work with the immortals. We can make hurting elves a serious crime or force them to give us all their double-berries for a month. Or we could—”
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“Enough,” came a voice from the ground.
I closed my mouth. I stared at Noel as she sat up against the wall of black gravel and rock. Her hair was a mess, and I noticed a bunch of cuts and bruises on her face. Her clothes were tattered, although the makeshift leather moccasins were still holding up quite well. Mine were fine too, just by the way.
“You,” said Noel, still gasping for air between words, “need to learn to stop speaking.”
That was a fun way to tell me to shut up, I mused to myself. Ah, translation magic. What would I do without you?
“Everything you said,” continued Noel, “made it sound like you still haven’t learned a thing. But, I have a feeling, you do understand. At least, I think you understand much better than you did before.”
I nodded. I still didn’t want to speak, just in case it made her start up again.
“My family does need justice,” she said, “but the methods that you offered, will not work. Apologies will not bring peace to my family. They will not join the ancestors through sorrowful commemorations and tributes of fruit.”
I frowned. This was exactly what I had feared. How could I move her heart or change her mind when I had no answer to the basic premise of her anger? I couldn’t just scream about superstition or religious dogma, not least because this was another world with magic and immortal beings. But also, because ridiculing her sincerely held beliefs wasn’t going to help me change her mind. I was stuck behind an almost immovable object, with both of my hands tied behind my back, and the only methods of progress hidden from me behind a veil.
“However…” said Noel.
My ears perked up.
“You were right about a couple of things. There are other ways to avenge my family. And I do need to find out more about the immortals, and what they had to do with what happened to my family.”
“You’re right!” I said, as the realization finally dawned on me, “the ancestors of the human Jora are dead, but the immortals are immortal! They are still here. I am sure they bear more responsibility for that atrocity than these humans who weren’t even born back then!” I breathed a sigh of relief and offered Noel a hand. “Once we get back to Bek Tepe, we can ask the humans to help us find the other elfin tribes or their descendants. We can try to contact the Immortal of Desire, too. I’m sure those birds will help us out. We’ll need their help, since we have no idea how to take down an immortal, right?” I smiled. “Come on, Noel. It’s time for a new adventure!”
Noel stared blankly at my hand. I felt really awkward just standing there with an outstretched hand and pained smile, but I kept it up. I was sure I’d finally gotten through to Noel. All she’d needed was a new target for her anger! Not a healthy solution to her problems, but I’d take it!
“No,” said Noel, as she raised her eyes from my outstretched hand to meet my gaze. “I am not going to Bek Tepe.”
“Oh, you know what, you’re right, my bad, you probably don’t want to see them right now. How about we go back to the roof of the world and think about a plan back there? I left poor Kelser back there too, I hope you don’t mind just one tiny human helping us out,” I said.
Noel shook her head. “No, I mean I am not going with you.”
I blinked. “Not going with me? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Noel, as she slowly raised her hands. My eyes went wide and I prepared my own spells. “That I don’t need your help to avenge my family.” She pushed her hands hand.
The crumbling rocks above her head began to rumble and crackle. My eyes went wide as an ominous black wave raced towards us like an avalanche. I shouted something and tried to reach for Noel, but she pushed me away with invisible magic hands. She must have spent almost all of her remaining energy on that push, because I went flying far across the ruined meadow, my feet never touching the ground as I fell back off the edge of the mountain.
My final image of Noel, was of her surrounded by a sea of rolling, cacophonous darkness, smiling in victory, her feeble fame a frenzied mess, mouthing the words goodbye, Cas.