“Leffy, stop messing around. I can’t drain all these deer carcasses by myself if you don’t help out.” The exasperated voice came from a female currently crouched over the bodies of five dead mammals. She held a bloodied, dull blade which she was using to systematically sever the throats of these animals, proceeding then to sling them over a low hanging branch to allow the juices and liquid viscera to drip out. Each deer had a single arrow sticking from some vital organ, accurately pierced during the short hunt before. Elves on Blessed 26 were trained from young to hit fast moving targets from a mile away, after all.
“Buuu… You can handle all that boring stuff, Treen. I told you before we set out, I’m only coming along for the fun parts, the shooting bits and the chase. Maybe to help carry back the spoils – definitely not to go rummaging about their guts or whatever.”
The female elf’s companion, the one engrossing himself by poking at an anthill with the tip of his bow, was Treen’s younger brother, Leffy. The two had been tasked with bringing back dinner for the week, which was apparently going to be deer for the foreseeable future. Again.
Leffy sighed.
It wasn’t that deer was unpalatable; on the contrary, the elves prepared deer meat with a special dark sauce that rid the flesh of its gaminess and left it tasting quite hearty, an invigorating burning sensation which permeated the body as one swallowed each slice of meat. But as you can imagine, eating anything for a week straight would make anyone balk.
Well, Leffy thought, if I had my way, we’d probably continue tracking a little further out. I heard from Barkly that a little past the Breezy Plains there’s way more variety in game. Rabbits, birds – even bears! He drooled a little at the thought of bear meat. It wasn’t often they’d get to savour the melt-in-your-mouth goodness of wild bear; hell, it’d been about four decades since he’d last tasted the treat, back during his coming of age ceremony – a grand event that all able elves took part in.
It wasn’t like elves popped out babies like rabbits either, so ceremonies celebrating young elves becoming adults – and therefore the chance to have that coveted bear meat - were few and far between. In fact, Leffy was the youngest of their tribe, so the only way he’d get more of that delicacy was if he was accompanied by one of his older siblings on a longer hunt in more distant lands. But as long as Treen was around, there was no way that was going to happen anytime in the next five decades.
He shot a scowl at his older sister, who was still busying herself with the cleaning of edible organs in a nearby stream. She was way too protective. Whenever they went on hunts, she’d lay down ground rules like: Don’t go any further than eight stone throws from the living spaces! Or: if the animal is twice your size, leave and let it go by!
For goodness sake, he was fifty-six already! It wasn’t as if he was some forty year-old stripling that needed everything spoon-fed to him! So what if he couldn’t sprint as fast as her or his other seniors? Footwork like that only mattered if you had to retreat from a foe stronger and more vicious than you were. So as long as you took down your quarry from range, skill in escaping was irrelevant. And his bow-work was impeccable! Of the five deer they’d hunted today, he’d taken down three - one more than her!
“Leffy, I’m not asking twice. Get over here and help. If you’re not going to assist in cleaning the meat, at least help out with removing the hide, or organising the portions in the bag. You understand that this is all for your own good, right? I can’t always be there to help you with all these details, so you’ll need to learn by doing. Practice makes perfect.”
Leffy groaned at her nagging, but obediently slung his bow back onto his back and dragged his feet over to help sort out the cuts of meat in the woven leather bag. Hunting for the elven people was a ritual of conversing with nature - of proving that they deserved to survive. Sure, in hardier times they could fall back on the sap farms for sustenance, it produced enough food for their people to weather even the longest droughts and could be kept without spoilage for an absurdly long amount of time. But hunting would always be the first option when it came to food.
It was the act of besting animals that were allowed to roam freely, that had every opportunity to struggle and improve in their own habitats at their own pace - that were blessed with superior agility like the deer, or great might like the bears, or endowed with a supernatural sense for avoiding danger like the rabbits. Killing any of these creatures showed that the elves were worthy of continuing to receive the grace of the gods.
Of course, none of that was actually related to the true reason for their long lives, heightened physical ability and great ocular acuity – the fact that they were situated with great proximity to the divine realms itself.
Still, in accordance to the meaning that they'd assigned to hunting, the elves made sure not to waste any part of their prey. It was only right to find a use for every spoil of the hunt, so as to give thanks to the land for providing them with the chance to enjoy these luxuries. Meat became food on the table. The animal hides became clothing and accessories. Bones were fashioned into ornaments and occasionally into arrow-tips or weapons. And the viscera would nourish the earth and enrich the soil, returning to the ground and perhaps becoming a new leaf on a branch of a tree or turning into a blooming flower to adorn a bush.
Treen found this process of death and rebirth meaningful. Even in demise the organisms of the world still contributed to keeping the planet and those that walked its surface alive. It was a beautiful, magical cycle.
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Her younger brother, however, didn’t see things from the same high-minded perspective - he just liked killing things. Leffy’ll come around eventually, she thought, plucking a parasite from a cut of thigh meat. I mean, I was like that in my younger years, too. All belligerent and haughty. Time makes saints of us all, I suppose.
A wistful smile grew on her face as she reminisced about her own rebellious behaviour when she was fifty-six. Always wanting to take shortcuts, to do things faster and ignore rules that were meant to keep her safe. Look at her now – a mere forty years passing was enough to teach her to take things slow, to savour each moment. Elves had all the time in the world to stretch out and experience the small wonders of life, so there was no need to rush and blunder about.
“There – done. Can we go now? If we aren’t going to hunt any more, I’d much rather go back and work on my hand-to-hand knife skills with Barkly.” Treen pulled the bag over to her side to inspect his work. She sighed as she transferred a couple of misplaced portions of meat to their correct groupings. Sloppy as always. Why couldn’t he put as much effort into learning the more mundane details of the hunt as he did combat skills or archery?
“Alright, fine. Give me a moment to tie the meat up and we’ll head back.” Treen tossed the meat she was washing back into the sack and started binding the piles of cleaned protein loosely with twine. Then, after burying the guts and other grisly bits that were deemed too vile to consume in a shallow pit under the shade of a particularly scrawny tree, the two elves each grasped onto one handle of the bag which was now filled with the processed remains of their hunt and made the trek back to their home in the trees.
The elves of Blessed 26 made their cozy homes in the canopies of large redwood trees – treehouses, if you would. It was perfect for them since these trees provided everything one needed to survive. Shelter – the dense branches and leaf covering deflected rain, wind and hail alike, only allowing small trickles of water to drip through. Food – the trees themselves produced a gooey, thick sap that was as sweet as honey and shared similar qualities with regards to the amount of time it took to go bad. Water – in a pinch, the branches of the tree could be snapped off and squeezed in a press to obtain a source of fresh water, which was useful if the nearby stream ever ran dry. Protection – the only access to these houses was via scaling the trunk of the redwood it was constructed on, meaning that save for birds or animals with the intelligence and strength to climb the steep bark for minutes on end, there was no threat to the elves that they wouldn’t see coming from a mile away.
“…who’s that, Treen? It doesn’t look like one of our kind.” Treen snapped out of her thoughts at the cautious tone from her brother. She looked up and scanned the treeline for the intruder and finally found what she was searching for.
A figure – a woman with a brown bob cut, dressed entirely in white – a pigment that the elves did not have a dye for. She held no bow nor knife, yet looked entirely unfazed at the likelihood that she might encounter trouble. Treen’s instincts told her that this was a confidence that only the strong could possess. Yet all this lady was doing was standing there at the foot of the redwood trees that the elves had built their houses in, staring up into the branches. Watching.
Or more likely, looking for a way up.
Treen motioned for her brother to drop the bag and take aim at the stranger. “I’ll go talk to her; you hang back and cover me.” Leffy nodded, retrieving the bow slung around his shoulder and notching a bone arrow from his quiver. Treen armed herself with the blade she’d been using to dismantle the deer with and proceeded with caution.
She approached the woman warily, slowly and gradually making her way towards the foreigner in a hunched posture, all bodily senses tuned and ready to bolt at the first sign that this stranger was hostile, gripping the small blade she wielded with white knuckles. As she got closer, Treen’s eyes noted that the stranger didn’t share the same pointed ears that all elves had; hers was rounded at the end. Definitely wasn’t from around here.
She called out.
“Hey there, lady. What brings you here to our humble dwelling, here in the trees? Certainly not to mean us any harm, I hope?” The white lady turned around at the noise, gaze locking onto the elven girl. Treen felt a shiver run down her back as the stranger examined her curiously, head cocked to one side. The white lady’s face was emotionless, as if she was regarding an insect, an ant, far beneath her dignity. Then creepily, the blank face gradually formed a faint smile.
“I see, Greed’s been here before, then. Probably left a bit of his influence with your ancestors while he was plundering something or other. I suppose that’s why you can speak God.”
“Pardon?” The stranger spoke in words that made no sense to Treen, yet it seemed that for the moment, the white lady did not mean the elves harm. Treen signalled to Leffy to lower his bow with a wave of her hand, eyes still trained on the foreigner.
“Oh. Where are my manners?” The white lady enunciated, a clear and even tone. Words that were clinical and calculated, as if rehearsed many times over, like she was putting on a show for the elves that were before her. The stranger bowed deeply.
“You may address me as the God of Order and Knowledge.”
“And I am here today to bestow onto your people a great blessing.”