I remembered when I was a child with the Ben-Hassaroth. I remembered my teacher tell us all once a myth, one that the elven slaves were taught by their parents in the dark of the night.
There once was an elven Keeper, head of a great clan that roamed all the mountains. But one day, he fell in love with a human hunter, captured by his own men. The prisoner said she loved him and the Keeper told her the secrets of all the tribe and wished them to lead them together in peace.
But the hunter's love for him faded and when her people went to war with the tribe, she told all and the tribe was captured and sold into slavery. The Keeper spent the rest of his days as her slave and died by her orders.
A child in the lesson asked if the story was to teach to only follow duty to ones people. The teacher told us it was, but she asked if there was another message there.
Another said that it was one man's love that ruined the clan.
The teacher said that both were true. That the passions of one could not dictate the direction of the group. Passion was a usurper to order, to reason. The Qun teaches that only through duty will one find happiness. Honour the Qun and one honoured themselves.
I was disgracing myself now. I shamed the Qun.
They left me out in the rain, tied to the pole that they whipped me on. It was only I that night, shivering in the cold, my blood and the rain mixing in the pool around my feet.
I thought of the cold waters of Lake Calenhad and I saw her swimming still.