"Begin at the beginning, and when you get to the end, stop."
The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland
It was so long ago...
I remember still, the way things were...little things, like the way the trees bend just so under the snow in the spring, the way The wind sounded at night, the way the sun shone through the smoke of the forge-fires...
Anvilmar was my home, for all that I am an Elf. Is it so hard to imagine that one of we, the tall, ever-living people of the twilight, should desire for the simple comforts of home and hearth...or a warm cup of mead, and the comforting sounds of hammers on anvils?
I suppose that makes me the odd one. I never was much of a dwarf...and afterwards I never felt like much of an elf.
But, I digress. Let mestart from the beginning.
My name is Mica, and I am an Elf of the twilight, in the eternal service of the Goddess Elune. In your words a Night-elf. This is my tale.
It all began on the day I was to choose my place in this world...
I, stubborn as I was, wanted to be a druid...but the call of a druid is a deep one indeed, and all those who were to see the moonglade had already been singled out from among us.
Did I say us?
Yes, there were several...
We stood in a little cluster in front of the imposing Male
who had been given the chore of overseeing our choices.
Choices...ha!
They hadbeen observing us for decades as we grew towards this moment, looking
back, I have no doubt in my mind that they had our paths chosen for
us before we ever set foot in the room!
...Either way, there were our of us younglings, short, un-muscled, untried, each bright with the thought of the Great Choice that we were about to make...
I knew, already, that I'd never be a druid.
I had been told as much many times before, and so
had turned my practical mind elsewhere...if not a healer and
protector to be...then perhaps a protector only?
It was a compromise, thought I, to choose to be a warrior. I had seen them strutting about Darnassus, tough and strong, in their bright plate armor...they seemed so capable, so sure of themselves and others...It was not a bad fate to have, I thought. A warrior, that's what I'd be.
...more the fool, was I...
The first to choose was a young male.
He went before the Master of Choices and told him, in a
tremulous voice, that he wished to be a Priest.
Naturally, or so I thought, the Master nodded, and the boy has led away by two Journeymen Acolytes in flowing white robes...to the Temple, I presumed, to be cloistered into the Priesthood as he had requested. This heartened me, and I smiled at the others, all female beside me. They too seemed encouraged, and as the eldest of the two - they were sisters - went forth, and proclaimed a desire to be a warrior. She too, was granted her wish, and proceeded at the beckoning of a well-muscled male at the door. He smiled patriarchally down at her, and she turned to flash us a reassuring grin. I was certain of my place now...If she could be a warrior-maid, so could I! I was so lost in my thoughts of this that I missed the turn of the other girl...I know not her name, nor where she went, but suddenly it was my turn, and all the terrible gaze of the formidable Master was upon me.
I am not ashamed to say that I was terrified.
Confidence weakened, but by no means lost, I told him of my wish to become a warrior. But, this time...he did not nod to a teacher in the doorway, nor did he turn and beckon to a teacher in the shadows on the wall. This time, he spoke.
"You, young one, are not fit for the path of a warrior. We have watched you come into this world...and the warrior's life is beyond your abilities."
I was stunned...how could this be? It was my life, was it not, to spend or waste or do with as I pleased? How could this choice, most important of all, be taken from me?
"Do not be so shocked, young one. did you think we would have let Nifaric become a priest if he were more suited to the life of a druid? Or Aiella become a Warrior if she were half as gentle as you? You are a fighter, be certain, but not as she will be."
I was silent, there was nothing to say. I had been cheated of my own life, was all that I could think of...utterly cheated.
"You, young Mica, will become a hunter."
And then, he reached out his hand...and then the Huntress who was to become my teacher came foreword...
...and then my personal hell began.
Three years.
Three long years, which seemed to me to be three-hundred, though in those days I was barely fifty. The training of a hunter is difficult, requiring the utmost stamina in both body and mind...you train in arms, in tracking, in scent and sight and hearing...they train you in thought and in the way of the beast...In many ways we are another sort of Druid. The archery training was the easiest for me, for all that I hated it. Warriors do not use bows, I thought to myself, warriors use swords, while I trained with flimsy daggers and thin wooden bows.
And so, three years of dragging my feet through a training that requires utter dedication later...my teacher gave up. She threw up her hands and declared that she could do nothing more with me, not if I did not wish to learn.
And no-one could have been happier than I!
I danced with joy, I sang! For the first time in three years, I laughed at small things...I felt so free!
...until I was put to work in the warrior barracks, polishing the practice-armor for the trainees.
My birth-people are wise and strong and beautiful. They see many things not apparent to others, and they...we...live for untold centuries before we die. But, that does not make us gods. We are cruel as often as we are kind, and it was cruel, to watch others grow strong on the path of the warrior. To have my dream so close, to reach out my hand and touch it...and to have it slip away, like river-water through a net.
It was a full year before they found another teacher for me...or rather, before my new teacher found me.
I was bent over my latest work...a shield, gone filthy with rust and ill-care, when I heard her first. I say heard, because I did not look up.
She was speaking with several other teachers...one of the warrior-masters was a Dwarf, I think, so it was not too odd to hear the then-strange cadences of a Dwarfish accent. They spoke together for some time, several of them and her...not all dwarves, not all warriors, but all of them teachers, to be certain. She must have looked over at me and seen my hunter-garb, for she asked about me. That's when I began to listen, for I heard my name.
"That one is called Mica...she's...a difficult student," Said one of the Hunter-masters.
"Aye," said the Dwarf warrior-master. "She's no' much o' a hunter, I hear, bu' makes a righ' fine armor-polisher...pity, tha' one! She's hopeless..."
It was then that I heard the voice of the one who would change my life forever.
"Bah! Tha's the most foolish thing t'ever coome oot'a yer mouth, lad! Nobody's hopeless! I'll train the lass, take her home wi' me, and shoow 'er how the Dwarves live! What di'ye say t'tha'?"
I do believe I turned and looked at her then, eyes wide. Me? Train with, of all things, a Dwarf! Unheard of! Impossible! And yet, was that my old teacher standing there, nodding at the Dwarf-lady in agreeance!
It couldn't be, it simply could not be true!
And yet it was.
So, I found myself bundled away to a cold and frigid, and, to my Teldrassil-spoilt eyes, treeless land...Anvilmar, a place full of squat, hairy dwarves, tiny, rodent-like gnomes, crawling with Troggs, wolves, and I had even heard stories about Trolls!
Such a place seemed to be a hell of stink and fire and snow and loneliness...
...How strange is it that now, when I think of home, the sharp scent of Anvilmar furnaces comes to mind first...and the gentle hum of the Wisps of Teldrassil only second, if that?
Her name, she said, was Firebright, and it was one that I would never forget. Though she grew old, and died, I was still in my prime...a Dwarf can life a long life...but an Elf can live a longer one.
...but, that is another story, and shall be told another time.