I am sorry. I had to write these. They will be short.
Feel free to ignore everyone who isn't Storm/a leader. The healers are next in priority if you want extra credit.
"I'm going with the Windan this time."
"No you're not."
"Try to stop me."
"Maybe I will."
"Eesh, Dawn. He's been here like a millennium, give him some freedom." Fox poked Dawn, who poked him back. After a short poking war he backed off, but folded his arms defiantly.
"A millennium, really?" Moon asked. "That long?"
"A thousand, two hundred, and fourteen," said Flint, barely glancing up from his conversation with Rain; he was the only one in the tribe who kept track of the years that closely, unless they had an elfling. He'd been married to Rain for a few hundred years now, and his eyes still lit up whenever Rain was near. It was adorable. (Storm was trying to convince them to have children already, but unlike Silvans, Avari usually waited a long time. Even Fox and Moon didn't have any elflings yet, proving Storm's talent for prediction only worked for marriage.)
Storm rolled his eyes at Dawn and picked up his pack. "Bye."
"Ugh. Take my Ada with you."
"Bye, Storm," said Raven. When Dawn glared at him, he raised an eyebrow and returned to chucking acorns at Flint.
Poor Dawn, but if you were going to be an Avari leader, you had to get used to your authority being a bit finicky. Storm winked at her and trotted off.
"Ooh," Wanderer exclaimed when Storm caught up with the leaving tribe. The caramel-haired leader elbowed his friends. "Lookit who is coming!"
Alcaito and Silivren (who'd already been looking) grinned at Storm. "Coming to visit?" asked the Noldo, with a trace of his accent from over the sea.
"It is the right time of year for it," Silivren added. She had red leaves woven into her silver hair; she would've fit in well with the Silvans.
Storm grinned. "And about time." How many all-tribe meetings had he been to? About four or five a century... sixty? He felt like he knew the tribes pretty well, but he'd never seen them in their native environment.
"Well." Wanderer's eyes shone with mischief. "Welcome, and please stay as long as you want."
Storm suddenly realized he'd put himself in the position Rain had been in years before. "You... are going to let me leave, right?"
All three leaders made noncommittal "hmm" noises.
. . . . . .
"So this is how corn grows."
"Yep." Night plucked an ear off one of the stalks. "Start picking, pull off the husks, and when the bag is full, take them to the hut we came from."
"Right." He did. The corn was different from what he was used to, with some of the kernels being red or black or orange instead of yellow like the corn shipped into Greenwood. "Where's this stuff come from, anyway?"
Fox's sister looked at him; her black eyes with their traces of silver still mystified him. "Valinor."
"Really?"
Another silver-haired elf—Petal, Alcaito and Silivren's daughter—came to join them, returning from emptying her bag. "Yeah. Tomatoes and potatoes and peppers and beans, too."
"Really!" Storm would never have guessed. Greenwood hadn't had them before the Sindar shipped them in, but he'd figured they came from the south or east or something.
"Ada says if he remembers correctly, they came from somewhere further west than Valinor before that."
Further west?!
. . . . . .
"We're indoors."
"We are," Alcaito agreed. They had been most of the nights, but Storm hadn't adjusted. Avari plus roofs didn't compute.
"This shouldn't be as weird as it is." The Windan apparently lived in mud-and-grass huts in the summer and autumn while their crops grew (at least, the elves who wanted to did). This meant they actually had some privacy without having to get up and walk a little ways, which had become a foreign concept to Storm.
"We are used to visitors being surprised, do not worry," said Silivren. "More corn?"
"Yes, please." All the new or nearly-forgotten foods... Storm thought he might come back here someday, in autumn, of course. It was so good he'd even been eating regular meals.
But for now, he'd have to be going soon. "I'm gonna leave in a few days."
"Have some more pie," Alcaito offered.
Mmm, pumpkin pie, a delicacy even the Sindar hadn't discovered. "Nice try, but bribery won't work," he said with an effort. "But also, yes, more pie."
There needed to be an explanation for how potatoes ended up on a continent that's based on Europe.
