There is a force that can stump every Vulcan. It is not anger, that is logical, it is not fear, that too is logical for emotional beings. It is not aggression.
Quite simply, it is love.
If anger, fear and aggression cause emotional creatures to act irrationally, then there is no word to explain what love will cause elves or humans, or even dragons and dwarves for that matter, to do.
Eliana was not a Vulcan, but she had always valued logic. Perhaps that is a trait that every pointy-eared species has, but up to date there have been no studies to prove or disprove this theory.
The point is that she was behaving irrationally.
And that wasn't normal.
Granted, she argued over almost everything with the Queen—but that was different. That wasn't irrational. That was being rebellious. And brave.
Actually, that was being stupid. But she didn't really care what the Queen thought of her. Not right now. Right now she needed to get into the main army. So she could actually earn that title that her regiment teased her for. Yes, yes, she had saved the Queen, but almost everyone—except for the Queen that is—were indignant that such a high title should be bestowed for something so petty.
It was a bittersweet thing for Eliana.
On one hand, she was thrilled that the Queen was recognizing her potential. (This is looking logically on the subject.) On the other hand, she was confused as to why she was being recognized.
"Never mind that, you've been recognized and that's the idea," she told herself. "Now you have to keep on being seen as the hero you now are." That wasn't going to be happening any time soon.
"She's scared," Eragon had said. "She saw what the dragons did to her army and now she's more afraid than ever. She's fought battles, of course, she's killed dragons more fierce than I care to imagine. But now she's seen that not all the dragons can be so easily killed. Now she's seen what the only the scavengers used to see—death in cold blood."
"I don't understand," she had said, furrowing her eyebrows together as she thought about it.
They had been sitting in a tall tree a short ways from the camp as Eragon took a quick respite from his heavy training.
"Look at it this way: if you've only fought one dragon at a time with a group of ten or so elves, you always win. No matter how fierce the dragon, with eleven elves it's outmatched. Now imagine that you have thousands of elves, but you're fighting hundreds of dragons. You figure they're outnumbered, and they are—but then you see three dragons kill one-hundred elves with a single swing of their tails. Three-quarters of the warriors that fight are just bait for the one-fourth that actually do the killing. If you have a thousand warriors, eight-hundred are just going to be distracting the dragons so that two-hundred can kill them. Almost all of the eight-hundred are going to die, and of the two-hundred that do the killing, maybe seventy-eight will survive the battle. That's what the Queen has seen, and now she's afraid."
So would Eliana be one of the fourth, or the three-quarters?
It wasn't a question that kept her up at night, it was a mere curiousity that took up a lot of her contemplation...
Which meant that it kept her up at night.
Because the truth was that she too was afraid. It was easy to say that you weren't frightened when there was nothing scary about, but when there was a dragon staring you down in your sleep, it is a totally different thing.
Part of the problem was that she had not seen very many real dragons parading around and growling at you, so part of her fear was merely the fear of the unknown.
But the other part of the problem was that she didn't exactly view dragons as stags to hunt.
Because in her dreams the dragons always talked to her. Talked to her, told her things she thought she'd want to know, told her what she didn't want to hear, told her the things that chilled her to the bone.
They were just as sentient as she was.
And killing a sentient creature was the equivalent to murder.
Which was punishable by death.
So perhaps now you understand her confusion at being honored for taking the life of a creature that, under better circumstances, might have been a friend of hers.
"But that's preposterous! I've been preparing all of my life for this," she told herself again and again when the dreams didn't stop.
"The past matters nothing in the face of the future," her dreams told her, a huge black dragon staring down in her face. Torrents of rain came down, bouncing off of the dragons mighty hide. The moon shone down, sillhouetting the dragon for an even more terrifying effect. "In the face of the present, in the tides of the future, all you can do is tremble. Tremble, because you know in your heart that you are broken and lost."
So she was part of the three-quarters, doomed to die. Death. Die. Her.
She was pretty okay with that.
She would be okay with it, assuming that it would be a painless death—which was never guaranteed.
Thing was, she never trembled. She shook, in anticipation of a death that probably wouldn't come.
It was a phobia.
Which was completely illogical!
And she told herself this, constantly, but to no avail. Still she feared.
For what? She wasn't afraid for her life. It wasn't even that she was afraid of a painful death—so long as it wasn't slow.
No, she couldn't pinpoint the source of her fear. Apprehension, she called it. Unknown, she called it.
"Unreasonable phobia," Eragon said. "You should be afraid of dragons. They are fierce—beautifully so. A marvel of nature, dangerous, but majestic."
"Like magic," was how Eliana compared it.
"Indeed. You must treat them with respect, and in turn they will respect you."
"You don't seriously mean that do you?" she asked in numb shock.
"It is the way of life. It's that way for all beings. Think about it," he had said, looking down on her with a smirk. "Search your feelings. You know it to be true."
"You're right, I guess." There had been an awkward silence, before she broke it with another question that had been bothering her.
"Do you—I mean, well, do you view dragons as our equals, superiors or, you know, inferiors?"
Eragon had gone quiet in concentration.
"Good question. I guess I view them as our equals. At least. If I actually put more thought in it, I'd probably come to the conclusion that they are our superiors. I mean, one dragon versus one elf kind of proves that idea."
"Yeah. But still. Mentally, do you think they're up with us?"
"I don't know. Nobody knows the answers to these kind of questions—we hadn't asked them before Logan went and was an idiot..." Eragon snorted, and stood on the tree-limb. "Well, it's nice of you to give me things to think about, but I've got enough on my mind as it is." He had paused, looking as though he were trying to decide whether or not to jump down. "But it's nice to know that I'm not the only one asking the unanswerable questions."
"They're not unanswerable, you know." Eragon looked at her quizzically. "They just haven't been answered yet. Maybe one day, they will be answered."
"And maybe you'll be the one to answer them," Eragon flashed a bright smile and leapt off the tree with a wave of his hand.
Yeah right. Like she could ever get close enough to a dragon to interview it.