The End is Near

Chapter 1

2045 – Redwood Forests

The prophecies all say the end is near. That it is impossible for humans to win. Never has a cause been more desperate. Never has a species been more in danger of extinction.

I feel the tides of change shifting and know the humans will soon prepare their engines of war. I shudder...for the fate of all life is inseparable from theirs. What have we to do with human wars? For centuries, we have watched in silence as they find more and more petty and stupid reasons to kill each other and lay waste to what others have created.

We watch and listen...above all else, we are silent. They must not remember we are here.

Who are we?

WE are the peoples of Rae-dόc.

The humans have their tales of elves and dwarves, of giants and faeries that walked the earth. Each people has its own myth surrounding our beginnings – and theirs.

The Greek tell of the Earth and Sky and the children they made. Some believe we have always been here, as much a part of the Earth as her oceans and her trees. Some believe that when she was corrupted by humanity we left. And of course, some believe we never existed.

The truth is a mix of all these things, yet it is a little simpler. We came to the Earth, on our ships, through the night skies. We came when she was still young and humankind still had too much hair and too little ambition. We came and lived in peace with these our simple friends. We taught them many things...how to make music, when to plant, how to build and how to pass down the stories so that each generation would learn from the last.

Alas, our teachings fueled their imagination and with it came ambition. There eventually came a time when the humans broke away. They sought their own way and neglected some of the more harmonious things they had been taught. Ultimately, there came a time when they declared war on us and the long held peace was shattered.

And yes, some of us left. These declared their intention and launched their ships back into the night-time sky. At least half of our numbers left.

The rest of our ancestors had grown attached to this world and decided to stay, but even amongst those there could be no clear agreement on how they would live. The only clear thing was that war was not an option. The love and respect of life was too ingrained within us for that possibility to even be considered. The other facet was that these humans, for all their frailty and barbarity, were like the children of the Rae-dόc. They may have forgotten the lessons of harmony we had taught them – but we had not.

One of the few things I knew about the Rae-dόc is that they had eventually split into three factions or sects. There were the forest dwellers, the cave dwellers and those who had supposedly gone into the oceans, but who had not been seen or heard from in centuries.

I keep referring to the people of Rae-dόc as 'us' and to the humans as 'they'. The truth is I don't really belong to the race of humans or to the people of Rae-dόc.

My name is Kiera and I am an outsider, doomed by an unfortunate mix of blood and heritage to be on the outskirts forever. I have no human family. No man, woman or child of Rae-dόc will ever call me kin. My father was an outcast of the Rae-dόc and my mother equally so of the humans. One cast out because of a crime of passion and the other for being what she was.

It seems to me a joke of the Fates that I was chosen to be the bearer of tales, to be the one who would keep the chronology of events as it unfolds. I've always felt like I had no real history of my own. Like I don't really know where I came from and somehow I'll never truly know who I am without the missing pieces of the puzzle.

Once long ago, I was wandering the forests alone when I met a truly old elf. In those days of innocence and freedom, my mother often let me run free. The old one told me that she was of the same sect of creatures of the Rae-dόc as my father had been. It almost seemed she had sought me out. Since she disappeared as quickly as she had appeared, I never found out the why of that encounter. Out of a crystal ball, she had drawn the image of an elf, fleet of limb and fair of face. She let me know he had been one of the best of the Glamor warriors, well-respected and powerful in his clan.

Unfortunately for him, he one day came across a Cavern princess as she wandered the woods alone. She was fair as a moonflower and it was love at first sight for them both. By this time it was pretty much taboo for a forest dweller to have a relationship with one who lived in the caves. She told me he would have risked all for his lady of the caverns. The crystal showed them begin a relationship of stealthy meetings by darkest night, one of furtive but nonetheless passionate couplings (I could've done without that bit of imagery....ick!). The crystal then showed her with child.

The old elf said that before he could be told, they were found out. The cavern princess was sentenced, by her people, to imprisonment in Cavern Hold until they decided what to do with her and the child. For him, there was worse punishment from his people – BANISHMENT.

Banishment for an elf meant certain death. The few safe havens left in the world were now closed to him. All his kin forbidden to speak to him, with disobedience resulting in a similar fate. Left to wander alone he would invariably be found by a human, which would most likely lead to his death if he was lucky. If he was not, well certain imprisonment, perhaps put into a museum or probed and prodded in a lab.

The crystal showed that the Cavern princess bore him a son. The old elf looked at me closely as she spoke of the fact that he was so like my father in face and form that he was treated as an outcast from birth. Eventually my half-brother's mettle in battle earned for him a grudging place in their midst.

My father was lucky. He did not meet the Fate they expected or intended. The human he met was a witch. The mysteries of the wide world did not scare her and she fell in love with him. She too bore him a child.

That's the part of the story I already knew. The old elf left me at that point. I remember sitting there and thinking for a long time about the quirks of fate. I allowed myself to feel a little self-pity at that point. My half-brother was lucky. He had gotten the chance to prove himself while I never would. He had grown up with a huge clan and I had no one but a mother who hardly seemed to notice my existence.

It did not matter anymore. With the prophecy, my petty self-pity moment seemed even pettier. Somewhere inside my heart, though, I acknowledged the fact that the knowledge of a brother made me feel a tingle of hope.

Maybe I wouldn't have to be alone forever? Maybe that was a selfish thought in the grand scheme of things...but I couldn't bring myself to quell that frail feeling.

I had a brother somewhere out there. A brother I hadnever seen. If this quest brought me nothing else, I hoped it would bring me atleast a little closer to the possibility of meeting him...

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Author's note: Writing in first person is difficult and getting a tone for Keira was tough. Did she sound confident? Or too full of herself? Did she sound like a teen who was just trying to figure this thing out?

Whatcha think?