Keeper of the Lost Cities: Rebuild [COMPLETED]

Chapter Fourteen - LINH

Most of them were orphans—that, or unwanted. Before, Exillium had been a rehabilitation program for children deemed unfit for society. There were still students like that here, but Exillium was also a choice. Foxfire wasn't the only elvin school anymore, and sometimes people decided to not go there.

Then, of course, there were the human students—at least, those whose parents let them come. Linh had overheard two of the Waywards speaking of a human school set up in a campsite.

Apparently the prejudice ran both ways.

At first the Council had thought they would withhold the species' complicated past from the humans, but Sophie had convinced them to tell the truth—all of it. After all, deceit had nearly broken relations between the gnomes, back when the plague was running rampant. If the Council wanted the Human Reinstatement effort to work, honesty was the best way.

In this, Linh agreed. It was better to know everything you were getting into upfront versus finding out about it later. In the human transportation sites, skilled Telepaths planted explanations into the humans' minds, so it would be easier to process. From there, it was the human's decision whether or not to go to the Lost Cities.

The ones that had come were brave. But there were other motives Linh could hardly fathom—though she knew they were possible—that could be keeping them in their camps.

If you trusted the elves enough to live in their world, why wouldn't you trust them to teach your children?

Then again, trust had been damaged once the Purities had arisen. The humans were scared; they hadn't been promised danger, they'd been promised a perfect world—a utopia. But despite Linh's optimism, even she knew that wasn't possible.

And it was just that—the Purities, the prejudices—that made Linh hesitate every time her twin mentioned the humans.

Reinstating the humans will help, Linh.

We have to start somewhere, Linh.

It's because we're the good guys.

Was it really so "good" to lure the humans into a potential death trap, all for the sake of politics?

Coach Zeura's shrill voice broke through Linh's musings: "Stormy Dallarosa, what did I say about disobedience?!"

Linh looked at the riverbank, where the two elves were fighting.

Stormy flipped her purple ponytail behind her shoulder, crossed her arms, jutted out her hip, and fixated a nasty glare on the coach. "I'm not taking off my boots. I would say sorry, except I'm not, so you're just going to have to get over it."

"Zeura, perhaps I should take care of this?" Linh offered before her fellow teacher could do something she'd regret. "I've persuaded her before," she added in a lower voice, so only Coach Zeura could hear. The blue coaches always responded best to logic.

"I can hear you, you know," said Stormy, preventing whatever response Zeura had come up with, "and for the record, it's cute that you think you can 'persuade me' or whatever. But I'm not feeling very impressionable today, so..." She shrugged, as if to say, What can I do?

Linh supposed she should have expected a few Keefe Sencens over the years of being a teacher. In her defense, however, Keefe had never seemed this bad.

"Why exactly do you not want to take off your boots?" she asked. She couldn't do anything, persuading or no, if she didn't understand the full situation.

But Stormy just rolled her eyes. "Because."

Linh could hear Coach Zeura's teeth grinding together in a painful-sounding eeeeeeeek.