“PHIL!”
King Theodore sat in his massive throne room staring at a large scroll that had been deposited on his massive desk by Phil, the king’s royal Accounts receivable manager.
“Phil! I command your presence at once!”
Phil shambled back into the throne room. He shambled because his father, the previous Royal accounts receivable Manager shambled, as did his father before that, and on and on since the discovery of Wanderlust. It was generally approved by the assorted kings since it generally kept the accounts receivable manager from hurrying and causing undo stress. It’s hard to get angry at an accounts receivable manager that doesn’t scurry.
So, even though Phil was only thirty and was extremely healthy, his father had warned him that the quickest way to become unhealthy working for royalty, was to scurry about with stress-causing documents.
Today it was inevitable though. No matter how slow Phil shambled, no matter how demure his persona or slow he spoke, the document that he’d delivered to the king was definitely going to cause him stress. It was a treaty from the first people of Wanderlust, whose envoy was assembled in the courtyard waiting for an answer.
Long before Wanderlust was a city. There lived a people who were close to nature and friendly to the woodland creatures and fauna. In fact, these people by all manner of the words were woodland creatures and Fauna. This pristine and natural empire existed from sea to sea in a duality with the natural world around them. When strange monkeys started to emerge from the seas to poulate the shores, the native creatures moved inland so as not to have anything to do with the rowdy chittering apes. They considered their links to the ape-like creatures as too distant for the monkey race to be considered people. The empire that expanded across the natural world called themselves ‘The first people’, they called themselves Hypes, but most of the people that happened upon their camps and villages knew them only as Elves.
You’d never call them elves to their faces though. They hated that. It was a racial slur. It was a demeaning concept. In fact, the term elves is such a derogatory term, that there have been to date seventeen murders, a dual beheading, and a family feud, as well as one mid-scale midtown riot from the careless use of the word “Elf” in the wrong company.
Before it was inhabited, anthropologists and researchers that came to Wanderlust were the first ones to use the term “Elves”. When they landed their exploratory vessels at the foreign shores of Wanderlust. They came upon pristine beaches, cascading fields and fens, and massive hills with picturesque sloping valleys. A virgin land, untouched by man.
John Thomas was actually the first human to set foot on the shores of Wanderlust. It was actually called “Biglendoars” by the Hypees, in a time honored tradition of naming things what they were. But the humans didn’t know that. And even if they did know that, they probably would have renamed it anyway. John Thomas proudly declared this new world to be his finest moment. His finest moment on record was actually listed in his biography as setting the record for “most hotdogs eaten in a half hour at an independence day bar-b-q”, but that event was still 10 years hence.
The first colony of humans emerged from their months long journey across seas and storms and god like intervention were startled to see such a beautiful land around them. Their previous homeland was gray and drab and was covered in the humanistic creations that were initially meant to make their cities and lives better, but ended up making it that much drabber and grayer. They blinked their way into the light of their new home and promptly started bitching and moaning about the place.
“Is this it?”
“Can we go home now?”
“How long do we have to stay here? I miss my friends at home.”
