A glimpse of Bronte's Childhood

Chapter One

13-year-old Bronte laughed and swaggered past his friends, who jostled him about as he made his way to the front of the crowd, searching for his father's face on the stage. "He must be there somewhere," He muttered to himself, starting to get worried as he failed to find any sign of his royal well-to-do dad. His father was an Emissary and had been told to present about this new school in front of the entire elvish population, which felt bigger now that Bronte was attempting to look over all their many heads. 

But when he got a glimpse of the stage, all he saw were the four newly elected "Councillors", of which he only knew Fallon Vacker, the uncle of his friend Corwin Elvwood. He didn't see any of the Emissaries...

 ah, finally, the Council was starting to talk! It was deathly boring, though. Bronte didn't see any point to going on and on about why this new school was named Foxfire, apparently after glowing mushrooms, which was pretty pitiful. So he silently snuck out of the crowd, and around behind the giant crystal structure the Council was standing on.

"Dad?" He whisper-hissed, looking around anxiously. There was no sign of him, and Bronte began to wonder if he had taken a detour to Human Cities and gotten stuck in their problems again. He pulled out his secret blue crystal and held it up to the light, letting it sweep him away.

Bronte arrived on a road that stank of a million human things he'd rather keep away from. He decided he'd do that breath-holding thing that the Pre-years Center had taught him. But his concentration was lost as a giant machine pulled by two of those "horse" things came cantering up to him. He lept quickly out of the way, cringing at the creative vocabulary of the angry driver, and happened to land in a pile of horse dump, which of course triggered lots of flies swarming around him, as if he didn't already have enough problems.

"Sorry!"  He yelped to the driver, before finding the nearest patch of grass, and wiping his pant leg off on it. Yuck, this stuff was disgusting! Bronte was ready to vow never to come back here when a boy came running towards him, calling something in a language Bronte didn't know.

"Excuse me?" He called in the Enlightened language.

"Oh, you're an elf, that's cool! I've never met one before. I'm Arthur, by the way. I was just asking if you're okay. I saw what happened, and I guess you're not used to human cities and stuff... why are you freaking out?" 

Bronte sighed. "I landed in a pile of poop, of course."

"That's okay, it won't like, hurt anything." 

Bronte rolled his eyes, but decided not to press it. Everyone knew humans were incredibly unsanitary. What they didn't know, though, was that in about 200 years, humans would have a huge outbreak of the bubonic plague, because of the germs they were unaware of.

"Anyway, how did you get such a perfect accent? It sounds natural."

Arthur blushed with a combination of pride and embarrassment.

"My father learned when he was young so he could go pretend to be an elf in your cities, and when he grew up he decided it was a valuable skill and taught it to me."

Bronte shrugged. "Well, cool. I should probably get- Oh no oh no oh no my father, I forgot!!" He ran away screaming.

Arthur caught up to him not long after, but he channeled more strength into his muscles to run faster, and search every street and alley without that Arthur kid tagging along. But Arthur somehow followed, possessing some sort of uncompromising strength that Bronte thought uncanny for a human. 

He turned around and yelled, "Go back! Wha- what are you doing? And - how are you keeping up?!" But suddenly Arthur gasped and pointed ahead of both of them, where a man lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, bruised and with what looked like a broken arm. But the man had a cape, tunic, leggings, and knee-high laced boots- Elven Clothes.