Their relationship was rather strange. Tsomis had dated many women in his years. He was wealthy from a good home, and he felt his manners help him in this regards. He knew what the higher class valley woman wanted, and he was able to be that person with them: he was charming and witty, and was wonderful at social parties, where he could keep conversations going for a long time with any number of beauties who would appear on his arm. He knew that part of his charm lay in his father’s council position, and the power it gave him, and by extension, his son over the future careers of some of the ladies’ family’s futures.

He had only fallen in love one time. She was seemingly out of his reach. She was not from a wealthy family, but because of her looks and intelligence, every man in his university had taken a shot at her. He was no different. There was something about her wiles that had him pining for her from the first time he saw her. She was his puppy dog crush. He would follow her around campus to carry her books. His friends could not believe how much effort he put into winning her. She was a scholarship student, not someone that someone of his station would normally even give the time of day, let along expend so much effort trying to win. At first he had try to woo her with gift. He realized early on that he would not be able to buy her. She was insulted that he ever thought that to be the case.

It was when she was finally bending to his charms that Sada entered into his life. He confided in her his love for Baine. He and Sada spent many hours dissecting his different approaches to Baine. Sada was amazed at the amount of effort humans put into relationships.

“You don’t do the same?” Tsomis asked Sada. They sat on an outdoor patio table outside of the university library. In front of him was a basket the university restaurant had put together for his lunch meal. Sad had a much smaller basket in front of her. For all of her high use of energy, she did not eat anywhere near enough food to sustain it. But she seemed happy with it, and whenever he tried to give her more, she would demure and tell him that the elves did not eat as much as the humans. She would try a different elf joke each time. None of them were funny, and if he had been an elf, he would have been insulted. But she seemed to enjoy eavesdropping on these jokes as the students would tell them about her, and then repeating them for Tsomis’s benefit. The few times he had cracked a smile, she had done her “I made Tsomis smile” dance, which always made him smile, regardless of how offensive the joke was, or that her race was the butt of the jokes.

“We elves are amazingly simple in our relationship,” Sada said. She was nibbling on half of an apple, leaning over a large cloth napkin to catch any of the juices. “There is little courtship. We find the right person, and then we are with the person for the rest of our lives. Our couples, however, are different than how humans handle it. We are not always together. In fact, some elves rarely see their other half. We live such short lives that relationships are built out of mutual respect and don’t always devolve into successful courtships.”

“That sounds very different than here,” Tsomis said. “So your relationships are prearranged? Has your husband already been chosen? When will you meet him? Or are you already married to him?”

To these questions Sada laughed. She spit out small pieces of apple. She was not embarrassed by this and instead picked up the apple bits and placed them back in her mouth. “These are excellent,” she said of the apple bits.

“You were saying about your arranged marriage,” Tsomis reminded her to get the conversation moving again.

“Actually, I wasn’t,” Sada said. “But I will because you asked so nicely. Our marriages are usually arranged when we are small. We have little say in them until after they’re consummated. Once they are selected, then we choose whether and how close our relationship grows. I never married.”

“What do you mean you never married,” Tsomis asked. “Did your parents not find a man who would be willing to put up with you? Or did you meet him and then refuse to have anything gto do with him because he did not meet up to your exacting standards.”

“Why is this any of your business?” Sada asked, not unkindly. She smirked when she said it, and Tsomis took the hint that she was flattered he asked, but perhaps he did not really want to know the answer.

“We have spent too many hours discussing my pining over Baine for this not to be an interesting topic for us,” Tsomis said. “I realized while you were eating that apple that we spend far more time talking about my sad and pathetic life than talking about yours. It hardly seemed fair.”

“I came to the university to learn about humans,” Sada answered. “And you have allowed me to see an important aspect of how humans live. I do not mind the time we spent talking about you. In fact, I much prefer it to discussions of my own provincial existence.”

“Oh I doubt your existence is that provincial,” Tsomis said. “In fact, the more I think on it, the more extraordinary you really are. I do not know of any other elves who are not married, and spend a year attending the university in the valley.”

“You do not know any other elves period,” Sada pointed out. “Let alone elves that are not married.”

“All true,” Tsomis said. “But that doesn’t take any of this away from this conversation. Speaking of which, you were going to tell me about your marriage.”

“I was going to do no such thing,” Sada said. “And besides, you better start eating or your food will get cold, and I don’t want to spend the next thirty minute listening to you complain about cold food.”

“I do not complain about cold food,” Tsomis said somewhat indignantly. “At least not that much.”

Tsomis let the conversation drop, but he did not file away in his head what Sada had said. She was a strange elf, a strange woman. There was something about her that did not mesh well with what he knew of the other elves. She was not conceited and she was overly concerned with the human valley. From his father’s interactions with the elves, the one thing he had learned was that the elves had a very low opinion of the humans, and they barely appreciated any of the time they spent wondering or having to deal with the humans.

Tsomis stood in the back of the cave’s entrance. The chanting had grown louder and the gong was ringing constantly now, now the sets of three that had been heard earlier. The robed figures were swaying slightly to the gong sounds. The warmth from all the bodies in the large room washed over Tsomis. There must have been hundreds of elves standing around watching the robed figures walk in small circles around the body of the old prophet. The old prophet wore his simple white robe. Tsomis had seen the prophet at the queen’s addresses, back when she first ascended the throne. She had given talks to the people then about what she had hoped to accomplish. Over time, those talks grew less frequent. Over the past five years, she had not given one talk. She would sometimes send a letter to the council, who would in turn broadcast it to the newspaper boys to be distributed amongst the people. The missives were usually short poems, and it was usually difficult to understand what if anything she had hoped to communicate to the valley.

The rumor in the valley was that she had gone a bit crazy after she took over the throne. Comparing her earlier speeches to the later missives provided many scholars at the university all the evidence they needed to support this theory. The thought of a crazy queen on the throne was the subject of much debate amongst the people. It was always interesting coffeehouse discussions about whether the queen would overrule the council’s decision because of her insanity.

Tsomis was not convinced that the queen was insane. Even though her messages were cryptic, she seemed to get a lot accomplished. Her father called her way of dealing with the council troubling but incredibly effective. The law was simple: she was the power behind the entire valley. Her word was law. But even so, some kings and queens in the past had not been able to get much accomplished. While the monarch’s had the right to make and keep law, they did not enforce laws. They only passed them. If the council was not onboard with the enforcement of laws, then it was difficult to get things changed in the valley. Some of the monarchs through the valley’s history had fallen prey to this weird ruling dilemma. Their power while absolute was limited in its enforcement.

When Tsomis had last seen the prophet, he had looked very young. Even as he peered over the heads of the elves surrounding the funeral bier, the prophet still looked young. However he had been murdered, it was not evident from his still form. As he stared at his dead form, he noticed the stillness and the lifelessness of the body. He had never seen a dead body before, elf or human. And seeing one here he could see the difference between it and a living body.

The old prophet had always been present during the queen’s speeches. He would stand a bit behind her as she talked, staring into the crowd. He was a short elf, even shorter than Sada. Even so, his presence was commanding. He would address the crowd with a slight prayer before the beginning of the queen’s speeches. The elven prayers always referred to humans and elves as one people. It did not make a distinction between the two races.

Sada had taught him this. To the elves, the humans and elves were the same. It was similar to how dogs had different breeds. Yes, you could tell the difference between a boxer and a sight hound, but in the end, they were both dogs. Humans and elves looked different, but they were the same on the inside. They had diverged because of environmental differences. Sada was convinced that if an elf was raised in the valley, they would look and act very similar to the human. Tsomis had laughed off this theory. The elves were way too short and had a power that was much different than a human could ever wield. While Sada did not disagree with that, she was convinced that what she said was true. She did not tell him why she thought this, and he could not get his theory out of her.

Tsomis looked around the cave room, and noticed it could hold many more elves than it currently did. There was plenty of space along the middle of the room. If anything, this room was only filled to less than a third of its capacity. Sada had also told Tsomis in confidence that the elves were dying out. That there were far fewer of them now than there had been only fifty years before. To this she did not have an explanation. She was not sad about this fact. It was something that she accepted the same way she accepted that the sun would rise, and that the orange dust would stay out of the valley. It was a fact of their lives to take in and accept and move forward.

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