Tsomis stood outside the cave and hoped something would happen today. The chanting grew louder and then he saw Sada. She was wearing a white robe. He had only seen her wearing human clothing, and it was a bit strange to see her in her element wearing an elven cloak. The cloak was long and the hem scratched along the bottom of the floor. There was an orange tint to the cloak, as there was in most of the cave. The orange dust was heavy in the caves, and even heavier in this meeting room.

Sada stood beyond the crowd and slightly in front of the robed figures that surrounded the dead prophet. Tsomis looked over to the prophet and noticed something strange. It took him a moment to understand what he saw. The prophet’s robe was exactly the same as Sada. Sada stood in front of the dead prophet. She was the next prophet. The realization struck Tsomis hard. It did make sense in a way that he never considered that the elves would send the prophet-in-training out to the human world to learn something about it before taking over the role of the prophet. Her reaction to the news about the prophet made sense on a different level as well. She clearly was upset by his death, and she had spoken about his teachings often during their discussions. He had always thought that the prophet taught all of the elves. He had never clarified his role in her life.

Now it became more clear: she was sent to the university to learn about humans and to prepare for the day where she took over as the prophet for the people.

The gongs stopped and the chanting increased in volume. Sada approached the circled robed figures and kneeled in front of the old prophet’s table. There was much to do and at the end of it she got up. There were tears coming down along her cheeks. The chanting continued and it sounded almost like moaning. The orange dust in the room was heavy, and it was becoming more difficult to see what was going on. It was almost as if the chanting was causing the orange dust to rise off the floor or blow in from further in the cave.

The chanting rises to a fevered pitch and it sounds of regret and sadness. It is almost overpowering. Tsomis falls to his knees with the power of the sound and begins to sob openly. He did not even know the prophet, but the chanting sounds as if the entire people were crying for their fate, not just the fate of the prophet. Tsomis felt the incredible sadness of the entire elven people. They had lost something much bigger than their prophet.

As quickly as it started, the chanting ended. The gongs picked up again, and Sada raised her head and held her chin up high and looked to the collection of elves that waited around the room. It looked as if she was about to speak, but no words came out of her mouth. The gongs continued to sound throughout the room, and the dust, which moments before seemed thick enough to almost cover the entire room began to float slowly toward the floor. The room smelled like a rich, deep cinnamon.

As Tsomis slowly rose to his feet, he felt an arm grab his arm from behind. He turned and saw a bulky elf behind him. His dark eyes glared at Tsomis as Tsomis fell to the ground. There was an intense pain in his wrist and elbow as he fell. The fall seemed a natural extension of the pain, and it felt like the only way to escape its painful sensations.

He heard and felt the elves in the large room toward the doorway and see him there. There was an outcry, and he heard the word “human” repeated many times, almost like a curse. His wrists were tied behind his back and he was picked up off the floor by two sets of arms. He could not see who held him. The elves in the room began to approach him. They all looked angry at him. He had violated one of their secret ceremonies. He felt terrible for doing it. He tried to explain that he was looking for Sada, that he had called out, the he was not trying to interrupt or disrespect their ceremonies. They did not listen. Their anger was great, and they did not seem ready to forgive.

He looked through the crowd for Sada. She was nowhere to be seen. He called her name repeatedly hoping that they would bring her. She was the prophet, and as such she should have dealt with any humans. At least that was what he thought of her job.

Sada stood by the remains of the old prophet. The white robe felt strange on her. She had pulled the hood up over her head and it covered her thin blonde hair. She looked at the prophet laying on the bier. She thought she would have more time with him before she took over. There were talks within the elven council that he had not performed well. The humans were more suspicious of the elves than ever before, and this was evidence of his failure. When they discussed this issue, the prophet had laughed off their assertions.

“They do not understand how it works with us,” the prophet had said. “They think that we see the future. You and I both know we do not. We see the right path with our magic. The right path does not always lead to what our people think is right. Even now I see that we are dying out. Our young people do not stay in the caves, and many of them are smuggled out to be raised in the valley or outside the valley in the dusty farms.

“They do not understand,” the prophet had continued. “This new generation has given up on our culture. We are the same as the humans, and our ways will be lost if something does not happen. I set it up for you, Sada. I doubt I will be able to see it through. You must take my mantle and finish what I started. You will see the right and only approach to this. The elves will not understand it. The cave dwellers will die off. The oldest of the elves will not understand why we did this. But the next generation will. And it will be up to them to take over guiding the humans in their own way. The humans may not even accept you, Sada. Do not let that stop you from guiding them. There are other powers than those of the prophets as we taught them. Your choice does not have to come from the divine, but could work its way up through society through other avenues.”

Sada knew that that was why the prophet had sent her to the university. The elven council did not understand his plan. They thought it had been a mistake. There was no way that the university of the valley could teach her anything that the elven books and teachers and historians could not. What they did not understand was that she was sent there not just to learn about the histories, but also to change them. It was her relationships with the humans, the next leaders of the next generation, that she was sent to develop.

The elven council did not have any authority in their dealings with her training. This was one of only two areas that they did not have influence. The other was in the prophet’s selection of the next human ruler. Other than those two choices, the prophet was very much hobbled by tradition and the elven council’s whims. The elven council was similar to the human council in that it tried to limit the ruler. It grabbed power for itself to use the power of the people to bring about the people’s basest instincts. As a group the people could be incredibly wise, or dense to the point of destroying the society. That was the role of the prophet and the ruler. Their powers were both waning, and that was what the old prophet tried to prevent.

Sada had cried only once during the ceremony. She did not cry for the old prophet. He had known that his time would be short, and that was why he had rushed her training and sent her to the valley. He had never hidden that from her. In his will, which provided the formal succession, he had stated as much. He knew the times of the elves was drawing to a close. They would leave the caves and it would remain a monument to the older days and the wars and destruction that made the valley a necessary and safe haven for the human race.

Sada listened intently to the chants. She had heard these mourning chants often as she grew up in the caves. The short lives of the elves meant that there was at least one death every week. Fewer and fewer of those deaths were replaced by births; at least births that were official reported and not smuggled out to the human lands. Once in the human lands, the elven babies would grow larger to be almost humans. The power of the elves still sang in their blood, but they did not have the short lifespan of the cave-dwelling elves. With their longer lifespan, they also lost the energy of the cave elves. It was a sacrifice that the younger elves made more and more. They knew their people would not survive, and if the humans decided to clean the caves of elves, they wanted their prodigy to survive, even if meant living with those that murdered their people; even if it meant some of those very children that they had saved would do the murdering.

At the end of the ceremony, Sada looked to the entrance of the cave and saw that there was a commotion. She heard the curse word “human” being used and she rose and wondered what was going on back there. She walked her way to the back of the room. The elves at first did not let her pass, so much was their anger toward whatever was happening back there. There were whispers, but whenever she approached those whispers died down to a respectful silence. Among the non-council members, the role and position of the prophet was very much respected. She wished the elven council was as respectful.

She made her way to the back of the cave and the elves in front of her gave her a clear path. She came upon Tsomis, who was held with his arms pinned behind his back. His long curly brown hair hung over his eyes, and his head was bowed in pain. His feet dragged on the floor as the two elves that held him raised him above the crowd. There were vicious curses said to his form.

Under elven law, any human that entered the cave forfeited their life. There was no recourse or appeal. They were strung up and killed. In the first days when this law was first passed, the human’s body would be hung up near the entrance to the cave as a warning to other humans. That barbaric practice had passed along with the power of the elves. They had grown more civilized as the prophets took their places with the rulers of the humans. With the weakening of the elves and the power of the prophet, there was much discussion in the crowd of reviving this ancient practice.

“It would serve them right to remember to respect us.”

“Even though there are less of us, our power still runs strong in our blood. We should make an example of this one in the old ways.”

Sada approached Tsomis and touched his face. “I will make this right,” she whispered into his ear. The elves were screaming too loudly to hear these tender words.

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