Friday, October 20, 2017

Red in Tooth and Flame 4


And leaning against a low stone wall with an open book in her lap and watching people fifty years older than her play without a care and wishing she could slow her mind down, or everyone else hurry up, so she wouldn't have to wait all the time. And reading more and more, dreaming herself away in stories of dwarves and gnomes and orcs and half-orcs and half-dragons and half-elves and half-ogres and half-trolls and particularly humans, so like her with their easy way to learn anything and everything even from earliest childhood. They fascinate her with their tall towers and their bold adventures and willingness to give all their short lives away and apparent ability to mate with everything under the sun, so symbolic of their fluid, changing nature. To Aseka they seem to have perfected the heterogenous culture her own people strive for but fall short of, always clinging to traditions. The stories she reads have no shortage of elves painted as heroes for resisting change, excluding outsiders, sacrificing themselves to honor dead ancestors, and it frustrates her in ways she dares not put in words.

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