Jemdins

  The age of Myth.

  A time filled with conflict, miracles, discoveries, and conquest.

  Good and bad, tumultuous times, buried secrets, upending catastrophes… throughout the world numerous actors went to become either revered or scorned in history. Many ended up as fragmented fairy tales, and others, recalled as forgotten gods and ancient myths. The length of how much time since that age has passed made it hard to discern the truth from mere folklore.

  This happened millenia ago, some remnants of the old world still remain to this day, preserved through lineage and tradition. Much of the people have moved on, however. And the majority of the memories of those times have been forgotten, only the scars left on the surface of Terra remain today.

  Since then, even the few who had taken up the mantle of remembering have fallen, most of what is known from that era is from ancient depictions… and the word of mouth passed down from elves.

  In their long lives, their longevity has allowed them to witness history repeating itself. The tragic rise and fall of kingdoms, the impending recmation of nature, the ever revolving timelessness of life.

  And if there's one thing that the elves believe is consistent amidst the denizens of this world…

  …Is war.

  Protracted conflicts that create generational trauma both to the living and the environment, the elves have always ended up working to restore the desoted nds whenever the short-lived races' wars crossed their territories. Most of the time they stand by as a neutral party, preferring to weather the event instead of getting involved.

  This st war, however, has not been the case.

  More than four centuries ago, building tensions along with rampant discrimination across countries and races sparked a great war that encompassed the continent. And the elves that were unfortunate enough to be caught in between were forced to fight whether they liked or not.

  Greed, Hate, Justice, Love– the precise reason of why the war happened was lost to many. People were more concerned with recovering from the horrible catastrophe than to bicker with their enemies and doubt their allies.

  Murder, Svery, Theft, Arson, Embezzlement, Desecration… Innumerous crimes were committed, and went on to be committed before and after the war. People flocked together for safety, bands of vigintes and bandits alike rose and fell during the chaos.

  And that's not even accounting for the monsters that pgue the livelihoods of everyone.

  Eventually, order was reestablished, slowly, bit by bit, people began finding peace once again. Through the work of their ancestors who suffered to rebuild modicums of peace across the nd, people moved away from those dark times. Some stayed to rebuild, others left the continent entirely.

  The elves… few as they were before the war, were now left scattered and fractured. Some, too broken to keep on.

  To the short lived-races, the war was already a tale of the past, a tragic thing their great-grandparents passed through. Most of the elves however… The ones that survived suffered the full brunt extent from the several years of violence and bloodshed, followed by decades of a votile and turbulent aftermath.

  The ones that survived, and held the willpower to keep on living, went on to become great figures to be both feared and respected. For they have learned and mastered the skills and experiences necessary to thrive in the conditions they had been forced to endure.

  A good portion opted to move far, far away from the nd full of bad memories.

  The others that stayed, went on to create a haven for the war-torn and the forsaken.

  The great sanctuary of the Death Forest was born. Daivette.

  ——— –– –– -- - -

  "In the beginning, there wasn't anything, no houses, no gardens, just barren ground and a jungle. People had to sleep and eat together, there wasn't room for all the buildings you see here today.Slowly, gradually, we expanded from that. Did you know that the cantina is actually one of the oldest structures in the vilge? Despite everyone having their own pce now, the habit of sharing a meal with everyone together never faded." Granny regaled us with tales of the past…

  "Hm! Hm!" Sedia nods, "The grand hall is actually the newest you know? It kept raining when someone wanted to do something with lots of people, so that huge thing was made!" She added after Granny.

  …Or rather, I'm the one being educated in the history of the vilge. 'Since apparently everyone in this room already knows.' The things I learned from Samyra during the period when she was also teaching me their nguage only generally covered what happened in rge strokes.

  And when I say rge strokes it means, Large. Strokes. Decades of history summarized into little things that end up jumping and skipping many details.

  We were talking to each other in the kitchen inside Curen and Samyra's home, and I actually was in the kitchen helping to make food.

  It's a rare occasion where everyone is having lunch together. Unexpectedly, Granny and Sedia are also here.

  Samyra invited them… on the basis that Sedia was my friend, and since Granny was there she also came. Curen compined a bit at the start, he wanted this to be a "just us" thing, he made his point, and then got promptly shut down by the majority vote of Granny, Sedia and Samyra.

  To me, either way it didn't matter much, so I didn't say anything to his pleas.

  The topic of food came up when I was trying to recreate noodles. I don't actually know how pasta works, or much of the details behind the dough's ingredients other than that it becomes really stretchy.

  Then, one thing led to another, and the idea of showing me more of the elven culinary grew into this.

  "Are you… sure you can handle a knife safely?" Samyra asked with worry, tying my apron behind me.

  "Mn." I nod.

  The ingredients were a little familiar, but also foreign to me. 'I know how to cook… at least the basics only to not go hungry. Sometimes I helped in the kitchen back then, but I never got into making complicated or fancy dishes.' Interested in learning more about it, I ended up helping to cook with them.

  "Even if she gets hurt I am here!" Curen added. "Besides, she heals fast, and she has handled far more dangerous things before."

  "I'd rather you both to not get hurt at all to begin with…" Samyra sighs, protesting the callous disregard for safety by herself. "Regardless," She says with a little annoyance, "being careful doesn't hurt, avoiding dangerous things is something both of you ck."

  "Here, you have to take off the head and cut off this part the roots grow out of up to here…" Samyra expined in detail how to prepare each ingredient along with some of their characteristics.

  "Hum." I nodded.

  "We use these herbs to season pretty much everything, but only the leaves. The stem can make you get a stomach ache." Curen too, despite not being allowed to even touch the ingredients, knew a lot because of his job. So some things overpped.

  "Mmm." I nodded.

  Throughout the process of cutting and preparing ingredients, I learned a lot about different ingredients and where they come from.

  It seems that because of magic, or maybe because this is a different world, there is a lot more diversity of life, and at the same time not. Some things I remember from earth may as well be extinct or never have been conceived into existence here, but there are also many simir if not identical things.

  Daivette doesn't have any chicken coops, so I can't confirm this, but apparently chickens in this world are rger, and… can fly?

  When I had that discussion with Granny, the exact wording when transted would be something like "fowlbeast flesh" but when I asked about a tamed bird farm and simir things she got confused. 'Bird meat is a thing… I'm pretty sure. But I don't think we were talking on the same page.'

  I know chickens are a thing because of an old book about humans that Samyra let me read… so there was some confusion. Maybe there is another bird species? Other than chickens that are domesticated for farming.

  "Hoo… This unfilial disciple actually knows something useful?" Granny mocked in a voice full of fake grandeur.

  …It was hard for me to tell if she was just teasing him or legitimately surprised about it.

  "W– Of course I do! What do you even see me as?!" Curen indignantly shouted back. "I know how to cook… I just…" He coughed, "abstain myself from it."

  'You can cook, yes… potions, that is.' I thought to myself. 'Not sure about anything else though.'

  Sedia watched with interest from near me. Although she knows a decent amount about cooking, something inevitable after living so long despite her retive age maturity, people usually don't let her use the kitchen unsupervised. Usually sensible people don't let children handle knives–

  –I cast a gnce at the sharp knife currently in my hand, 'Sensible people… Right. Ahem, maybe there are some exceptions.'

  That, and also three people made the kitchen too crowded to work safely without bumping into each other, because both Sedia and I are small in size, but there was not a lot of space regardless.

  Eventually the food was done.

  "I've eaten this a thousand times before already, but maybe because it's you it seems like a new taste." Granny praised. "Or did you put something different?"

  Curen scratches his cheek. "Did she? I don't taste anything differ–" Samyra sps the back of his head.

  "Ehen," Samyra stuck her chest out in pride. "It's because it's Syuufarin after all!"

  She seemed unusually proud just from something I helped to cook.

  Or maybe it's because it is the first time I ever showed interest in something other than books and magic?

  "...Um… Okay?..." A lot of their recipes rely on the natural fvors of the ingredients, some go as far as to not use any seasoning other than herbs. And they surprisingly taste good.

  'At most… maybe I put too much seasoning? I barely know what half of these are…' Instead of a precisely measured recipe I only followed Samyra's instructions… and she just eyeballed everything.

  It felt strange to be praised for something so mundane...

  …It wasn't all that bad though.

  …

  'Wait if there aren't any chickens here where in the world did those eggs come from?!'

  ——— –– –– -- - -

  2 Years since the death of █████ ██████████

  …

  "Should I cut my hair?" I think out loud.

  Quite a lot of time has passed, and looking back it doesn't feel like it has been all that long at all.

  Any elf would agree with me, that 3 years isn't anything to worry about.

  But to me, it feels strangely nostalgic, so much has happened, but the memories inside me, despite the crity in their detail, all seem so fleeting. I lost everything, got lost in the forest, and then gained so many things in the vilge. An almost imperceptible smile makes its way to me as I reminisce.

  "Ehh~? But it's so fluffy and pretty!" Sedia, who is with me, compined out loud. Bringing me back to reality.

  Sedia… if I didn't know her I would say that she has not grown at all, both inside and out. Another reminder of the mind-boggling longevity of the Elven race. She still looks exactly the same as when I first met her, and she still has the same temperament and habits. Other than her new prowess in magic… and the increasing ways she knows how to tease me, there hasn't been much change.

  Or rather, I couldn't notice anything different when looking outwardly.

  Except for her magic wand. Beginner spells are prohibited, but little magic tricks for fun on the other hand… safe to say that these days the children's games have grown more complex.

  I cough, a little embarrassed. Having your hair complimented, of all things, is still weird to me. "I don't mind it too much… but it's a hassle to keep clean and it gets in the way."

  "Everyone grows their hair out, why would you want to cut it?" She began to comb my head with her hands, instead of pulling my head down like one would expect, my hair smoothly passed through her fingers and her hands barely had any friction with my head. "Besides, Granny said it's always useful to have hair at hand for magic."

  "Hmm… I don't know…" When I was… born, for ck of a better term, my hair was already at waist length. And now when it's loose it can reach my calves.

  Sedia loves to braid it and py with different hairstyles on me from time to time, since it's harmless I let her do as she wants but I personally am not all that enthused about it.

  "Wait, but you keep your hair short!" I excim aghast at her.

  "That's that and this is this! Dummy," Sedia says as if I am the one being unreasonable. "But you can't cut your hair!"

  "…Why?"

  "Because I said so!" She continues pying and fluffing my hair.

  "???" I stare at her with an inscrutable expression. Then sigh. 'No use arguing with her…'

  If it were up to me I wouldn't do anything beyond washing it, but Sedia, for some reason beyond anything I can understand, has personal vendetta with how I care for myself. And now she's always picking me up and going around like I am some sort of life sized doll that she enjoys taking care of. I don't know where her behaviour came from, but ever since she named me she has grown to hover around me for some reason I can't make heads or tails of.

  On the bright side, much to my dwindling masculinity's chagrin, it feels nice to have healthy hair. But…

  I sigh again, slouching forward while supporting my head with both hands with my elbows resting on top of my knees.

  'I guess I understand why women take so long in the bathroom now…'

  My appearance has come with a cost that I debate with myself if it's worth it everyday.

  The bath-house, being the only pce with the proper facilities for a good bath, is the go-to pce that everyone uses to clean themselves.

  The rest of the vilge that doesn't have plumbing manages with liberal use of magic… but only to the level of a bathtub of cold water. Despite the elves' high aptitude for magic, even if water is sourced the normal way, not everyone is adept enough to be able to heat so much water all everyday.

  In the end, why go through such a hassle when they have a perfectly fine pce with everything already prepared? So everyone goes to the bath-house.

  'And what does that mean for me?... Well…'

  …

  Samyra.

  "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH EVERYONE?!"

  "We're going!"

  "B-but! I mean– Um– I'm fine! You go first, I can wait until ter!" Syuufarin stammered while being helplessly dragged.

  "No. I have not raised you to be the type of person who is filthy, don't be like Curen now." God forbid, Samyra doesn't remember what went through her head when she was dating Curen, but she remembers very clearly how hard it was to instill good habits into that poor sod of a man.

  Curen would stay holed somewhere for weeks on end without even seeing the sun, much less a bath. He's a lovely person, but by the heavens Samyra will not tolerate her little girl becoming like that.

  In today's magic css, Syuufarin and Sedia managed to get themselves covered in dirt and grime from their practice session. Curen somehow also got dirty in that lesson, but Granny is spotlessly clean. She had preemptively shielded herself with magic.

  Since it was already around that time, everyone decided to go to the bath-house.

  "But there's too many people!" Syuufarin compins again.

  "Huh…" Sedia comments, "Is that why you take a bath so te? When there's nobody in the bath-house?"

  "A-ah… um…"

  "Aw, she's shy!" Curen ruffles her head. "There isn't anything to worry about~"

  Granny intervenes, "Ahh, give the girl some sck. She is very different from everyone else, in appearance and origins. It's natural that she is nervous about it, nobody else has a tail after all. And st I knew bath-houses don't exist in the outside world." The rhythmic sound of her staff hitting the ground garnered everyone's attention.

  Other tribes of elves might be different, but in Daivette they've grown accustomed to the shared bath-house. It was more convenient to build a rge area for people to clean themselves instead of houses when the vilge was only at its infancy. Then after a long time passed, their descendants were taught to and grew up used to the same bath-house since it was a convenient thing that stuck around even after proper housing was built.

  "Ah, I had forgotten about that." Curen rubs the back of his head. "We're all used to doing it together, but I guess foreigners like to do it alone huh?– Gyah!"

  Samyra clonks Curen's head. "Wording. There are children here."

  "Hm? What do you mean?" Sedia, whose hand was held by Granny, said innocently.

  "*cough* Nothing important, y'know, boring adult stuff."

  Granny throws a very raised eyebrow over to Syuufarin. Syuufarin looks away.

  "Ah, okay then!" Sedia happily forgets about it.

  Samyra sighs, "Sorry, I didn't know how you felt about the bath-house."

  Unknown to her, while Granny's assumption wasn't completely wrong, Syuufarin's true motives were actually very different from their assumptions.

  Samyra pulls Syuu up and begins carrying her by her armpits. "But even so, that's no excuse for being dirty!"

  "H-hey! I can walk by myself!"

  "I'm worried you might run away, so no."

  And that's how Samyra started to make Syuufarin learn how to take proper care of long hair.

  …

  'Uuugh…' Words couldn't describe the embarrassment I had felt that day, having somebody wash me is an experience that still makes me cringe in shame. And it's another completely different, and worse, thing for that to happen with other people that know you in the same room.

  By the time I'm done squirming over embarrassing memories Sedia's done pying with my hair.

  "Done!"

  "Oh, um… thanks I guess?"

  I have a thought that Sedia actually wants to have stylish long hair… but doesn't want to go through the trouble of taking care of it. Because of that I ended up turning up like this.

  '...I don't mind it.' I resign myself. But the feelings in my heart are light. 'In the end it's fine, right? She's my friend… right? Mmm…' I don't think of my hair with any particur importance, but for the sake of my friend I'll keep things as they are.

  Although I can't call myself close to her, and our retionship is tenuous and one-sided at best, Sedia is someone deserving of love. That is my opinion of her. Even though she is older than me, I can't help but to see her as something akin to a younger junior. She is friendly, naive, and innocent, but ultimately, I have never been good with children or reting myself with them.

  'A friend… is someone who you trust, and someone who you understand and they understand you. An equal' Because of this, Sedia simply can't reach the status of "friend" I have in my head. A metaphorical distance that is unbridgeable. I am affectionate to her, and she to me, but such affection is characteristically sullied by my perception of her "being nothing more than a child". Our preferences, experiences, behaviour, and thoughts are too far apart and different for a true friendship to be born.

  I sigh. 'I feel like a hypocrite'

  As a child in body, I wondered if I should also be one at— "Aah! Ahwwmmff!!!"

  *Mnyuu~* Sedia pinches my cheeks and stretches them. "You're doing it again!" She lets me go.

  "Doing what?!" I compin while massaging my face.

  "Being sad for no reason!"

  "Eh?– I-I mean…" If there's one thing that Sedia has become adept at, it is that she has a scary ability to instinctively know where I am and how I am from anywhere somehow. "...Sorry."

  I feel a strange sense of deja-vu 'Has this already happened once before?... I'm not sure.'

  *bonk* Something hit me on the head, but it was so soft and without any force behind it so it didn't hurt. "W-what?"

  "Don't say 'sorry'! You should say what is making you feel bad instead!" Sedia says.

  "..." I look at her, Sedia is striking a powerful pose, legs apart and hands resting on her hips. She is looking at me with an uncharacteristically fiery glint on her eyes and a frown.

  "...You wouldn't understand." I sigh. Maybe I could tell her, but then what would be the point? I fear that if I did she would only grow more distant.

  Or maybe instead, I would be the one growing more distant.

  "Of course I can't understand if you don't tell me!" Sedia becomes irritated. "I already get enough of this from the adults, they get all worked up because of something silly, but don't want to tell anyone! And then when everything goes wrong, they find out there was no good reason at all to keep secrets!" Her frown becomes more and more deep. "I'm tired of being left in the dark…" She says with a much quieter voice.

  "So you'll either tell me, or I'll make you!"

  I stare at her wide-eyed. 'She… sometimes I forget how old she is.' I kept underestimating her, but she is much more mature than meets the eye. 'When you put it like she did, It's a btantly simple solution for a simple problem, her words have merit and a surprising width of emotional knowledge.' The viewpoint of a kid, no matter if said kid is already decades old, is precious.

  'Either that… or she is simply saying what comes to mind, one way or another, she is right.'

  'My feelings aren't changing anytime soon, but… Yes…' I ugh at myself. 'Maybe I am being sad for no good reason.'

  I was not sure why, maybe I was afraid to make a new friend after getting cut out from my previous life, maybe anxious to let this bond grow closer only to become disappointed somehow, maybe I was trying to avoid getting hurt, or hurting her. How could I know? In the end, as Sedia said, what truly matters is if I decide to march forward towards this unknown ending or not, regardless of any consequences.

  "It's nothing… really, just…" There are too many things weighing on me, family, the future, the past, who is myself and I. Too many secrets, too much pain, anxiety, and guilt coming from many directions. They fade away with good and new memories of these precious moments of happiness, and they surge back unprompted and without warning, always reminding me and tinting my vision just that little more gray.

  But this peace, these people, are always spshing new colors along the way, covering up my torn and mencholic canvas.

  "...I'm gd I got to be your friend, Sedia."

  "?..." Sedia gives me a befuddled look at my answer. I haven't given her a truly concrete answer, but seeing me smiling again she let the matter go away. "Hmph, yeah that's right! I am too gd to be your friend!" She nearly shouts, before slinging an arm around my neck and making us both fall when she attempts to hug me.

  It's embarrassing, it's corny, it's cringe, and I was half-expecting for her to also feel embarrassed by my sudden procmation. But she just took it in stride and reaffirmed her own self-confidence. I huff half-exasperatedly, a light blush tinging my cheeks.

  Regardless of my origins, and regardless of my own shortcomings. Sedia is a steadfast person that never disappoints, and has always been honest and trustworthy. 'Friends… they are equal without needing to be equal. It's alright if we aren't able to stand shoulder to shoulder' in this contrasting inequality is where true friendship blooms.

  "But you still gotta tell me what is wrong ter!"

  "Haha, Ok. I promise." I said, but inside I was fervently praying she forgets about it.

  'I only hope that when the time comes, she won't be too sad when I leave the vilge.'

  ——— –– –– -- - -

  AnnouncementTo our (te) commemoration of a combined 200k views on both ScribbleHub and Royal Road I'll be hosting a drawing session! For both requests and story-reted things!

  The date will be this thursday (2024-12-19) for the entire day, I want to take into account people with different time-zones, so I'll try to wake up early.

  The location of the event will be over at our discord! I could try to do a stream instead but I don't know how to do that.

  Jemdins