• I was sixty five when it happened, A typical summer in 1936 when I begun a downward spiral that would take me across Europe, up to mountains in Finland, the centre of Italy. And eventually right back here, to my multifaceted home of Schongssebiete. The appropriately named ‘Sanctuary’ from the humans was a small village set within a forest and was close to the Rhine River. It was just along the outside of a wide turn in the river and was also opposite a small town that we used to sell a selection of our crafts to get money to buy food or other items that we couldn’t get from the earth. I was never allowed to go. My father would always say “Human interaction is dangerous for an elf, men don’t understand us or our ways.”

    It was true to a certain extent. A random man on the street would have looked at me like I was a mad woman if I had told him that I would most likely outlive him by a good eight hundred years (A thousand if I was lucky), as long as I avoided childbirth. But even with the warnings I was given, what ever stories I had been told about the ruthlessness of mankind. I had felt a small admiration for the species as a whole. We elf’s have only managed to relocate a populate a few places of the earth, where as the human race had spread across the globe like a moving blanket, ensuring a snug fit over her surface. And they had created and mastered many tongues, created gods to out of thin air and believed in them enough to actually ‘make’ them a part of the earth’s own spirit. Our language was more like an offshoot of the word of the land. We spoke a form of this ‘German.’ But the first time I heard human German, I was confused a little. Their pronunciation was a little off to my ears, and sometimes word placement was backwards… though thinking about it now, being the minority I guess that ‘my’ word placement was sometimes backwards.

    But I digress. I was sixty five when I went to my first human village. It was a right of passage to sell my second bow (since I would keep my first). However, I could only make a second once I had brought my tenth meal to the commune. The night before was such a night for me. Though it should have technically been my ninth, I brought two wolf carcasses in with the aid of my friend and hunting partner Moirx. We ate well that night, and I went to bed a satisfied woman.

    When I woke up, my routine was fairly short. I had gone through my usual stretches, got up out of bed, and walked over to a sheet of broken glass that I had found and had fashioned to act like a mirror. It was the size and shape of a large puddle and I cleaned myself up a little bit. At this point in my life, I was pale skinned; in some ways, I miss it. A lot of people back then associated pale skin as a sign of beauty. I was tall as well, well built since I was a huntress. Though many said that my body was also suited for seductress (but that was a role that elf’s had abandoned ever since humans stopped seeking us out to assassinate people in power). Taking a few pine’s out of my hair and running my fingers through the long, brown curls. I pulled several stands of my hair out right from my scalp and counted them. “13 is more than enough, it shall make a fine bowstring.”

    I admired my reflection a little bit longer and then went back to my bed to start braiding the strands silently as birds chirped around my small roof. The flooring was made from timber we had gotten from the town across the river and the walls were made from the leaves still attached to the branches that I had tied together to make my roof. The technical design had caught on since long before I was born (with the acceptation of the flooring) and I had been living in this room for about five years now. My bed was made of several branches, with a mattress that had been bought for me a year ago. My blankets were that of past kills, two deer and a boar that had been stuffed with falcon feathers.

    I had just reached the midpoint in making my bowstring when I heard a voice call my name. “Clorotilde!” it called from outside. It was Moirx, I remembered thinking about how urgent he sounded and expecting him to just push aside a row of leaves and walk through to me without thinking, so I quickly shouted. “Wait, I’m not dressed.” Back to him. I place my unfinished bowstring onto my bed and reached for two wolf skins. The first I would wear like a mixture between a shawl and a cape that would cover my upper torso and cover my rear end (though there wasn’t enough ‘material’ to cover my stomach… but I didn’t mind, it looked appealing in my minds eye.) and the wolf’s head acted like a hood, with the ears hollowed out so that my own long ears would poke through should I wear my wolf skin with the ‘hood’ up.

    The second skin was a little harder to fashion into practical clothing (though I managed it in the end.) The creatures head had been converted to a loose frontal pouch styled item, that covered up more fabric that I used to ‘actually’ cover my crotch. The rest of the creature, I had used to make a pair of suitable shoes, fingerless gloves and leg warmers. The extra I had, was used to make some thing to keep my thighs covered for when the colder seasons came by.

    Dressed in all but my thigh warmers, I walked out through between my branches after picking up my bow and sliding it over my head so that the string was pulling against my chest and the bows back was against my own, I and came face to face with Moirx. He was in a similar get up to my own, but his was made from two stags (so naturally he had more material to cover more of his body.) I took a breath and exhaled with a slight frustration of having to abandon my work. His face was speckled with a hunters tan, working within tree’s that had gaps to allow small spots of sunlight to get through and kiss the skin with leopard print. I had always thought it looked a little off. I couldn’t describe it though, it just looked more like he had an illness to me.

    He wanted to show me some thing. He told me that it would make hunting a lot easier, especially when it came to larger prey. I was naturally interested; I had wanted the title ‘Bear Killer.’ As a huntress, my current title was ‘Wolf Executioner,’ which I had gotten when a wrestled a wolf onto its side and cut off its head (which by the way, manifested to make the pouch around my waist.) And while it was an appreciable title, it didn’t inject respect into my fellow elf’s. Nor did it guarantee me a mate should I ever wish to do so. Needless to say, I followed him as he led me away from the commune and we both climbed up a large tree.

    When we got to the middle of the tree, we both stopped. Moirx turned to me and took an arrow out from his quiver. It wasn’t like a normal arrow. It didn’t have the standard arrowhead that was made from the bone on an animal that the craftsman had killed. It was a piece of metal. Without touching it I could tell that it was 7.63 millimetres in diameter and twenty five millimetres long.
    “Where did you get this?” I asked him as I reached out and took the arrow from Moirx’s fingers and examined it closer.

    “I traded for a small box of them in the street, apparently some soldiers went by and one of them lost it in a scuffle with some villagers. I traded him two of my knives for the box and I made these.” I’ll admit that I was impressed. Almost all of the weight was in the front of the arrow now, this would make it ideal for trebuchet style archery. And I didn’t even want to think what would happen if it were to be fired downward at some one. “I’m working on getting materials to make an arrow with a metal body, as well as this metal head.” I almost dropped the arrow when Moirx told me this. A little shocked, I replied with.
    “Is that a good idea? What if it makes the arrow too heavy?”
    He stared at me as he took the arrow back, I could tell that he understood where I was coming from. But he still seemed adamant to get me to agree with him.
    “But the weight of the head alone may compromise the overall effectiveness of the arrow as a whole.”

    We discussed it for a little bit longer before I had decided to try and change the subject.
    “Can we test them out?” it was a simple question, to which Moirx gave an equally simple answer.
    “Of course.” And he took three arrows from his quiver and handed them to me. I smiled and held each one between each of the fingers of my left hand and pulled my bow back over my head with my right. I looked over to Moirx and asked him to make a deer call as I placed all three arrows between my teeth and climbed down to a branch that would be high enough to get a good angle for a shot to the head.

    As I reached the second to last branch to get to my position, I heard Moirx’s deer call. I could tell it was him and not the creature itself. We had been friends since we were at a single number age. You tend to know some one inside out when you spend that much time with them.

    I took one of the arrows from my teeth and drew it, pulling it tight against the string as the bow itself bent to my will. I always imagined that the bow would be saying things like ‘Trust me Clorotilde. Put your faith in me, and I shall provide a meal for you.’ I listened to my bow, and I waited.

    Moirx made the call four more times before a deer had shown up. It was close enough for a kill shot, but I wanted to see how far the arrow would go. It came closer. Moirx had moved a little lower down so that the sound direction was a little more plausible to the beast. It was almost there, I knew that another foot would have given me the angle I needed. But then, there was no pride in certainty. For the first time in my life… I wanted to show off.

    I gave a quick whistle and the deer looked up to me. It must have known what I was, since it turned around and ran in the opposite direction to which it came. I quickly ran along the branch and jumped out past the leaves, the thick wolf skin clothes protected me from the tiny twigs and leaves that would have brazed and scratched my thin skin normally. And for the first time in my history as a huntress, I could see all of my target. I could pick to aim for what ever part of the creature I wanted to. I was already halfway through my jump, at the peak of my arch. Still with my bow ready, I let go of the arrow and it shot forwards.

    Even before the arrow hit, I knew that it would fly into the creatures lower spine and sever its lower nerves. It’s lower half stopped and it carried on trying to get away with its front end. I outstretched one foot and landed on it, breaking my fragile elven bones and sending small amounts of pain through my right leg. I fell onto my elbow (breaking that too) and rolled onto my shoulder (placing a wide crack through my shoulder joint). I rolled over and placed my weight onto my left foot now, standing up quickly and then jumping to the deer again. As I started my jump, I spat out the other two arrows and grabbed one with my left hand, I dug my right rand into the shoulder of the deer as I came down again and I stabbed it in the ear in a swinging over arm motion. I pivoted the arrow twice in a large anti-clockwise motion and the creature finally fell.

    I rolled off the deer as it lay dead beside me and I laughed three times before giving into my pain, acknowledging it with a brief “Ow.” Though still with a smile on my face. Moirx came running towards me and shouting my name. I held up my left hand and gave a close fist gesture, then opened it up by my thumb and my two middle fingers. The elven hunt signal for ‘Successful slay.’

    “I can’t carry you ‘and’ the carcass Clorotilde.” I waved my hand feebly and lay there in the sun. I then pointed to the deer and told Moirx to pick up his arrows.
    “We should make more.” I panted from a mixture of exhaustion and the pain from the breaks and cracks in my skeleton. “That thing dug itself into the deer like the sharpest of blades.” Though my approval of the arrows didn’t answer the problem of carrying both me and my kill home. It was against our culture to just leave a dead animal to rot in the wilderness. And Moirx couldn’t just leave me here (even if he was to go and get help.) Moirx took the arrows out of the deer and set them back into his quiver and looked down at me, waiting for an answer.

    I looked to the dead deer and then back to Moirx. “Leave it.” I said simply. Moirx’s reaction was a little more than what I had expected. He had placed his hands around both his ears, as if he was trying to will that he didn’t hear my suggestion. He stopped when I tried to get up. He reached out and grabbed my good hand and pulled me up, turning around as he did and pulled me onto his back. “Fine... but if anyone finds out.” I interrupted him with a. “No one’s going to find out.” I tried to sound soothing, and (in my opinion) I was. “The hole doesn’t look like one of our arrows did it. We’ll just say that we were out hunting for birds and I fell out of the tree. It’s true to a certain degree anyway.” I could tell that Moirx was uncomfortable with this. I curled my arm around his neck and lightly stroked his right ear with my left hand. Now, it may not seem like much, but me touching him like that was a pretty big thing. I guess its closest equivalent would be a sensual caress. “Something else will come by and eat the carcase soon anyway. We can just say that ‘our’ hunt failed. No one has any reason to think that we would lie about it.”

    Now, I don’t know exactly when everything started to take a turn for the worst. But if I had to make a guess, it would be between when I first jumped out of that tree, and this moment here. And I would only ever know when there was no turning back, no way to reverse the dark elf tumour.