Young Writers Society

Chapter 1

The night was warm against my bare skin and the breeze that blew had the smell of sweet lilac on its breath. The forest was thickening the air with its damp, suffocating reek of rotting earth. Lichen hung from trees and wrapped around its waist. The green was everywhere you turned, ranging from bright and alien-like to deep and rich. Forests were often this way, but there was something about the Carrilin Wood that drew me in from the first moment I laid eyes on it. I knew it would be my refuge.

If someone ever asks, magic is intoxicating. It doesn’t have to be cast by a wizard or made by a with, magic is as natural as breathing and can be found in the most obscure places. Magic does not follow moral values and doesn’t respect things like free will, because it is as free as a bird. It soars, takes a place to live and thrive, and then slowly dies away. It is inanimate and animate in so many ways that it would take me days to explain it all, but the important part is that it’s alive.

So when I happened upon the Carili Wood in my travels I knew it would be the place where there was an escape from the war. I knew it just by taking a glance that it promised a permanent shelter, one I could live he rest of my days in, and protection. Little did I know that the beckoning was magic, one that really didn’t care for me and rather for its own needs. I never knew what fate the Wood would bring me.

*****

“Gabriel, why do we fight?” Melloni had asked one evening. She had just turned a First Year and had entered her training. She was preparing for combat in the Rain Season, but until then she would experience grueling hours of work and toil, so she one day could fight for our freedom. It was a mandatory course that took up most of an elf’s life and then we would use our training in the battlefield until we died or most likely killed. That was the sad life of an elf.

I saw her sleek, pointed ears wiggle in anticipation of my response. She was the first to question where she stood and why she did it, but only due to her nature. The rest of the First Year Fleet was ready for each command and were non-questioning, but there were occasionally few who broke away from the group. But never one girl who would question her place.

“Hopefully you will never have to.” I replied. Everyone in the elfish community knew that the Twelfth Year Fleet hadn’t returned yet, even the Preceptor hadn’t come back to home base.

The year before only the Preceptor had returned, giving me the devastating news that his whole Fleet had been completely wiped out and some taken prisoner. I could never give this information to the rest of the community, for fear it would dampen the new Twelfth Year’s spirits, but it still sat in my mind like a spike, ready to puncture my heart whenever I happened upon it.

Chances of this year’s Twelfth Year Fleet succeeding on their mission was quite slim, but we needed that tiny flicker of hope to continue our fight for rights and freedom from our demeaning shackles. Many elf women had died for that, year after year, without a single inch of progress. Every move seemed futile against such a powerful force, but we had nothing to lose besides our lives. This makes us fight even fiercer.

Our enemy is small, but it comes in vast numbers. They are fighter fairies, something not like those cute pixies many a generation have mistaken them for. These demons come to slaughter and kill without mercy, conquer our lands and force every other creature to bow to their microscopic species. It is sickening and forbidden within my community to even utter a word about those vile creatures.

Elves, such as ourselves, were treated horribly within the world of magic. We were forced into refuge, where we had to fight for survival. There were many who wanted our race eliminated, especially the fairies. Fairies were the ones who had done the most sinful things to my people. They had crushed their hopes and dreams of a future, forcing us into a small wood. We fought with a fierceness that was hard to counter, but we grew weaker. We couldn't keep up much longer.

So as I gazed down into Melloni’s eyes and saw apprehension, but also eagerness, for what she was born to accomplish, what was I to say?