Foundations
He stood up, leant against his spade, and fumbled around his Yak wool jacket for his pipe. His white beard matched the fresh puffy snow high on the mountain tops, and the empty blue sky mirrored his eyes, both in colour and in their transitory state of reflection.
Not finding his pipe, his eyes drifted upward and rested on the natural moon of Elthenia, currently nestled between the lower mountains of Wexmede and Norkam, the sight brought a smile to the old elf’s face. But then, like some overwhelming shadow of inevitability, his eyes rested on the ghost moon, or the galleon moon, as the older elves called it. A few elves, older than himself, who remembered the galleon moons arrival and the onset of suffering its inhabitants — the Lawcundali, brought to this formerly serene world.
Felsted closed his eyes and inhaled the sharp forest air. “We are born again each morning, and for this I am grateful,” he said aloud.
“Born again? Once is quite enough, thank you, godfather. Us barn-owls have far less chance of survival than you elves; even when you are being hunted by wolves and all the other monsters those moon creatures can conjure up. You have the gift of the Sun-God at your fingertips,” said Tarron, Felsted’s closest friend glancing towards the fire Felsted kept burning for…
