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 warmth and security.
Felsted, smiled at Tarron as he returned to his excavation. After a period of prolonged digging, Felsted suddenly dropped to his knees, “Well, well,” he said, somewhat stupefied, “that’s not something you find every day.” Tarron, who was thinking about where to hunt that day, flew a little closer to see the obstruction. A large blue rock, with red spiralling veins under its surface protruded from the trench. “I thought this was an old oak tree stump. I couldn’t have been more wrong,” said Felsted.
“What is it?” Asked Tarron, floating from the annoyingly shaky pine branch, which caused snow to fall not just below but from above also (hence on him), to the neat log pile Felsted had brought up from the valley last spring.
The elf sat back on the side of the trench where he suddenly saw his pipe next to his pickaxe. Shrugging his eyebrows in a ‘I don't remember leaving you there’ movement, he…
