The Powerful King of the Elves

The meeting

Airen's POV

Arlolon, the pride High Elf King is begging with me to help them? I wonder why? I have not seen his kingdom or his high court. He is handsome. He is taller than me. His shining black hair is shoulder length. It is braided and tired loosely behind his head. He is muscular and strong. I look at his golden crown, and I can not help to feel angry. They have so much wealth. They refused to trade with us and instead traded with the humans. In my eyes, they are nothing by traitors to the Elf Nations. I will never bow my knee to the King of the High Elves. He even prefers trading with the Dark Elves than us, the Wood Elves. Are we so beneath him that he only wants to use us? If we train them to fight like us, they will take over our kingdom and make us live as their willing slaves again. Over my dead body!

"Why should I believe you? Once we train your women and men to fight like us, you will attack us and take our kingdom. You tried before, and we send you home with your tails between your legs. We will fight on our own. We do not need you," I say as I start getting ready to leave. He is handsome, and I turn around to look at him one more time. Arlolon looks like a king, but I can not trust him.

"You are stubborn. I see we will not be able to see eye to eye. Go then if you want to, but the orcs and golems are coming in huge numbers, and I do not know if they have help. Maybe a warlock or a dark witch is with them, as they are generally not so organised," Arlolon says. I keep looking at him.

"Maybe your human friends are helping them. I will send out spies and see for myself what is going on. Why I agreed to see you, I don't know. You are not like us, and I can see you still look down on us. Go back to your palace and your white satin sheets and leave the fighting for us who knows how to," I say. I am angry. He called me smelly and said I lived like an animal. He does not know how we live. We may live close to nature, but we are clean, and our villages are always neat. We produce our food and have running water in our villages. We are not stupid as the High Elves think we are. We need no humans or any other creatures on this earth to help us. We do have friends, though. The white witches, dwarves, fairies and werewolves live next to us, and we help each other. The High Elves have forgotten about their real friends, and they need to be taught a lesson.

"Listen, Airen. I am here to try to work with you. I know you look down on me as a king. Yes, over the years, my people have relaxed as we did not have any wars. It is the year eighteen-forty-five. We do not live in the times our parents lived, and it is about high time you and your barbaric elves come to realise we are more advanced than you. Do you still live in your wooden and mud huts?" Arlolon asks me.

"We don't live in mud and wooden huts! You look down on us, and you want to rule us again. It will not happen! Not over my dead body! Your human friends brought illness and plaques to our lands! How you could allow them to come into our realm, I do not know! You call us foul and not as advanced as you? Your human friends drink and eat like pigs. Even their kings. They have ladies in their courts that will sleep with anyone and does not care. Sorry if I want to keep my kingdom clean of your human friends. Send them home and close the realm to them, then we can talk again," I am angry Arlolon knows nothing about us!

"I am sorry. You make me so bloody angry that I can catch a snake with my bare hands. Listen, I will close the realm between the humans and us, and we will stop all trading with them, but you need to help us then. It is not me who started trading with humans. I don't have a say in these matters as we have a kingdom where the people decide on the council, and the council makes most of the decisions. They are my advisors, and I have to listen to them. I know you see me as a weak king, but I do not want all the responsibilities on my own shoulders anymore. I have ruled since my parents died, and I can not do it all alone," Arlolon tries to explain to me.

"How you run your kingdom is up to you. I think you gave your council too much power, but that is just me. I know what is best for my people, and I try to keep them happy. I mix with my people. I talk to them daily, and I love my people. I don't think I am better than they are and don't look down on my poor and struggling people. I help them. That is the true way of the elf," I am not convinced about his whole explanation. I can see Arlolon frown. He is not used to going among his elves and talk to them. He is the king, and kings do not speak to peasants. I can not blame him. It is the way his parents raised him.

"I am the King. I can not be everywhere. My kingdom is big. How am I supposed to meet all my people?" Arlolon asks me.

"I travel from village to village and tries to stay as long as I can. I don't live in a palace with maids and butlers, and I do not have a council. I do consult with the leaders of my kingdom, and they advise me. We are different, and we will never be able to live the same lives. I will think about helping you and your elves, but you need to get the humans away from us. I do not want them in my kingdom, and as you know, we will kill them if they trespass on our lands. I am leaving the day you break all ties with humans is the day we can talk again!" I jump in the nearest tree, and I hear Arlolon shouts my name, but I ignore him as I have wasted enough time with him and his high and mighty attitude. Yet, I can not get him out of my head. What is wrong with me? I told him we could not live the same lives, yet I can not forget him. It is like someone put a spell on me, and I can not forget the arrogant King on his big black horse.

That night I go home for the first time in a month. I need some alone time to figure out what is happening to me. My heart skips a beat every time I think of the King of the High Elves. I walk into my plain house build of stone. It is warm inside as the fireplace is burning. I have an old elf that lives with me and looks after my home when I am gone. Kelda comes walking in and smiles. She hugs me and gives me a warm bowl of soup with freshly baked bread and some chicken she fried over the open fire. I am hungry, and I eat a lot. Kelda is the best cook I know. She smiles at me as she watches me eat.

"How did the meeting with King Arlolon go?" She asks me.

"Ummpff," I snort through my nose.

"That bad?" Kelda asks.

"Let's say that he and I will never see eye to eye. I told him if he wants our help, he needs to get rid of the humans," I say between taking big bites of the bread and sips on the soup. The chicken I always keep for last.

"Is he as handsome as they say?" Kelda asks.

"I did not look at him in that way," I lie, but Kelda knows me too well. She looks at me and smiles.

"He is that handsome ain't he?" I roll my eyes. Elves only age until they look the age of twenty-five, but some elves get older as they are not only elves. They have other partners, and their children grow old. Kelda's father was an elf, and her mother was a white witch.

"No, he is arrogant and thinks he is better than everyone else," I say.

"Well, dear, I am a half-witch and half-elf, and I know a lot of secrets. Some are not in my power to tell you as yet," Kelda says and chuckles. She knows something I do not know, and I look at her and narrow my eyes.

"What are you not telling me, Kelda?" I ask her, but she shakes her head and walks out of the kitchen where I am sitting, still eating some of my chicken. The blue eyes and dark hair of the King of the High Elves still in my mind. What the hell?

"Get a hold of yourself, Airen," I talk to myself and Kelda giggles from the outside.

"You can not stop thinking about him, can you?" She asks, and I curse myself for always talking out loud.

"I was not thinking about him," I lie. I have not found a king yet. I did not look for one yet. My commanders and generals have asked me a lot about it, but I told them I would get married the day I can find a man that can fight as hard as I can, and they gave up. They know no man in the Kingdom can shoot an arrow or ride a horse as I can. I was trained hard by my parents, and they made sure I was the best in everything. Only the best of the best trained me, and it was not long before I out mastered them as well. I had many elves of high rank that wanted to marry me, but I could not as my heart and soul was not into them. I wanted a love like my parent's love. I wanted to know that he will be next to me if I have to fight to the death. I can not even think of another kind of love. My heart never beat fast, and I did not feel butterflies in my stomach until today. I might as well admit it. The King of the High Elves made my heart beat fast, and I felt a few butterflies in my stomach.

"Keep lying to yourself, kiddo. In time Isha will talk to you," Kelda says, and she looks at me with a knowing look. I wonder what she is hiding from me and why Isha, the Goddess of Fertility and mother of Elves, would want to talk to her?

Third person's POV

She knows it would not help her ask Kelda as Kelda will not tell her what this is all about. She has once seen her father talk to Kurnous, the God of the Hunt, and she always wondered what he spoke about to the God of the Hunt, but elves are very secretive and hardly talk about their experiences and what the old gods have to say to them. Sometimes it is good news other times. It is not such good news. She knows her parents always told her that one day the high-born elves would get their powers back. As Queen of the wooden elves, she is a high-born by birth, as is Arlolon. The day the powers return, the elven nations will be reunited again and live by the old ways, but she never believed it as she knows the High Elves is too full of themselves to become close to nature again and follow the old ways again. They are lost with their High courts and human-like behaviour.