I have hidden myself from the villager's watch. I do not wish to startle them with my presence, which may distract them from their daily tasks. It is not the first time I emerged from the forest, but I have never stayed in proximity of the ocean for as long as I am doing now. This is the influence of my friend from the Far West, and all the stories he told me about his clan's love of water. I do not like it very much.
To me it is scary, this endless surface of water that one moment looks like a beautiful mirror and a few hours later turn into a grey storm than drowns everything in its path. I have seen it happen. Why my friend loves it so much, I do not understand. It seems however, that the villagers I am observing have the same love of water in common with him, and they are not Quendi, but Those Who Came After. Mortal men. Do mortals have more in common with the elves of the West than us who remained East?
I happened upon the village by chance, as I do not have any other direction but west and I was trying to get my bearings by staying along the coast. The houses are nothing more than wooden planks with a slanted roof, but the wood from what I could see had been roughly plastered and seashells attached to the plaster as decoration. All in all, the village looked quaint in its surroundings so near to the beach.
I watched the men of the village get ready for the morning catch, sailing small boats just offshore, some sifting big nets, others with fishing rods waiting patiently for something to bite, others diving with spears. Their techniques did not differ from what my clan does when looking for fish, but we do limit ourselves to lakes and rivers near the forest. We never had love for the sea. Their equipment looked a lot more rudimentary than ours... perhaps I could give some advice to these men, show them how to better weave nets and whittle the rods. I wonder if our craftsmanship would look just as primitive in the eyes of the Western elves? If so, would they be willing to teach me?
I deemed it best to observe some more before revealing my presence to these villagers. A group of women stoked the cooking fires and another hanged washed clothes and sheets on a long drying rope. Three children were gathering driftwood and a couple were playing in the sand, building makeshift dwellings. Then the women started singing.
I listened, transfixed on the simple yet cheerful melody. Their voices sounded a bit rough to my ear, used as I am to the lilt of elven speech but it did not detract from the beauty of the song. I understood the shaganic language well enough to understand it was a song about an enchanted blanket belonging to an old and cranky wizard that one day decided to fold itself in the guise of a bird and fly away to meet the real birds of Shagana. The children joined in the song and the blanket reached the airy of the great Roc, a giant bird to whom the blanket taught mannish speech. Then the men returned from fishing, they joined at the end of the song and the blanket with its new friend flew beyond the horizon in search of new lands.
I smiled. I am sure my friend would love to hear this song. By now, the villagers seemed friendly enough for me to get out of the shadows and greet them. I stepped past my hiding spot and walked up to them, raising my hands in a sign of peace. Most gasped upon seeing me, a few whispered to each other, but none made a hostile move towards me. I greeted them in their language, and one of them, I assumed the chief by the way the villagers bowed at his passing, extended a hand and said that it had been years since one of the beautiful people visited them. If they thought me beautiful, I wonder what would they say about my friend? Probably that he was a god, much like I thought at first sight.
His welcome convinced the other men that I was not a threat, and they were quick to treat me as a guest. As the day turned to night, I decided to stay a while, and repay their hospitality by teaching them a bit of Cuind dialect through songs of my own and how to better carve the tools they need for fishing.
I knew well that not all Those Who Came After are well meaning. Many of them are not, as the decades old fighting between war-mongering clans of the East and other elven clans never ceased, but in every dark place harbours a little bit of hope, my friend told me. I found it to be true, for now.
