Roe felt refreshed after the swim in the lake. The late summer days were very hot this year.

"How was your time at the palace?" Roe asked.

“It was good. Princess Aliendre is magnificent. She’s beautiful and kind. But there was a rude human prince visiting the palace. He constantly tried to flirt with Aliendre as if an Elven princess would care about a human.”


Roe’s eyes became wide and she jumped up. “Did you say human?! Do you mean that humans exist for real?! Did he try to kill you?”


Thorundur laughed. “Roe, of course they exist. Why would he try to kill me? After all it was only a human.”

Roe was upset. Her worst nightmare was true. Humans might come and force her people to leave their homes just as the storyteller had said when she was a child. But Thorundur didn’t seem to be worried or frightened. Maybe the storyteller had exaggerated?

“What do they look like?”

“They are not very different from elves but much uglier of course. Their ears are small and the adult males have hair in the face. Some of them remove the hair from the face while other let it grow.”

“Hair in the face, ugh.” Roe laughed.

“How was your meeting Roe?”

“I won three competitions.”

“Wow Roe! Of course I knew that you would do well. And more?”


“There was a boy named Bear who was really annoying. Dad thinks that I should take him as my spouse at the next meeting but I don’t really want to think about getting a spouse already. I can’t imagine how depressive a life with Bear would be.”

Thorundur was quiet for a long while which was something very unusual. “I don’t want to grow up,” he said finally. “I want everything to always be like it’s now. When you have a spouse you won’t have time for me.”

Roe knew that what Thorundur said was true. She could hardly run around in the forest with Thorundur when she had a husband and a family.

“I don’t want to grow up either,” she said.

“Elves don’t marry until they find the love of their life, even if it takes several hundreds of years, but I know that your people are expected to have a family as soon as you grow up.”


“It’s warm, I want another swim,” Roe said to change subject. She didn’t want to think more about the time when her happy days with Thorundur would come to an end.

If anyone had seen them he would probably have found the sight very odd. The young Forest girl and the Elven boy were playing like children in the water, laughing heartily as if there were no worries or dangers in their world.


They were lying in the sun letting the warm sun beams dry them after the swim.

“Did Bear give you that necklace?” There was a strange sharpness in Thorundur’s voice.

“No, You’ll never believe this!”

Roe told Thorundur about her meeting in the forest with the Mother. He looked at her with large eyes.


“If it wasn’t for the necklace I wouldn’t believe it myself. You’re the only one that I’ve told about the meeting with the Mother. To everyone else I said that I found the necklace in the forest.”

“I believe you. You’re the most incredible person I know Roe. That necklace is clearly not Elven handcraft. It looks very old.”

“I didn’t even know that the spirits could show themselves as people. No one that I have asked has heard of such a thing.” She didn’t tell Thorundur that she hadn’t felt the presence of the spirits during the dance because she’d been thinking about him. If he knew how she felt she was afraid that their friendship would change. There was no sign at all that he thought about her as anything else than as a very dear friend.