Fiction River by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch [Dayle A. Dermatis, Edited by]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WMG Publishing, Inc.

Elves were tall by nature. Eldislan was taller. He had the broad shoulders of a warrior, but the dancing, smoke-gray eyes of a wizard. His hair was the color of redwood, and hung to his waist without a trace of knotting or splitting. And he dressed human style. Not in T-shirts and jeans, or the apparently popular Columbia Sportswear, but in the style the humans called “formal.”

Well, in Portland the humans called it “way too formal.” Here, the humans considered “formal” a sports coat worn with jeans and a T-shirt. But Falin still recognized the garments as forming a suit.

Eldislan’s suit was the same smoke gray as his eyes, with a black belt and black shoes that smelled of leather and polish, a tie the deep blue of the ocean at sunset, and a shirt so silver it might have been woven from a metal this world did not possess.

And Eldislan smiled the smile of an elf at peace. An elf who knew what he was about, who understood his place in this new world better than Falin thought he ever would.

Falin leaned forward in his seat, and he was not the only one.

“I look around me,” Eldislan said in a rich baritone voice, as he strode slowly across the room, “and I see cowards. I see elves no better than the leaf eaters orcs would have us be.”

Anger rippled through the room. Falin found himself wanting to reach for a sword he no longer carried.

“Look at yourselves.” Eldislan reached the podium, and toppled it with a sweep of his hand. It crashed, but not an elf moved. “Majestic pointed ears hiding under hoods. Why, I bet not a one of you has made eye contact with another living soul since you set foot outside to come here tonight.”

The anger in the room shifted to discomfort. Falin noted some of the elves around him hung their heads now. He wondered if he should be one of them.

“Well? Show me your hands if you have.”

Every hand in the audience stayed tucked inside its “sweat” jacket pocket.

“That’s what I thought. Each one of you knows you need to be here. To hear what I have to say. But you let that need shame you.” He sneered. “Do you know what those garments are called? Not sweat jackets. It may say so on the label, but nobody really calls them that. Hoodies. That’s what they are. And do you know who wears hoodies? Angst-ridden teenage humans.”

Eldislan shook his head slowly.

“Well, I won’t have it. Not here. Every one of you strip off those hoodies and throw them away.”

No one moved. Not even Falin.

“I mean it. Do it now or leave. Do it now or I’ll leave. I’m not here to talk to angst-ridden human children.”

Falin was the first to cast his off, throwing it over his shoulder, but others were quick to follow and soon there was a pile of hoodies behind the back row. A few of the male elves had worn no shirts underneath, and now their pale skin glowed in the candlelight.

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