Pentad of Un

Chapter 3 - Adif

     Long ago, when life was still new in the realm, elves had been nothing more than trees and flowers with a desire to travel. Over time, they evolved, picking up humanoid traits while keeping the more important traits of plants.

     Some elves shed their foliage in the cold season; others simply slept more. When there was less sunlight, they could eat food to get energy.

     Of course, they always needed a lot of water.

     Adif Agilaz learned the hard way that not all water was the same.

     "What are you doing?"

     Adif flinched and looked up from the edge of the sea that she had been about to take a drink from. She was only eleven at the time, and it was the middle of the warm season—meaning the sun was constantly drying her out even though she got energy from its light.

     She had been wandering on the beach, completely parched, when she had the brilliant idea to take a drink straight from the sea.

     And now, out of nowhere, this merboy decided to interrupt.

     "I'm thirsty," Adif told him.

     "You're thirsty? Then why are you gonna drink sea water?" The merboy looked very confused. He spoke with a heavy accent, since his native language was probably a coastal Merrowish language like Seyoenese. He could only make the hard th sound, pronouncing "thirsty" with the same th as in "then".

     "It's water," Adif said, drinking from her cupped hands—and gagging as the salt hit her throat.

     "I tried to warn you!" The merboy cackled.

     And that was how Adif met her best friend, Jelro.

     When they turned thirteen, he chose to become a hunter while Adif chose to study alchemy. She figured it was an obvious choice, since her foliage was poisonous and could actually be used as an ingredient in certain concoctions.

     Neither her nor Jelro changed their class, and when they turned fifteen, Jelro made the startling discovery that when he pulled himself completely out of the water, his tail turned into legs. He met his human father, and Adif showed him all around the land portion of town.

     And now they were seventeen, and things had changed drastically.

     Adif had started routinely stopping by the market on the way home from The Academy, buying whatever food was selling for cheap and taking it with her as she went to the treehouse-and-shed fort that was behind her home.

     With her hands full of bread, a bunch of grapes, and a jug of narberry juice, Adif had to lightly kick on the door of the shed to knock.

     The shed was a fairly new addition that she and Jelro had spent a couple months building, since the treehouse had limitations to its uses. They also added stairs to make the treehouse more accessible, but for security reasons the stairs started inside the shed and traveled up a sort of tunnel, being closed off from the outside.

     The door opened after a few seconds, and Adif found herself looking at a swan.

     "Thanks, Refi," she distractedly said, squeezing into the shed while trying to keep from dropping anything.

     The swan softly honked, nudging the door closed behind the elf girl.

     Adif glanced around, frowning at the disorder within the shed.

     A chameleon was hanging upside-down on one of the lanterns, swinging it around in a dangerous manner. A snake had managed to tangle itself on an upside-down chair, wrapped around one of the chair's legs. A bat was flying in circles near the ceiling. A sea otter was lazily floating in the wash basin, its muzzle stained purple.