Riveildian tales

The beautiful Elf

Love, it is a feeling often confused with many feelings of pleasure. Lust, happiness, attraction, and so on, but what many do not know is that the reward of true love comes from pain, sacrifice and sometimes grief. A lesson little Oliver would learn today.

The morning sun just risen and all the students sat in class ready to start the day. Mr Hamphyll walked into the class dragging his feet with a low slump on his shoulders and a grimace in his face. "Settle down everyone." He said with a growl in his voice.

Thomas leaned to his side and whispered to Oliver and Amice "He seems even more irritable today."

"That could mean only one thing." Amice said with a grin.

"Could you three nuisances keep it down?!" Mr Hamphyll spat to the three. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. "starting today, we will be having a new student joining us. Class, say hello to your new classmate, Nuriya." When Mr Hamphyll gestured his hand to the door, Oliver expected a normal person, perhaps even a new friend, but the girl who walked through the doors of the classroom was no ordinary person. She had lustrous green hair and narrow pointed ears. Her eyes were clear sparking blue akin to a lake in summer and her smile took all the students in the class aback. Her beauty had indeed enchanted many in the class indeed. And like many others, when Oliver felt the strange new rhythm of his beating heart, he'd known Nuriya had captured it.

"As you can see, Nuriya is an elf, one of the few who live amongst us in Riveildia." Mr Hamphyll said, "See to it that she feels welcomed in amongst you." he then sent Nuriya off to sit and picked up his chalk, "Another little burden I must bear." He muttered to himself.

The young elf sat by the class window in the furthermost row of the class. Oliver watched Nuriya with a starlit gaze as the light of the rising sun shone through her green hair as emerald glimmer. His hear skipped a beat as Nuriya turned back to look over her shoulder, for as soon as his eyes met hers, she smiled.

"I still can't believe she smiled at me." Oliver said wistfully by the cherry tree. The three friends sat together eating lunch. Well Thomas and Amice were, Oliver could hardly have a bite, with his mouth busy running off about Nuriya. But Amice did make sure his lunch was eaten however.

"Yes, Olly." She said with a mouthful of Oliver's raspberry pie, "like you said a hundred times over, she smiled at you in class, and even when you say it a hundred times more, it would be nothing more than that."

"Not yet it won't," Oliver said grinning ear to ear. Amice growled softly in frustrating, she swallowed the last piece of Oliver's pie and rested back against the tree.

"I know Elves are beautiful but who'd have thought you'd fall head over heels for one." She said, but her words fell on deaf ears as Oliver had begun gazing at Nuriya once more as she made her way through the school grounds. Amice sighed, narrow eyed. She shifted her gaze to Thomas who studied a sapphire gem in his left hand as he ate a porridge with his right.
"And why aren't you star struck over Nuriya eh, Thomas?" Thomas pocketed the gem and said;

"I try to be wary of elves. Father says people fawning over them often leads to their undoing."

"It's still odd to me. You're probably the only boy in our class who isn't head over heels for her." Thomas spotted something in the grass a small distance away, he leaned forward to pick up a green glowing gem and said;

"I have other interests."

It wasn't long before all the students were called back in at the end of the midday break. As all the students made their way into the school building, Oliver approached Nuriya.