In The Realm of The Elf

chapter 3

Waking up the next morning, rubbing the sleep from her eyes Lily smiled. She could smell cinnamon and fresh cut grass. Hoping for cinnamon pancakes she got out of bed and almost walked into the wall. Giggling because she should have opened her eyes before getting out of bed. She got dressed and opened the door to Foren smiling at her.

"There is food in the dining room for you. I hope you slept well." He said and walked off down the hall towards some of the other rooms in the house.

Lily walked down to the kitchen to find Treep there dishing out food on her plate. "Good morning." Lily said as Treep passed her a plate for her to put food on it. Taking a look Lily found more vegetables and some kind of corn cakes. It smelled so yummy that her stomach began making noises. Laughing she put some on her plate and began to eat.

"I hope you slept well." Treep said, "The men just left to met the elders from the other villages and will be back in an couple of hours."

"How old is an adult here?" Lily asked wondering because she was sure Treep included Frost as an adult just now.

"Well When a boy or young girl has grown for twenty summers they become an adult." Treep said smiling at the calculating look Lily was giving.

"Frost is twenty?" She said thinking about that fact watching her plate.

"No dear he is not. He is older than twenty and that is why he needs to find a mate by the harvest moon." Treep said finishing the last of her breakfast.

"Oh, so how old is he?" Lily asked leaning over to whisper.

"Twenty-three." Treep said laughing at Lily. "How old are you dear?"

"I am not sure how long your years are, but on earth I am nineteen." She said then shoved a bunch of food in her mouth.

"We have thirteen moons each year. How many do you have?" Treep asked clearing away the plates of food.

"Um...I am not sure we don't count in moons anymore. We have months, some are thirty days and some are thirty-one with one month twenty-eight days. Oh except every four years that month is twenty-nine days, a leap year is what we call it." She said taking a drank of water to wash all the food down she had been shoveling in.

"Do you know how many moons you have that are full in each month?" Treep asked still putting food away.

"One for sure, but sometimes there is two in a month. My one teacher once said that a full moon usually was every twenty-eight or twenty-nine days." She said cleaning the last of her food off the plate and shoving it in. She was so happy that Frost wasn't here to see her bad manners for eating, but she was starving for some reason and wanted to get the food in her fast.

"Let me do some math for a minute." Lily said counting on her fingers to try and figure out how many moons might be in an earth year. "Okay so we have about twelve sometimes thirteen full moons, like I said, I'm sure. Our year is three hundred and sixty-five days except leap years are three hundred and sixty-six days. How long is your year?" Lily asked after giving up counting on her fingers remembering what her geography teacher had told her class about moon phases.

"Each full moon is thirty days apart on our planet. So you wouldn't be nineteen years old here." Treep said then put out her hand for Lily to pass her the empty plate she had used.

Lily thought about that as she walked up to her room and sat on the end of her bed. If she ended up not being able to go back home she would have to learn more about the world she was living on now. "The name of the world would be useful." Lily said quietly then sighed then remembered they had said the name one time but can't remember what it is now. How old is she here? Thinking about this she figured out how many days a year was for them first. She hoped she wouldn't be too young again, not wanting to relive a lot of her teen years again. "Ugh...seventeen, I'm seventeen almost eighteen again here, eighty-one more days to be exact. Why?" Lily said to herself after figuring out how old she was on their planet. Putting her face in her hands she wanted to cry. She didn't want to be a child again after being an adult for a year already. Letting that sink in she sat by the mirror and started doing her hair to hid her ears. Not something she wanted to do for the rest of her life, so she sat there hoping the elders would have an answer for her on how to get home.