Everything Has Changed

Age of the Ocean

"The Neutral Territories?" repeated Linh, not sure how to reply to Tam's confession. She thought she'd prepared herself for any truth that might have come, but this was a totally new otherworld.

She didn't know much about the Neutral Territories, as it wasn't inhabited by elves. However, she was a huge advocate of the geographical studies of Earth, so naturally Linh felt a little guilty not reading more into the territories where other intelligent species, mainly gnomes, thrived. So why would Tam and his father-who, clearly, weren't gnomes, stay there?

Linh made a mental note to gather some books concerning the Neutral Territories from the library.

Tam nodded. "Specifically, we were staying in the Wildwood Colony."

"The Wildwood Colony," she echoed, not missing the way she sounded like a dumb person who only knew how to repeat what other people said. And she felt like one right now.

She didn't think the elves focused much of their attention onto the other intelligent species' lives. The gnomes were just servants to them, and some elves like Lord Cassius probably looked down on them. And she was ashamed to admit that she hadn't thought much about their wellbeing, either.

"Where is the Wildwood Colony?" she asked, hating how unknowledgeable she sounded. Linh prided herself for her wide collection of information, and her insatiable thirst for further knowledge. But she was just another normal elf now, learning something new and foreign to her.

How could she top the Foxfire entrance examinations like that? Even if Foxfire didn't focus on the Wildwood Colony in multispeciesial studies, it was still important, and indirectly connected to her-Tam had lived there for a solid two years. His life must have been vastly different from what they were experiencing now in Choralmere.

There was another important question deep inside her mind, but she pushed it aside for the meantime. She needed to know all the background information first, before she could make further inferences or conclusions.

Tam stared at the ivy vines crawling against the stone walls, running his fingers across the shining gold seams. They glimmered as bright as Choralmere in the stark artificial light, reflecting against his pale, cream-coloured complexion. Linh got the feeling he was avoiding her eyes, but she didn't make any move to object as she listened to him. "The Wildwood Colony is like the main residential area for the gnomes. The colony houses the biggest population of gnomes, and it's kind of close to Serenvale-before you ask me what Serenvale is, it's the former homeland to all gnomes, before it got taken over by the ogres and became Ravagog, the ogre capital."

"The ogre ca-" Before Linh could finish her sentence, she stopped herself. She didn't need to repeat everything that Tam was saying. Instead, she swallowed the lump in her throat and twisted her shaky fingers together, hoping it would help herself calm down. "So how did you and Father end up there? Are you...banished, or something?"

When a young elf committed an unforgivable crime, they were usually banished to the Neutral Territories. If that was the case, that could only apply to Tam. She wondered what Quan had done. This didn't clear up everything, like Linh thought it would. Instead, it just left all her questions unanswered and made more questions surface.

When Tam remained stubbornly silent, Linh prodded, "Please-I need to know. You haven't actually answered anything!"

The helplessness in her voice showed through, and her voice hitched on the last word. Tam finally turned and looked at her, his expression completely unreadable. As endless seconds passed, the two twins just stared into each other's identical eyes, not sure what to say to break the silence that had settled into the atmosphere.