Kah'lii: A Tale of a Girl and her Dragon

Prologue

The early morning sun peered through the thin layer of clouds, painting the horizon with oranges, purples and yellows. The air was crisp, and fog and steam could be seen rising from the ponds and rivers that stretched across the wooded landscape. Birds and small woodland creatures created the only ambient sounds, as the lack of any sort of breeze left the leaves in the trees completely devoid of any discernable movement.

A silent figure moved across the mossy ground, stealthily tracking its winged prey. Filthy, bare feet stepped lightly, making no more noise than that of a jungle cat or coiled snake as the hunter eyed the plump pheasants that had gathered in a small clearing to feed. A small blade was removed from a bandoleer-type belt, identical to the seven that remained in readiness along the leather belt's edge. The hunter gripped the small gleaming blade with thumb and forefinger from the sharp end, and a quick flip of the wrist was all it took to fell one of the succulent fowl, sending the others skyward as their multiple wings destroyed the relative silence of the still morning air. Breakfast now assured, the hunter sat to create a small fire and enjoy the hard-earned bounty.

Kah'lii was a nineteen-year-old elf that lived alone in the sprawling Red Forest, which contained one of the largest villages of wood elves in the region. She was an orphan and an outcast, and as such she tried to avoid the other elves as much as possible. Kah'lii embraced her solitude, while shunning the traditions and religion of her brethren, although she kept true to the belief that harming a living tree was wrong, so she had built her campfire with fallen branches. Although technically an adult, the low reproduction rate and two-century lifespan of her species caused the other elves to treat her as an adolescent, and she responded by dressing the part of a rebellious teen; as she had no parental figures in which to answer. Her clothing consisted of nothing more than a leather bodice and loincloth, and her oversized elven-ears bore multiple piercings of silver hoops, as she simply couldn't afford gold.

To further complicate her place in wood-elven society, it was rumored that her father was a dark elf, or Drow as they were sometimes called, and as a result her skin-tone was a deep bronze instead of olive like the other wood elves of the forest. Her hair, however, was nearly white, and while it granted her an exotic beauty in contrast to her dark skin, it appeared to the other wood elves as the hair of the lighter-skinned valley elves. In short, Kah'lii looked to be an unfortunate mixture of the three main elvish races of the region, and since the wood elves, the valley elves, and the Drow had such a vastly differing view on religion, the young elf found herself shunned by all three.

Kah'lii picked the bones of the pheasant clean and added two of the fowl's long tail feathers to her braided-leather headband, further enhancing her wild appearance. She chuckled to herself and cleaned the flawless dual-edged throwing-knife and returned it to its individual sheath alongside the others. She dutifully snuffed the campfire with dirt and then drew a long swallow from the water-skin that hung at her hip; smiling and reveling in her freedom and lack of structure. She could hunt and gather anything she needed, and on the rare occasion that she had to spend actual gold, the bone necklaces and bracelets that she made usually brought a fair price at the human settlements on the outskirts of the forest. Kah'lii was not bound by any laws save her own, and she couldn't imagine life any other way.

The bubbly young elf traipsed along the hunting trails humming to herself as the afternoon sun did its best to shine through the thick canopy of ancient redwoods that gave the Red Forest its name. She feared little, as the elvish denizens of the forest didn't actually hate her, they just regarded her with callous indifference, and most humans in the region knew how accurate she could be with her throwing knives, so they left her alone as well. As for the local wildlife, her hearing was exceptional, and that was enough to keep her from accidently walking up on a leopard or rattlesnake, or worse: a sleeping troll. After walking for several minutes, she left the blazed trails and took to the trees, and before long she arrived at the simple structure that she called home.