No Matter What

Chapter II

The green pebble of my necklace was glossy partly because of me. I took care of that pendant like it was alive. In a way, it was. It was a living memory of my dear father. He had given it to me for my fifteenth birthday, right before the war.

He had worked on it for days. As a master of the crafting guild, he had access to every crafting resource.

"Why do teribos hate humans?"

I had asked him that one day, as we took a walk beside the stream that cut our land perfectly in half.

With a concerned look, my father stopped walking and he sat down on a big stone. I sat by his side, staring at him, eyes curious, hungry for answers.

"A long time ago, humans and teribos got along just fine," he started, "we helped each other. Humans fed them crops and pasture and, in exchange, they donated us their fur in wintertime and helped us with manual labor.

"Life was peaceful and, though they were much bigger than us, the teribos never took advantage of it and stuck to a human-free diet," my father's eyes, like mine, gave away exactly what he was feeling. At that moment, his eyes glowed with dreams. Hopes for the future. That light died out when he said,

"But humans are greedy. Greedy and arrogant creatures. Much more monstrous than any other monster in our realm," he sighed, "When men discovered iron and started welding weapons, they were tainted with corruption. These powerful objects made it possible to inflict wounds, to bring death upon an opponent.

"Humans no longer wanted to work. They became lazy and ungrateful. Evil ideas began sprouting in their heads. They realized a way to have food and fur for a VERY long time.

"A group of men killed a teribo."

I gasped.

"Why would they do that!? The teribos were friends!" I asked with child-like innocence.

"Humans sometimes act with selfishness, my dear," he replied.

My eyebrows danced to the swing of my emotions.

"Father?" I interrupted the silence.

"Yes, dear?"

"The teribos must have been very hurt and angry with the betrayal."

"They were."

"Um. How—how are we still alive? Humans, that is. The teribos are very big, compared to us. I know our weapons are powerful, but we would lose many men and it would be hard to populate with so little of them."

"Well. Not all humans are as horrible as that murderous group of men. The humans were divided into groups. Some despised the teribos, like those men. They were discriminating and thought our former allies' only purpose was to serve the human race. But there were also the few who respected the teribos. Who thought of them as friends. That group made a truce with them. They built a town—Teribo Town—and agreed that as long as the humans don't bother them, the teribos would stay there.

"And so it has been all these years. We lost contact with them. We still have those who loathe them, and, of course, many of them still hate us. We are terrible traitors. Thank God there are still good people on earth. Good humans are special. They are rare, they—" he stopped. He was looking at something; something in the stream had caught his craftsman eye.

He walked towards it and I followed. He picked it up.

"Good humans are like this beautiful green pebble," he admired it, "so amazingly unique, different from the rest. Precious, contrasting themselves from the other gray stones."