The Prophecy

Adagio | 1st Movement: The Shortened Lesson

9 Lïon 1307,

It was a day like any other. The sun had rose early, around 6:00 b.z.(1), wakening birds in its course, making them chirp and fly over the little Elf city of Elwìnn. If the children were still asleep for the most part, the Wise elves were already on their way to their morning chores.

Elwìnn had never been built to become a normal city with families and children. It had been thought initially to be a city destined to gather knowledge and spiritual researches, mostly designed for and by Wise women and men. There were yoga places and meditation squares; cozy common rooms with large fireplace and big comfortable pillows; huge writing rooms bathed with sunlight and convenient levelled wooden tables. The library was in fact composed of many houses linked together with doors and covered pathways, each house being its own complex library dedicated to host one specific subject. Together, the Maze, as it had been coined, was a well-stocked one, especially for such a little town. Very few people did know how many books the library really contained, nor how precious the manuscripts were, which was for the best. Not that there were many thieves in Innàa potentially interested in this kind of job, but you never know the kind of people who could be behind organized crime bandits.

Not all Wise elves lived yearlong in Elwìnn, many came from all over Innàa, only gathering in the city on special occasions. The ones who did had their little house in Elwìnn, lived either in town, or in the Est side. The Est side looked like an overgrown impenetrable forest, where trees have been left to grow unrestricted, untamed, not unlike a forgotten garden, located in the middle of a civilized city. It was where the Grand Pope(2) lived.

In the center of the city was located the Large Dome. It was a place of gathering. Multipurpose. On demand, it could become a hall for ceremonies or big feasts, when they weren't held outside, a place to gather all the town for town halls or decisions making. Since the arrival of Half-Moon and the children, it had become a school, every morning. Apart during the Rest Days, of course. Invariably, every morning, from 8:00 b.z. to Zen, the children were taught in the Dome, about history, runes, biology, herbology, magic, alchemy, and the legends, of course. Quicksilver, our Storyteller was the usual teacher; while others wise people could intervene from time to time on specific subjects, even if they mainly did so during the after-zen. That was the time of the day the children liked the best, because it meant be outside, able to stretch and run, jump and overall, just be children.

When she wasn't exploring the world, Half-Moon spent the most of her time with the children, which means that she, too, attended the lessons of the Storyteller. Like this morning, for example. She had come back to the city the week prior, missing her band of misfits so much that she had shortened her trip to the Glinsfàar, to come back to them. Truth be told, she had not come back that fast only because she was missing the kids, it was all the rest... The strange things that were happening all around, like the rivers that suddenly overflooded entire villages for no reasons, storms and thunder strong enough to level down an entire region, leaving behind terrified and heartbroken people who had lost everything. And there's the issue with the sky as well... At first, when she had seen the skies painted with those oranges and reddish tones, she had found it nice. But as the day move forward, and the sky was not turning back to its usual blue summer shades, she had begun to feel unease. In her mind, old warnings had begun to ring, but she couldn't connect them to any piece of knowledge that would make sense and explain why she was feeling so disturbed by this atmospheric abnormality. Some people she was travelling with had surmised that an eclipse could be the cause of that unusual color, but no eclipse had been announced by the Wise community, rendering this event weirder. But when Half-Moon got a message from Old-Bear, The Pope, asking her to come back to Elwìnn in all haste, that was when she understood it was serious. Arriving in the city, she learnt that it was so serious that all Wise Elves of Innàa had been called in, and a council would happen as soon as they would be present.