"Everyone volunteered for you to kill them and you couldn't do it! What kind of fighters are you?" When the Elf had said this, Jerika could only blink at him with surprise registering all across her face. Who was he to ask such a question?
“What kind of fighters are we?” Kane roared, and Jerika flinched ever so slightly at the tone. “What kind of fighters are we? You insult me, insult my people, insult my companions...my dead companions...because...because I wouldn’t kill an unarmed man?”
He wouldn’t kill an unarmed man like your kind had…Jerika thought. Then it hit her: Everyone in the cave was either dead or close to it…that meant both Kane’s brother Vlad and Jerika’s brother Jeshak were probably piled in a heap among dead orcs. Jerika shuddered at the thought of being buried alive –or even dead- among smelling, bleeding orcs. Jerika bit her lip, and tasted blood as she contained her disgust and sadness.
"You are injured." Kane suddenly spoke with a passive voice. Jerika smirked and tried not to blurt out something about the comment. Yeah…I think most of us are Kane, including you. “As am I,” Kane continued, and Jerika sighed. As Kane came to crouch beside the giggly-elf, Jerika lifted her eyebrows in a confused and skeptical expression. When he only examined the Elf’s wound, Jerika could easily hear his companion’s relieved sighs, and Jerika rolled her eyes.
"Its impossible. Anything I may do, anything she does, towards anything you do...its seen through different eyes, interpreted with different minds, eyes and minds that change our actions and words into terrible things, so different from anything we may do, or say... You spoke of honour, and I shot the arrow away from your friend. Yet then I am criticized." Kane continued his speech. Jerika nodded in agreement. Because not everybody knows that everybody goes to a better place. I take what I need and some say it’s wrong but it’s right for me. Elves don’t understand the life we lead.
“It’s impossible.”
“What is? My arm?” The Elf wondered aloud, and Kane smiled.
“No. Your arm shall be easily fixed. Yet I fear the bond our races share with such hatred shall not be so easily mended. If they are not drowned in wine, we brought medicines along that can clean such gashes as you have,” Jerika spoke up, in a louder voice than she had spoken…or whispered in earlier. Looking down at her own mangled arm, Jerika winced at the sight. It’ll be a long time before that heals…
"Besides, even if you don't want to use the medicines, we probably will be. Kane, we should start figuring how to bury our dead and make a pyre for the orcs," Jerika continued. This fight was over, in Jerika's mind.
[ March 11, 2003: Message edited by: Aylwen Dreamsong ]
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...Come down now, they'll say. But everything looks perfect from far away - Come down now! But we'll stay.
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