The Old Elf
Elves, as a race, can live for centuries without so much as aging, remaining locked in the prime of their bodies.
Yet an elf's tongue has a talent for endangering the crown of its own head, so how long a truly accident-free elf might live is not widely known.
The sole exception is a figure the elves themselves revere as something close to a god.
Carnepisara.
Or, as he is more often called, the Old Elf.
"Ugh... An elf. Somehow that already worries me."
I just know he's going to be a complete asshole.
I muttered the words under my breath and folded my arms.
It wasn't as if I had met many elves in person. To be precise, after coming to the valley I hadn't properly met humans either, and elves even less so. Still, my impression of the race was oddly clear.
Long ears.
Handsome faces.
Long-lived.
Slow of speech.
Looking down on people.
And convinced they sit at the center of the world.
Strangely, those last two stood out sharpest of all. No one had ever told me so; the image had simply been lodged in my head. Probably the residue of all the stories I had absorbed before arriving in this world.
Elves were generally beautiful, long-lived, attuned to nature, and quietly dismissive of humans. And if this was the Old Elf who had reached the absolute peak of magic, whom even death could not claim, and whom the elves regarded as divine...
"No matter how I turn it over, he has to be an asshole."
I said it with complete sincerity. Gargantua fell silent for a moment. The wind of the valley slowed, almost carefully. The silence was not the kind that denied anything. It was the kind that carefully chose words so I would be less inclined to flee.
That alone was not reassuring.
"A cheerful... kkondae. You may think of him as roughly grandfather-level."
Gargantua spoke at last. I slowly lifted my head.
Regarded as a god by elves, unclaimed by death, poor in temper yet a cheerful grandfather. Put every piece of that description together and it still did not feel like a safe teacher. It felt far closer to an eccentric wizard whose mind had bent, after centuries of life, into shapes no human could follow.
"By cheerful, do you mean the kind who turns people into trees and then goes, 'Ah, so much quieter now~'?"
"There has been no such incident."
"That's a relief."
"There was one who became a tree."
"There was!"
"Carnepisara did not change him. He experimented upon himself."
"And you didn't stop him?"
"I watched with interest."
"That's the worst part."
Gargantua quietly lowered his head.
"Thereafter the elf lived three hundred years as a very healthy tree."
"That is zero comfort."
"I am told the leaves were beautiful."
"Stop."
I dragged a palm down my face. All I had done was say I wanted to learn magic. Why was I suddenly hearing about an elf who spent three centuries as a healthy tree? The world of wizards was strange after all. No—the world of dragons was strange enough, but at least dragons never hid their strangeness. When they wanted to breathe fire the throat glowed; when they wanted to swing a tail the tail rose; when they erred it showed in their eyes.
Wizards were different.
"Carnepisara," Gargantua began again. I fixed him with a wary stare, "is not an evil man."
"That distinction seems terribly important to you, yet from the listener's side it is not very comforting."
"It is important. Rudeness is the shape of the tongue. Evil is the direction of the heart."
I started to argue and stopped. The sentence was rather good. Annoyingly good. Gargantua had a habit of dropping plausible lines like that and leaving my anger nowhere clean to land.
"So a sharp-tongued grandfather, then."
"Yes."
"And the direction of the heart?"
"Generally slanted."
"Which means it isn't straight."
"The old find it difficult to stand perfectly upright."
"You're old too."
"I am close to a mountain."
"That line is banned as well."
Gargantua closed his mouth with great quiet. Another forbidden sentence had been added to the list.
I sighed and looked down into the valley. A white hatchling that had been washing its forepaws at the water's edge had fallen asleep with those paws still submerged; a still smaller one beside it was nodding off with its head tucked under the first one's tail. Alduin crouched low behind my left side. His golden eyes had narrowed slightly the moment the name Carnepisara was spoken—the face of a dragon filing away the name of a powerful stranger for the first time.
Not good. Very not good.
I raised a finger at once.
"Al."
Krr.
"Do not even think about fighting Carnepisara."
R.
"That answer was a little late."
Krrr…….
"Death itself couldn't take him. What if you breathe fire and he's still fine?"
Alduin seemed to consider. Then a very soft rumble gathered in his throat.
Krr.
I narrowed my eyes.
"You're saying that won't happen?"
R.
"You absolute—"
Alduin wore a look of pure grievance. But I knew better. When dragons hear of a strong opponent their eyes change a fraction. Alduin's more than most. To me he was still the firstborn who got caught sneaking dried meat; to the dragons of the valley he was king. Kings do not scare easily. That is both a virtue and a problem.
"Masor."
Sagak.
The sound came from my right this time. Of course he was there.
Sagak.
"If Carnepisara lays down some weird magic circle, you'll want to cut it, won't you."
Sagak.
"I know even if you don't answer."
Masor's scales chimed, very small. The sound carried a sulky edge. There was nothing to be done about it. For five hundred years I had watched trees, boulders, and monsters part in clean slices wherever Masor passed. Why should a magic circle be different? I did not know. Curiosity alone might make him try. That was the problem.
"The two of you, honestly..."
I looked from Alduin to the empty air where Masor stood.
"Carnepisara is cheerful," Gargantua said again.
I squinted up at him.
"I already don't trust that word from earlier."
"He has lived long, yet boredom has never conquered him."
"And that counts as cheerful?"
"Many of the ancient are swallowed by boredom. They believe they already know the world. Even when they see something new they call it only a repetition of the old, and they cease to listen." Gargantua's voice deepened. "Carnepisara is different. He may mock, yet he looks. He may ridicule, yet he listens. If something displeases him he drives it away; if something pleases him he asks questions."
"Well. That's something, at least."
"Also... he is my longtime Butiza. My friend. I have already invited him to this valley."
"...What?"
"He always has time to spare... I summoned him for Mother."
Before I could demand what that meant, the mist at the valley mouth parted.
It was not pushed by wind. It was not beaten aside by dragon wings, nor opened by Gargantua lowering the storm. The mist itself seemed to yield the path—like a doorkeeper who recognizes a long-awaited guest and steps aside with bowed head.
Between darkness and white fog, tiny lights rose. At first I took them for fireflies. They were not. The lights neither flew nor fell nor swayed with the breeze. They simply hung in the air, illuminating the way half a beat ahead of someone's steps—as though an ancient forest had peeled scraps of moonlight from its own leaves and sent them into the valley before the visitor.
Even the sounds of the gorge changed. Young dragons swallowing their breath inside the nests. The low resonance gathering in Alduin's throat. The faint interlocking of Masor's scale-tips. The wind threading between Gargantua's wings. Every noise folded quietly in place and went no farther.
I closed my mouth without meaning to.
A guest was coming. The teacher from whom I might learn magic.
Out of the mist a staff appeared first. White, dry wood. Almost no ornament—no jewels, no metal fittings, no elaborate glyphs flaunting a mage's rank. Yet the moment that single staff touched the valley floor, every surrounding sound sank deeper still.
Tok.
A small sound. Softer than a pebble dropping into shallow water. Yet it reached my ears with unnatural clarity. Because the whole gorge had fallen silent? Or because only that sound had been permitted?
Where the staff met the earth, a faint leaf-vein pattern of light spread and vanished. I stopped breathing. The light was not flashy. It did not flare like fire or spin like a circle. It simply was—as if a pattern that had always slept inside the ground had been summoned by the staff's tip and briefly opened its eyes.
Then a hand emerged. Long and thin. The skin was pale in the elven way, yet different from the smooth beauty of the young. Faint wrinkles marked the back of the hand; the finger joints curved quietly, like the limbs of an old tree. Strength was still there.
White hair followed, flowing free of the mist. It fell past the waist and faintly caught moonlight and fog. "White hair" felt insufficient. It might never have been black, or it had been black so long ago that no living memory retained the color.
Long ears showed through the strands—elven long, yet they did not look like the sharp, arrogant ornaments of youth. They belonged there the way the cracked limbs of an ancient tree belong after hundreds of seasons: unbroken, unfallen, still alive.
There were wrinkles on the face. Wrinkles, on an elf. The very phrase felt wrong. He did not look frail the way human elders do. Each line was not a mark of collapse.
The eyes were pale green. More than green—forest light trapped inside an old glass bottle. Not the color of leaves under direct sun, but the color of leaves that have fallen after rain and still hold memory before they rot. Closer to autumn than spring, closer to recollection than vitality.
Those eyes surveyed the valley. First they found Alduin. Carnepisara's gaze brushed me, feather-light. Then they turned exactly to the empty air where Masor stood.
Sagak.
Masor's scales chimed, tiny. The sound folded once near the ground the staff had touched and then released. The corner of Carnepisara's eye dipped a fraction. A smile? Interest? Confirmation of something already known? Impossible to tell.
Next he looked at Gargantua. The mountain of a dragon slowly inclined his head. A mountain offering greeting—that was the only way it could be read. The six pairs of wings lowered slightly behind the cliffs; the valley wind pressed deeper. Carnepisara returned a slight bow of his own head.
Then he looked at me again.
"It is a pleasure to meet you."
The voice was clearer than I expected—neither young nor old.
"Mother of Dragons, Lady Lakia."
"Ah... Hello."
"Oh my. There is no need for formality. You are my friend's mother. Please speak more casually."
"...Th— That. No. Okay."
"Yes. I understand quite well why I was summoned."
Certainty filled his eyes. Oh—so he had already realized it was about teaching magic? Impressive after all—
"You wish to judge those fucking humans, do you not? Speaking as representative of the entire elven race, we shall spare no support. My long-cherished dream of dragon-riding elves—"
"No no. No I don't?!"
Crazy. He's just a senile old man.