To be or not to be a Warden......

"You've got one right here!" Fred shouts, nervously eyeing the approaching.

"And here," Alicia says, not wishing to see the bloodbath in the making.

"Ah....but do you understand what you're asking for?" Grailing asks, looking up at the were-foxes. Time stops as the foxes look into the golden, young/old eyes of the elf.

To become a Warden means forfeiting whatever existence you had before, Grailing says to the foxes without speaking. It means, in each of your cases, Lord Fred of Suffex and Princess Alicia of Aethiopia, that your human past would no longer be. A twist in time would occure, and you human vessals would die at conception. Instead, you would be REBORN into the current, non-human forms you now wear. You would forever more be humanoid foxes. You would have memories of what you had been, before your Rebirth, but nobody else would know that your were anything else but what you appear to be, nor would they believe you.

If.....we do this, Fred asks, swallowing nervously. What can we do as Wardens, are we stuck doing sentry duty, keeping out humans from the non-human lands or something.

No, not at all, Grailing says. As Wardens, it will be your duty to.....walk the lands and rebalance Nature......planting trees and encouraging vegetation to grow where humans have either cut or burned away. Induce fertility in the wild life of the Forest, to repopulate what man has whittled down. And, by just BEING wardens, the Forest will, through you, be impenetrable to further human intrusion.

This far and no farther, Alicia murmurs.I take it that part of this "fertility power" business is to keep the humans satisfied with the land they have.....more or less?

Exactly, Grailing nods.

1. <But what will happen....how will history unfold with our absence....as humans?> Fred asks, suddenly bothered by something.