There are ways around that....

Lilith

"You're . . .letting us go?!" Nightfall blinks owlishly at them. "Uh . . .good but what about us not being Marked as belonging to any tribe? That's how we got into this mess in the first place."

I feel a pain in my chest. A sharp pain I feel right now, hearing that. Oh, it’s not the same kind of pain I felt upon learning the pathetic truth of my existence. My true Purpose in the Grande Scheme of Things as a NGE Angel. A Reaper...

Thank God I was allowed to escape that Fate and become a Champion! OH, I have a few sharp questions for the Creator for that grim business before--only due to the fact that I’d been under the sway of what could only be called powerful instinctual imperatives can I sleep at night--but . . .

Nevermind, it’s not important right now and for the most part it’s behind me. I get sidetracked sometime.

I am just saying that THIS pain I have is different. It’s bloody ANNOYING!

I do fear that I can see just where our standards will take us here.

"You’re saying that even AFTER we free you from your chains that this’ll probably happen again?" I ask blankly, knowing somehow before Nightfall opens her mouth what her answer will be, so I don‘t bother waiting for the verbal answer.

The small nod is enough.

"Oh joy!" I drawl. "Well, there’s only one thing for it."

Nightfall

And the white haired (and white winged) woman goes and gives us the obvious answer to our dilemma. Before our desperate dash into the magical portal spell here (wherever THIS place is . . .never would I have believed there was a LAND with TWO suns in the sky) our hope had been to find a tribe who’d accept US into their ranks. Only then would we be able to live out the rest of our lives in our rightful form: as Wood elves along with our fellow Wood elfin people! In other words, in order to be able to LIVE something approaching a normal (and decent) life for my children and my sisters the plan (desperate and admittedly sketchy though it was) was to FIND a group who’d accept us into their midst.

But up until NOW? Wasn’t looking too good for us, to UNDERSTATE things. While we’d successfully landed well and away from the surprise attack that dragoness had launched upon us (re: 77876) and EVEN managed to come across a traveling tribe of Wood Elves . . .things are NOT like what I and my family had hoped for at all. I mean really! A tribe of Wood Elves who practice slavery?

Nowhere in any of the tales . . .

Sigh, I guess I just showed I assumed too much on too little information. Maybe there are no elves who would enslave others, being the free spirits they are back in the land I hale from. Here? Within a land with TWO (!) suns in the sky? Well, that’s something else entirely!!

And if it hadn’t been for these . . .these strange female mages here? Sooner or later I would have probably been separated from my children. After EVERYTHING I and my sisters had gone through and done!! If those slave collars had not prevented me from acting out against our captors I would have strangled more than a few elfin necks for that!

And then, after getting the Wolf torn OUT of me and my sisters and . . .

Hey . . .what had been so good about having It stuck in us anyway?! I mean it was kind of NICE being so close to nature but then again it was so . . .

Primitive? I mean I’m all for getting back to nature and all that (I’m an elf, remember?!) but that was . . .a bit extreme. Looking back, a bit extreme indeed.

Uh, anyway. Got to reflect over that one in a bit on the overall meaning...

But anyway these three women--magic using woman, can’t leave that one out--come out of nowhere soon after we’ve been caught and collared. Traveling down the same road we were and for SOME reason out of the blue they go and start shopping from the caravan. Shopping for something but apparently NOT for slaves, as it turned out.

They see med MOST surprised (and disgusted) at finding US for sale. For a bit the way they’d gone on and on about all our faults I and the other began to feel their disgust had stemmed from being offered faulty "merchandise" and not . . .what turned out to be the truth.

If nothing else it’s a blood covered fact that these women absolutely HATE slavery (and slavers). And I figure would rather had killed every last of those bastards back there and take us by force than what they ended up doing: buying us to free us. And in such a way which let the slavers have little to nothing to show for it.

. . .

If it hadn’t been for my children I’d have been all FOR these three magic using women to slay those bastards, but . . .such as life.

But how to live life, if not at a risk of being a slave again? Well . . .that’s where it’s interesting.

I have NEVER been a Hill Giant like my sisters had been. We are now elves . . .of some type (not sure exactly what species we’d be technically called, all given) but honestly? HOW often do you hear of a human offering something like this, exactly?

Employment of elves to humans is a rare thing, but not unheard of. Magic user humans employing elves? Eh, a bit more common than just regular humans employers . . . But tell me something . . . .

How often does ANY kind of potential employer make THIS kind of offer?!

Rei

"Well of course the little ones need to be fed and whatever mage who performed that transformation upon you must have been a male to forget something so simple!"

It’s really simple just how I and my sisters happen to know this, now. Feel a bit silly for not having figured it totally out right out the gate, really.

Bloody obvious once you look at it, really. Few non-fairies would have been able to survive the anger stirred up by crimes committed against the Faire Folk to land them getting a Mark of the Fey on their foreheads.

Bleeding things are dangerous to the recipient. Makes magic cast upon VERY unpredictable in it’s outcome. Might even bounce back on the caster.

So VERY glad that the quick magic aura scan Lilith did of them while ago is one of the few spells that isn’t effected by that mark. Speaks of good characters in ALL of them.

Including the griffin, for God’s sake! Was he the runt of the Nest or something? Sentient griffs are larger by far than HIM!

Hrmph. Can’t well go and kill that Braveheart of theirs now for spell components, anyway....

But that aside, you say it sounds GOOD about that mark being able to deflect or pervert magic cast upon them?

Might sound good but even the most beneficial healing spells could prove deadly, you see, for them. And in a world where non magical medicine is perhaps only the roughest of First Aid that can prove to be a real . . .bummer.

Wonder how that idiot mage managed to transform these former Feys into elves, and just WHY.

Got to ask them (politely) here soon if we’re going to actually hire them on here to help avoid them getting enslaved and all that.....

But whatever the case I fear that whatever that idiot did to get them transformed into elves from Fey (for ONLY Fey would EVER get the mark of Excommunication upon their foreheads in punishment, unjust as it is by a feeling I get), the mage must have forgotten . . .to make sure the mother of her elfin babes was lactating.

Now, we could probably set up some kind of bottle feeding soon enough but the infants are hungry NOW. And remember that Mark I spoke of? Well, can’t get Nightfall here breast feeding them naturally and magic is out of the question!

1. “How did you know about us having been transformed?” Nightfall asks quietly. “And again I ask . . .are you serious about wanting to breast feed them yourselves?!”

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