"Oh look, Sildorn! There, in the street!"

At Lareis's cry, Sildorn glanced up. There, standing amidst the debris and bodies, was a human. Sildorn always had trouble with identifying humans by their appearance, they didn't have any of the scales, antlers, fur, or fins that helped mark the individual elven tribes. This human was wearing crude-looking plates of metal with straps holding them in place, and was holding an equally-unconventional chunk of iron in one of its hands.

Lareis was already approaching the bedraggled human, who took a step back as if to flee. It said something Sildorn didn't understand in the simple language they spoke, which didn't discourage Lareis.

He picked his way past the bodies of the orcs that had ransacked the human town. As he got closer, he could see the human was coated in dark blood.

"Oh, the poor sweet thing," Lareis said. "Look at it! It's practically a babe."

Sildorn frowned. "How can you be sure? It looks like it can walk fine to me." He'd heard about human children, how they struggled to stay upright on their strangely-fragile legs.

"I read about it in one of the tomes we borrowed from Ysale. It's hard to believe, but did you know they let their children go into battle as young as fifty years old? How barbaric!"

Lareis bent down to make eye contact with the human, and smiled sweetly. The human now looked considerably less skittish, and made another series of harsh sounds, to which Lareis responded by softly cooing. Sildorn didn't need to see his soulmate's eyes to know what she was thinking.

"No."

"No what?"

"No, we can't keep it," Sildorn folded his arms and gave the human a stern look. "It's a child, who knows if it's even been house trained yet?"

"Oh, but we can't just leave it here!" Lareis turned to him, and he grimaced as she reached down to pat the human on the head. The human took another step away, but Lareis didn't seem to notice.

"It's not just one human. I've read some of Ysale's books too. Humans don't create vessels for children, they just..." Sildorn trailed off. "Well, I'm not entirely sure I understood the diagram correctly. But if you take two humans in, within a few centuries you'll have a hundred."

"Please, Sildorn? At least let us take it back for tonight and give it some food, then we can let it go in the morning. Besides, you just said it takes two humans to make new ones, right?"

The elven man hesitated, and glanced at the human again. It did look rather pitiful, with its filthy rags and vacant expression. He sighed, lifting his face to the sky in a silent prayer for patience.

"Fine. But it's just for tonight. It's gone in the morning."

---

Sir Braxford wasn't entirely sure what the two elves were saying. He cursed himself for not paying enough attention during his language studies, but at least they weren't hostile. Lifting his sword, he drew a cleaning cloth from his belt and wiped some of the orcish blood off the blade, before sheathing it. The elves seemed to have come to an agreement of some kind, and began to gesture childishly in his direction. The errant knight sighed, and began to follow the duo, rolling his eyes at the idiotic noises the taller, scaled elf was making.

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