One day – it had been perhaps months since I’d been travelling with the Orcs – I saw Jebediah about to speak up, with the now familiar glint in his eyes as he looked at me, the glint I learned to recognize all too well in my time alongside him, that let me know he was going to make fun of me once more.
I cut him off. “And you - You’re too proud, too conceited to accept that Elves may be good people too! You think you’re better than me, but where has your revolution gotten you? You make grand speeches, sure, and you rally people, but what have you achieved? You speak of a time past, of your people lost, but worry about the present for once! You think I can’t help you, you say you don’t need me in the revolution, but you’ve achieved more with me at your side here in months than you’ve done in years by yourself!” I yelled out, right in front of him and the council.
Jebediah looked at me for a moment, but he showed no emotion. He endured my words. Then he breathed in, and for a moment I thought he might lunge at me for my transgressions. Instead, he calmly turned to one of his friends and motioned for him to bring forward his musket.
“Are you going to pick it up?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you want to prove you have our interests at heart, that this is your fight too, then pick up the musket and join us fully.”
I looked at the weapon. It’s not that I’d never handled a weapon – I’d used a bow plenty of times before to hunt back in my homeland, but… a musket was a whole different thing.
Jebediah challenged my gaze.
“I thought not,” he said. “You claim you want to help us, you say you are on our side, but when it comes down to what matters, you would never die for us. You will go back to your cozy life in the glades, while we sacrifice our own down in the ditches. And that is why I believe you, but I don’t listen to you.”
Soon after I first arrived, Jebediah took me to a human village. I didn’t particularly care to go, and he didn’t force me to, but it’s not like I had anywhere else I could be in this unfamiliar land.
There, we walked through the fields for a while. The local humans didn’t seem to care much about us, and went about their day unbothered. After some time, we left and went back to our horses.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said as we were saddling up the horses.
“What do you not understand?”
“I don’t understand why you brought me here.”
“I wanted to show you how people live here,” Jebediah said, a hint of laughter in his voice.
“Yes, they share four houses between themselves and tend to the fields, so what?”
“This is the village. These people live and work here. This is their life.”
“Well, this is very different from my homeland. Where I come from, we have large houses, light at night, and --”
“And glass window panes, and beer in clean mugs and other luxuries, I know.”
“But you said you’ve never been to an elven town?” I asked quizzically.
“I’ve never been. My kind isn’t allowed there.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Who do you think lights your pillars at night? Who cleans your mugs? Who builds your houses?”
I looked at Jebediah with a raised eyebrow.
“We do, elf. Except you never see us, you never meet us. You wake up in the morning with everything already handled for you – your mugs cleaned, your bedsheets washed – but someone has to do it. And it’s not you. Where do you think all of your wealth comes from? It comes from here, from these people. If you miss your mirrors and your jewelry, we can go to the lord’s manor, if he’ll let us in. But you won’t find it in this village.”