“Whoa, check it out! A whole parade of magical fauna!”
Once off the Flower Road and through the massive academy gates, the students were on the campus grounds. The tall boy let out a shout, and Oliver looked over. “Whoa,” he breathed. Beautiful unicorns, griffins proudly spreading their wings, the golden scales of fafnirs sparkling in the sun—an orderly line of magical creatures, some far taller than humans, paraded around the courtyard.
“Hoo, what a sight! That’s Kimberly for ya. First, they impress you with their plants, then they hit you with the animals!”
The tall boy wasn’t alone in his amazement, either. The other students made no attempt to hide their excitement at getting a front-row seat to such a show. The line of first-years temporarily stopped—it was as good a time as any to get a good look at the parade. The tall boy hooted and hollered until he finally noticed that the girl next to him was frowning gravely. He turned to her.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, puzzled. “Loosen up. You can’t see something like this anywhere else.”
“I understand that. I just can’t bring myself to celebrate this,” the curly-haired girl said, pointing to a section of the parade. Oliver and the tall boy turned to see a ten-foot-tall, brawny, humanoid magical creature—a troll, a type of demi-human, was dressed in the simplest of garb and was lumbering along. “See? They’re forcing that troll to parade around like some magical beast.”
“Hmm? Yeah, I guess so.”
“Does no one have a problem with that?” the girl asked heatedly. The tall boy gave her a blank look.
“Where’s the issue? Wild trolls are dangerous creatures, but they make for valuable livestock if you can put them to work like that. They’re pretty useful for carrying stuff.”
“Sigh… You need to study more,” the girl said, lamenting his lack of knowledge. She whipped her pointer finger at him and continued: “Are you listening? According to the great sage Rod Farquois’s research, humans and demi-humans share a common ancestor, if you go back three hundred thousand years. Do you understand what that means? Our species are distantly related!” she lectured. The tall boy shrunk back, but she continued to hound him. “Do you know which demi-human kinds have been granted civil liberties?”
“U-um… The elves, right?”
“Correct. There are two more—”
“The dwarves and the centaurs,” someone bluntly interrupted. The two turned in surprise to find a short boy with a thick book in his hands. He snorted and peered at them through his glasses with haughty irritation. “That’s just common knowledge—no need to repeat it all. And if you’re going to chat among yourselves, would you mind being a little quieter? It’s disturbing my reading.”
“Huh? Oh, uh, sorry.”
The curly-haired girl instinctively bowed her head. No one thought to rebuke him for reading at a time like this.
“Those are griffins…no, hippogriffs? The wing shapes are nothing like the illustrations in my book. That damn bookseller better not have ripped me off…,” the bespectacled boy muttered as he glanced between his book and the parade of magical beasts.
The girl, watching him out of the corner of her eye, recovered with a cough.
“…Ahem. Correct. That’s all. Kobolds, sirens, goblins, harpies, pygmies—in magical biology, there are many living things we classify as demi-human, but only three species have been granted civil rights. This is all very recent, I might add. Twenty years ago, centaurs were treated no different from trolls. Just beasts of labor, valued for their ability to carry heavy loads.”
As she spoke, she quickly regained her composure. Oliver listened to her explanation with interest.
“But if we trace their roots, we discover that trolls branched off our common ancestor even later than centaurs. This is an academic fact, substantiated by much research. And yet, even though centaurs are now considered ‘human,’ we still treat trolls like slaves. Don’t you feel that’s wrong?”
She whipped out her finger again, while the tall boy crossed his arms and thought for a bit.
“Now hold on,” he replied. “I’m no expert here, but isn’t it a bit of a stretch to classify elves, centaurs, and trolls under the same umbrella? Trolls can’t speak or write. They’re pure muscle. They attack humans, too. And you want us to treat them as relatives?”
“You’re right about their limitations. But I object to your other arguments. The image of trolls as brutes only came about after humans began subjugating and using them in our wars. They were forcefully tamed, and their wills twisted.”
Oliver nodded to himself. Trolls were strong and tough, not too smart and not too stupid. For these reasons, it was in many ways inevitable that mages took to using them as servants.
“Are you tryin’ to say wild trolls don’t attack people? Sorry, but that’s just a pack of lies. Trolls injure plenty of folks each year back where I’m from.”
“Of course they’ll fight back if someone barges into their territory. The same goes for elves and centaurs. It’s an issue of boundaries,” the girl retorted, puffing out her chest as if that was final. However, the tall boy wasn’t convinced.
“Boundaries? This country’s population keeps growing and growing. If we don’t clear the mountains, we can’t plant more fields or build new towns. And if you really wanna get into it, what about this academy you’re about to attend? This place used to be home to other demi-humans before they built this campus.”
“Mmgh… Th-that’s an extreme example. I’m not trying to repudiate development. I just think we should recognize that they have the right to live in their own territories…”
“Should we, though?” the boy cut in. “If our positions were reversed, d’you think they’d treat humans with that much empathy? Would they just let us off with a gentle warning to not invade their space because we have a right to live, too?”
“Erk—”
The girl’s words caught in her throat as his argument hit her in a delicate spot. She was on the back foot now. The tall boy didn’t let up, either.
“This’s just my experience, but trolls are freakin’ scary for us out in the country. They’ve messed up our fields, which is why my family has set up traps to drive them back and sometimes hunted ’em in the mountains, but my mom and dad never let me come along. One mistake from an inexperienced person means death.”
This was true, too, Oliver thought as he looked over to see the girl’s reaction. The tall boy had real-life experience in this area, which lent weight to his words. Unable to come up with a suitable counterargument, the girl bit her lip bitterly in silence.
“…’S not like that,” the girl suddenly muttered. Her head was turned down, and her cheeks puffed out in a pout; even her tone was totally childish. “…Ours isn’t like that. My family’s troll… Patro is kind and strong. He’s never, ever been violent with me. Whenever he found me crying, he’d let me ride on his shoulders… I’m not lying. Trolls are gentle creatures.”
“Whoa, that’s nuts. I’ve never heard of trolls taking care of kids. Your parents must’ve trained it really well.”
The tall boy seemed to be impressed, but Oliver still covered his face with his hand. This was not good, even if he hadn’t meant to be sarcastic. And as expected, the curly-haired girl’s face instantly twisted in a sharp glare.
“‘Trained’?! Is that the only way you can think of them?! It’s because of people like you that trolls are afraid of humans!”
“What?!” he countered. “You’re the one makin’ light of wild trolls! You’ve never seen one take a giant poop on top of the field it’s just ruined! Those things are like small mountains! Come over sometime, and I’ll show ya! That’ll definitely change your mind!”