I more or less finished helping out Reina, so while she was getting done with the rest of the cooking, I went into the room to check on the sleeping Elf.
“Oh, hey, Arata,” Elga said.
“Hi, Elga. Sorry for making you watch over her.”
“This much is nothing, seeing as you’re feeding me some good food again after this.”
Since I didn’t know what kind of person the Elf girl I had fished up was, we needed someone to watch her. Then again, there was a chance she might panic from waking up to the sight of a stranger. While I had been wondering what to do, Elga volunteered to stand guard.
“Where’s Luna?” he asked.
“She said she’s going to watch Reina cook the fish.”
“What’s so exciting about that?”
“Beats me. You’d think she wouldn’t want to see the fish she named get skewered.”
I sat next to Elga and looked at the sleeping Elf. She had been drenched when I fished her out of the river, so I hadn’t really been able to tell what she looked like, but now I saw that she had symmetrical facial features, like a doll’s. Her hair was currently down, but it originally had been tied up into pigtails on either side of her head. She seemed to be around the same age as Reina, yet even thinner; Reina was already quite slender, so the Elf girl looked like she would shatter at the slightest touch. Her skin was a tanned brown, which was a bit different from how I would have pictured an Elf.
“She’s an Alfr,” Elga said.
“What’s that? Not an Elf?” I asked.
“They used to be the same, but now they live separately and go by different names. And as you can see, it’s normal for Alfar to have darker skin.”
I had assumed that “Elf” and “Alfr” were just two words that meant the same thing, but it seemed they referred to different people akin to High Elves and Dark Elves in typical fantasy terms. Though, considering I’d never actually seen an “Elf” in this world, it was strange for me to assume what they were like. Regardless, that was how they were referred to on this island, so I had better remember it.
“Generally speaking, it’s a distinction between where they live and which spirits they worship,” Elga continued. “Elves live in the forest, and Alfar live in the mountains.”
“What about the spirits?”
“Elves worship spirits of light, water, and wind; Alfar worship spirits of darkness, fire, and earth. Oh, but it’s not like the spirits are at odds with each other. The races aren’t exactly on bad terms, but...”
I tilted my head, confused why Elga was being evasive.
He roughly scratched his head and let out a sigh.
“What I’m saying is, we Divine Beastfolk get along with the Elves just fine, but not so much with the Alfar.”
“Really?”
“Yeah... You see, our elder is Phoenix, right? A while back, there was a dispute over whose flames were more divine: Phoenix, or the Great Spirit of Fire. They’ve had it in for us ever since.”
The Alfar must not have been able to stand the thought that there might be a being even greater than the one they thought was the best. Apparently, they and the Divine Beastfolk had ended up both deciding to not involve themselves in the other’s affairs, in part because their respective territories were far apart from each other. Even so, it would be a bit of a headache if the Alfar still held a grudge.
“But still, that was around a thousand years ago, so it’s old news,” Elga added.
“A thousand years...”
It was even longer ago than I had imagined. Enough time had gone by for even the famous enemies—the Taira and the Minamoto clans—to make up, shake hands, and dance together. Surely everything was fine now.
Everything is fine...right?
But the long-lived islanders had a scale of time that I simply couldn’t comprehend with my small perspective, so I really wasn’t sure.
“Mhmngh...”
“Ah.”
“Oh?”
As I was lost in my strange thoughts, the Alfr girl let out a groan. She slowly opened her eyes, then sat up and restlessly looked around the room. Her messy, waist-length hair shook slightly, almost resembling the swaying foliage of a large tree.
“Where am I?” she said. “No, more importantly...” She had just woken up, so her head must have been fuzzy.
She absentmindedly placed a hand on her stomach, then...
“I’m...hungry,” she said, looking at us with teary eyes.
She seemed so pitiful that I felt ready to do anything to protect her.
✦ ✦ ✦
Chomp chomp chomp!
“M-My fish... I-I won’t lose!”
Chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp!
No sooner had the Alfr girl gobbled up a salted grilled sweetfish than she grabbed another and stuffed it into her mouth. She continued to devour more fish, speaking no words and sparing no thought to anything else, as if she’d achieved some ascended state of being in her single-minded feasting.
“She’s eating so quickly,” Reina said. “No matter how many fish I grill, it won’t be enough...”
“Luna’s eating almost as much as her, and even she can’t keep up,” I said.
The large quantity of sweetfish Luna had caught was steadily being consumed. There should have been some in there for me, Reina, and Elga too, but everything would be gone at this rate. Then again, it would be a bit immature of me if I joined in on this.
“And, what was her name again? Katima, right?” Reina asked.
“That’s right. She said she’s an Alfr who lives in the mountains a bit north of here,” I said.
“Why was a girl from up in the mountains carried here by the river?”
“That’s a long story, but...”
After a hungry Katima had woken up and looked at me with teary eyes, I asked her a few quick questions about what had happened to her. Her reason for being washed away by the river was simple: She had taken a dive for some fish because she had been hungry, and then she had gotten leg cramps.
It was a shorter story than I had expected.
Reina paused. “Is...is she stupid?”