While his mother tried to instill in him early to bed early to rise, Illion almost always stayed up late and  slept in. He couldn’t help it if melatonin didn’t cooperate. The night before he was up especially late, to catch a sight of a comet. His mother shook her head and simply went to bed without him. So the next morning despite trying to wake him several times, he was out cold til the sun was high in the sky.

Eventually he gave in, groaning as he rolled over and pushed the covers off his head (he had to cover his head when the sun came up, but he’d only been awake for a second to do so). Finally he managed to drag himself out of the bedroom. By then breakfast was long over and he was out of luck. So he took off to pick berries.

He knew well what was edible and what was poisonous, some he learned the hard way, and he knew where they were. Just passed the boundary he was told to stay behind. Normally he only passed by a few steps, but every now and then he would convince himself to go a step farther. Each time he grew a little braver. 

Today was one such day.

It was a cooler day, one threatening rain. Illion didn’t care, curiosity got the better of him all the time. He would have made off to do mischief with Ausa, but he was occupied with other things. So Illion had no one to keep him out of trouble, well more trouble than he’d be with Ausa.

As Illion reached the edge of the village something inside of him egged him on. Would it really hurt anyone if he went just a little farther? He didn’t think any humans were that close, and truth be told he wasn’t that scared of them anyway. 

Illion was happy to take the walk from home to the edge, and once he reached it he took a deep breath and one small step forward. Of course nothing happened, but he had his eyes shut, and when he opened them still nothing happened. He chuckled at himself for expecting anything. 
He should be allowed to go wherever he wanted if no one found out, he was almost 100 which he’d been told was a mile marker. Not that that happened often, there was no other elf as young as him, in fact the other elves were hundreds, even thousands of years old. 

The farther he went the more the trees seemed to change, he couldn’t point out why though, it was as if he were in a completely different world. The sun seemed brighter, the birds sang different tunes, and the air even smelled strange. His curiosity was more than enough to push aside the fear of the unknown.

His footsteps grew softer and slower, but he did not stop. 

From the distance he heard a voice caught between the soft breeze and the trees. He couldn’t distinguish the words, in fact he wasn’t even sure he was hearing it right, maybe it was all in his imagination. So he grabbed onto a low hanging branch of the tree nearest to him and climbed up, lest the nearing voice come from some kind of enemy. 

After a few minutes he could hear the voice much clearer, enough to tell it wasn’t in his head. And then a minute later he could pick out words, words that he recognized. It was in his own language, he knew that song he’d only heard it a hundred times as a child. It told the tail of a princess kidnapped by a giant and her lover that tried to save her. It wasn’t his favourite song, he always found it too melancholy.

At first he thought it had to be another elf who else would speak elven? But that brought up so many questions. Who would come this far from home? Were they looking for him? But the harder he listened the less familiar it became. Yes it was in a language he understood but they had a distinct accent that he wasn’t familiar with. 

He, being the curious individual that he was climbed lower and once the figure was in sight he jumped down, despite it all expecting to see another elf. Instead he faced a human. She looked to be close to his age, but he had no idea how long humans lived or how fast they reached adulthood. While nothing about her screamed “run away” he found himself frozen, not with fear but with surprise. She didn’t look as nasty as he had been told they were, not that he really knew what to expect, he’d never seen a human before, but this was definitely a human, if not something worse.

His mind searched for any words but his tongue was bound by something invisible. 

Finally he was able to open his mouth and stuttered saying “Alflijar jöne lijas?”He asked, which basically meant “you speak the elf language?” it was a pretty basic sentence but one he wasn’t sure she’d know, oh he hoped she would though.