Side Story:
Clairia Leaves the Next
“OKAY, IT’S TIME to leave the village!” the young elf girl suddenly declared.
By appearances, she seemed to be a twig of a girl, fourteen or fifteen years old. Yet she was an elf, which meant her numerical age was several times that. Still, among others of such a long-lived race, she was treated as a child, so her mindset very much matched her appearance. On the other hand, she had lived quite a while, and her knowledge and experience did reflect that.
“There’s no way I’m ever going to meet the man of my dreams in a chauvinistic, conservative, underpopulated, unchanging, backwater place like this!”
She had heard that, unlike her home, human cities were vibrant, exciting places. Aetelou and Sharalir, who had left the village some years before, sometimes came back with souvenirs that they had purchased from human settlements and plenty of stories
to tell. According to them, life on the outside had been hard at first, but now they were employed as researchers and lived an exciting life as promising newcomers to their field. Apparently, the greatest hardship of all was deciding how to gently turn down all the droves of human suitors!
“Elves are popular in human towns? When you eat at restaurants, tons of men come flocking to treat you? Sign me up!”
Of course, there was a fair bit of exaggeration in Aetelou and Sharalir’s stories. They wanted to be able to continue living among the humans, which meant sometimes putting a bit of a spin on the whole thing. Yet in Clairia’s experience, the pair had always been earnest and frank, so she would have never thought them to be liars and took them one hundred percent at face value… It wasn’t that the pair had lied out of any sort of malice. They had merely embellished, modified, and edited their reports from the human cities slightly—ever so slightly—so as to avoid being pressured to return to the village. What they said was perhaps only four, maybe five times more impressive than the actual truth…
The older elves, of course, could all see right through those embellishments, glossing over them in their interpretations of the tales. However, Clairia, still a child in elf terms, not only took the stories literally, she built them up even further in her mind, inflating her own expectations several times over.
“I have to get out of here! B-but…”
Set as she may have been on going to see the humans, there were four major issues. First, it was unlikely that her family would ever permit it. Second, Clairia herself did not wish to be away from her father. Third, Clairia did not wish to be away from her father. And fourth, Clairia did not wish to be away from her father.
Her daddy complex was far too powerful.
***
“I suppose you’ve come to that age then, Clairia…”
“Children grow up so quickly.”
“All right then. I’ll go and get permission from the chief and the village elder. They’d never deny me. After all, when I was living among the humans as a hunter, I greatly improved the quality of life in this village by bringing back supplies—and it was along that journey that I met Safarna here. As I recall, when we first met, she was being carried away by an orc…”
“You promised not to talk about that!”
No one tried to stop her. Both of her parents had once left the village, too…and, apparently, Clairia was stunned to learn for the first time that her mother had even once been in acute danger of suffering a fate worse than death…
***
And so, before there was time for her to retract her wish, arrangements were made, and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail it was decided that Clairia would be leaving the village.
“I can’t believe I’m really leaving home… I was sure that Father would never let me go!”
As she began her journey, Clairia found herself dragging her feet, somehow disappointed even though everything she’d wished for had been granted.
“Anyway, before I head to the capital, I should probably find a town nearby where I can earn some money…”
Indeed, unlike humans, elves rarely carried much coin. They lived in harmony with one another, subsisting off of the fields, meat from their hunts, and whatever wild plants they might gather. They bartered with their neighbors, loaned and borrowed. On the rare occasion that they needed to do business with a human town, a representative of the village would take all of the herbs and pelts and various monster parts they had gathered to turn into cash.
Indeed, save for what they kept aside for emergencies, there was hardly any human currency within the village. Therefore, the only money Clairia’s parents had to give her were a few ancient coins that they had brought back to the village with them from their time on the outside, so unrecognizable now to modern people that they had no value beyond the ore they were minted from.
“Okay, so first I think I need to just go to the nearest town and earn enough money for travel expenses, plus some more to support me in the capital until I can find work. It’ll take me some time to find a decent job, I’m sure… Though apparently elves are pretty popular in human towns, so I should have no issues finding a good position. There’s no need to fret!”
Had Aetelou and Sharalir been present at this particular moment, they would have rushed to tell Clairia the truth. However, the two of them returned home as infrequently as they possibly could to satisfy the regular homecoming requirements as set out by village statutes…which only made sense considering the costs of international travel and the effect long absences had on their careers.
All of which meant that Clairia set out from home with a wholehearted belief in her own bright future, fashioned from the tales that the other elves had told her and a mix of her own wild imaginings…
***
“So, this is a human town!”
Clairia had blown straight past the nearest human settlement and the ones closest to that, arriving in a town quite a distance from her little village. She had spent all of her nights until then roughing it—er, camping. Naturally, she could not afford to stay in any of the inns she had passed. She doubted that she could even cover a single day’s dining and lodging expenses in town. The coins she had received from her parents were already of designs no one recognized and would not pass in modern circulation. Assuming that they would have little value as currency, Clairia decided to forgo exchanging them for something usable, instead just holding onto them as her good luck charms.
Any gift she received from her father was precious, after all…
Though even Clairia, who had in her whole life neither left her village nor used any money, was aware of the color and value of a gold coin, she could not have known of the existence of an orichalcum coin, which was worth far more than gold. Nor could she conceive of the fact that, even if it was not a currently circulating currency, it was of enormous value based on its material alone.
Her father, not having realized this, either, had simply handed her a coin purse with no explanation, thereby making a grave miscalculation.
With no idea of how valuable these few old coins might have been if she were to have exchanged them, Clairia had traveled all the way here through the forest, gathering long-lasting and valuable foraged goods—fruits with medicinal value, rare mushrooms, etc.—which she intended to convert into a few days’ living expenses, off of which she would live until she might find work.
“My plan is foolproof!”
Indeed, Clairia, who had never left her village, knew very little about the world. Neither what the market price of materials were, nor of what lay in humans’ hearts…
“Oh, these are rare mushrooms! And these fruits only grow on trees in the middle of the forest! I’ll give you one gold for them!”
“What? An elf?! Don’t see one of you every day! You all alone, Miss? We’ll pay for yer meal!”
It’s just like those two said! Humans are suckers! Hee hee hee!
Sure enough, human men really did have a thing for elf girls…
***
“Ee hee hee, as long as I keep playing the ‘poor little elf girl working hard to earn her way to the capital,’ I can work at these restaurants and rake it in on the tips. Humans are such softhearted suckers!”
Indeed, although humans knew how long elves lived, most—who rarely had chances to actually interact with the species—still guessed ages by outward appearance. In their eyes, then, Clairia was just a hardworking young girl. Add “elf” onto that, and people were quite sweet on her. Furthermore, no matter how far they might have been from the elven village, there was no one in any of the towns en route from the village to the capital who would ever antagonize an elf—particularly in such a way that might incite an all-out conflict and get the Crown involved. As a result, Clairia was safe from truly dire threats like being stolen away into slavery.
The old guy at the restaurant did tell me, though, that while no one around here would ever do anything to an elf, as I get closer to the capital, there might be self-centered people who care only about themselves, not their town or the country. When I got there, he said, I should be more discrete about the fact that I’m an elf in case I encounter any prejudice. “Thankfully, as long as you cover your ears with your hair, you’ll look just like a human,” he had told her. “So I guess I should start pretending to be a human from now on? Okay, sure! From here on out, I’m not a ‘hardworking elf girl,’ I’m just a hardworking young girl!” Clairia had agreed, giggling.
Of course, even if she were not an elf, she would still be a pretty young girl traveling all alone, which made her a prime target for evildoers… Her situation would scarcely change at all.
Thanks to all the money she had earned in such a short time—more from tips than her actual wages—this time Clairia took a passenger carriage instead of walking. Even under her new guise of a diligent young girl who was heading to the capital to work and send money back to her family, she received all sorts of sweets and other treats from the other passengers along the way…
Humans really are suckers! Hee hee hee!
***
“Here it is! The human capital!”
Though they resided in the same country, elves were neither constituents of any human territory nor taxpayers. The beastfolk were in the same position. Thus, as far as Clairia was concerned, this was the human capital, not her capital—to her, it was merely the largest city around. Which also meant that it was the most prosperous, the most exciting, the liveliest…and the easiest place to make money. That was the reason she had come.
“Okay then, let’s get a job at this academy Aetelou and Sharalir mentioned! They said they got preferential treatment since they were elves… They’re living in a different country, of course, but every country is supposed to have an academy, and the main branch is usually in the capital… I bet if I go there, I should be able to find a job!”
Poor Clairia’s knowledge of the world was so limited that she really thought it would be that easy…
“What? You’re an elf, and you want to do research here? We would be glad to have you!!!”
………
Humans really were suckers.
***
“…So basically, I got a job at the academy the moment I arrived at the capital. Three days later, they invited me to this huge party, where I was introduced to some rich and powerful merchants and some handsome, refined nobles, and the next day they gave me a job as a professor with a title of ‘Doctor,’ along with tons of money to do whatever research I wanted. Uh—hey! What’s up, you two?”
As Clairia recounted her early days outside the village to Aetelou and Sharalir, who she’d met up with on her way home, the initial worry on the pair’s faces had gradually twisted into strange expressions. Noticing their odd reaction, Clairia paused, only for the two to shout…
“You’ve gotta be kidding us!!”
They were livid.
“W-we worked so hard to earn money in the first human town we came to and had to present our theses so many times, buttering up fat old dudes with a smile and not even managing to get the title of ‘assistant’ at the academy—no matter how hard we tried! There’s no telling how many years it’ll take for us to work our way up to assistant, then assistant professor, then lecturer, then associate professor…all before finally hitting professor! Thanks to our long life spans, we could probably get there eventually, but only with lots of pain and mortification! Besides, it would be shameful to take advantage of our longevity to snatch the positions of human researchers who are working so hard throughout their short little lives! And so, we’re busting our butts to prove we can produce better results than those humans, while meanwhile you…you…”
Aetelou let out a growl that seemed to rumble from deep below the earth, gritting her teeth so hard it looked like blood might start seeping from her gums.
“What kind of research are you doing, anyway?” asked Sharalir, glaring at Clairia with an equally murderous look in her eyes.
To this, Clairia could only bashfully reply, “Ah…um, well, I’ve been playing around with the cultivation and medicinal applications of rutile grass…”
“That’s something little kids grow in their backyard gardens for fun!!”
“Yeah, uh…it seems like humans don’t know a lot about it, though… Oh, and I’ve also been researching the growth conditions of celina grass, and the population density and distribution of monsters in the heart of the woods, and a few other…”
“Every elf knows that stuff practically from infancy!”
“You actually managed to get the title of d-d-doctor—and that professorship—on the basis of facts that anyone who spent decades living in the woods would know? Stuff that every elven toddler is well aware of?”
“Well…I—!”
“You’re dead meat!!”
The pair looked as though they were truly ready to attack her. At the look in their bloodshot eyes, Clairia ran away, as fast as her legs could carry her.
Thus began the long rivalry between the elven girls Sharalir, Aetelou, and Clairia…
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