Ralph and the Pixie

‘We? You mean you and I? Or you and I and the children?’

‘I mean all of us. Theuli, as long as we stay here within the Elf Kingdom, nothing is certain, except that the King is mad, and that a bloody civil war is imminent.’

‘What? Pran, I cannot believe what I’m hearing! Are we craven, that we should abandon all hope and run away? I will admit that loss of our possessions is a grievous blow, but material things can be replaced. But our property . . . I and my siblings grew up there, as did my father, and three generations of his family before him! My . . . our life is there-’

It grieved him to torment her with this, but he said, ‘Theuli, you are my wife and dearer to me than life itself, but I must tell you that there is nothing left worth saving, or trying to preserve. If we remain and fight, we will be putting the lives of the children at risk, as well as our own. Zuic has taken the death of his family hard! I would that Rani never experience such grief; or worse, fall prey to such as murdered my brother and his family.’

Theuli was weeping now. ‘But Pran, where will we go? How will we live? What of the others who need us?’