Mraan found himself unwilling to accept his father’s words. Of course the world had been a safer place! Why else were they now running for their lives? Besides, he had never laid eyes upon a single Faerie creature, except in the illustrations of old books he’d read as a small child. To him they were mere abstractions, that the measure of truth of them was so many words, and nothing more.
No, his world had been safe; perhaps even a little sheltered, were he to be honest with himself.
But no longer.
Mraan found to his surprise that he wanted their journey to resume soon. Their destination, the only one he could imagine, would be some place just like the one he and his father had known all their lives; somewhere safe and predictable. He felt keenly that the malignant powers which now ravaged the Elf Kingdom were somehow directed at himself personally, much in the same manner that a woodsman might feel towards a forest fire as he ran back and forth to a nearby stream for yet another meagre bucket of water, tossing it in desperation on the roof of his house which is beginning to catch fire . . .
After a time, the wind began to moan and hiss through the trees, carrying with it the sound of rain, and his spirits sank. Within moments he began to hear the patter of drops on the shed roof, and on the dry leaves on the ground; it seemed a very mournful sound, he thought.