Chief Blackberry Blossoms the ceremonial leader of the elven peoples of the Seven Islands, local to me, clarified his knowledge of Ellabell, the orb spirit mentioned previously throughout this thing. I guess I’ll paraphrase and just type it out instead of use quotes, because I didn’t record it, and I’m not a journalist or anything. But basically he told me that he had an older brother called Floodhead, who had a different name at birth which nobody remembers, but as a toddler there was a big flood in the James River. Whenever this would happen, the elven people would climb the trees in case their islands got flooded, which was preferable to crossing over to where the human people lived. Floodhead got bit by an enchanted dragonfly, which are shaped like normal dragonflies but glow bright green like the lightning bug. This made Floodhead enchanted. He was 47 full moons older than Blackberry Blossoms (the elven tribe keeps calendars by the moon, like all sane peoples on this earth) but Blackberry Blossoms said Floodhead was really different, tapped into an awareness uncommon, even amongst mythical creature cultures on mostly unknown islands.
Thus Floodhead was recruited to work in the in-between realms, known to you and me as the aether. Those realms are where all the various shit that various organisms consider their reality connect together. But Chief Blackberry Blossoms said that once you joined the aether, you never came back – it was a lifetime commitment. I figured it was like classified military work for us (you are human people like me, I assume). In fact, I asked Blackberry Blossoms, “You mean like an intelligence officer?” He looked at me like I was a fool and said, “No, not intelligence. The exact opposite – intuition. Intelligence is what you are taught; intuition is what you already know.”
The elven clan got word back on Floodhead every now and then, through the dragonflies (not all of which are enchanted, but enchanted dragonflies and regular ones live together and share lines of communication). Floodhead did good work and had found love and apparently had had three children, all daughters, triplets in fact, with some sort of indigenous South American fairy female. The triplets were named Chillabell, Hollabell, and Ellabell. And being they were all three born in the aether to parents working those in-between realms, all three were automatically recruited to work there as well. You’re not exactly allowed to leave, at least not here. You have to be relocated a couple universes away, which often takes the entire lifespan of a creature to even get there, which ultimately means if you are born there and don’t pan out as a second generation aether worker, you are shot into space. Kind of felt to me like the “travel to a neighboring universe” part might’ve just been added on to make family members feel okay that their kids got shot off into space until death.
Hollabell was loud and abrasive, far too rough spirited for the in-between realms, so she was shot off pretty early on. Chillabell was quiet and tended towards pleasantness, but Chief Blackberry Blossoms wasn’t really sure whether she was still there or shot into space. But Ellabell had taken to the work marvelously. He said, “My older brother Floodhead was always considered the most fortunate son of our people for generations. He was destined to be an elder from birth, even before he became known as Floodhead the one with ultra-awareness. The dragonflies said that Ellabell was as fortunate and aware as Floodhead, but times three. She is said to be one of the greatest elven people of recent times, even if she is only half-elf. I do not know what her maternal fairy people were like, but I imagine that influence has helped make her even more of what Floodhead was, multiplied.”
“So she’s cool? I can trust her?” I asked the chief elf. Again, he looked at me as if I was foolish, but then it was as if he remembered, “Oh yeah, this motherfucker is only human.”
He smiled at me a deep old dude friendship for naïve youngster smile and said, “My friend, I would do anything she asked of me. I trust you are doing your own self a favor by doing the same.” So then I went home, but not before rolling dice with Chubb Rock on my way out. (I lost seven whole chunks of white quartz to Chubb Rock. I suspect he might’ve been cheating.)
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