Na'Amir

The grass flicked back and forth in the wind. The little girl who watched imagined that the little blades of grass were in fact little men and woman, dancing over the hard ground. But children often imagine such things and imagination is such, that if it is imagined strongly enough, it becomes reality. Five little blades of grass suddenly stopped, stunned that they had arms and legs, and then ran away, because when your two inches tall and the wind is blowing the treelike blades of grass around you in torrents the last thing you want to do, in point of fact, is dance.

Little Sarah sighed, and forgot about the grass. It never appreciated being animated. She wished she could animate bigger things, like rocks or trees, but the biggest thing she'd ever been able to animate was a tomato bush and that hadn't been the least bit fun at all. First it had complained about how its fruit never seemed to call it after they left the vine. Then it started complaining about how it always seemed to be raining, or how this drought was lasting forever, or how sunny it had been or etc. etc. etc. Complaining is only ever entertaining when your ten, provided your the one doing it. Sarah was eleven, and unwilling to admit that she still liked complaining.

This did not in fact mean that she had stopped complaining, or that she no longer took joy in it. It just meant she had to be sneaky so that no one figured out what she was up to.

The most solid thing she'd ever animated was a rock. It had been a very tiny rock, because dense objects are harder to animate than thin ones. She'd quite liked it at first. It'd buzzed around like a fly to anyone who annoyed her. A fly that no one ever seemed to able to kill, that hurt when it hit you and was more persistent than other flies, who were usually suicidally persistent to start with.

It had all ended when her father had figured out what she'd done. He animated a much bigger rock that he'd stacked to resemble a cat. The rock cat ate the fly, and then wandered off, as cats tended to do, to find a nice sunny place to sleep all day. That might have been nice if it weren't for the fact that the stone cat didn't need any of the things real cats tolerate humans in order to get. Thus it consistently ignored Sarah, who eventually gave up on it and moved on to better things.

Her father, she now knew, had used that cat as a lesson. Just because animated things look and think like real things doesn't mean their real. If your not careful you can create something horrible for the simple reason that its form puts it outside the rules. A cat made from wood or earth would have needed to come home for food, but a cat of stone needed nothing.

"Is that why we aren't to make humans?" Sarah asked, making her father shake his head sadly.

"No Sarah." He said softly. "The reason we can not animate things to be human, is because we are." For an adult that would have sounded wise and mystical enough to be let go, but sadly Sarah was immune to such things.

"Are what?" She asked, but her father just sighed and got back to what he was doing. That inability to understand warnings was exactly why she was out, animating things to look like humans today. She wanted to know what would happen. So far, as much as she had noticed, all the little human figures did was run off out of the wind. Perhaps grass was one of the few things that made men inside the rules. She turned from the grass, and forgot about it. She trudged threw the grass and into the woods.

The woods were dark, and creaked ominously but Sarah ignored that. She knew it was just the old things trying to scare little children away. Little children, she'd been told, should obey their elders and not go into the woods. She'd also been told little children were sweet and kind, and she knew for a fact that was wrong. So she'd come to the conclusion adults didn't know everything. For some children that would have been a earth shaking discovery, filling them with dread and fear. For Sarah it explained a lot.

And inside the darkest corner of the woods he waited. He didn't have a name, unless you could call Ahhhhh a name. Sometimes people called him 'It' but he didn't like the sound of "It" so refused to believe that was his name.

He waited for something, though he didn't know what it would be. All he knew was something was going to happen today. He had felt it in his leaves when he awoke, and the trees around him murmured and gossiped about it. He strained his ears to try and hear what they said, but he couldn't understand anymore. He knew once he had been a part of all that. He had been a young tree, and he didn't exactly know why he wasn't anymore. He felt sad, cut off from his people, unable to join the knew people who screamed at him whenever they saw him. It was a depressing life.

And then Sarah, in a calm and unthinking way stepped out in front of him. He pulled in his breath, afraid the little creature would run at the sight of him, but she didn't. She just looked him up and down critically, stretched out her hand and said,

"Sarah Fa'ire. How do you do?" He looked at her quizzically for a few seconds, and then ever so slowly fainted. Sarah looked down surprised, thinking to herself, "all I said was hi!"

He awoke sometime latter to see the little human creature still there. It had sat down to watch him while waiting. He got up and backed away a little, afraid of her. She smiled, but didn't get up, giving him his space.

"Hello again." She said calmly. "My name is Sarah Fa'ire, and please don't faint. Your awful boring when you faint. You just lie there and don't do anything interesting at all." He turned his head, trying to get a better picture of her with eyes that were slightly out of sync. She was young, and skinny, with long red hair and big blue eyes. She walked around like she owned the place.

Much more she walked around as though her ownership of the place was a right and proper thing, not to be questioned. The very idea that she didn't own the place would probably shock her. Once again she turned her quizzical eye to him and asked him the horrid question.

"Whats your name?" He writhed, he turned. It was the one thing he was sad about not knowing. She seemed to sense that he did not have a name, and slowly rose to her feet. "It is not right that one such as you should not have a name." She said, coming to stand in front of him. She closed her eyes and concentrated, than raised her hand to her mouth and blew out. Blue rushed from her lips to her hand to his face. He flinched, thinking she were blowing some sort of spore at him, but it was not so. The blue.... thing was insubstantial. It did not have any touchable form, but he knew it was there. When all the blue stuff was gone she turned three times and said at each turn, Yi'Elin Mo'ti'osher, Yi'Elin Mo'ti'osher, Yi'Elin Mo'ti'osher!

Then she opened her eyes and looked at him. They were bright green, and glowed in this shaded area. She reached up and touched his face, closing his eyes and said,

"I name you Na'Amir, the elf." He felt a lifting, as though some weight had been taken off of him. He looked down at his green arms, he raised his arms and felt his green, brown leafy hair. He listened to the wind threw the trees and almost understood. Memories also came flooding back. The first awakening, the first sight, the first touch of air and the witch. He had been an elf, and she had changed him. She had caught him in her trap and dis-formed him. She had tortured him for days....... till he had escaped.

Her curse had remained, and memory had flown. Now he knew, and now he was as he had been before her. He had fingers again, and bark. He looked at the girl, who's eyes were once again smoothing down to blue. He had assumed she was human, but she was more than human. She had said what..... her name was Sarah Fa'ire, and for some reason he had though it her name. He said it now, slowly and in the old tong.

"Sah'ra'fa'ire." She winked, touched her fingers to her lips, and danced away back toward the grass lands. Back to the realm of the humans. Na'Amir turned himself the opposite direction and headed back to his own people, his own world. Toward the land of the Vi'gon'fa'ire.