“EHLANA!” The voice is all too familiar and no matter how hard she tries, there is no mistaking that angry tone.

“Not again,” She thinks. “WHAT NOW?”

“Get in here and finish putting away the new stock! I want it done before dinner!” His voice is so deceptive. On the surface, he seems a harsh and demanding father. But yet, if you look deep into his eyes as he stands there looking at his only child, you would see a look of pride mixed with deepest regret at the fact that the young girl sitting on the docks would never know the truth about her real father.

“Yes father!”

With a sigh she slips her feet out of the water and stands, looking out over the lake’s surface at the tunnel leading to the rest of the world.

“No visitors today,” She thinks as she walks across the wooden peer back into her stepfather’s trading store.

With a nod to some departing local rangers, she slowly begins to unpack the boxes delivered last night and place the items on the shelves.

“I’ll never get out of this cave if I’m always emptying boxes and sweeping floors!” She mutters to herself. After a while, her mind starts to drift and soon she is daydreaming of being one of the mighty warriors or paladins that visit her father’s store from time to time. Every time a new visitor comes to her father’s store she sits silently on the pier outside and listens through the window, ears alert, easily picking up the conversations the strangers have with her father, even if they are in the back room. Her ears have always been unnaturally sharp. Her father says she gets it from her mother. Most of the travelers are loud and not hard to hear as they relate tales to her father. They speak of places she has never been, Qeynos, Freeport, Halas, and the lands of the elves where her mother was born before she came to Surefall Glade. They all take on a wonder and a yearning begins to grow in her heart.

As she reaches for the last item to be put away, a commotion is heard outside. Pausing from her thoughts, she edges her way to a window to look out, her curiosity getting the better of her. With a silent gasp she sees in the low twilight what appears to be GNOLLS!

“What are gnolls doing in Surefall Glade?” She thinks to herself as she listens to their guttural speech. As her eyes adjust to the darkness outside she notices whom the gnolls are conversing with. Shrouded in a dark hooded cloak, he is instantly recognized as a barbarian, one of the warriors that Ehlana sees from time to time in her father’s shop. In a language she cannot understand they speak of things, and Ehlana soon gets the feeling these people are up to no good. As she struggles to make sense of the conversation, she overhears a few words that she recognizes, Halas, Qeynos, Blackburrow, and what must be a person’s name, Mythrial.

As the meeting is concluded she ducks below the window keeping silent as the three strangers depart. As she sits there she notices that the whole time she was sitting there, she held one of her stepfather’s swords in an iron grip.

“How did that get there?” She asks herself, for in all truth she can’t remember even unpacking a box of swords.

With a silence known only to the most adept elves she moves back towards the living quarters at the front of the store, intent on sharing with her father the strange visitors and their conversation.

“Father!” She whispers softly, “Where are you?”

To her surprise, her stepfather is fast asleep in his chair, a longbow of ancient design resting against his knee.
With a sad smile she softly picks up her mother’s weapon and places it back on the shelf in her stepfather’s closet. All thoughts of the strangers forgotten as she pulls down a blanket made by her mother’s hand and covers her father with it.

“Be safe dear father, May the Goddess of the elves and protector of my mother, watch over your brave and generous soul,” With a gentle kiss to his forehead she picks up the lantern from the end table and carries it off to her own room. After silently slipping into her nightclothes she drifts off to sleep, Her dreams invaded by the image of a familiar, yet unrecognizable face. The features human and somehow deeply important to Ehlana