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Ehan's dark eyes widened at his captain's answer, simultaneously feeling amazed and startled at the information. Elves! Ehan thought happily in the dancing firelight as he thought of all the stories he had been told. Looking up from the map to Koran's face, Ehan grinned. "Elves, captain? I have heard many stories about them. None of them bad, I must say. Most of the tales are filled with awe, because in most cases even the storyteller has never seen one of the things."
"So you say you have never seen one?" Koran asked for clarification. Ehan searched the man's dark face, wondering what sort of answer Koran wanted and whether Ehan would be able to give it to him truthfully. Oh, what fun would it be to spin a tale about myself, and never have him know what I am truly like, Ehan thought, wanting to laugh but suppressing the notion. Lying to a leader is not done. Brother would have my head if I started spouting lies on this mission, when it is to expand his reign and interaction. Lying is much better when it comes to the orcs, I suppose. Ehan sighed and stood from his crouching position near the sand-map.
"No, I have never seen one. I have only heard the stories. And wondrous stories they were, if I may say so, captain," Ehan replied slowly, his brows furrowing and his excited eyes squinting against the licking flames of fire. "I have been told many times descriptions of the elves. I hear that they are tall...taller than you or I stand...I hear that they have voices soft as a baby sighing or the wind caressing a tree. I have been told that their hair is spun of silk and their faces made of the smoothest stone," both Ehan and Koran chuckled at the last statement. "All these tales passed down from one eprson to the next, until the tale-weaver can only speak wonders of the elven kind, and cannot attest to the truthfulness of their tale. The Elves are filled with beauty, they say. I cannot think how they are more beautiful than any other kind, for I have never seen them, and in my heart I do not think I have ever seen a smiling face that was not beautiful in its own way."
At this, Koran stood as well, wiping his hands of dust and then warming the hands in the heat of the flames. "Well, young Ehan...if you say that you have never seen an ugly smiling face, you have never seen an orc up close." For a moment Koran paused, and both men were silent as they looked over the ledge to hear the screaming fray of the orcs. Then they looked back to each other and began to laugh at Koran's statement.
"Aye, captain, I stand corrected. Still, I admit it honorably and proudly, for I would not stand to be corrected by any other person of less knowledge than you!" Ehan said in a suddenly gallant tone of voice. Then the young man bowed low to Koran as the men of noble statute in his sister's stories would have done. "Now, good captain, when do we leave? I am hungry for the blood of the beautiful."
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