Kre knew he had said something wrong. This was the kind of feeling he had quite often, usually when dealing with Syonette, Jem, or, more recently, with Kitalia. It was that awkward stillness hanging over him like a dark cloud. His cheeks felt the burn of shame that usually followed this kind of idiotic outburst of his, even if he didn’t quite understand the why of it all.
As he turned to glance back up the trail to see where the others had ridden to, he spotted the dark skinned Ylveryan, Kersath leaning with his back up against a tree just a dozen feet ahead. Kre pulled his horse up alongside and he could hear Kersath chuckling softly to himself.
“What’s funny?”
Kersath pretended to wipe a tear from his eye, though Kre could see that he had shed none. “You, my foolish friend. You are hilarious.”
“Thanks,” Kre responded flatly. “I’m so glad that I can provide you entertainment.” He moved as if to urge his horse past the Ylveryan man but paused instead. “Would you be so inclined as to tell me what my error was?”
The Ylveryan pushed himself away from the tree in a smooth, supple movement. He took hold of Maple’s harness and began to walk alongside Kre, guiding Maple along the path. “So many things,” he murmured softly, still grinning. “So many errors you have made that I have great difficulty in knowing where to start.”
Kre sighed, “How about just the most recent one? The one where I upset Ras and Beleg?”
Another chuckle. “Ras is… not a child,” the Ylveryan answered, waving his free hand as if trying to think of how best to make his point. “Ras is what the Ylveryan call a hauflin, though that is… inadequate a term and not quite the proper categorization for his lineage.”
“A halfling?” Kre asked, trying to form the word the same way Kersath did.
Kersath’s face scrunched up in a semblance of pain. “That is not the word I used, and I would encourage you not to use that in Ras’s presence.”
Kre swallowed hard, the bile tasting sour in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I suppose it’s a Tehynshin slur for his people just as elf is to yours.”
The adventurer chuckled again and shook his head, “Yes, that term has a negative connotation to his people as it refers to size rather than ancestry. As for the term elf, my own people do not care if yours use that idiotic nickname. We have heard much worse over our lives and choose not to give words the power to turn them into weapons that will harm us.
“It is the other tribes that worry most about words and names,” he continued, as if that were explanation enough.
“What other tribes?” Kre asked. “Tribes of Ylveryans?”
Kersath nodded. “Have you not learned of these things in your studies?”
Kre shook his head, “No. To be honest, I was never very diligent in school in the first place, and secondly, we never really covered Ylveryan culture. Everything we learned was related to the war.”
Now that he was thinking about it, he suddenly realized how true that statement was. Aside from the few random comments that Professor Marxin made to explain the Ylveryans, everything that was in the books was related to how violent and aggressive the Ylveryans were and how the wars had raged on under their oppressive hand.