“Your feelings are… justified,” she replied. Kre hadn’t been expecting that as the response. He was more stunned than he had been when she initially berated him. That feeling didn’t last long as in the very next instant he felt an immense amount of pain as she punched him, hard, in the upper arm.
“Your derogatory comment, however, was not.” Kre pulled his makeshift reins tight, calling for his tired old horse to stop so he could nurse his arm. It burned like hellfire but thankfully it didn’t seem like she had broken bone.
“Heavens girl,” he yelled, “you hit like a… like a…”
She quickly raised a finger to his face and smiled with a sickeningly sweet smile that could rot your teeth. “Consider your next words carefully Kre,” she said, a hint of warning in her voice. “I held back.”
Swallowing the words he originally intended, Kre considered carefully and lowered his head. “No, you’re right. I apologize. I shouldn’t have called you by that term.” In fact, the very idea that he used that kind of language was revolting to him. It made him feel no better than the Rangers they had just so recently left, as well as some of the more colorful and obviously racist travelers that would roll through town before they were found out by the villagers and run off before they could establish any kind of foothold and potentially poison the minds of the other citizens.
Elf. It was a disgusting term used by the first Tehynshin people. Although those first migrants found themselves speaking the same language as the Ylveryans, they also found that their dialect and manner of speaking was vastly different. Other differences were apparent too, from the shade of their skin, to the foods that they ate, their religious beliefs, and even to how they believed a society should be governed.
Taken one at a time, these differences might have been surmountable, especially to a population considered, at best, to be refugees of their former countries where they themselves were the persecuted ones. When those racial differences were taken all at once, during a time when fear and uncertainty of their future was clearly in doubt, and it was easy to see how some of the first migrants might turn to violence and hate instead of peace and friendship.
The first, harsh year in the new world saw the First Migrants split into three camps. The first wanted to take over the new world, conquer the lesser Ylveryan peoples and claim their cultivated land for themselves. The second group favored a more peaceful approach, desiring a more diplomatic approach with their new friends and to research the newly discovered heritage sites. The last group, the smallest of the three, sought to continue on, to find uninhabited lands where they could make their lives.
History, of course, tells that it only takes one person doing something incredibly stupid to set of a chain reaction of events that can consume everything in its path. Both sides tell how the other side started it all, but they would both be wrong. Both the Ylveryans and the Tehynshins were at fault for what happened.