Chapter 35: Chapter 34: Pragmatism of survival

Levin and Rolwen were pretty quick to agree with the idea of inviting Eirlathion in. Really, Rolwen was quite likely the only person in our group of four who had enough personality to oppose me on anything, Levin and Tia would likely just go along with anything I said. In this matter though, it was mine and Tia’s lives that were on the line, not theirs. So, with the strong case I had made, he was also essentially deferring to me on everything now.

I still went to laying out the road-map on how things would proceed from here though. With them all following my lead now, I had to make sure none of them did something to confound my efforts. First off, it was agreed that it would be a bad idea to immediately let Eirlathion in on all our secrets. We would have to feel him out little by little.

I felt we could more or less trust him, but if he’s told too much too fast then he might be shocked and his actions could become unpredictable. So, the first thing we should do is find out how much he already knows. He was an elf after all, and who knows how old he was. He also seemed to have some kind of high standing in the village. I’m not too clear on it, but old and high standing usually means he’s a wise man of some sort. I am under no illusions he’s got zero suspicions on us.

So, we agree that for this first meeting with Eirlathion, we get him to speak all his suspicions and we reveal just a little more information than would be necessary to answer his questions. We will see how he reacts to that information, and then judge whether or not we can reveal more based on that.

There are really two big questions up in the air which we agree should be among the last things we tell him about. One is about Earth. Two is about information in regards to Levin and Rolwen. We’ve already shown off that me and Tia are very unusual, so it’s inevitable that we will wind up having to reveal a lot about ourselves. However, Levin and Rolwen being the same as us is information that we will truthfully answer if asked, but we are not going to volunteer it.

If we wind up having to tell him about me and Tia having memories of our past lives, we are going to try to be vague about it and create the impression that our past-life memories are somewhat less complete than they actually are. That way, it could be at least assumed that maybe we had our past lives here in this world rather than a different world, and if we don’t remember anything specific then that can answer why we don’t know things we should about this world if we have already lived a whole previous life on it.

It seems Eirlathion is spending quite a bit of time downstairs in order to, as Tia said, “consolodate” the energy he got from that rough (to put it mildly) healing potion we gave him. I still really didn’t understand what that was all about. Tia says I likely never will, my method of meditation I learned on Earth is just too high-grade apparently. As a result, I’ll never have to go through the same things he does with his “inferior methods.” I suppose all I have to know is he finds it a lot harder to gather the energies that are abundant just running through my blood.

So, having finished up my conversation with Levin, Rolwen and Tia, and with Eirlathion still isolating himself in whatever he’s doing, I am stuck here facing another difficult situation that I need to address. This situation has been literally staring me in the face for several minutes in the form of a light-based projection of a small girl wearing a dress with a leaf motief.

Well, I say small girl, but she actually appears to be older than I do in this life. Around 7 or 8. It seems like she looked a whole lot younger when she first showed herself to us, she looked around 3 or 4 at that time. Her light projection is growing even faster than we are. That seemed a little rude to me, I would assume she can choose how she appears to some extent. Actually, her projection appeared to have grown a lot older just over the course of this night. Was she trying to assert herself or something because she was angry about me yelling at her earlier? Definitely rude.

“If you are looking for an apology, all I will say is that I understand why you acted the way you did. However, I am not going to apologize.” I said. Nymph glaired at me.

“What do you mean by that?” She asked.

“I do not apologize lightly.” I told her. “If I give out an apology, it means that I fully understand the situation, have considered it, and intend to change my behavior in the future. However, as we are right now, I would yell at you in exactly the same way I did then if the situation ever comes up in the future. Therefore, even though I know why you acted the way you did and I know you were trying to act on my behalf, I cannot apologize. I feel it would be rude, and it would lessen the weight of any future apology I give.”

Nymph glaired at me again. “Asa, you don’t know the things I hear them talking about outside every day.”

“Then tell me.” I cut in and interrupt her before she can go on some sort of tirade. “I want to know. Right now, my sister’s life as well as my own are both in danger. I am well aware of this, and now I am trying to get as much information as I can. I would like to know.”

Nymph’s face was rock hard. “Even before today, they were talking about how you were grey elves and that they should kill you before the dark elves find out and attack. The only reason they have stayed away is because of Eirlathion’s influence and because they are afraid of me. Eirlathion has also used me as an argument for why they shouldn’t do anything rash.”

“Hmm…” I nodded. “Well, that confirms it then. That matches the worst-case scenario I considered.”

“A lot of them were actually convinced by Eirlathion’s story that you were only sick, but they said they should kill you anyway just because you looked like grey elves.” Nymph said with a particularly vicious bite to her words. She looked so furious her hair could stand on end.

“Hmmm…” I nodded.

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“ASA! How can you be so calm about this!” She shouted like she was about to bite my head off. “Do you understand me? They talked about horrible things like dismembering you and putting your heads on pikes out in the forrest! You! Even the ones who believed you were just normal children said stuff like that! You just said it, right? This is your life! Doesn’t that make you angry?”

“No.” I told her coldly.

“Whahh!” Nymph seemed to trip over her own thoughts when she heard me say something so completely outside her expectations. Well, better take advantage of this lull before she gets started again.

“What this does, Nymph, is it makes me want to survive. And I have to think about the best way to do that. I do appreciate you getting angry on my behalf. It lets me know you care about me. But as the person who is the target of this, I cannot afford to get angry. All I can do is hear that information and try to think about the best way to survive. Getting angry lowers my chances of surviving. That is why I am not angry.”

Nymph continued to look at me with an astonished face.

“Nymph, I am sure you want to know why I acted nice to those men while I yelled at you. I had a very good reason, and it is not because I was ‘too nice.’” I said, and looked at her with a piercing gaze. “It may have looked like that to you, but I am really not such a nice person at all. I have seen only a surface glance of it, but I understand the evils of intelligent and sentient creatures like Humans and Elves. I told Levin and Rolwen I was not trained as a proper ninja, someone who works at manipulating and processing information.” I fixed her with a meaningful gaze and left the rest unsaid.

“Nymph, what you told me about, the way they regard grey elves like me and Tia. We have a word for that kind of treatment of a people back in our world. The desire to kill every single member of a race or completely eliminate their culture. It happened so often in our world that we had a name for it. We called it genocide. And, unfortunately, we also understood genocide extremely well.

“An effort of committing genocide always starts the exact same way. It starts with stirring up lies and fear. We have something we called the 20% rule. In any group of people, 20% are good people, 20% are evil, and the middle 60% will not have strong convictions for good and will just be concerned with what they need to do to take care of themselves and their own family. The efforts to commit genocide always come from those evil 20%, and they need to find a way to get the middle 60% on their side while keeping the good 20% from helping the people they want to make thier victims. And so, they spread lies and fear.”

I pause here for effect, and to allow Nymph to make any comments she might want to make.

“What… I still don’t understand what you were trying to do by being nice to those people. Are you about to say you think it will stop them from being afraid of you or something?” She asks in a challenging tone.

“No.” I tell her in a tone that is just as flat as the last time I said it. “I am aware this one act would not be enough for it. What I was doing was indeed related to damage control, but it was not the main reason.” I gave her another long hard look. “I was trying to imitate a group of people from my world. They were one of the many targets of genocide throughout the centuries and millenia of my previous world. And, of everyone who had ever become a target of genocide, this group of people managed to handle it better than any other.”

I stopped for a moment as I had a thought. “It was still a horrific ordeal they went through, mind you. However, after an entire nation went on a horrific campaign of systematically killing them by the millions, this scattered people managed to rouse the world to their aid and in the wake of this horrific treatment they were supported in founding their own country where they could gather and keep themselves safe.

“Things did not work out well for them even after that. They were still subject to a lot of hatred. However, they also had strong allies supporting them. There were some complex things about them, but after a while they became very aware of how their enemies manipulated the lies about them and they learned how to tread carefully. Their enemies began rousing innocent civilians from other groups who felt disenfranchised by these people, hid among them, and then launched cowardly attacks from within the crowd of innocent people in order to kill or harm, and then retreated back into the crowd of innocents in order to hide and foce the solders of the targeted group into a bad situation. One where they would have to harm the innocents in order to get to the killers.

“It is a cowardly and vile tactic, but it is one that is very bad for the targeted group. It puts them in a position where they can’t even take action against those who are trying to kill them.”

I paused and gave Nymph another meaningful look. “Nymph, in this situation, the entire village is not our enemy. It is because the 60% is still undecided that Eirlathion is able to hold them off as well as he does. However, if we begin harming the people of this village, even if it happens to be the evil 20%, then we really will make this entire village our enemy and there will be nothing more Eirlathion can do to hold them back. All the 60% will see is that we harmed someone who was a member of the village.

“Nymph, this is why I became angry at you. This is also why I will get angry again if you harm someone from the village for any reason. I was only just barely able to salvage this situation by showing that you listened to me and that I was very angry when you harmed them. I did not mean to upset you, but I had to say those words.”

I let out a breath. “But, if you ever do something that will endanger mine and Tia’s future again, even if you meant to help, I really will get angry next time. I will not be able to forgive you as easily as I am right now.”

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