Dream Diary piece of mind no. #70: SPACE ELVES!
They’ve come a long way. Colonists, scientists, artists, families. Watching their new home from the safety of their spaceship, the elfin aliens ready up to begin their new lives, full of hope and excitement.
The planet below glows with verdant life, a paradise garden ready to be shaped to the needs of its new people. Alleged to be uninhabited, continents stretch out, surrounded by glittering oceans. It will be the future they hoped for.
Then the colony ship stops responding. Some damage sustained during the long flight through space or some other, unknown factor causes the machinery to fail on entry, the crew bracing for impact in collective panic as the navigators guide the ship into an emergency landing at a forested mountain range.
The ship shakes, groans and splits apart like a dropped fruit, its seeds, the people, falling out helplessly as many are lost. More still are lost to the force of the impact. Most of the crew yet live and step outside as the hatches open, their new home revealed.
The forest is primal and ancient; a rich cauldron of biodiversity and beauty with thick roots sprawled along cliffsides. Reverence of its glories aside, the survivors gather to mourn and plan. Some terrible news is brought by the ship’s captain; the colonisation equipment broke and they have no replacement. What was to be a new paradise home of glittering spires will never be, the colonists now forced to survive on what they have left.
Once the despair settles, a plan is made. All things of worth, use and of value are gathered in carts, buckets, bowls, anything and anywhere they will fit and the colonists move down the mountainside, a civilization on the march making its own path through the primeval forest. Men, women, children, all single file so that none stray and are lost, their long walk is one of mournful determination.
All is not lost. They are still scientists, crafters, survivors! They know the bounty of nature and can work with it to live in spite of everything. Finding shelter among the boughs and cliffs of the valley below, they set about building. Not the vast sprawl of an interstellar colony but a home for all that it will hold with anything avaliable. They know that they will make changes to their ways just as they had to leave their old dreams behind. This is for their children and the children of their children. The future is in the hands of those who work for it and adapt to this new life.
Thus the space elves become wood elves, regressed to iron age technology, hunting with bow and arrow and developing a new culture and art from what they lost. In time, as generations pass, they forget the stars. The forest is their home.
Are there even other people out there beyond it? Explorers make ready to find out.