Silvea by Jasmine (free children's ebooks pdf .TXT) 📕

Cursing loudly, she rushed to retrieve it- wasting was idiotic and disrespectful, and she had learnt early in life that it can cost you dearly. Pulling the reeds extra tight, she left it to get her water, which was now fully boiled. Wandering back, she mused on what she would do after this. She was in no mood to go and make more rafts or stay inside studying, and her exertions from last night had left her too weak to attempt practising magic or training, even through she didn’t feel tired enough to sleep. Silvea always seemed to have something to do, but for now she was at a loss.

Dumping the water just inside of her tree, she sealed it and hesitated. She then began to scale the outside of her tree- it wasn’t simple, but she had been doing it for two years, she knew all the hidden footholds and which branches would support her weight. Reaching the top, she perched of the swaying branches and looked out, far down to the village below. She couldn’t see the raft on the river, so she was assuming the bodies had reached the humans…she scanned the landscape briefly, in case there were any more coming for her-unlikely, as she would have heard them, but just in case. As she thought, there was no one there. Left with nothing to do, Silvea considered exercising her tree hopping skill. She had tried at a few weeks ago, and had found that it was thrilling and fun. It was basically jumping from tree to tree, easy where she lived where the trees were denser, but further out you would really have to leap to avoid a nasty fall. Even so, Silvea had always been on bit on the reckless side- a necessity when any day could be your last, and you needed ingenuity to escape a bad situation. Anyway, what did she have to lose? She healed fast, and even if worst came to worst and she did die, she would not be missed-hell, the event would be rejoiced upon by all of Hieltaria.

Bending her legs, she imagined the springs coiling in her legs, visualising her flight from one tree to the next, nimble and smooth. She broke into a smile, snapping out of her trance like state- she was becoming vain of her own abilities. It didn’t matter what it looked like, it mattered whether it was effective or not. On that note, she released the coils in her legs and sprung to the next tree, landing deftly with only a slight wobble. She continued, going further than she ever had before, finding herself laughing as the wind whipped through her hair and she almost fell off the treetops. As stupid as it was, it felt unbelievably good to let go and do something insignificant for a change.

As she approached the outskirts, the trees became more widely spread, and Silvea found herself breaking a sweat with the effort of her newfound game. She soon found herself in a tree, with nowhere to go but back or down. Looking forward, Silvea swore- she was right at the edge of the village, closer than she had ever been. She felt distinctly uneasy, and began to turn away to jump back., but faintly she heard a noise coming from the house closest to her, and ducking down, she watched and listened intently.

“…selfish, don’t you ever think of other people?”
“Of course I do, I do it all the time by letting all the things you’ve said to me slide, you’re the ones being insensitive!”
“How dare you! After all we’ve done for you…look, you’ve made your mother cry! Come here!”
There was a loud slapping sound, and the sound of sobbing intensified
“You bastard! That’s child abuse! You don’t even care about you own daughter, just because I didn’t turn out how you wanted!”
“You do nothing but try to upset everyone you meet, and complicate everyone else’s life to make yours more convenient! You are a little bitch, nothing but a burden!”
“Fine! If you hate me so much, then I’ll leave! I can’t stand any of you, not you, not mum, not grandma, not anyone in this whole godforsaken village, the whole lot of you can go straight to hell!”

After this speech, a door burst open and a human girl ran out, swinging on a large backpack as she went. An older woman, presumably her mother, staggered after her, screaming nonsense hysterically before she collapsed to her knees. Silvea watched with amusement- humans could be so overly dramatic sometimes. Then she realised that the human girl was running towards the forest, and she quickly doubled back. As she jumped, she had to take extra care to be as silent as possible-humans were partially deaf, but they could hear leaves rustling well enough, and the wind had dropped to less than a whisper. This slower her down, and kept her in line with the human, who was uncommonly fast for her kind.

She kept on running, not slowing although her gasping breaths were loud enough for even a human to hear from far away. Silvea continued on her path above her, and found herself deliberately keeping step with this child. As much as she hated it, she was curious of this child- she was more rebellious than any she had ever seen before, and instead of decapitating the man who had thrown the cruel words at her, she had simply retorted with something better, which had actually seemed to hurt him more- but how could that be? Her mind confused, she failed to notice the being below her collapsing against the base of a tree. Doubling back, she considered going down and killing her- that’s what everyone who came into this forest wanted to do to her, anyway. But she posed no threat- she appeared to be crying, but almost silently. Silvea remained where she was, observing her. Now that she had stopped, she had a better view of the girl, and what she saw surprised her. Although the top of her hair was a dark brown, the uneven tips of it were a bright green, slowly receding in colour as the hair crept back to its roots. She wore a long deep purple top that appeared to be ripped short at the bottom, exposing black material clinging to her leg above halfway down her thigh. After that, black shoes hung from her feet, muddy from the run. As the child looked up and wiped her eyes, Silvea saw that they were a startling shade of green, hard and deep set. She was unlike other humans that she had come across-not angry, but determined, vulnerable, but confident. It was fascinating to Silvea, so fascinating that she stayed to watch her pace up and down in the small space between two trees, muttering to herself. Various profanities were interspersed in what seemed to be ranting about her family- apparently they didn’t treat her well, acted like she wasn’t a person, an individual with feelings…some girl called Suki could do something to herself which sounded very undignified, and all her teachers were idiots…she was going to be fine, this was a good thing, she would never go back, never go back to that living hell…

Silvea watched and listened as the girl sank down at the tree stump, still muttering to herself as her eyes closed once again, although Silvea could tell that she wasn’t asleep. The sun had well and truly disappeared now, and the moon was high in the sky. A thought stirred in the back of her mind that she should get home, she had had a rough day before and needed her sleep, but her curiosity of the strange girl below her compelled her to stay. Settling on the branch and loosening her knife from its pouch on her belt, she trained her eyes on the human and began her self-imposed night’s watch.


The sun shined down on her skin…why was it being so cruel to her? Groaning, Silvea rolled to the side out of its rays.
Except that there was nothing to roll onto.

“Ah!” she cried as she fell out of her tree, landing on the leaves at the base. As a mountain elf, she had exceptionally strong bones, so all she gained was a few bruises. But she had caused something much, much worse.

The human girl, who had apparently been sleeping, had jerked upright and was staring straight at the strange girl who had just fallen out of the tree in front of her. They both stayed like that, paralysed by surprise and fright, before Silvea jumped up, pulling out her knife.

“You idiot! Why couldn’t you just stay sleeping?” she snarled. “Now I’ll have to kill you!”

The human had scrambled up, and was backed against the tree she had been sleeping against. “Wait! What have I even done to you? There’s no reason for you to kill me!”

Silvea’s face usually broke into a smile when people began to beg for her to spare them, as the humour that they had come to kill her and expected her to spare them in return was always too much for her. But this girl…she was making a point, she hadn’t done anything…but no! No she couldn’t think like that! The village humans could have sent her to spy, and Silvea couldn’t risk that. She moved forward, eyes locked on her victim’s throat. And then she made the fatal mistake.

She looked up into the girl’s eyes.

And what she saw wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even acceptance of death.

It was determination. A determination to keep living, and to fight to the end. To never give up.

This girl was a fighter. And Silvea respected that. It was also the barrier from bringing herself to end the girls life.

“Dammit!” yelled Silvea as she tossed the knife to the side. The girl relaxed- just as Silvea ran forward and whacked her over the head with the edge of her hand, knocking the girl out and effectively giving Silvea some thinking time.

She could drag her back to her home, and hope that no one would believe what she said. Or better yet, that she wouldn’t remember any of this at all. But the chances of that were slim now that the village was periodically hunting her, and thinking of the home Silvea had seen the girl flee…she wouldn’t wish it on anyone to be taken back to that. She had already made the decision not to kill her, so that left her with one option that she could see…and that was keeping the girl with here. Even in her head the idea seemed ludicrous, but as she thought over it, it may be helpful to get things done, and although she would never admit it, the company would be nice.

Sighing, Silvea picked the girl up and swung her over her shoulder, keeping a firm grip on her back in case the girl woke and began to struggle. She bent down to pick up the girls bag, but as it almost threw her off balance she decided to come back for them- if she ran she could do it in a few minutes. However, with a human on her back, she was forced to walk, if briskly. Although the girl had come a fair distance, they were still nowhere near the centre of the forest where her tree was, so the walk was a long one, leaving Silvea to consider her decision to keep the human. The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. She had taken very little time studying humans, and therefore her knowledge was lacking; she didn’t know how they aged, what they ate, their abilities, she