Ah, the elves. Creatures that like to be mysterious, mischievous but never miserable. Creatures known by their spiky ears, slim body and solid mind. Really not so different from most humanoids that are at least a little preventive, but the elves have a mystical element about them, not only metaphorically, but quite literally.

They are born with an extra brain part which works basically solely to produce and understand magic and mana, a unique trait that isn’t only rare, but also desirable and transferrable via some risky operations that may end the lives of the giver and receiver. Not that someone taking a brain part from someone else actually cares about that other “thing”.

Later in my life I actually met some other elves, some of which actually knew the man who captured us both that day. And that showed me that both the initial and final the reactions of both my sister and I towards that man were right. He was dangerous.

Waking up I felt a soft feeling on my cheeks, but cold enough for me to realize that I wasn’t sleeping on top of my sister. My arms and legs also had difficulty moving, with some kind of cloth hindering my movement. I didn’t open my eyes immediately, because I could also hear unknown breathing noises nearby. What had just happened? I had difficulty remembering… There was meat with sticks and then… some light appeared! After that… nothing till now. What was that light? What…?

- I know you’re awake - a solemn voice came from the same direction as the breathing noise, probably a male.

So, I slowly opened my eyes and looked towards the origin of the voice. It looked quite similar to a human, albeit its ears were different. Was it another species of Rakshnurians? We had different ears from the humans after all… But it didn’t have horns… So maybe it was a different kind of human… While I was busy thinking about the person that was in front of me it seemed to be getting angry at me.

- Can’t you talk? Come on, even your sister talked, and I believe that you should be smarter than her.

The man said, increasing its emitted pressure, making me feel almost suffocated. Just when I believed I would faint from the pressure it immediately disappeared, making me relieved but wary.

- What?

I spoke. During the last few months my teeth had developed, and I could actually pronounce harder sounds, such as the “w” in “what”. Still my vocabulary was very limited, only to my experiences in the town I was born in.

- I can feel that you’re wary of me. You’re a young one, so you cannot hide your instincts and past experiences from me. At least for now. – After a pause that felt too long for Petrió’s comfort, the man continued – I’ll teach you. You see I’m quite interested in spe- beings like you. Halflings. An impure mixture that shouldn’t work but many times is better than each of the original ones. I’m Grum by the way, an elf if you’ve never seen one. You can identify one by the pointy ears, you see? – he points at his ears – Anyways since you barely survived out there, I think you’ll prefer to stay here, with me. – in his face a smile appears.

I didn’t answer that time. I didn’t even move an inch. Without noticing it his presence over me hadn’t actually disappeared, but simply shifted somewhere else and then slowly came back, too slow for me to notice. But at that moment I felt it again, I couldn’t defy that man, he would only force me to do whatever he wanted me to do.

- I see you understand, good. Welcome to my humble home.

Grum got up from the chair and turned around, leaving through a door, leaving it slightly opened. Even though the curtains were closed Petrió saw light coming through. It was reddish, was the sun already setting? That was surprising, as they’d been blinded by the light pretty early. He didn’t remember the last time he slept so much, even less during the day. He probably had never actively slept that much time, only while he was a fetus inside his mother that was probably inside another human settlement by now.

Petrió left the furniture he was on and left the room. It led to a rectangular garden without a roof in the middle, probably to let natural light and water in to feed the plants, but the zones nearby the walls had circular roofs over them. The room where he left from was close to a corner, the closest to the corner on his wall, but to his right was a door that led to a room which he suspected included the corner of the building. Petrió tried to enter the room, but it was locked, so he kept traveling counterclockwise through the halls.

Going around them, he noticed that the plants inside the garden weren’t the plants he had previously seen on the forest, they were more colorful and looked more interesting. Attracted by them, he got closer and was eyes to petals with a flower about the size of his head. The flower started to spin in front of him and out of nowhere threw some kind of dust to him. Petrió tried cleaning his face off, but this “dust” was actually a hallucinatory pollen used by these plants to then eat their prey while they are confused.

But this plant was different, because one half came from a hallucinatory plant and the other half from a humanoid. Grum thought that this experiment had failed, because he never managed to communicate with the sapient plant being, but it was smart enough to know not to communicate with Grum. Also, the only way for him to communicate with other beings was either if they were a plant or through “illusions” created by his hallucinogens.

Even to this day I can’t really remember what I was told by that being. I did meet with it again over the course of the next few months, but he never told me what he had said or done to me that first time we met. I know it happened, because after the illusions ended, I was laying on the ground, spit coming out of my mouth and clear signs of tiredness, as if I had just slept there.

After a while Petrió stood up from the ground. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he was decisive to search for Grum, his sister and a way out, which was more important than figuring why he was just sleeping right there on the ground. Maybe it had been Grum that had put a spell there, much like the one that captured him and his sister. Going again through the halls, nothing too eye-catching except a few decorated doors that looked that went somewhere important, but not much else on this side of the building.

He turned around the corner to find two of the three things he was searching for. The easiest two, his sister and Grum, the man who had caught them. He probably hadn’t told his sister because from the distance he was looking at them she looked quite happy and captivated by what the man was saying. She wouldn’t be like that to a man that had captured them and could have done basically anything to them… right?

Petrió got closer to the two of them and started to overhear the conversation.

- Arabelle is quite a nice name for a nice girl like you

- But I don’t like that name. I want a name that gives fear to my enemies!

- Ohhh… but Arabelle will scare people, alright. You see it comes from someone special from which I’ll tell you another time. But how about we tell your brother his name?

Petrió was caught off-guard with this conversation. From all the things in the world they were now worrying about names. Names hold almost no significance in comparison to survival. And being inside this building was not safe, Petrió decided. While he was reflecting on this, his sister suddenly told him his name:

- You are going to be Gabriel! And I am Arabelle! Groaaarrr!!!

And that is the first name I ever got; Gabriel. Not the worst name, but I definitely dislike it not because of itself, well a little bit yes, but mostly because of where and when I got it. Petrió is, simply put, a better name.