Singing for the sunrise

Mahrak left the caves on light feet, both to not disturb those fast asleep and to not startle the singer outside in the dawning sunlight. He'd taken a fun tumble with Keleero right as the night had come to an end, but as he'd come to expect, the silly bird-elf went from hot to cold at the drop of a feather. It had seemed wise to retain the high spirits the fur-sharing had left Mahrak in by leaving the solitary chamber Keleero had made for himself and go out into the new day. The lovely singing was an added bonus.

**Don't stop on my account,** he made sure to send to Milo as he left the caves, closely followed by Longsleep. **You have a lovely voice.**

Mahrak raised an eyebrow at Milo's words. "They didn't want to see you?"

Humans were still an alien concept to Mahrak. The winter weather hadn't allowed him to see the local ones up close in any way - he'd in fact been loudly discouraged from doing so by certain tribe members - so he hadn't quite grasped what Milo's life before this place had been like. Then again, he couldn't quite wrap his head around the spares descriptions Keleero had shared of his old holt either. But that was the fun challenge of learning about new elves!

"Are humans like that? They don't want to look at each other, but they like singing? And singing is useful to them?" He plopped himself down next to Milo (asking for permission to join someone's company before doing so rarely occurred to Mahrak). Longsleep followed suit, settling down for Mahrak to lean on. "Humans sound so fascinating!"

"Didn't want to look at you?" Mahrak echoed Milo, his confusion very audible. "That's strange. Are humans very shy in general? Or they didn't want to look at you in particular?"

He hadn't seen any humans since he'd come to the holt. This was partly because he'd been told to keep out of their sight, of course, but he'd seen no trace of them either. They seemed to keep down to the big water away from the mountain.

"And they need singing done every day? For some reason? Are they like birds?"

Realizing that his mouth had run away from him, again, Mahrak gave a self-deprecating little laugh and jumped to another subject, leaving it up to Milo what he wanted to answer and not.

Noting some nerves in the air, Mahrak put a hand on Longsleep's head and ruffled his fur. Longsleep gave a pleased huff at the contact.

"Do you want to pet him? He's big on pets. A big kitten, really, and lazy to boot. It's amazing he finds the energy to hunt enough to keep fed."

Mahrak had enough tact and social graces to not outright ask Milo 'If you didn't belong, why where you there?' There were many reasons a person could end up somewhere they didn't belong, he assumed, especially when they lived in a place with more than one holt available to them. To think there were so many elves and other creatures out in the wide world, just waiting to be discovered by others! It made Mahrak ridiculously giddy.

"So singing is like cleaning for humans? What were you supposed to sing praise to?" The concept confused Mahrak a fair amount. Singing the praises of someone's great accomplishments he could understand, or even singing about how beautiful a sunrise or an aurora was, but daily praises as an idea was a vague and strange one to him.

"Correct! Little Longsleep here is my bond-friend - has been since he was a kitten." Mahrak gave the tiger a good scratch behind the ears, which said tiger happily leaned into. "He's very used to elves so don't you worry about his teeth or claws. He's a big fuzzy old baby."

Longsleep did nothing to protest this description, merely yawning and buffing his head against Mahrak's hands in search for more skritches.

"Did you ever have a bond? With one of the humans, I mean." It seemed only logical to Mahrak that Milo should have been able to, seeing as he shared blood with humans. Then again, humans seemed more elf in manner than like creatures such as tigers and wolves. Tigers didn't build dens or wear clothes or sing. "And what are 'books'?"

"Huh, odd. Then again, I suppose your humans would find our habits equally strange." Mahrak basked in that knowledge for a heartbeat, taking kit-like pleasure in imagining the (to him) strange lives the humans must lead and how they would fair among elves. The urge to seek out the local humans burned ever bright in him. "The humans had High Ones too? They also come from the stars?" Not having even the basic concept of 'gods' to build on, that's where Mahrak's thoughts ended up.

Longsleep happily accepted the pets from Milo, heaving a pleased sigh and settling in for a bit of his namesake. If he'd been a smaller cat, he would have purred.

Mahrak frowned at Milo's 'no' to the question about bonding, but it was a thoughtful frown, not an angry one. "Interesting. Oh, and who shared blood with tigers first? Hmmm. Well, as far as I know, the tales tell that the High Ones Uthorim, Iefyr and Zestari held on to most of the star magic when they awoke in the Far White, more than their fellow travelers. They were the ones to change into animal forms that could survive the harsh cold. They tried different ones, but always returned to the tigers, helping feed their fellow survivors and eventually birthing half-tigers. But that was too long ago to even measure in fathers' mothers and mothers' fathers."

Mahrak's people didn't have a true measure of time passing, but generations was as close to it as they came, and the High Ones hadn't been seen since long before Mahrak's greatest of grand uncles had drawn his first breath. Trying to imagine time that far back in any concrete way almost gave him a headache.

The explanation of what books were made more sense than getting stuck trying to imagine 'time'. Mahrak's whole face lit up at the idea of writing down stories on leaves. "How clever! But it must take a lot of work, making pictures small enough to fit on leaves. And leaves are so fragile! How often do you need to make new leaf-stories? My people had enough of a chore keeping our paints and stories up on the cave walls and stone keeps far better than leaves." Another thought struck him. "Keleero did mention something like stone-stories back at his own Holt. Said they had a whole weave of all things that had happened to his people since the High Ones' Palace fell from the sky - can you imagine?!" It seemed a mad, impossible thing to Mahrak, but he loved mad and impossible things. "He said something about maybe starting the tale of this holt, on the walls in the bathing cave. Seems like a fun idea!"

The idea of humans, so alike both elves and what people had told him trolls looked like, having also come from the sky made perfect sense to Mahrak. For all he knew, there had been others along in the Palace, not just the trolls and preserves. Well, he might get his chance to ask the humans themselves one day.

"I'm guessing humans don't have stoneshapers? Not that we had many of those either. Most of my kin use paint or carved the slower way." Too slow for his own lack of patience. He was happy to enjoy the results artists accomplished on the cave walls of his home, but since it was an activity you could only get up to while inside, he'd had too much wanderlust to pick it up himself. A flute you could play while you walked; a cave wall needed you to stay next to it for a long time for there to be a story on it eventually. "Agreed! Songs are also good for keeping things in memory, but adding in markings makes the tales twice safe from forgetfulness."

With Milo mention of Keleero possibly asking Flint for help, Mahrak couldn't help but chuckle. "I'm not sure birdbones is open to anyone helping, arrogant flutter-about as he is. He might grow some sense eventually, but I think that day is far in the future."

Milo's next question genuinely surprised Mahrak to the point where it took him a few heartbeats to even formulate an answer.

"Not elves? Of course they were elves! They were the first elves!" He searched for more words, for a way to explain what he'd always thought of as self-evident. "The High Ones were beings of fire and change. They couldn't survive in the Far White. They needed the blood of tigers to learn to live there and that is how we became elves. Just as sharing High One blood made our tigers more than they once were. If shapechanging hadn't been lost with the High Ones," at least where he came from, "we would still be seeking to renew that bond.

"I honestly don't know how elves like Keleero, Eryk and Flint managed to become elves without their firstcomers joining with their worlds in any way. Reefshadow I can sort of understand, his High Ones clearly made a lot of changes so they could live in water, but I still can't fully wrap my mind around the how of it." Which delighted him! He couldn't wait to find out how that had become possible.

"So you're half-human?" Mahrak had meant to ask earlier, but Milo had seemed so shy he didn't want to scare him off. "Does that mean one of your parents was a High One?"

Mahrak gave a snort at Milo's observation on Keleero not wanting his help in particular. "Don't mind old birdbones, he doesn't seem to like anyone much. I think he's too scared to."

And then Milo went there again, saying things that went so against everything Mahrak had grown up understanding as 'just things you know'. It was fantastic!

"They didn't do it only once," Mahrak clarified. "It was just very, very difficult. The Far White froze their magic, making it a mere spark of the fire it once was. When they were among the stars, the High Ones could be any form or shape they wished to. But once they fell from the skies, they were weakened. Eventually, all three of the High Ones who could be tigers were tigers, completely, and so were all the children they birthed thereafter. I am indeed more elf than tiger, just as Longsleep here," he gave the tiger an affectionate pat, "is more tiger than elf, but we both have the distant blood of the High Ones in us. Trust me when I say, if one of mine could reclaim such ancient magic as changing one's form, we'd seek to renew blood ties in a heartbeat!"

He had to stem the tide of his excitement a bit more at Milo's confirmation that he might have been the child of a High One. Mahrak did manage this, since the news that Milo hadn't known his parents or tribe at all tempered his excitement with sympathy.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Being raised by those who birthed you wasn't a must for happiness, Mahrak knew that well enough from other elves in the Far White who'd happily grown up with other adults, but not having know even your tribe...

"So you grew up with only humans? No elves until you came here? And how does your name explain it?" Was it a human name?
OOC:
Keeping Mahrak's knowledge of Milo's name intentionally vague here, so you can decide exactly how soul names work for elves from Milo's world I know how they work for Mahrak's people, but seeing as our elves are from different universes, soul names might act differently between them! I mean, canon has most elves without soul names, so I think it makes sense there could be differences in how they work exactly between worlds and elf groups. I think we might have discussed this at some earlier point, when Milo first appeared, but I started up a thread over here, to make sure everyone gets a chance to update the group on how soul names work for their elves in particular.