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" ‘Since you have fallen back to squabbling, and none can prove his case, I shall withhold the reward,’ the Sun said, showing her disgust
"Each Great Spirit retreated to his place in the Upper and Lower Worlds, and thought black thoughts Being of sireedy reatest, I will get the reward But how to prove I a that can kill even dragons!’
"Earth, deep in the ground, ave theon-scale, and the fearless solidity of mountains
"Water, in her sloisdos she nourishes They age like trees and move like windblown leaves They are patient hunters, keen eyed and eared
"Air, far above, made men Man the wanderer, man the hunter, man the flexible Man does not stand like a mountain in the face of difficulty, or wait like trees for the season to change, but figures a way over, under, or around it
"Fire was lazy and capricious; Fire did no work Instead he took aside a few of the others and turned thees would kill or control all the dragons, then kill or control all the other races in time, and one day put Fire in the sky to replace even the Sun Even worse, Fire taught these , so he would have so
"But like the Spirits that created the The Spirits’ peoples spent their tiht men when there were no elves to slay Sadly, each race did ant in those early ages, before we learned to fear
"Without the dragons ordering things, the blighters also came back and made trouble for the other races Since then, the world’s history has been littlethe Spirits’ creations
"So noe dragons must hide, or assassins will coons who knew better tione The dwarves find our caves, the elves trap us by wood and water, and always more and more men come with their flocks, their forts, their roads, and their cities
"I know ray But I will offer you this: Learn so of the ways of all the races, but especially learn of randsire, my father, destroyed an army of them, but a new army came filled with survivors of the old When he came to smash and burn their war machines, they surrounded hihty red They adapted--a word I learned froons are to last, we e, or the work of the Four Great Spirits in creating us will coon kind will continue to dwindle, until one day there are noshelf, his nostrils taking in great drafts of cavern air, as though searching its approaches for the sight or smell of ene for you to worry about today"
They finished the remains of the ain, and made to kick it down the hoard-shaft, but Father made him carry the weapon back to the shelf to share his lesson with his sisters
Chapter 4
Change came with new air The season above had finally cavernturned, and faint traces of spring life filtered down to the cavern
It could not co scarce
With the renewed air ca in torrents from the melt above to some unknown reservoir below Auron did not mind the wet; it rolled off his hide as easily as it ran down stone He drank fro the world above through the liquid conductor
At the touch of the water, the dead lichen gave way, leaving little patches of growth The bats started their nightly ventures, returning to the cave to leave a shower of fresh, a to the cave affected even Mother She still had a listless, pinched look to her, but sniffed the air coy
"Soon we’ll be in the Upper World, little gems Meat and heat, no more dead bats for you"
"Father will have an easier ti?" Wistala, his smaller sister, asked
"Yes, but on’t seefar and wide, to ons do not encroach upon us Besides, the appetites of a faons soon exhaust an area Overhunt a forest one year, and you will starve the next"
"What is the Upper World like? Dangerous?" Auron asked
"Big and beautiful There’s life everywhere, all singing different songs to the four Great Spirits You could fly your whole life and see only a part of it Now you just have the h our cave In the Upper World you will hear rain fall frorasslands, the crash of the ocean probing the land for weakness Lightning will light up a place she wants her lover Thunder to visit And far above, the Sun and Moon travel in silence, listening to the er there, yes, but reerous In all the world there is nothing on’s th?" Jizara asked