Puntabulous

Have you ever met an elf? Would you recognize one if you saw it? Are you always on the lookout in case one might cross your path? Have you ever thought…

No, no, no. This is no way to begin a story. There are too many questions and one might begin to think you were in school. A proper introduction to this tale would be to tell you about elves, and then once you have a picture of them inside your head, you can decide for yourself if you have ever seen one in person. After all, even if you did want to answer my questions, I could not hear you because I am, in fact, a book.

Elves are entirely ordinary creatures. In the old days when the world was still young, and the stars shone much brighter than they do in the days of skyscrapers and automobiles, elves were no less common than dogs or cats, or even dogs and cats combined. Though no good person would ever keep an elf as a pet; besides, it is much too difficult to catch an elf to make them your pet in the first place.

Elves are fiercely shy creatures. One did not often find them in market, or in grand halls lined with tapestries, and heavens never on a battlefield. In fact, it was not uncommon for one member of a group to catch a glimpse of an elf hiding in the tall grass of a field or meadow, and once they would say “Goodness! Did anyone else see that elf?” the whole of the group would turn to look, but the elf would have already hidden itself away, and too often the group would reply “What elf?”

It was children who most commonly saw elves, due to the fact that children are much more open to the idea of seeing them. If a child ever admitted to seeing an elf to their parents, the grownups would usually dismiss it as a child’s overactive imagination and return to their adult conversations that consisted mostly of weather or village gossip.

Elves are also much less cautious about being seen by children. You see, elves are short creatures, and children are much less intimidating than adult humans. Full grown, an elf usually stands at most two feet tall. Though once there was an elf who stood almost two and a half feet tall. It was rumored that there was troll blood in his family, which would explain the added height, but no one would ever admit to having a troll in their family, so the rumor was never proven as fact.

Elves often take their residence in the roots of trees. Often there are whole woods, where not a single tree is left unoccupied. Smalls doors covered in bark at the base of these trees hide the entrances to their homes – called elfsteads. These elfsteads may seem small to humans, but to elves they can be enormous, sometimes housing families upwards of twenty elves most comfortably. And though they may be dug into the earth they are always kept impeccably clean, for you see, elves are remarkably tidy creatures. They take great pride in their homes and even in their surrounding lands. It is not out of the ordinary for elves to enter the gardens of humans – at night of course, for fear of being seen – and plant flowers or pick weeds, or any other number of helpful tasks, almost always unnoticed by their human owners. But elves do not provide such services for the gratitude of humans. Elves are very much in love with the beauty of nature and therefore take it upon themselves to enhance that beauty whenever they can without need of reward or retribution.

I suppose I still have not described elves properly enough for you to have a complete image of them inside your head. So far you only know that they are short creatures, which is by no means a full description, seeing as though there are thousands of creatures in the world that can be described as short, and of course not all of them can be described as elves.

Elves have large heads (large for their bodies anyway) the size of melons with great big golden brown eyes. Their skin is the color of harvest wheat and smooth like the fresh leaves of a summer maple. They have pointed ears that are also quite large, though elves are not known for their extraordinary hearing, so the usefulness of these large ears remains a mystery. Their arms and legs are thin and end in long narrow hands and fingers, and feet and toes.

Of all elven features it is their mouths that can be the largest, though not literally of course. Elves have been known to jabber on for hours on end, with just about anyone that may be listening, or perhaps when no one is listening at all, or even just with a particularly troublesome weed. But do not get me wrong, elves can be extremely quiet when it is required of them. They would not stay so hidden for so long if that were not true.

There you have it. Can you see them now? The elves inside your head? If not, than I’m afraid this book may be too much for you. Elves are only just the beginning. This story is filled with magical creatures and places so you must keep an open mind and do your best to imagine what I tell you. For I do hope you stay, because if not, I will continue to jabber on for pages on end, and if no one is here to read it, I will feel awfully silly talking to myself, in which case I might as well be talking to a particularly troublesome weed.