“Look there,” Dagda pointed out suddenly in a hushed voice. “Be quiet and move slowly; try not to draw eyes to us. With any luck we’ll slip by unnoticed.” I followed his gaze to see a pair of dwarves supervising a small group of what I could only assume were elves. Another pang of disappointment rewarded my observation. These elves were slender with the pointed ears I expected, but they were far from beautiful. Barely taller than the dwarves, they were unkempt, with tangled hair flying wildly around their ears. They fawned at the feet of the dwarves, who appeared to be giving orders with the aid of blunt spears used to poke and prod any unfortunate elf who did not please them. The elves were sullen as they tended the trees in the orchard under the scowls of their masters.
As we passed uncomfortably close to a small group working near the road, one elf who was heavily laden with what appeared to be a bucket of dung tripped over a root and landed hard on his belly with his face in the bucket. The dwarves roared with laughter, insults indistinctly heard even at our distance, and prodded the poor fellow mercilessly until he rose to his feet. One even thumped the unfortunate creature over the head with a spear point, producing a yelp of outraged pain. A scowl covered the elf’s face along with globs of manure and a trickle of blood from his mouth where he apparently had bitten his tongue, and without warning he dumped the entire contents of the bucket over the head of the closest dwarf. The dwarf, stumbling about yanking on the bucket now stuck on his head, howled with rage, and other elves ran to the support of their fellow laborer, gabbling angrily. We tiptoed by, slowly moving from tree to tree just off the road to try to escape notice.
The Word Worker 
One thought on “Book Teaser: Dwarves and Elves”