Volume 1.1

What am I? That is a question I have asked many times since I knew I was so different. My mother Frea was a beautiful halfing maiden. Her hair was the color of jungle honey with eyes that sparkled like a thousand tiny stars. I miss my mother dearly.

My father, he was something else, he is an elf, a jungle elf to be more precisely. I only seen him once, wild, fierce, very proud. The day I seen him I was very young maybe ten or eleven. Our tribe was near the edge of the great jungle gathering special herbs when three elves seemed to just appear from thin air. One grabbed my mother and took her into the forest. I was terrified but mother only smiled as she willingly was kidnapped. After several hours my mother came back with a smile on her face and many rare herbs. I didn’t know until many years later that was Menkir Shimmerdale my father and what that smile really meant.

Back to my question of what am I, some would say I am a half-breed, others would say orc bait, but most would say I am an elfling. I just like to say I am Nago Shimmerdale. I took my father’s last night as my own, at least I have one thing from him.

I know very little about my father’s people, except what my mother and other members from my tribe have taught me. I can speak their language and I know some of their customs, but they are a mystery to me. I was raised by my mother’s clan and I am more halfling than anything else. I am slightly larger and faster than most of them but still I had it hard being different. My mother never married and I was the only elfling in our tribe.

It was a small band of wandering halfling that hid in plain sight on the great plains. Moving from south to north trading, foraging, herding and avoiding the orc raiding parties. It was a hard life, but full of love and merriment. My mother made every moment like it was the last moment and she lived it to the fullest. She began to teach me leatherwork skills. I made simple items, but ones that were useful to everyone. We could trade rope for food. A belt for some beer. A few pouches for some refined grain. That was how we all had to live.