Elder Elka found me at the Sequoia tree with the particular expression she had learned to recognize as me having decided something.
"Leigh." She settled onto the bench across from me. "You have that look."
"I'm bringing an elf." I said. "I'll be right back."
She opened her mouth.
I was already standing.
"Leigh." Her voice had the quality it sometimes got, the one that reminded me she had been running this settlement since before I was born and had opinions about process. "We talked about this. Anyone coming to Eryndor comes with their consent. You can't just-"
"I know." I said.
"You said that last time." She said. "And came back with two seamsters."
"They consented." I said. "Eventually."
Elder Elka looked at me.
"I'll ask." I said.
She exhaled slowly and looked up at the Sequoia tree the way she sometimes did when she needed a moment to gather patience from somewhere.
"What do you even need an elf for." She said.
"The animals." I said.
She waited.
"The monkeys ate the bananas." I said. "The birds are hollowing out the Glowfruits. The squirrel is still in the tomatoes."
Elder Elka looked at me for a long moment.
"You're bringing an elf." She said slowly. "Because of the squirrel."
"And the monkeys." I said.
She pressed her lips together. Her eyes had developed a quality I had come to recognize as her trying very hard not to look like Frostina and Flame had looked earlier.
"With consent." She said finally.
I teleported before she finished the sentence.
Behind me, I heard her say something to herself that I didn't catch.
••••••
The eastern border of Singrael ended where the elven territory began, and the elven territory announced itself without signage.
The forest changed. Not dramatically, not in any way a person without sensitivity to mana would notice, but the quality of the air shifted and the trees were different in a way that had nothing to do with species. They had been here longer. They knew it and didn't make a display of it.
I stopped at the boundary line.
Even I didn't step into elven territory without consideration. Not out of fear. Out of the particular respect owed to a civilization that had existed for longer than most of the kingdoms currently arguing over Philantria's map had been a concept.
I stepped across the line.
The barrier triggered within seconds. A detection ward, layered and sensitive, the kind of construction that told me the elves had been refining their border security for a very long time.
I waited.
From the forest above and around me, at least twelve arrows trained on my position. I could feel the draw weights without seeing the bows. Significant. These were not decorative archers.
"I need an elf." I said.
The arrows stayed drawn.
"To help me." I said. "State your conditions."
The arrows flew.
I put a barrier up. The arrows clattered against it and fell. I left the barrier in place and waited.
Movement in the canopy. Then from the trees to my left a figure dropped, landed without sound, and straightened.
A woman, silver-haired, with the particular quality of stillness that came from centuries of existing in a forest that rewarded patience.
From my right, a second figure. A man, similarly still, with an expression that had not yet decided what it thought of me.
The woman looked at me with the focused attention of someone reading something.
"You're using illusion magic." She said. "We can see it."
Elves and mana sensitivity. I had known this and worn the illusion anyway out of reflex. I let it drop.
The man's expression changed.
He looked at my face for a moment. Then, with the particular tone of someone who knows exactly what they're looking at and finds the location deeply incongruous:
"What is the Hero of Philantria doing in elven territory."
"The hero is dead." I said. "I'm Leigh. A farmer."
They looked at me.
The silence had a quality that I recognized from the moments just before people decided whether something was a joke. They were running through the same sequence simultaneously. Checking my face for the tell that would reveal the performance.
There wasn't one.
The woman's composure went first. It started at the corners of her mouth, moved to her eyes, and then she was laughing with her whole face, the kind of genuine, helpless laughter that doesn't ask permission.
The man lasted another three seconds and then joined her.
I waited.
They wound down gradually, the way real laughter does, with aftershocks.
"You're serious." The woman said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Yes." I said. "You may not interact with humans regularly, but you track events. You know the Hero of Philantria has been dead for over a year. You heard the announcement."
The man straightened, the amusement settling into something more considered.
"We heard." He said. He looked at my face again with different eyes this time. "We didn't expect to see you on our border."
"Call me Leigh." I said.
The woman collected herself and looked at me with the professional attention that had been underneath the laughter the entire time.
"What do you need an elf for, Leigh." She said.
I told them.
I told them about the farm fields and the squirrel in the tomatoes and the birds systematically hollowing out the Glowfruits from the inside and the monkeys that had located the first banana harvest Eryndor had produced after months of temperature management and consumed it without any apparent guilt.
I told them that dragons, it had been recently confirmed, were not useful for this particular problem. That earth dragons or elves were the relevant parties and I did not have access to an earth dragon.
The man was pressing his fist against his mouth.
The woman had both hands flat on her thighs and was looking at a point slightly above my head with the focused expression of someone applying serious effort to a single task.
"So." She said carefully. "You came to elven territory. You crossed our border and triggered our wards. You stood down twelve archers." She paused. "To ask for help with animals eating your crops."
"Yes." I said.
They looked at each other.
The man's composure broke first this time.
I let them finish.
When the laughter had run its course again and they were both breathing normally, I said one word.
"Aphrodesia."
The forest went quiet.
Not the comfortable quiet of before. The particular quiet of a word that has landed somewhere it matters.
The woman looked at me directly. The man had gone still in a different way than he had been still before.
"The herb." She said.
"The one you've been trying to cultivate for the past several decades." I said. "Without success. The one your healers have been substituting around for the fertility treatments that require it. The one that stopped growing in accessible territory around the same time your birth rate started declining."
Neither of them said anything.
"I have it." I said. "Growing in my settlement. Controlled, healthy, producing consistently. I have more, which we never use."
The woman looked at the man.
The man looked at the woman.
"Come with us." She said.
In the elven village, I was the first human who had walked inside it, in living memory according to the elder who received us.
She was older than Elder Elka in the way that elves were older, carrying centuries in a face that didn't show them obviously but held them somewhere in the eyes.
She sat across from me in a structure that had grown rather than been built, its walls shaped from living wood, and looked at me with the full attention of someone for whom a conversation was also an assessment.
I set a cutting of Aphrodesia on the table between us.
She looked at it for a long time without touching it.
"What do you want for this." She said.
"An elf." I said. "To help manage the animals coming into my farmland. Temporary arrangement. With full consent and the right to leave whenever they choose."
She looked at the cutting again.
"And for a sustained supply." I said. "I'll provide the herb regularly. Monthly, same schedule I keep for my other supply arrangements. In exchange for a continued relationship with your community. Fair trade on both sides, negotiated openly."
The elder looked at me.
"You came here about squirrels." She said.
"I came here about squirrels." I said. "The herb is a separate matter that seemed worth raising while I was already here. Give me a proper condition."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then, very slightly, she smiled.
"You have the upper hand in this conversation." She said.
"I know." I said.
She looked at the Aphrodesia cutting one more time. Then she looked up at me with the calm certainty of someone who has made a decision.
"Let's talk." She said.