"You won't ever understand," said Oren. He was sitting back against the cave wall now, knees pulled to his chest and skinny arms wrapped around them. He stared at Vica with dead-eyed seriousness, entirely unaffected by her loud complaints over the last few minutes that she was always, always in the dark. "Not everyone with old blood knows what to look for. You have to be taught. You weren't."
"Taught? You mean the stories? Please, those are myths. They're not real, Oren. You can't tell me that everyone grows up listening to stories about how some great goddess Tiamat sent her pet monsters to kill humans or whatever -"
"Those aren't the stories we learned," the elf said with no small amount of dryness. "But you should pay closer attention to whatever wisdom is shared with you, anyway. Yo
