14
The True Woods
The pointy ends of the weapons seemed to be directed towards Thalaea only. She held her hands up in surrender; Salia, Ruk, and Isuena growled at their packs to stand down, for several of Thalaea’s friends seemed ready to leap upon the newcomers and rip their throats out.
The bipeds who met them could only be Thaenites, she decided. They were short, perhaps coming up to her hips. Their skin was gray, their hair abundant, coming down in long black waves from the tops of their heads to form large beards from their chins. Both hair and beards were tightly braided, and the remaining bits of skin that Thalaea could see were also hairy. Not quite the Afghan-hound-type of human she’d pictured and definitely not what she expected from the word Elf. Their eye colours ranged from
