Day 2

I woke to the noise of sizzling meat, and shivered. I had forgotten that the humans were omnivorous, and hoped that they'd have something I could eat. How they could eat meat, I didn't know. It was disgusting, it was somewhat akin to cannibalism, eating flesh. It would be like . . . A lion eating a tiger. I shivered again.

The man with power spoke in his broken elvish, "Elf boy, are you awake?"

I let my words drip with sarcasm, as I remembered how useless they were. "No, I'm still asleep and my doppelganger is talking to you."

"We've reached a consensus; and we're going to send you a wonderful place with a lot of ground, so you can roam around as you like. And you'll get a beautiful room to yourself." and padded walls, and a nice strait jacket. I'm sure you'd fit right in with the others who are insane.

He thought I was insane, a child, and stupid. I decided that I wouldn't be able to be respected unless I spoke their tongue, and looked like a human. Seeing as maintaining an illusion would be the harder part, I decided to pick his brain for his language.

He made a kind of gargling noise as if he felt me picking his brain for the language, English? Or Francais? Or Deutche? Or Espanol? Or... My, wasn't this man quite the scholar. I decided to take all of them, trading his years of learning for a bit of energy. I also picked up that his first language was English, as was everyone from this mission. And that he is 47, has a wife, two kids, and the American flag is a rectangle, with 13 horizontal stripes, 7 red, 6 white, and in the upper left corner, there's a blue patch, with 50 stars. I decided to get all of the information possible, skipping over his personal information, and got facts. He really did believe that magic didn't exist.

I finally released my hold on his mind, and he fell to the ground, clutching his head, and moaned, "Oh, shit. Migraine..."

In perfectly respectful tones, I said, "You should probably get back to your friends."

"Yea, yea." He turned around, and looked like he was about to leave, when he turned around quickly, and moaned again. He had forgotten about his migraine. "Ow... How do you know English?"

Shit! He didn't believe in magic, I'd just have to lie my way through. "Sir, I've always known English, but I grew up in the Vatican, so when under stress, I speak Latin."

"Oh... What was that talk about elves?"

"Elves? What are you referring to? They don't exist." I laughed, and felt liberated, finally able to laugh in his face. I got up, and walked outside, stopping to talk to people while picking their brains for information. It was a bit like a museum, look, but don't touch. It would only cause more trouble then it was worth, making up another fool story, lying about the same one was hard enough. I figured out that "old" was 60 or older, and "young" was 25 or younger. I did fast calculations, and figured that an elf grew at 1/5 the speed of a human, so 300 would be old, 125 would be young, 15 would be an infant, almost a toddler. So, at 90, I'd be... 18, just out of high school.

Another interesting thing I learned about was capitalism, and money. Money, little scraps of paper, worth more than anything. With money, you could buy security, food, death, mayhem, and even the law.