You think you know what a diaspora is. But you have no idea how far and wide we travelled.

When The Happening occurred, we tried to fight, but the odds were stacked against us, so I am told. Our elders and our wise agreed the battle was unwinnable, and that for the good of our kind – our bloodline and heritage – we needed to run. But fleeing isn’t part of our DNA. Fighting is. So our running was fast, but it was heavy too. For every nimble step taken, there was a feeling of immense gravity pulling us back. And that pull did not diminish with distance. Nor time.

My folk arrived here by boat. Elders had decided this was a good place to settle, peaceful and distant. When we first came, we had to lay low, avoiding places where our looks would draw attention. My folk – men and women alike – needed to maintain long hair, never tied back. Wearing our hair any other way was not, strictly speaking, a violation of custom, but it would have drawn attention. We tried to blend in as wanderers, nomads, hippies, and stragglers. Office work was out of the question. After time, thankfully, we became invisible.

Most of my kind took to the water like you wouldn’t believe. (Funny, given our mountainous origins.) When we discovered that anyone could swim in the ocean without reprisal, it was difficult to get us to live anywhere but near the sea. We became hard-core surfers, catching waves for hours at first light, and back in the swell as soon as school or work finished, regardless of failing light. The elders have always tolerated our surf addiction thinking it sound fitness training. Good for our bodies. Good for our minds.

How were they to know how ill-prepared we’d become? Sitting ducks from years of complacency. Loud music in earbuds. Booze. Smokes. Bongs. Fucking like rabbits all night long. We’d been so, so complacent. Yet, how could we be anything else? The Happening was long ago; most of us didn’t actually believe it had occurred, rather, simply a thing of myth. Just another crazy tale from our ancient, shaky grandparents. We didn’t think much of our history. We had assimilated, after all.

For the most part.

Kind of.

Not really.

Looking back, we had done everything together. We surfed with no-one else but our own folk. (Made sense, in a way. Because long hair gets wet. Ears get exposed.) We lived in our self-righteous ghettos. Our kids went to the same school, all taught by our own folk. We didn’t talk much to outsiders; only the minimum amount required for trade. Just as well, too. Our idioms, if overheard, would raise too many brows.

On any given day, you would see any one of us as a lowly, forgettable surfer – a bleach-blonde bum. Which is how it needs to be. We are, in the old tongue, Gambu Sil. It’s a difficult word to put into your language. You’d be tempted to think Gypsy or Traveller, and you’d be partially correct. But the giveaway – the tell – is what you see when I bunch up my salty hair, or what you see when it’s wet.

My ears… My unmistakably pointed ears.

I am Gambu Sil. In your tongue: an elf.

And for a time now I have been surfing less and training more. Learning the old battle arts with bow, axe, and staff.

Because there’s a war ahead.

We all feel it in our angry, immortal elven bones.

It is happening. Again.