There is power in life. Those who value life and witness the ebb and flow of time, value power; not power in time, but with it. By recognizing the limited quantity, you can make better use of the life you have. Gnomes do not appreciate life. Gnomes appreciate gold. They do not value life, because for them life is prolonged and almost indefinite. The gnomes look to the present. Humans look to eternity. The presence of death fixes their eyes on life. It is not possible to know one without the other. Although their life is limited, the life in them is not and so their appeal to the Finfolk is known. The Finfolk, immortal as they are, know no life. If death is the absence of life, the Fin cannot know life in the absence of death. The Finfolk, however, know power. They see power where it lies, inherent in the lives of human beings. But the human race has declined. In the wake of the Catastrophe, the great calamity that destroyed the old world and plagued the new, life is fleeting and rarely flourishes. Life is stagnant. The villagers, the last vestige of the human race, have no life or reason to live. They have no purpose. Their purpose has been lost over time. The Finfolk have become desperate. For so long they have thrived on the back of human expansion. Human life nurtured life they did not innately possess. Human life fueled their power. Without purpose, without life, the Finfolk have no power. Abner Shineborn, the fourth day of the evening tideChapter 1There were few things of which Percival was prouder than his handwriting. The thin line of a well-written letter sent shivers down his spine. It was a happy experience, bordering on romantic. Compared to everyone else, he was simply an amateur. Among the illiterate villagers, this made him a… middle of paper… would he really notice, he thought? The air was cool and crisp, the sky overcast, clinging to the rain and refusing to give up its watery load. The sun sets behind the forest canopy, leaving the villagers to finish their daytime activities. For a brief moment the dying rays of the sun pierce the gray veil that enveloped the sky, as if they were setting it on fire. The village that Brit Shineborn called home was located on the edge of an ancient forest, on the outskirts of Nowhere (a few hundred miles south of Somewhere, between the lands of Unexceptional and Mediocre). It was nothing but a picturesque grove of thatched buildings and pale sun-dried lawns for which the green shade of life was a distant memory. Upon observation, it appeared to be nothing more than a tight-knit agrarian community, living off the land, concerned with nothing more than surviving each day as it came..