Council preserve us, but if the Ember aren't the end of us, I'll eat a wig. They claim that they want to return us to the “days of promise” back on S'iolaem, but those days are long gone. No, by my reckoning the Ember amount to well meaning fools who want to return to better times since passed. They seek to do so by way of uniting the races under one banner.

The issue I see (other than that it's been tried, and failed) is that the races of Terminus are so intensely disparate when you look at them as a whole. An Ogre, dull minded as they are, could not see eye to eye with an Elf, yet the Human and Ogre would treaty to break bread together. Should the Ogre and the Elf bandy words and find disagreement, to which side would the Human gravitate? Would there be hesitation? Can there be any hesitation about protecting your so called allies? I say no.

I say, privately, and with no small degree of security about the storage of this volume, no.

I say no and I offer an alternative. Stay home. Protect and tend to the Tree. By going out we only make more foes know of our tree. Staying home is security.

Knowledge of the outside is still important, though. No sense coming inside, closing our gates, and shutting our eyes. Rather than having an entire people roaming the land making asses of all of us, we should have a select few of the Ashen roam out into the land, and see the world as it is, not from the eyes of someone constantly looking for a threat. If you seek a threat you will often find one. If you seek knowledge, that is what you will find, rather than the conflict and ignorance of before.

Let the Ember put their toned bodies to the plough and to defense of Faerthale at large. The Ashen will take to study of the Art as they always have and, with Ashen agents sending information back to the world, the Lucent Tree, the Vae Wood, and the tradition of the Elven people will be maintained in an ongoing fashion, just as the Ember purportedly desire.

Why would you put a shining future at risk for want of control and return to the old ways? No, we've given enough. We should look to our own and not seek to meddle in the affairs of other, different people. Each race is as a puzzle, the members each a piece. One never mixes pieces from different puzzles. You might find a piece from one puzzle spending time in another's case, but tis not a matter over which to be dismayed. The piece knows it doesn't belong. The piece doesn't need to be told to go. All is well in the mind, if not orderly in the flesh.

All must be well in the mind for a people tossed and broken by the trials of time. The third crucible has come and gone, and prosperity must be the name of the Elves of Faerthale.

Until next time, I leave you, a journal. Ha.