1. Prologue

            In my days as a journalist I had the opportunity to travel a lot. I have been around the world not once or twice. In my travels I have collected and written down many strange legends but none as mysterious and intriguing as the one you’re about to read.

            I heard this one deep into the Amazonian jungle. I was staying in a small local village. One day my guide and I found ourselves on a barren field right in the middle of the jungle. There were no trees, not even bushes, and no animal dared set foot on this unfriendly land. My guide explained that this place was once a marvelous forest – Dreamshore Forest – and that elves used to live there. I didn’t believe him then. Now I would think twice.

            He took me to an old woman in the village. She was supposes to be over 500 years old. To me she looked in her mid sixties but here face…oh, her face…I had never seen such beauty and I haven’t seen anything like it to this day! She said her name was Erina and claimed to be the last of the elves. I was determined to get a story from this part of the world no matter how ridiculous it was so I asked her to tell me her story.

            She often interrupted her own words and started off in a totally different stream of thought but I haven’t changed a thing when I wrote it down so that you can read it and be at least half as amazed as I was when I heard it…

~ by Vesper Starr on September 7, 2007.