Elixir of Power In-Character Essay: Oenan Telíth Ahar - The Strength of the Whole, by Sage Nyendí
Oenan Telíth Ahar – The Strength of the Whole
In Madea and other human-dominant societies, the idea of strength is closely allied to that of mechanical force. Motion, mass, velocity, torsion, friction, and all the energetic capabilities of alchemy. The bull has great strength, they might say, but a bee has not. As someone who witnessed an unfortunate beast disturb a hive and perish from the thousand stings that followed, I might say otherwise.
The elvish notion of Ahar is alien to humans. It means strength, but like most elvish words, it means many other things as well. It is the strength of a community, a fabric, a web, a hive. The strength does not lie in one muscle or lever or fibre but in the totality. If you take a scarf and pull it apart thread by thread, fibre by fibre, each individual filament or telethí will be weak and fragile. The threads do not transform when they are woven together. They are all in the same form they always were. It is just that, when they form a scarf, they lend each other strength. They gain Oenan Telíth Ahar – The Strength of the Whole. Each thread added to the scarf adds more than its individual strength.
The Common Power, the miracle of Elarím culture and community, is an application of this principle. The telethymic art stitches a great tapestry of spiritual fibres that extends from one end of Elarím land to the other. Every bird, beast, cricket, flower, tree, and lichen within those lands are interwoven also. The more telethí, the more threads, the more life is added, the stronger the Common Power becomes. Most crucially, as I mentioned above, each individual gives more to the total than their own strength. A group of twenty are like a group of thirty. A group of a thousand are like a group of a thousand and a half. But there is a shadow to this light—the loss of one individual begins an unravelling.
Our people have been at war for countless years, now. We have survived. We have not lived. We have not thrived. We have held on, just barely, within the shelter of the Common Power. While we developed the technology of life, humans developed the technology of war. Their art—the art of guns, cannons, and powders—has at last begun to eclipse ours. Human ‘strength’ is overwhelming elven Ahar. By the time my daughter is grown, I fear the Elarím will have been defeated. We do not lose more battles than before. We do not run low on the supplies needed to arm and feed our warriors. The herald of our loss is that with so much death and destruction of the living land, the Common Power has begun to fail. Oenan Telíth Ahar recedes, like a wave that has broken on the shore. We are getting weaker.
My idea is a radical one. The principle of Oenan Telíth Ahar suggests this idea. To me, it is the most obvious thing in all the world, but I know that it will not be welcome. Very few among the Elarím will consider it.
We must make peace with the humans, and extend the Common Power to them.
Did you recoil in your seat reading that? I imagine most would wear the ugliest scowl at the thought. How could I suggest it—after so much slaughter, so much theft of sacred life? I tell you now that I am not suggesting it. I am stating our only way out. It is this, or extinction.
Perhaps my suggestion is the wrong way around. I have considered this. Why not extend the Common Power first, and then make peace? It seems equally likely—or unlikely—as a viable course of action.
For most of our history, we have thought that humans cannot wield telethymia. I have seen with my own eyes that this is wrong. They can be taught—they must be taught—to see the telethí that permeates and penetrates all living things. My second, and perhaps more radical notion, is that humans are not incompatible with telethymia as a species. I believe that they are heavily resistant to telethymia because of their culture.
As to how we can achieve the feat of extending the Common Power to our foes, I have no idea. I have experimented with some of the anti-war humans I have met, but most humans are enthusiastic supporters of war. Our own people, it seems, have no choice but to fight. Both sides are stuck on a course they seem unable to control. Besides that, how cruel for the universe to place the responsibility of making peace on the shoulders of our people. How cruel that it should fall to us!
Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the human rulers would never make peace unless they were forced. Whether by gunpoint or by an uprising or an assault by our warriors, it would require great force. Not the strength of Ahar, but mechanical force—the very thing that is hardest for elves to imagine. Can one form of strength lead to another? Could we unite with the human commoners against their own king, their own country? I admit, it seems impossible.
Perhaps we have no hope. Perhaps it is better that I bow to the darkness and exit this world with all the rest of my kin. I hope our kind, our culture, can in some way echo through the pages of kinder historians. We made something beautiful, briefly, when we made Crann Arborím. It was the great miracle of that age.
To survive, we will need a miracle of our own.
Nyendí