Jeslyn drummed her fingers on the flat table in front of her seat. Ankeftel had raised some decent points in his speech at the podium, although she did wish the older elf wasn't such an extreme right-winger. She was tempted to ignore the good points just because of the gibberish he had spouted about Elerea and her supposed 'plans' for all Lemorra. Considering the length of his tirade, it was hard to ignore.

She was pretty sure that Ankeftel had been just as surprised as anybody else when the Goddess had showed up during the session earlier. In fact, she knew that his zeal was new-founded; Ankeftel had hardly ever even mentioned Elerea's name in his speeches before. But now it seemed the conservative had replaced his former talk of 'common decency' with dropping it into his speech as often as possible. Perhaps he was trying to make up for his earlier laxity, she thought.

In any case, as much as she wanted to, Jeslyn couldn't deny he'd made some good points. Setting aside what he'd said the Goddess wanted, and why she wanted it—both of which benefited Ankeftel and his cronies suspiciously much—Jeslyn had to agree that leaving Lemorra was going to be very difficult. Where would they go? The Lemorran assembly had always focused more on improving life at home. Some of the more radical members had always said this was a mistake; they said if Lemorrans didn't learn more about the world outside they would be in trouble some day.

It was beginning to look like they'd been right, although it was far too late to do anything about it now. If they did indeed have to abandon the continent, they would be striking out into almost completely unknown territories. There were bound to be a few manuscripts here and there: log books from the few merchant adventurers who braved the seas; disaster stories by the survivors of ships blown off course into the strange foreign lands; even the occasional rich elf who had done it for fun. But these were accounts of questionable reality. One famous travelogue mentioned a race of half-elven half-animal beings who walked on four legs, had long snouts set in the middle of elven faces, and communicated by scratching a pair of atrophied wings together. Jeslyn would hate to base plans to leave the continent off of that.

She would much prefer it if the combined minds of all the assembly's members could come up with a plan to defend against the disaster and stay put. There was such a long history of elves on the continent that she would hate to see it tossed aside without even an attempt to save it. Around her, she heard mostly support for one side or the other with a few voicing opinions close to her own.

Jeslyn had always felt a little uncomfortable at her post for exactly this reason. Her stance meant she often ended up in the middle of the two main parties' arguments. She sometimes wondered why she still bothered attending sessions which rapidly degenerated into an “us versus them” mind-set on both sides. Of course, she had built a reputation as a just arbiter, which probably had something to do with why she still did bother. After all, somebody had to see that work got done.

She hoped that the severity of the coming crisis would force the representatives to work together without forcing. Hoped, but didn't expect.

To her left, she could hear a sudden cessation of chatter. She looked in that direction and noticed that representative Delarin was walking to the podium at the front of the hall. He was accompanied by Cleo, another radical, and both were proceeded by a young-looking elf who was apparently making sure nobody tried to block the representatives' way. Jeslyn settled back into her seat and waited to see how accurate her admittedly cynical view on the assembly would be.

Was Delarin going to try to reach out to those not in his own tiny party, or was he just going to throw invective at the conservatives? Surely he would realise the necessity of getting at least the liberals on his side. And as much as the liberals hated the conservatives, they would need quite some convincing before they listened to everything Delarin would say if he didn't reign in his opinions a little.

She watched as he gained the podium, leaving his aide at the bottom of the steps. Representative Cleo exchanged a few words with the younger elf and then walked back through the hall to the double doors at a brisk pace. No doubt going to rile up the populace. That was a common radical trick, and probably the only reason they even had seats in the assembly any more. They very rarely won an argument without having to call upon the threat of a popular uprising.

And they didn't even have very much of a popular backing. The only city they had a clear backing was here in Tyr. The capital city had always been known for its extremely liberal bent. Riots were not a rare occurrence, and marches and other forms of activism were even more common. The city was certainly an odd match for the rest of Lemorra, which tended to err on the side of conservatism.

Delarin clapped his hands against the top of the podium and started to speak.

“Fellow representatives, I know that not all of you agree with my politics, but&emdash;”

He was cut off by catcalls and whistles as the understatement was lambasted by the other elves.

“I know not all of you agree with my politics,” he continued, once the noise had died down, “but I hope that you can see the situation that lies before us now is not one that needs to be met with politics. It is one that needs to be met with clear and immediate action from all sides at once.”

“What representative Ankeftel suggests is ludicrous. You all heard it from the Goddess' mouth! The continent will be destroyed. There is no way to defend against it. And yet we all heard his suggestion of staying here on the continent.”

“It's frankly suicidal. What's worse, it shows a distinct lack of respect for the people of Lemorra. And it is those people, after all, whom we represent. They look to us for their security, their well-being. To flout their expectations of us is to let down not only them, but also ourselves.”

There was applause from more elves than Jeslyn had expected. But Delarin had always had a gift for public speaking. She glanced at the foot of the stairs leading to the podium, and noticed that Ankeftel was making his way towards it with murder in his step. The aide standing there looked rather shaken, but resolute. Fortunately for him, Delarin noticed Ankeftel's approach as well.

“Well, fellow elves, it appears that Ankeftel forgot something in his earlier speech. That amazes me, because it took him close to an hour to say everything he had to say.”

With that, Delarin bowed and walked down the steps, moving aside with mock-grace to let the older elf pass him. Then he, with his aide in tow, walked from the hall without looking back. It was an obvious insult, and Jeslyn half-suspected that Delarin had even planned for it.

Once Ankeftel had gained the podium, he did not let the elves forget that brazenness. He spent another hour practically frothing at the mouth about the root cause of such behaviour, and how it reflected badly upon the assembly at large. Jeslyn wondered if he realised the irony of the statement, but somehow she doubted it. She was sorely tempted to walk out herself, but she didn't want to become associated with the radicals. As more and more elves walked out, though, she decided that she would run the opposite risk if she stayed in the hall.

Since she was damned either way, she may as well go and get some fresh air and stop torturing herself with Ankeftel's hateful speech. She stood and headed towards the doors, hoping that by tomorrow passions would have cooled enough to actually get down to business and work on solving the crisis.