Rush

History: He was among the first of the elves to leave the comfort of the forest, and head out to the scrubland, and also among the first to befriend the cats there. Though he himself is not cat-blooded... it's a sure bet that he was responsible for the first of the not-entirely-elf children born to the group. How he got them that way is a secret he's kept, and perhaps only Kohl knows now that they Recognized. The tribe does know that they have something special about them, but this was done so long ago that it's going to be difficult to describe to Yasheel that he didn't breed elves with cats to get this effect. She won't believe him anyway.

As the tribe moved through the desert they met up with many others - wanderers, lost folk, some of them stayed with the group, others moved on. This took up nearly two thousand years. In that time, humans evolved, they spread like chaff on the wind. They were everywhere. But so were elves, and he knew this because he could sense them at the edges of his perception whenever they had some down time. He knew of the Sun Village, they didn't come from that place nor from their stock. He knew of the Plains elves, and definitely a few of those scooted around with them long enough to have kids that were darker and strangely adaptable. But it wasn't until the Palace was regained that they all knew there were more elves around this world than they anticipated or even could guess. It was always just that there were hundreds of humans for every single elf, if not thousands of them. That was so recent though, Rush's memory of that event was still fresh. His memories of his tribe and their journeys now were bittersweet.

The tribe became large enough to spread around and journey in groups. They could remain friendly to the humans - a bigger group of elves than a tribe of humans on the dunes would have caused a lot of trouble. They did have to come together every few hands of turns, just to make sure that everyone was okay. Then there was the one time, that it wasn't okay.

The flood came. It was nothing they could have possibly anticipated. They didn't know about the storms in the mountains, how could they? Even if they had great birds like those reclusive elves living near the coast, you couldn't see the storm over the horizon. But even something as far away as this storm affected them. At their most prized gathering, when they would share tales of hunts and trade goods from distant lands, when they would occasionally find romance or even Recognition among their number... The entire area they had used for over two hundred turns, vanished in an instant. A wall of mud and stone, water foam and brush, whole trees, whole log homes from the human camps on the hills... Everything just blasted straight through their gathering.

Under the packed sand, far below, they also couldn't know that there were caverns. They knew of the caves, from the occasional troll encounter. But these weren't even the troll caverns - they were natural areas that hadn't been seen nor touched in the millions of years they'd been carved out... Now they could be seen. The whole area collapsed, and precious few of the Dune Tribe managed to get out without injury. In all, Rush considered about half their tribe had perished outright, and at least half the rest had been swept so far away that they would be on their own for the long term.

Those on the far side sent urgent messages - they would be okay, they would continue. As his group would. Neither of them would ever be the same, nor would they ever meet up again. His group had to deal with a very young child in the form of Sumac, and caring for him was the most important thing on all of their minds, not just his parents. But they did stabilize, they did find shelters and begin rebuilding their stock of food, plant seeds, tools and weapons. They learned that the humans were equally impacted by this massive flood, and eventually heard of their stories about it - they knew that it must have been terrible, because they found both human and elf remains among the rubble.

Now though, now they had found a new place. Brook, bless her, was one of his prized 'students' at one point, and she led them not just with where the water was fresh - she led them with her keen mind, until they were close enough to communicate with even without her - or his own - long range sending. Bald Mountain, a good place, reasonably far from their desert home, but at that point they were done wandering. Time to settle.

With time and security, the oddest things might happen. Like Kohl asking to see his latest plant collection and suddenly knowing his name. He hadn't felt Recognition for a long time. It was good. And like he always did, Rush took it in stride.