"No," (Patreon)
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I thought, still using Elfmind. "You won't need a scalpel, just your mind."
"Well that ain't no fun," Burnside grumbled. "My old Stabbin' teacher from back in the Antglade used to always say, 'A sharp wit is no mach for a sharp blade.' He said that all the time, right up until I stabbed him to death. Made a nice necklace out of his jawbone. Reckon I still have it, if you wanna see."
"Use Elfmind!" I thought at her irritably.
"Fine," she mentally pouted. "What do you wanna test out?"
"I need to know if the trees can hear Elfmind."
"Don't it tell in that book o' forest magick that Ash wrote?"
"I don't think so," I responded. "I flipped through it, and - wait. How do you know about that?"
"Ash told me. I did mention that we was collaboratin' for a while. Did you forget? Do you still have the book?"
"Uh, Well... Um. Go back to humming," I instructed.
Burnside covered her ears and started nodding her head as she hummed an incoherent tune.
I turned and stepped a short distance away, then fished the aforementioned book out of my Elfintory. Right next to it I also found Ash's How to Be Unseelie and Look Good Doing It. I could have sworn I got rid of that. What was it doing still in my Elfintory? Earlier I had refused to look at it on principle, but on second thought it might be worth thumbing through, just to get a better idea of the Unseelie mindset. It would be useful to know the most likely ways my Unseelie "allies" would betray me. I tucked the small booklet back into Elfintory to peruse later.
I quickly skimmed through Ash's treatise on the Voice of the Forest. Unfortunately, it didn't give any conclusive answers on the subject of trees using or comprehending Elfmind. The omission could mean the trees were deaf to it, or the entire subject could have been simply left out. Ash did say that he hadn't put all of his secrets in there.
At this point I decided there was only one thing to do. I walked to the edge of the circle and thought "Hey, can you hear this?" directly at the surrounding woods.
Several minutes of uncomfortable silence passed as I repeated the message.
"What are you doing?" the trees finally asked.
"Trying to find out if you can pick up Elfmind," I answered aloud.
"What's Elfmind?" they rustled back.
"Never mind."
Now that I had an answer to that question, it was time to find out if Elfshot could affect elves.
"Can you help me with something else?" I mentally called out to Burnside as I readied my bow.
"What is it now?" she sighed, as she took her hands away from her ears and began to turn around. "Woah! Hold on! There's no need to do nothin' rash! Let's talk this over! I can change, I swear I can!"