The Vetti

The world distinguishes between the roshi — the animals of the world, wild or domesticated — and the Vetti, the sentient peoples, understood as the keepers of the roshi. The Vetti are eight peoples of several lineages, most of them with elven blood. They are people, not pets: nobody keeps a Vetti. A member's Vetti is a child in their care — the child of two old friends, fetched from the Wards' House — who lives with them at home and grows up there; the keepers of the Hollow's places are Vetti too (the people of the Hollow).

Growing up

A child grows by the time spent with them in the world, and by the months of membership, never by a trick: an infant, a young child, a child, an adolescent, an adult. Each stage opens what they can do — an infant is held; a young child plays, feeds and waters; a child carries and is trusted with the tin, and the first egg comes; an adolescent helps with the breeding and may keep a stall; an adult runs the whole Plot, and is asked the Calling. At home there is a sheet (hearts, ten stats, the temper on four axes), talk, praise, a scold, a head pat, a nap, an outfit, a gift, and the week's schedule; once every few evenings the child brings something up of their own (tales).

The register

The formal species names are Old Ljosalfian adaptations of each people's own name; the Ljosalfi are the dominant culture and their language is the world's lingua franca, so the common names are theirs. Formal name, common name, what they call themselves:

• Ljosalfi — high elves — Elf (High Elf beside the Dokalfi). The dominant culture; they chose "High Elf" themselves.
• Dokalfi — dark elves — Av (Tak Av beside the Ljosalfi). The Ljosalfi's sister species, parted some fifty thousand years ago; nocturnal, with pale purplish skin that is dark beside theirs.
• Trovi — orcs — Trov.
• Dverfi — dwarves — Dverf. Of the semi-elven, proto-Eastern-Elf line.
• Vatli — wood-folk — Vatal. Of the semi-elven, proto-Eastern-Elf line.
• Nissi — tinkers — Nix. Of the semi-elven, proto-Eastern-Elf line; "tinkers" is the High Elves' word.
• Lindri — lizard-folk — Linder.
• Kobbi — cat-folk — Kov.

Elves and semi-elves

An ancestral elven population gave the elf-proper species — the Ljosalfi and the Dokalfi — and the proto-Eastern-Elf branch: the Dverfi, the Vatli and the Nissi. Those three are elves to the scholars, but their bodies went their own way and the street does not call them "proper elves": semi-elves, in common usage, whatever the classification says. The record does not say how the three branched from one another, and it does not give the Lindri's or the Kobbi's lineage.

The names, three ways

A people's own name (Elf, Av, Trov, Dverf, Vatal, Nix, Linder, Kov); the formal name scholars gave it in the Ljosalfian register (Ljosalfi, Dokalfi, Trovi, Dverfi, Vatli, Nissi, Lindri, Kobbi — two of them, Vatli and Lindri, by a regular old sound change); and the common name everybody uses. Which one a speaker reaches for says something about the speaker.

See also

Roshi · the Hollow