Well, I guess this was inevitable…with happiness and joy returning to all the lands, they would also return to the Evergreen Forest, which is part of all the lands (even if a rather arboreal part). And in this sort of setting, happiness and joy is connected to birdsong…no fantasy author could describe happiness and joy without that ingredient, at least not in scenes taking place outside of urban areas.*
Our heroes’ triumph has brought happiness and joy back to the world, happiness and joy have brought back birdsong to the Evergreen Forest and birdsong has brought…well, uh…somehow K’ip doesn’t seem exactly filled with happiness and joy. >_> I guess there is something like a life-time tolerance threshold for birdsong, which most people will never get near to…but inhabitants of the Evergreen Forest tend to hit sometime around age six, due to overexposure. And the feline inhabitants of the Evergreen Forest are even worse off, due to their keen ears.
Speaking of K’ip’s ears, Si’ri is pointing out an authentic mistake on my part…when I sketched this scene, I automatically placed K’ip’s hands over the spot where a human character’s ears would be placed. Only when I started inking did I realize that K’ip’s ears are actually elsewhere…and quite obviously so, I mean, I drew them there myself. >_> Up to that point, I have always wondered how artists manage to make such obvious mistakes concerning anthropomorphic characters. Now I know how easy that is…and for that reason, I decided to not correct the mistake at the inking stage, and instead left it in there for Si’ri to point out.
And speaking of K’ip’s ears some more…could there really be a better demonstration of how keen an Eni’lef’s hearing is than the fact that K’ip can hear how stupid the birds look? o_O; K’ip’s hearing is so keen that it transcends the borders between the individual senses. I wonder how many of his senses are taking part in tasting the bitterness of regret at having contributed to bringing birdsong back to the Evergreen Forest. I hope it’s not more than two or three…
More on Monday.
* And most fantasy authors seem to be biased against urban areas, anyway, and are thus unlikely to even want to set scenes of happiness and joy in such a locale.
There’s no happiness and joy in (medieval) fantasy urban scenes because they weren’t places of happiness and joy. They were places of squalor and terrible jobs/working conditions. The death rate outpaced the birth rate but managed to maintain a steady population thanks to migrants from the country to the city.
It wasn’t until they figured out real sewage systems and enacted labor laws that happiness and joy existed in urban scenes (which at that point takes us out of medieval fantasy and into steampunk/diesel punk territory).
Well, that’s true, but only to a certain extent. Living conditions in medieval cities were terrible, compared to what we are used to. But, as you pointed out yourself, there still was a constant stream of migration from the countryside to the cities, which proves that many rural dwellers at least thought that they had a better shot at joy and happiness there, compared to living conditions in the countryside – which alone puts the lie to J.R.R. Tolkien et al.’s picture of an idyllic bucolic existence in pre-industrial times.
To mock a f***ingbird.
Anatomically easier and less illegal than the other way round. XD