-Echo Side-
A little girl plays on a lush, green, gently sloping hillside, under a tall, flowering tree. Her hair is long and blonde, her eyes are bright, sparkling blue, and her skin is a sweet pink tone. Wildflowers bloom in this perfect field, and the little one enjoys the serenity of this clear, sunny morning, where the only sounds are the birds softly singing and then wind hissing gently through the tall grasses. She enjoys the cool from grass she sat on, and the warmth from the bright sun above. But her mother comes running, shouting at her, and scoops her up, carrying the crying child away. The child does not understand what the problem is; she likes it there, near the seemingly endless crack in the earth. She does not mind seeing the black, scorched lands across the chasm, for they are too far away for anything over there to hurt her. Yet her mother knows better; her mother knows to keep her far, far away from that awful Echo Side and the Chasm that protects them from it, and the dark-skinned monsters that live on the other side...
A little boy sits on the baked, cracked ground, enjoying the warmth that radiated up from it. Nearby, a lick of flame shot unexpectedly up out of a hole in the ground, but he was unperturbed. The black cloud cover above made it a perfect temperature, and it was so pleasantly dark! It didn't hurt his sensitive, silver eyes at all. His longish hair was silver, too, but his skin was a slate-grey shade. The melodic hissing of the beast hiding in its den nearby pleased the little boy's elongated ears, and he sighed, relaxing against the spiky, black, leafless tree's glassy trunk. Maybe later he would shake a fruit down... But his mother comes racing across the flat, black ground, shouting at her son, whom she then scoops up and carts off, scolding him all the way. He knows he should not play near the Chasm; terrible things are hiding down there, things that might grab a little boy and eat him up. Things with pale skin and little ears, and terrible high voices. Things from that terrifying Echo Side...
Across the vast continent, a deep crack runs along the Earth, a deep rift in the ground created by an ancient battle between these two races - Men and Elves. Each stays on their own side, not daring to go to the other side, for they would be slain the instant one of the others saw them...
