The Place
The Two Shore is a quiet settlement of a hundred and odd souls that keeps the border where the elf-wood ends and the human town of Millhaven begins, and the border is a line of white birch and grey stone that no one is allowed to cross without a word. The shore runs 12 km along the bend of the river Lys, and the bend is where the water goes still and green, and the stillness is the shore's only clock. On the wood side the ground is dark brown loam and the loam smells of pine and of the moss that climbs the roots in a green so deep it reads as black at dusk. On the town side the ground is tan silt and the silt is where the grain is stood up in rows that the wind lays flat and the farmers stand up again. The middle of the bend is a silt bar of ochre sand that dries to a pale gold in the high summer, and the gold is where the two peoples meet to trade and to argue. The sky over the bend is the same sky on both sides, and the same sky is the only thing the two oaths do not argue about. The air smells of woodsmoke and of the bread that the town bakes in the morning, and the smell is the shore's way of saying that the day is beginning. This is the place where the middle is kept, and the keeping is the only honest work the shore does.
How They Live
The Half-Elfs build their chambers of wood and stone along the white line, the wood taken from the elf side and the stone from the town side, and no house is built from one side alone. The houses stand 4 m to the eaves and the eaves are where the thatch is laid in two colors, a grey thatch and a straw thatch, and the two thatches are the house's way of saying it belongs to both. Food is the bend itself: the grain that the silt grows, the wood and the small game that the loam keeps, and the fish that the still water of the Lys lets go only once a season. Water is drawn from the shore's springs, which come up through the silt bar in three places, and the springs are tended by the Middle-Keepers like a garden that is allowed to grow wild. Light is the woodsmoke by night and the green of the water by day, and in the cold months the hearths are fed with pine from the elf side and the smoke is the shore's way of keeping the warmth. The defense is the border itself, because a stranger who steps onto the line is already in the path of the word, and the word is the alarm and the welcome and the sentence. The day is measured by the two tides of the market, the morning tide when the town brings grain and the evening tide when the wood brings bark and resin, and the two tides are the calendar the two oaths need. The rite of the shore is the crossing word: any stranger, of either side, who wishes to pass must speak the word of welcome at the birch line and be answered by a voice from the other side, and the answering is the only gate the shore has.
People
Home of the Half-Elf, whose holds are counted by the white line, and the line keeps a hundred and odd souls in it, families of the wood and families of the town who have married across and stayed in the middle. The Middle-Keepers are chosen by the elders for the patience to hold two oaths at once, and the keeping is the only rank the shore recognizes, above the traders and the farmers and the two mayors who are not allowed to be in the same room on market day. No one is welcome here who would make the line mean one side only, and the not-being-welcome is the shore's only law. A human trader from Millhaven calls the Two Shore the honest half-kilometer, and the calling is his only joke, because the rest of the road is all argument. The half-elves keep their own silence in the chambers that face the wood, and the silence is where the old oaths are kept in their original words.
In Stories
The place where the middle is the only honest thing, and the thing is the two oaths, and the oaths are the word, and the word is the end. It is on the silt bar of the Two Shore that the six met the first human who believed them, and the believing cost the human the last of his grain and gained him a name the shore still speaks. The word of welcome has been answered at the birch line ever since, and the answering is the shore's way of keeping the promise.