Role

Chapter 7

Entertainment. Smiling, enjoying, laughing, grinning. Each emotion brought
out not by immediate reality, but by a farce itself. When acting, Erelia was
able to put on any face she wanted, create any situation she wanted and place
the emotion she so desired into her audience. She had started acting small
bits and plays out when her parents made their annual stop at the merchant
camp-site. Families, elders, children, races of all kinds made their
temporary homes here, making a versatile crowd with many appreciations and
pleasures. She noticed it first when she played with younger children. If you
spoke to them in straight strict tones, as their parents did, with your eyes
peering blankly at them and no emotion present in any facial expression, they
responded in kind. These children adapted to the current thing being express
AT them. Smiling and laughing, Erelia had taken pleasure in telling them
fictional stories of hilarity that occurred with her family while traveling.
These stories included soiled pants, rainy skies, lost clothing, tripping,
scuffling, and the children's favorite: flatulence. When happy, she noted,
the children reacted quickly and wittily, attempting themselves to bring
humor to the group's conversation. When scolded, they pouted and sulked,
nothing coming of it except sloth-like motion and sadness-And what a waste!
Why not, she wondered, joke at a child if they made a mistake, to stimulate
their ever-growing mind into a wonder of witty thoughts. These small stories
slowly grew as she told them, eventually becoming tales of large proportion,
taking hours to tell. As the stories grew, so did the crowd. As the crowd
grew, so did the roar of laughter. She stood before the crowd, looking at all
of these people gazing towards her grinning widly, "Why can kings not rule
with laughter, if it is so possessive and contagious?" she questioned in her
head. Comedy was not just enjoyment, she began to think, it was powerful. It
had the ability to change emotion, change action, change outlook, and change
people.