“The world is huge,” muttered the witcher. “We can find room. There’s enough space.”

“The world is huge,” repeated the elf. “That’s true, human. But you have changed this world. At first, you used force to change it. You treated it as you treat anything that falls into your hands. Now it looks as if the world has started to fit in with you. It’s given way to you. It’s given in.”

Geralt didn’t reply.

“Torque spoke the truth,” continued Filavandrel. “Yes, we are starving. Yes, we are threatened with annihilation. The sun shines differently, the air is different, water is not as it used to be. The things we used to eat, made use of, are dying, diminishing, deteriorating. We never cultivated the land. Unlike you humans, we never tore at it with hoes and ploughs. To you, the earth pays a bloody tribute. It bestowed gifts on us. You tear the earth’s treasures from it by force. For us, the earth gave birth and blossomed because it loved us. Well, no love lasts forever. But we still want to survive.”

“Instead of stealing grain, you can buy it. As much as you need. You still have a great many things that humans consider valuable. You can trade.”

Filavandrel smiled contemptuously. “With you? Never.”

Geralt frowned, breaking up the dried blood on his cheek. “The devil with you, then, and your arrogance and contempt. By refusing to cohabit, you’re condemning yourselves to annihilation. To cohabit, to come to an understanding, that’s your only chance.”

Filavandrel leaned forward, his eyes blazing.

“Cohabit on your terms?” he asked in a changed, yet still calm, voice. “Acknowledging your sovereignty? Losing our identity? Cohabit as what? Slaves? Pariahs? Cohabit with you from beyond the walls you’ve built to fence yourselves away in towns? Cohabit with your women and hang for it? Or look on at what half-blood children must live with? Why are you avoiding my eyes, strange human? How do you find cohabiting with neighbors from whom, after all, you do differ somewhat?”

“I manage.” The witcher looked him straight in the eyes. “I manage because I have to. Because I’ve no other way out. Because I’ve overcome the vanity and pride of being different. I’ve understood that they are a pitiful defense against being different. Because I’ve understood that the sun shines differently when something changes, but I’m not the axis of those changes. The sun shines differently, but it will continue to shine, and jumping at it with a hoe isn’t going to do anything. We’ve got to accept facts, elf. That’s what we’ve got to learn.”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” With his wrist, Filavandrel wiped away the sweat above his white brows. “Is that what you want to impose on others? The conviction that your time has come, your human era and age, and that what you’re doing to other races is as natural as the rising and the setting of the sun? That everybody has to come to terms with it, to accept it? And you accuse me of vanity? And what are the views you’re proclaiming? Why don’t you humans finally realize that your domination of the world is as natural and repellant as lice multiplying in a sheepskin coat? You could propose we cohabit with lice and get the same reaction—and I’d listen to the lice as attentively if they, in return for our acknowledgment of their supremacy, were to agree to allow common use of the coat.”