"Well then! Now that John and lady Thayna are gone," a small voice said, "We've the whole ivory terrace to ourselves!"

Red curtains parted, revealing a small, squarish room of white, marbled walls; large, but perhaps not nearly big enough to fit a giantess. Inside, a raised stage took up the end of the room, and a massive board of metal was hung on the back. Chairs were arranged neatly around the room, but they were completely vacant. It was like a cross between a classroom and a theater, only without any attendees today.

From behind the stage, the petite form of a human girl came hopping in. With long, jet black hair and childlike eyes of a matching color, she was immediately recognizable as foreign to Farum. Her skin was a gentle tan, darker than most people in the city, but a shade fairer than the laborers who toil in the sun everyday. She wore an extremely loose one-piece dress of vivid white which was lined with a blue stripe along its rim, expanding like an umbrella whenever she decided to do a twirl. She would jump about uninhibited, and danced about the stage without her shoes.

The girl only stopped when a giant, slender hand thrust itself out from the side of the stage, grabbing her and lifting her off the ground. The hand eased the rest of the giantess's body through, and the prone form of Thalana popped itself out from the left of the stage, resting her massive chest on the stage and holding her head in her palm with her free arm. The stage only had enough space to accommodate her upper body, and it creaked under the strain of supporting the gigantic mage.

"We've only this room, my dear Ariette," Thalana said in a smooth voice, "Or have you already forgotten that Farum houses four mages?"

Ariette kicked her little legs in the air, flailing about excitedly at the merest stimulus. "Lady Thalana," Ariette squealed, "You could always teach me again! Your voice sounds so silky every time you admonish me for never listening, and those condescending choice of words...mmmm!"

"You attend my lectures for all the wrong reasons," Thalana sighed, "And where on earth did you acquire such vocabulary?"

"From you, of course!" Ariette exclaimed with a big, toothy grin.

"...Of course," Thalana said with another sigh, "Well, I suppose you have been with me for adequately long a period to have mimicked my speech."

Ariette was the daughter of a slave woman who had run from her masters to Farum, where concepts such as humans as possessions were a privilege reserved only for the mages. Her mother was already near death when she came, and the people of Farum found Ariette a convenient tribute for the mages, so she came into service in the ivory terrace at the tender age of nine. Thalana was the one to receive her, but abstained from taking magic from her for fear of ingraining the misconception of mages being evil in her at such a young age. Instead, she amused herself by teaching her what she knew, hoping to groom her into a suitably intellectual conversation partner. Five years later, Ariette learned how to speak and read, but studying had become a chore in Ariette's mind, only coming to see her magic in action, making Thalana's attempts at educating her fall only on deaf, bubbly ears.

Still, Thalana tries, so she put the swinging Ariette down onto the stage before her, and cleared her throat dramaticlaly. "Let's begin, shall we?" She said, "The subject for today's lesson is Farum itself. If you're to live here with any kind of permanency, then you'd best familiarize yourself with the country.

Thalana waved a hand, and the board at the back of the stage began smoldering up as thin streaks of flame raced across its surface, burning a rough outline of Farum's border. It was a large, flat chunk of the continent, shaped like a jagged oval dish with a large, conic tail to its south. If one were to imagine hard enough, it would almost appear to be like the four-point star represented on Farum's flag. Another wave of the hand added geographic details, with many hills dotting the east and a small mountain range ripping through the center. Small veins which represented rivers slithered down from the mountains, like a heart pumping blood into the land, giving life to the country of Farum.

"This is Farum," Thalana explained to Ariette, "As recorded by our best cartographers. It resides, for the most part, on even plains, disturbed only by the deformations of geological intrigues such as the small tectonic formation at the center of the country. Mountains, as the common folk would call it."

A snap of her fingers produced a small singed dot near the base of the mountain, with fiery letters captioned it as "Farum".

"This," Thalana said, pointing to the dot with her palm facing skyward, "Is where we are now. As Farum started off as a mining town, it makes sense that its capital would be situated near an area with a high concentration of mineral deposits."

"The people of Farum love digging holes!" Ariette remarked with a giggle.

"Impeccable observation," Thalana replied rather dryly, "But what the humans were after were rare metals like gold and platinum, which this mountain was found to be abundant in. They make for good materials in luxury items for humans and giantesses alike, but their true value lie in the creation of magical implements. Neither metal tarnishes easily under the effects of magic, and make for perfect surfaces to inscribe runes upon. So humans prize these as bargaining chips when dealing with their giant mistresses, where a mage would otherwise see them as not even worth bartering with. Humans were simply treated as morsels of magic to be consumed.”

Ariette looked thoughtful for a while, then said innocently, "Mages are always hungry aren't they?"

"Yes," Thalana said with a devilish grin, "We are."

Another wave of her hand produced more dots on the board. Most were clustered around the capital of Farum, but some were planted far away, near the border or within the hills.

"The population grows as time passes," Thalana continued, "And the humans began settling down in the surrounding land. Most are still beholden to my family, but a number of villages whom refuse tribute hide away from our reach. It is difficult, however, as Farum has few forests to speak of, and hunting for enough food for an entire village is no easy task."

"How does Farum city not starve, then?" Ariette asked rather bluntly, "I don't see any trees near here, either."

"Ah," Thalana said with a smile, "But a sprawling metropolis of wealth such as ours need not hunt. Merchants who fancy our wares would regularly bring food and cattle here to trade, ensuring that a constant flow of provisions come through our gates. To an excess at time, I might add, which only results in a broader market of commodities for us to conduct business with.”

Thalana placed a hand on the board, and its surface started to fizzle into a molten slog. Ripples of liquified stone and metal emanated from where she touched, engulfing the scorch marks she had used to represent Farum before into the sloshing ooze. The bubbling calmed down as the board began to flatten itself back into a fine, smooth sheet, and the surface cooled with a dying sizzle. Thalana had returned it to a blank slate.

Impressed, Ariette clapped her hands furiously together. It was always a treat to see Thalana’s alchemy up close, and it was one of the many reasons Ariette continued to come to Thalana for lessons.

“It is also worth noting,” Thalana said, "That Farum was originally a human settlement. It wasn't until some one hundred years ago that my family found it here. In fact, the land was deemed uninhabitable from the lack of arable land to cultivate; a sufficient yield could not be produced to feed a whole country of mages, so no nation felt this place important enough to migrate to."

Thalana wove her fingers through the air, placing a spell on the board again. The empty slate began shifting as large swathes of flame washed across its surface. Small embers remained, creating lifelike silhouettes of huts, farms and smiths. Ariette's face practically lit up as she watched the moving pictures dance before her.

"The land, however, was just abundant enough to support a small village of humans who had run from their home nation together. They weren't the first to settle in Farum, but they were the most successful as they found the uncharted deposit of rare metals Farum's wealth now stemmed from. Even when their crops wilted in the winter, they simply needed to sell their shipment of gold in the neighboring countries to afford them enough food to last the season. It was a good many decades before any mage would catch on to their little plan."

With a cutting motion, the embers Thalana projected transformed into a portrait of three tall, robed mages, each carrying her own staff.

"My family, the Farum family, caught wind of the illicit trafficking of what were then called 'mage metals', as only mages may legally possess them, and an unusually large volume of the commodity had been circulating around the country at the time. The Farums were a peacekeeping family in that period, and were sent to find the source of these precious metals."

"Their search led them to the mining village, whose villagers continued their work well into the night, making them easily spottable in the darkness. Their life without fear of being found had made them complacent, and the Farums marched into their homes unimpeded."

The fiery images changed again. This time, what was depicted were the burning roofs of houses, fleeing forms of little people running along the bottom of the board, and the giant feet which stepped on them, their small forms ending in a puff of flame as the silhouette of the feet pressed into them. It was hard to make out the graphic details of the scene, but Thalana knew that the Farum family came to the village that day as exterminators. They didn't accept surrender until at least half of them were dead.

“Quickly, the village fell into our control,” Thalana proceeded, leaving out the gory details for Ariette's sake, “And the three mages found the mines the humans used to excavate the mage metals. Their duty was to turn the village in, but they gave them a new, different ultimatum: serve them and be spared from the wrath of the home country, and create a new nation with the three of them ruling over the people. Without a choice, village ceded their freedom to the Farums, and renamed the land in honor of their new mistresses.”

With a final swish of her finger, Thalana extinguished all the fires on the board and blew the soot off in a single breath. Ariette hid her head within her dress as the cloud of black powder swept past her. She peeked out of her collar like a mole when she thought the coast was clear, and leapt back onto her feet. She let out a large, blatant yawn, knowing that Thalana always finished her lessons just after she cleaned the board one last time.

“And that's the short of how Farum came to be,” Thalana concluded, “I hope you've come to understand the country we currently reside in better.”

“What country?” Ariette said sleepily, rubbing the drowsiness out of her eyes. All her energy had been spent watching Thalana's little fire show, and only a small portion of it had been used to focus on listening.

Thalana sighed. She didn't know why she bothered with the girl, but she couldn't help but wonder if this was what having a daughter was like. She picked up the sleepy form of Ariette and ran a finger along her hair. She didn't usually think too much about the humans around her; was she getting too soft with Ariette? Maybe she just enjoyed sharing what she knew, regardless of whether her participant was listening.

Pulling her upper body through the opening on the side of the stage, Thalana squeezed back outside the little theater she used as her classroom, cradling Ariette close to her as she moved. “I'll conduct our next lesson another time,” Thayna whispered.