>>24573431
>"Where are the rest of you?" Bran asked Leaf, once.
>"Gone down into the earth," she answered. "Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us."
>She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well. It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.
It's more like the Children see themselves as part of the system they live, where man sees themselves as the master of it. The children had their time, and even had their moments of defiance when they broke the Arm of Dorne and fought the humans. I subscribe to the theory that the Others are either exiled or rebel spirits from the Weirwood who are most likely CotF. They also refuse to die with the world. I also like the implication of Giants and Cotf fighting.