I miss her terribly, you know…
My family was appalled that I would bind myself to a human. That I would inflict such heartbreak on myself. As an immortal, humans make wonderful friends. Perhaps dalliances. But never, ever a mate.
She tried to get me to forget her. But how could I when she broke down in tears at the thought? How could I…
Sixty-five years. That was all we had. She was quietly horrified as her age leeched her hair, and bowed her back. I refused to let her speak of it. She was lovely even as she aged. And our children looked so like her; she refused to admit it because she was looking for me in them… while I was looking for her.
The true horror that I never considered was watching them come to their ends. Telerin, our eldest, succumbed to a lung sickness. I held him as his aged, fevered body gave out. Maferon died before his older brother; a war rose up… his remains returned from service with honor. His mother’s grief at his death sped along her own. And then there was Cabrelath, our baby girl… saying goodbye to her, as her husband and their wife, all of their children and grandchildren, held onto her and me… I understood it then. The error I had been warned of… the tragedy of humanity.
It was a very long time before I could bear to speak to my family again. But my grandchildren kept in contact with me. They knew I was grieving, and that elven grief can stretch for decades. They changed from small version of my children to adults with a trace of elven grace and bearing.
And then they all wanted me to meet infants. I tried… I tried not to let them… but the first little fist around my finger and the first burbling little face with cornflower blue eyes… her eyes…
You see, elves in general misunderstand something of humanity. They assume because humans are immortal, that they are fleeting and forgotten all too soon. I however have learned that this is not the case. Humans do pass on in time. Their bodies wither and die, or circumstance cuts their time short… but they are not gone.
When I held my great-grandson, Seron, for the first time, and he gripped my finger, smiling with toothless delight, eyes sparkling just as his great-grandmother’s had when I took her dancing in the forest by moonlight… I realized that it is not elves who have defeated death… but humanity.
For there she was… there they all were. My wife. My children. My grandchildren. They are still all here. They return in interesting ways. In the slope of someone’s shoulders. In the pitch of a laugh. In the preference of salty over sweet. In the bronzing of what appeared to be black hair when the sun kisses it. In the sparkle of those blue eyes that still emerge from time to time.
They come to visit me again and again. And I wait for them. My beloved family remembers me, they know I’m very old and have suffered what they call much “loss”. Humans are so self-deprecating; they don’t even understand their own magic.
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