#jamais vu

Primarily filler because I am needed for the days I planned to edit and post the chapters. But I hope ya'll like. Jamais Vu- https://archiveofourown.org/works/46776307/chapters/237562626

Note: This piece contains soft hypnotic language and may feel trance-like.Read only if you’re comfortable, and proceed at your own pace.

✦ ᛉ ᚨ ᚷ ᛟ ✦

Repeat a word long enough and it dissolves.

Sound remains. Rhythm remains.

Meaning leaves first.

That’s usually when things start to work.

People are born and die across Golarion every hour of the day. But now having access to a priest to keep the curse at bay I find there's more weight to it now. There's a reason many elves don't live among shorter lived races much. Not to the extent that the forlorn do. As time goes on, I am reminded of it often. The imbalance of having a lifespan that can be measured by centuries versus those who sometimes live less than two decades.

I was reminded of it again when I visited a old graveyard in a distant town. How little details of my old friend were captured on her weathered tombstone. But I remember them, all those details. The things time slowly whittles away from the world. The sound of her voice, the way she discussed her favorite literature. How we would argue over our favorite romance books (How much the vampire could truly redeem himself to his polycule was a legendary disagreement.). Or when she'd sneak away from work and we would talk behind the local bakery. I remember more. Like her brown hair and eyes, her thick framed eyeglasses. I had known her for a time, Since she was a teenager. Since I had met her years had passed. Scarcely any time for an elf. In our last letters we sent, she had gotten married, had a child, and she told me that she was studying plants. She was also a skilled shaman.

We had drifted apart, but even before I commanded the crusade I've been a wandering bard. From place to place I roamed. So when I left her town I thought little of when I'd return. Everything would continue as it always had and one day, i knew I'd return.

Almost a decade after we had last spoken, I returned to her town, expecting to see her a little older, perhaps with her second child. Humans age much faster than elves, so a second child seemed entirely reasonable for almost a decade passed. But she was less than a century old so I was not worried when I could not find her right away. I asked her nearest neighbors. She always had large celebrations on her birthday and would invite them. I was certain they would know where her home was now. Perhaps she had moved up in the world, I reasoned. Humans moved often.

The neighbors were an elderly couple. Their faces wrinkled when I asked where she had moved to. Very gently and kindly, they told me where her body had been laid for its eternal rest.

What a simple thing! I thought when I stood over her grave. An engraved slab of rock that bore her name and the years she lived. No details on how she had passed from this life. Just that she had left her husband and two year old son behind. It held nothing of what made her so memorable.

Decades have passed. Her gravestone becomes more weathered every time I see it. I always leave a handful of herbs in the offering bowl. I heard her son has grandchildren of his own now- I tell her grave whatever news I have heard. I also remind the grave I enjoyed the time we had.

She was one of the first shorter-lived souls I befriended. It is a blessing and a curse, a gift and a knife to the heart to have befriended and lost so many friends and loved ones. As the years pass on, kin I meet tell me they can see the sorrow weighing me down. The melancholy. They call me forlorn, tell me it's written in how much liqour I drink, how somber I become when I don't think I'm being watched. How scarred I am.

But looking over these memories I have, I don't think I could make another choice. It's painful, it's sharp and rough. But forlorn I am and forlorn I will remain.

HDB blackout: non catastrophic edition