A memory from the past life with the Elf Man.

I am dying, wasting away. I am betraying every elfin law I know but letting myself die this way, but I do not care. Some part of me tells me there will be karma to pay for countless lifetimes, but even that dire pronouncement elicits no response.

I didn’t think I would ever hurt this way, feel this damaged, this broken. I feel like part of my soul was ripped in half, stolen so brutally, that time itself will never heal the scar. The scar will be open and bleeding, and part of my soul will forever be leaking away drop by drop through the centuries.

I sit in our lovely house, looking out the window at the sea. The beautiful wide sea, with all its power and immensity. I keep thinking that he will come back to me. That what I saw was a nightmare and I will wake up soon, and my beloved elf man will be here next to me nuzzling my neck the way he does so every waking morning of our life.

But I do not wake up because I do not sleep. I cannot sleep. When I sleep, the nightmares come. The moments I last saw you come back in all its cruelty, and I wake up screaming and crying. I cannot relive, will not relive those moments ever again, so I stopped sleeping.  I stopped eating as well because eating reminds me of you. Being out in the garden and working reminds me of you. Everything reminds me of you. But sitting at at the window staring out at the sea does not remind me of you, even though I know I have often sat here waiting for you to come home.

The plant devas come and plead with me to take care of the plants in the garden. They saw what happened as well, so they know my pain. They tell me that I can go on, that I can live again, and that they will help me find my joy again. I smile at them but I say nothing. They are persistent.  They come every day, and talk to me, plead their case.  And every day I smile and listen to them, and at the end, I say nothing.  Sometimes I fear they will find other elves to come and talk to me, but there are no other elves left.  There are very few of us left in this world now. And the ones that are left, have gone far underground or have made themselves as small as birds that one cannot even see them.  A few have gone to live with the humans vowing to adapt themselves to that world.

I keep asking myself why didn’t either of us see this situation coming. We had always been able to see our future so we could stay ahead of it.  We wouldn’t have lived this long without staying steps ahead of the future. Where did we go wrong? You once told me a long time ago before we started down this path, that we would only be able run for so long and that the future and time will catch up with us. But even you weren’t sure when that time would come, and if it would come at all.

Did you know that time was catching up with us and not tell me? Because if you did know, then it was cruel of you not to tell me. Did you think it would spare me?  Could not you foresee my future and how I would feel? That by not telling me, you would condemn me to to this ever spinning vortex of pain. By not telling me you would banish me to a world where feelings of hatred and misery would intertwine within me and solidify as one feeling quite indistinguishable from each other. And that feeling would do its best to try and extinguish any love that I have for you. And that I would spend what is left of my life protecting the love I have for you from the misery/hate I have for you.

And that in the end, I would long for death, wish for death even more than I ever longed for you, so I could protect the love that I have for you in my heart.

And it is our love which is keeping me alive right now. Because in the end at the final end of my life, our love wants to win, wants to stay in my heart, and banish all the hatred and misery away. So in my final moments, I will not see your final moments with me but the first moment I knew I loved you and I knew that you loved me. Because this is the memory that our love wants me take into eternity.

Dedicated to the Elf Man, who followed the elves that led him to my blog once so long ago. This is what I see of our past life, our one relatively speaking short happy and contented life together.

We lived by the sea in a small cottage on the shore away from hustle and bustle of the capital. We were happy together you and I. We were neither very rich nor very poor, for all our needs were met. You went out every morning in your boat, and brought food for us to eat.  Strange food sometimes, gifts that the Mer people your friends had given you to bring to shore. I had a vegetable garden in the back, and with help from the plant devas our garden gave us more than enough food to eat.

Our cottage was filled with remnants of our old lives which neither of us could quite let go. The fancy furniture from both our parents, the luxurious linens and clothes that we brought with us from the capital. To an outsider who did not know us, we looked like any poor old elf couple eking a simple living by the sea as we wore the simple clothes befitting our current stature.

To those who did know us, whom I believed despised us because turned our backs on everything we knew, we were that rebellious couple with so much promise. You were the most brilliant wizard in our class, and could have had your pick of serving any kingdom as a spiritual leader. The head of our school said your powers were unlimited. There was only one other person who was probably your equal, and that was me.  I could have married a king or served as spiritual leader to any kingdom, which would have my parents very happy.

We might have even been able to marry each other, and served any number of kingdoms if we wanted to, for together we were that powerful and wanted. But that was not what we wanted. Not after what we had seen what was to come, what was to happen to our land and to our people.

And so we ran away, away from responsibility, away from our families, for a chance to experience the happiness we knew we would never have had we stayed. We had our many, many years together and we were happy, but such happiness does not come without a price. To keep our identities a secret, we vowed to never have children for a child would have seemed out of place in our disguise as an older couple. How I longed for children in those days, to see a miniature version of you or me or a mixture of both of us scampering about our little cottage.

But the war that ravaged our land which we had been able to escape finally reached us after all, no matter how many times we moved to different shores. I sometimes think I can see the soldiers dragging you away, but those memories are still so very painful even now that some part of me blocks them away unwilling to let me experience the horrors of that day.

And all I am left with is the very happy memories of us and our very many cottages by the sea. And the gratitude that thousands of years later, you were able to find me, that some kind elves led you to me, to remind me our stolen happiness.