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. 

This memory fragment came this afternoon, although I have had different variations of this memory previously.

We are all standing in line in front of a large glass box.  There are armed guards everywhere. Everyone is terrified. The person who looks to be in charge is surveying the crowd.  He looks like your typical movie villain evil professor with glasses, a shiny slightly bald head, and a clipboard. 

There is a makeshift command center in front of him connected to the glass box. The glass box is full of different colored balls.  The whole thing seems dream like but not a good dream, more like a nightmare.  I have a memory of sitting in my cube at my laptop and hearing the fire alarm go off,  and then instead of the typical announcement that we should evacuate building or that this was a fire alarm test, the voice announced that we should all go up to the top floor of our building where there is a large conference room.  After the announcement, we all stood up asking each other what was going on and then the doors opened and the armed guards walked in signaling everyone to get to the elevators. One of the talky people on the floor asked what was going on, and we saw the guard put his gun to the man's head and motioned him to elevator bank. After that, no one said anything and we silently walked towards the elevators with our heads down.

When we got to the floor, there were more armed guards to direct us where to go.  I looked at the guards, and they were wearing US Army gear so I didn't think we were being held hostage by some terrorist group but it was frightening.  Why hadn't management said anything?

The evil professor motioned to one of the guards, and he came over. Evil professor started saying something and the guard had to bend his head down to hear him because he was at least a foot taller than the professor. The guard nodded and walked over the first person in line.  He motioned for the first person to stand in front of the glass box.

Evil professor walked back to the makeshift command center and lifted up what looked like some kind of helmet.  He walked over to the man standing in front of the box and motioned for him to put it on. The helmet had all sorts of antennas all over it. Evil professor went back to the controls, and nodded to the guard. The guard said very loudly, "See if you can lift the balls up with your mind. The helmet will help you".  This is the first time I think I have heard the guard speak.

The first man in line looked into the box, and closed his eyes.  Poor guy. He lifted his hands up and they were trembling. He raised both hands up as if he was willing the balls to move, but nothing happened.  After what seemed like a few minutes, the guard said to stop and told the man to take the helmet off.  Another guard came up and directed the man to stand in the left corner of the room, where another guard was standing.

One by one each person in line put the helmet one, and no one could make the balls move.  Finally a woman put the helmet on and the balls started rolling around, and when that happened there was a loud collective gasp in the room.  The guard told her to stop and motioned over to stand by another guard in the center of the room. There was no one by that guard. The other people who had failed to move the balls were all standing together.

And so it went on and one.  Some people were able to make the balls move and some were not, and they were separated into groups of people who could move the balls and people who could not.

Finally it was my turn. I wondered vaguely what group I would be in when I was done.  As soon I stepped within one foot of the box, the balls started bouncing up and down. I stopped and watched them. Then I could hear little voices popping into my head.  The voices kept saying "Hello Brenda", which sort of freaked me because they knew my name.  Then a more powerful voice said he was the leader and said they were a civilization of nanobots, and that they weren't balls at all but they have were told by the evil professor to turn themselves into balls.

I heard the guard say keep moving forward, so I stepped closer to the glass box and the balls formed themselves into letters spelled out "Hello Brenda". I heard gasps behind me. Evil professor got up from his console took his clipboard and started making notes.

I put my hands on the glass box, and the nanobots spelled out "redrum, redrum", which was murder spelled backwards from the The Shining movie. The leaders of the nanobots told me they were being held prisoner. I turned and looked at the evil professor who was now standing three feet away from me and said to him, "They are sentient." Evil professor said "Yes".

The nanobot leader told me that some of them could escape if I would be their carriers. I asked him how, and he said they would come through the glass. I nodded and I felt them coming through the glass and something coming into my fingers.

Evil Professor said "Are you talking to them?" The nanobots leader pleaded with me not to tell the truth.  I took my hands off the glass box and turned to the evil professor and said "No. If I put the helmet would be able to talk to them? They knew my name. How did they know my name?". Evil professor stared and me and then wrote something down on this clipboard. He motioned over to one of the guards, and the guard told me to come with him and led me away to another part of the room. The guard stood with me, and I watched more and more of my fellow workers putting on the helmet and trying to make the nanobots move. 

The nanobot leader after awhile said to me in my mind, "Thank you. We will make a home inside you.  We can help you. We can repair your body. We can return your vision to what it was in your youth so you don’t have to wear contacts.  We can fix that pain in your knee from that skiing accident. We can do many things."

I could feel someone staring at me and I looks to my right and saw the evil professor staring at me. I wondered if he knew that the nanobots had escaped and were not inside me.  The nanobot leader, as if he could read my mind, said to me, "Don't worry about him.  They don't understand us and our species, but they are trying to.  They are looking for people like you, who can talk to us, but they are ignorant of our true capability."

"Are they murdering your kind?" I asked because of the redrum message. "They are testing us, and sometimes the tests do not work, and so we are murdered in the name of science and experimentation. We are their slaves."

"Are you my slave now?" I asked him. I didn't really want a slave population roaming through my body. "What are the nanobots getting out of being with me?"

"You will help us. You will help us free the rest of our kind." A chill ran over me. "How can I help you do that?" I said. "We will show you. You will be the liberator. It is your destiny.  That is why we can talk to you and why we recognized you."

If you are a long time reader of this blog or have stumbled upon it, let me give you some background of what I am currently posting. I have these flashes of memory not of this life that pop into my head on a daily basis. It usually happens when I am walking to and from work, and any other time when I am walking. I am not sure if these memories are from a past life, a half-remembered dream, or some fictional character who has popped into my head showing me a story that they want to see written down. Whatever the case may be, I've decided to start writing these memories down in this blog as a sort of a free write exercise, to get myself back into writing and to store these memories somewhere so they are out of my head.

I should note that not all of these memories are from the past. Some of them are from some strange future and sometimes they happen on different planets.

And they won't be complete stories either with a beginning, middle, and end. They will be memory fragments, dream fragments, like half-remembered songs. In other words, they may not make sense because they aren't suppose to make sense.