I have been waiting for a long time for something like this to happen.  Something that set my heart racing on a track so endlessly long I don’t think it’ll ever have the chance to stop and let me take a breath.  What’s that?  You don’t understand what I’m saying?  Oh… maybe I should start at the Beginning.  Yes, I’ll start at the Beginning.




I was tired of working on my uncle’s farm.  He was a lazy, fat old fart, and he had a voice so coarse that just the sound of it could kill off birds or large rodents.  He would sit on his behind at home all day while I was out in the fields, working the ground and preparing the harvest.

But that is another story.  Why?  Because I ran away.

It was bound to happen, you know.  I didn’t exactly hate him, but just the thought of my uncle made me gag, and I was tired of going around looking like some kind of idiot, gagging all day.  And besides, my head was filled with thoughts of the Elves.

That is what I would think of all day and at night before my eyes decided they were too tired to stay up another second and betray me, closing and sending the signal to my mind to shut off for the night, turning off my thoughts of the hauntingly beautiful Elves.

They were incredible.  Inconceivable.  Ludicrous.

But they weren’t.  They are real!  I know they are, even when everyone else tells me they aren’t, that even if they were real they died out centuries ago.  But I know that’s not possible.  I am so certain of that fact, I know it’s true because I have learned more about the Elves than sometimes I fancied they knew about themselves!  I knew that the only way for them to die was to be stabbed, or to die of a broken heart.  And I knew, I just knew that they were a race still thriving somewhere in this darkened world, protecting themselves with their brilliant inner light, laughing and feasting without a care in the world, without needing to fight us blind, careless humans anymore.  Yes, if anything, they were thriving more now than they had before, since none of them were being shipped off to battle.

I think the only reason the Old Ones say that the Elves have died out is because they’re afraid.  The Last War almost wiped out our race.  The Elves were dominating our species and weapons.  But they were kind, so kind!  I can’t understand why we fought them.




I have been traveling for several months now, and I’m finding it quite rewarding.  I enjoy seeing new people and new places, I even saw a bit of the ocean a while back.  I’d never seen it before then.  It scared me.  I’m in the Marshlands now, and it smells almost like rotting eggs, but I heard something the other day… I heard voices, what sounded like two people fighting.  Then there was a yell, and a splash, and I heard no other noise.  I want to know what happened.  No… I need to know what happened, for I am a curious fool.  But the Marshlands are dense with vegetation, and when the wind whips around as wildly as it had that day, there is no telling from which direction a sound came.  I have been searching for three days, this is the third night, for any sign of what happened.  Broken rushes, fallen reeds, footprints in the soft mud, but I have found nothing.  I think that if I don’t find anything tomorrow, I will move on.



......



The birds woke me today.  Their trilling is somewhat haunting to my ears in this freakish land of water and leaves that grasp at your ankles, trying to pull you under the dense, sucking mud.  Their voices echo off the nearby mountains, and through the dead, hollow trees, creating an eerie, poignant sound.  I decided to move on.

Around midday I came close to the edge of the Marshlands, to a stream that feeds into the mire, and I gladly waded into its cool, clean waters, enjoying the crisp feeling of the gently strolling creak against my hot, muddy skin.  And then I found him.  The sight of him set my heart racing on a track so endlessly long I don’t think I’ll ever have the chance to stop and take a breath.  Excitement and fear and pity all raced through my veins, pounding in my head and sending erratic thoughts through my mind.  I saw his serenely pointed ears and almost went into shock as my heart stopped just as suddenly as it had started racing.  It was a gruesome sight with the water dyed red around him, two arrows piercing his beautifully made Elven armor.

And suddenly I was afraid.

He was breathing, ever so slightly, and I didn’t know how to help him.

I had come all this way, almost as if I had been looking for this singular Elf, almost as if whatever gods there were had already plotted the path I was going to take, leading me as straight as a compass arrow to him.

And I didn’t know what to do.




I sat in the shallow water, not daring to move him, crying softly as I held his head in my hands, every once in the while thinking I had gained enough strength to pull the two, angry arrows out of his body, only to find that I was weak, too weak.

I told him I was sorry, though I doubt he could hear me.  I told him I was sorry that I couldn’t help him, I told him I was sorry that my race was so stupid as to go to war with his.  I told him I was sorry that I was too weak.

I talked to him until the sun began to set, casting strange colors across the blue sky, turning it red and pink and purple.  He seemed to be doing better, his breathing had grown stronger, and I finally thought I could do it, that I could help him, when he gave a brief, halting smile and spoke.

“I forgive you, brother.”

And his breathing stopped.

Four words.  Four words that should have changed my life forever, but it only took one.  That he called me brother.