it’s difficult being friends with them, so I have tried not to meet them for the past… something years. But I knew a cute Human once. I thought I was in love. I married him. But every year he aged, and I did not. He became jealous of my beauty and regretful of his aging, dying state. My agelessness was a reminder of his humanity. We quarreled all the years we were married, and it ended badly. We were divorced.
I found myself still loving him for years after. And every once in a while, I would come by his house and watch him from a hiding place. He remarried a Human woman his own age and had children. He was so happy with her… and I was so angry with him. I had a broken heart for years. After all, I had spent thirty years with this Human. He couldn’t look past his jealousy, even for love. They are short lived creatures and their love is often short as well.”
“That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
“You know how you said I have those days when just breathing is hard?” She asked.
I nodded.
“When I start thinking about that marriage too hard, it will be one of those days.” She muttered, looking at the sky.
I then knew Caitria really loved me. Lately, she had finally opened up and begun telling me random things about her life and past that she had never before. Aside from, of course, the story she told me before of her sister, and how she had died and come back to life.
“So,” She said giddily, changing the subject. “How about you? Any past girlfriends?” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Of course.” I said, embarrassed.
“Care to elaborate?” She asked, clicking her nails on the ground.
“She was a Human girl also. It didn’t work out, though.” I was hoping she wouldn’t press the issue, but I should have known she would. She was Caitria after all.
She stared at me silently until I caved. “Fine. She broke up with me because I was far too short for her.” I crossed my arms indignantly.
She fell on her back howling, gasping for air.
I gave her a few minutes, drumming my own fingers on the ground.
After a minute, she finally sat up, shaking off the few giggles she had left, and wiping tears from her eyes. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at society.”
That got me to smile. “Who needs Humans? They don’t know what it’s like being us.”
I was feeling sicker by the day. My migraines were worsening, and I was getting even paler than I was in the first place. I was bed-ridden for a whole day; Castor was surprisingly worried about me.
But no one was more worried than Caitria. Whenever I saw her, I looked worse and worse. But most disturbing of all, there was a blackness creeping up my leg. I definitely had some sort of sickness, but I didn’t know what it was. I decided it was best not to alert Caitria. I didn’t want to ruin our time together.
“You shouldn’t have come today,” she said worriedly. “You look worse than ever.”
“I feel…” Suddenly, I didn’t feel very well at all. The blackness had been growing up my leg and throughout the rest of my body slowly, sapping my energy, giving me migraines, and perhaps, I thought, even killing me. And suddenly, the sickness shot up from my chest and enveloped my head, turning everything black, including the whites of my eyes. I collapsed on all-fours, panting.
Caitria bent down to my level, grabbing my shoulders and shaking them wildly. She seemed to be saying something, or shouting something, I thought it might be my name.
I awoke to the sound of crying sorowfully. No, more like hot, bitter tears, than crying. I could barely move or process what was happening, but I knew my Caitria was crying, and that was all that mattered to me. I looked her way blearily. I reached over to her and weakly put a hand on her cheek. Slowly, my hearing came into focus.
I was outside. Outside of the village and in the forest of trees surrounding it. Somehow, Caitria had gotten me out of the village without being noticed.
Caitria put her hand on top of mine and closed her eyes, and her tears really were hot as they rolled down her cheeks and onto my hand. Then, she opened her eyes and said, “God, this is all my fault. Those three years ago, when I asked you to help me, no questions asked, I used dark magic to take some of your blood and give it to some Elves who were dying of this same sickness. It had to do with Dark Magic infecting them, and I thought your Anima blood might purify them. It did. But my magic must have poisoned you!” She collapsed on my chest and wept all the harder, clenching my shirt in dismay.
I just wanted to tell her I didn’t care. She could have killed me, and I still would have been poisoned with her. Not with her magic, but with her. For some reason, she could have done anything to me and it wouldn’t have mattered. Ah, love.
I was fading fast, my hand went lank, and she grabbed it before it fell.
She stood there looking confused and terrified. She was wondering why this was happening to her again. Then, a calm came over her face. She was resolute. She was my Caitria again.
Her eyes looked a little sad, but almost relieved. “This is why I’m still here. I can fix you, and your wings, too. I…” she breathed in, her tears came slower now, and she tried to blink them away—to no avail. Her fingers trembled.
She sniffled sadly. “Before I met you, I had given up on myself and life for the longest time. I had become frustrated, bored, and I avoided people because I didn’t want to watch them die. But since I met you, I haven’t felt those things at all.” She smiled through her tears. “I… wanted to live. Ever since I turned three-hundred, I had been waiting for that happy, ignorant fun I used to feel from just being alive… I would have given anything to be like that again. But you reminded me I had never really changed. It was the things around me that made me so bitter. Thank you… I really wanted to stay alive now, because of you.”
She lifted her hand, leaning her forehead against mine. I saw darkness being poured into her raised hand. Darkness from all around. All at once, it occurred to me what she must be doing. With the last of my strength, I attempted to stop her, seizing her wrist and dragging it down. Expressionlessly, she calmly moved my hand away.
I could no longer stop her. I couldn’t even move. All around, I saw whispers of black tendrils twirling around her graceful fingers. She was taking life from all the trees around us, and giving it to me. Sound was enveloping us, and it seemed like time was speeding up as the tendrils did. I could feel my strength returning, and tears crawling down my own cheeks, because I could not stop her. Suddenly, I felt her whole body go limp on top of me. I slowly removed her from me, holding her lifeless body up.
She left me feeling like she did before she met me.
I wasn’t myself ever since.
“That’s the truth of what happened.” I found my eyes getting teary. Caitria was a woman so integrated into that it felt wrong to share her with anyone else. Even in conversation. That’s why I had never spoken of her before. She was the most personal part of my life. Even more than my scars”
Mr. Serious, usually stoic and unfeeling, couldn’t help but shed a few tears himself. His expression had not changed, but they had come unbidden to his eyes even when he tried to choke them back. “So the story of her burning down the forest and herself in a fit of insanity was not true?”
“No. The girl I loved is gone, and the only thing people remember her for is killing a forest that never grew back. Nobody knew who she really was. Can you believe it? She hadn’t done anything wrong; in fact, she was only trying to help the infected Elves, stop the disease that has been assaulting their numbers since. I would have… gone long ago if it weren’t for the fact that my memory is the only thing that preserves the truth of her. It’s strange, how the truth can get lost and played around with given enough time.”
Mr. Serious was dead-silent. He was feeling much empathy for me, I thought, which was a point in my favor for getting Regenerated. He was examining his wrists thoughtfully, and looking down-trodden and sad. “That’s really the truth of it?”
I leaned my head to the side, the wind blew, and I looked the way it was blowing. “She didn’t have to do anything for me. I would have died for her. She was my lover. I have not met anyone since who I have loved so completely. And, I just feel I never will again. She was like me; we were two of a kind. There have been passers-by, of course, but no one was…. I’m sorry I no longer believe in your God. But after so many years pass and all the bad things I think of outweigh the good, and my thoughts ever returning to Caitria… it just becomes too hard to believe. Why take her? There are so many bad people in the world, why would He let her die?”
He didn’t have an answer for me. He knew I couldn’t believe the way he did, so he saw no use in trying to tell me why God would let something like that happen. He would probably have said, ‘everything happens for a reason’, though. “She healed your wings?” He asked instead.
“Yes. I didn’t know her Dark Magic could save me. I previously thought it could only do evil things, and I associated Elves with those evil things until I met her. She had to take her own life and the lives of the trees around us to do it, but she could save me. She filled my body with it so I was then immune to Dark Magic. And…” I looked down, and then back at Mr. Serious. “Now I can use Dark Magic as well as Anima. She gave me so many gifts. My wings, Dark Magic, her