A king's tale of beauty
It is my doom and my joy to see beauty in everything, in things living and breathing, in things long gone by and perished into nothingness. Beauty in life, beauty in death.
I see the beauty of elves: glittering stars in a darkened world, bright where fear lingers. Never ending, always enduring. The beauty of my kin is a fateful one – bound to witness tragedy and despair, but never to perish.
I see the beauty of mankind, so easily destroyed, so short in days. They are like rare flowers growing on the soil beneath ancient trees. Tiny in their beginning, so easily treat upon, so easily demolished. They blossom in their youth, bright colours dazzle our elven eyes. We are drawn to them like flies to the flame. We burn when one day, so short after, they fall and decline. Their blossoms losing colour first, shrinking and shrivelling until they bend with old age. Still so young. And when they at last return to where they have come from, sighing their last breath, they leave nothing but emptiness on the spot where they once have been. For this is my fate that I see beauty even where it is no more.
Hatred once divided us, mistrust clouded our eyes. But none the less I see beauty even in dwarves, proud warriors carved from stone, iron flowing through their veins. They are like a rough but porous rock cut into form over ages. Glorious when finished, but weathering in time. Like statues they are slowly falling apart with age, they lose the power they once held. Shaken by the forces of their own kind, they crumble piece by piece until one day nothing is left but a memory of what once has been.
Only the elves linger. A constant gleam on the horizon. A light that flickers but never dies. We live. We endure. We see. And even the darkness left by dragon fire cannot blind me, my once seeing eye still remembers the imprint all beauty has left. Blind but seeing. Blind but remembering. For this is the fate of elves, that I see beauty where now only pain resides.
Why does it hurt so much? Because it was true. It is. It will be.