This is a little something I felt inspired to whip up between Chapters of "The Learning Curve" (Chapter 12 of which is currently a work in progress).
I normally don't get my inspiration to write fanfiction from support dialogue. But something from the Nowi/Vaike canon hit me in the feels, so I ran with it.
Time Moves Slowly
"Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. Yay, though I walk through the shadow of the Valley of Death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me."
Priests and congregants sung the funeral hymn. Nowi sobbed into Nah and Nah sobbed into Nowi as Vaike's body was lowered into the ground, mourning the passing of a beloved father and husband.
Father Brady, now a man in the twilight of his years, conducted the final rites. His father—a man who had once helped Nowi care for her pet bird and consoled her when it passed—was dead. His mother was too sickly to leave Ylisstol. So few from the generation of heroes were left to pay their respects. Ricken and Donnel were shriveled old men. Lissa walked with such a shake she looked as though a breeze might knock her over. Sumia, Cordelia, and Chrom were nothing short of ancient.
Nay, It was the generation that followed which came to honor a life well lived. But they too had grown so old. Inigo had lost his youthful lusts; Severa her moodiness, Kjelle her vitality, and Cynthia her exuberance. Owain no longer monologued like a japering mummer, and Yarne no longer jumped at every bump in the night. Time had dulled them. Time had dulled all of them. Time had dulled everyone.
Except for Nowi.
She sat watching strangers bury the man who had been her husband—still young and beautiful—every bit the girl she had been the day the Shepherds found a mischievous manakete and a jolly sellsword accosted in Plegia. (Thinking of Gregor made her heart hurt. "Gramps" had been the first of the veterans to die—old as he was—and a grim reminder that so would they all.)
Of course things had been different then. Nowi had been different then. Time hadn't completely ignored her; she HAD changed.
She had loved a man with all her being.
She had born a daughter and raised her to womanhood.
She had made a home.
She had been blessed with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
She had seen the love of her life pass his prime and lose his strength year by year; seen how in the end those great arms that had once carried the weight of the world could not even lift him out of bed. ("I use to be able to swing a 40 lbs. axe like it was made of paper!" elderly Vaike had cried the first time Nowi had brought his meal to him in their bedroom, because he could not make it to the kitchen. "Now look at me. I CAN'T WALK!")
She had lived a human's life in a human's span.
Nowi felt old. But in manakete years, she was still a child.
Her daughter Nah—Vaike's greatest gift to her, and the other love of her life—was only a halfblood of her legendary race. Already she had the form of a woman grown and in the prime of her life. Many a time Nowi had found herself explaining to awkward gawkers how Nah wasn't her mother; she was Nah's. Nowi's grandchildren already appeared older than her, and her great-grandchildren with only an eighth of manakete blood already looked to be her age.
Nowi would look like a teenager when their great-grandchildren were having great-grandchildren.
"…I hate it…" Nowi said to the only other person there who could possibly understand. "I don't WANT to live for ten-thousand years."
"Our race was old when the world was young. The lifetime of a manakete is vast. This is our blessing and our curse," Tiki shared in Nowi's grief. That great thief time had stolen her Robin from her, and would one day steal their Morgan. As it had stolen Marth and Caeda and countless others. "But it is better to have grieved for lost love then never to have loved at all. I will live for ten-thousand years knowing that I found my Robin, and that a great bloodline was born of our union. And I will be watching over the heirs of his body for generations to come. Vaike was a good man, and for him you shall do the same."
Nowi saw that her youngest grandchild already looked to be a splitting image of the man she had married; even bore his younger habits of speaking in the third person and misplacing weapons.
...She would know so many of them...
"Hey now! Don't start cryin', Nowi! I ain't goin' nowhere. I guarantee it!" Vaike had told her the night they were wed. "I vow never to leave you—cross my heart! Look, Nowi! I promised, didn't I?"
She knew that was a promise Vaike could never keep. She didn't care. As long as she was with him she would never be lonely; that was what she had told him. That was what she had told herself.
…Now he was gone…
"I would give a dragon's lifetime to live as he lived," Nowi had no more tears left to cry. She had cried enough for ten lifetimes. "…to know that so long as I draw breath, my love will be at my side for me to grow old with…"
"You don't mean that." Tiki would mourn her beloved Robin until the end of days. But she would never wish her divine lifespan away; the wonder to see where his family would be in two millennia or three or four, and tell them of their magnificent ancestor.
"I do," Nowi insisted. "Human lives are short; they whither away in the span of decades. Yet in this time they live so intensely. They love so completely. Like every moment counts. Its something we will never know."
"That is how you felt with Vaike?" Like every moment counts?"
Nowi sobbed and nodded.
"Then you have known it." Tiki told her plainly.
AUTHORS NOTE: I must admit, writing Awakening fics is starting to grow on me. My loyalty to the fandom will forever be rooted in FE7 and Mark and Co. will always be my favorite crew. But The Shepherds have earned my respect.