By
Elendil Star-Lover
Memories are a good thing, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. And time races, and we struggle to catch up, but we can't, so we have to use the time we are given to our advantage, before it disappears beyond the horizon, out of our grasp, for all eternity.
They say Faeries are immortal.
This is untrue. Nothing is immortal, nothing is eternal. Not even a manifestation of an element.
But Faeries don't die as soon as their fist lifetime is over, nor are they truly reincarnated. When a Faerie's first lifetime is over, she returns to the gardens of Fyora's Tower and sits beneath a special kind of flower, and is then absorbed into it.
While the Faerie is inside the flower, her body is rejuvenated and transformed into another kind of Faerie. A Faerie only truly dies once it as been through all basic forms, earth, darkness, fire, water, air, and snow.
Thus, a Faerie has four lives in which to live.
But the catch is that they forget everything from their past life. Loved ones become strangers, familiar places become new adventures.
In this they are given a fresh start. The burdens of a lifetime that lasts almost thousands of years are forgotten, replaced by fresh newness.
This is the only way Faeries can live so long without crushing their minds and souls with all that they have seen, heard, and done throughout the years.
Unfortunately, Neopets are not so lucky. All that they have done, all that they will ever do, they will have to live with while in this world. It is the way of nature.
But some would give so much to be able to revive like the Faeries.
He waits on the shores of the Mystery Island, waiting for her. She doesn't look like she had all those years ago. Her skin has faired, her eyes and reddened. Her hair has a little more purple in it than it once had and she had grown a set of fangs.
She works for Jhudora now. Faeries know not who their mothers are and are sent to trainers in order to learn to do specific tasks. It is just as well.
She has been reasonably lucky, he supposes. Sure, Jhudora is mean and cruel and gives her impossible tasks, but she wass given a royal thrown for the future. It could have been much, much worse, she could have been banished to the summits of Terror Mountain to work under the Negg Faerie.
The heart of gold she had had before would make it easy for her to improve the Dark Faeries from malevolent witches to creatures of dark mystery, once Jhudora's rain was over.
But that would be in a very, very long time. Currently, she is only six months old. It had taken that long to restore her body, stained by the sands of time, broken, battered, but not defeated.
Not ever defeated.
He can only wish her the best. It is likely that once she had been revived four more times or so, she could be the next Faerie Queen. That is how it works, once a Faerie had seen the world through the eyes of each other Faerie type, they can be taken in by the reigning Queen and become Queen themselves.
What lies in a Faerie's heart determines who she is, not what her powers are. It is theorized that when Illusen was Dark Faerie, she was almost as bad as Jhudora, but never mercifully teased those who didn't deserve it, and when Jhudora was Earth Faerie, she sorely neglected her patience.
The two of them had never gotten along, in any form.
He waits for her, staring out over the ocean, where she would come. It is always here. She thinks it is for her daily trip to the Tombola, but he knows otherwise.
See that? That speck of rock just before the horizon? That was where his ship crashed.
"My lord, we're almost at the island!"
He turned around from where he had been staring out the portal in his chamber to see a chipper, young face, painted yellow. "What was that, Sylva?" he asked. "The island, we're almost there!" the Lupe pup repeated. He smiled. His journey was almost over. It would be a grand thing once he had finally finished his mission and returned back home, and the island was the last stop. "If you don't mind my asking, sir, what were you doing?" Sylva asked, bright blue eyes as wide as sand dollars. Sylva seemed to idolize him, and that was okay. Sylva was a good kid, reminded him of his own children back home. "Thinking," he answered. "Of your girl back home?" He nodded and smiled, thinking of his lady. His dark, dark, magnificent, eerie lady. "Yeah. She's waiting on me, just her and the pups, all alone in that Citadel with crotchety old Galgarrath chasing behind the four of them, going, 'I'm too old for this!'." Sylva laughed, "She sounds like a real gem." "She is, she's a good girl, a good friend, all things considered..." Suddenly, the ship gave a huge lurch. He felt his blue paws slide from underneath him, and suddenly he was hard on the splintery, wooden floor, pinned beneath something heavy, pressing his armor into his skin. He looked up to see Sylva sprawled on top of him, bright eyes wide with terror. "Sir, what just happened?" An incorporeal tear runs down his gray-blue cheek. He hadn't been able to answer Sylva, hadn't been able to save Sylva.
During all the scuffling to get off the i Pride of Meridell's Flag/i , Sylva had been knocked unconscious. He had grabbed his young friend and leapt into the water with him, hoping to reach the island.
But he couldn't, not in all that armor.
He paused to shuck it, but in doing so, lost Sylva.
He can't clearly remember what happened next. He remembers going under the water, tired from carrying a lifeless body and dragging golden armor, even after he had lost both. He tried to reach the surface, but couldn't. It was too far away.
He had fought hard with all his strength, but then he passed out.
He woke up climbing up the sandy beaches of the Isle of Mystery, as it had been known back then.
He was panting, but his lungs didn't hurt. They didn't call for breath, and none of his wounds or old battle scars hurt anymore.
His legs had shook underneath him, then given out, and he had fallen nose- first into the dirt, and fallen asleep again. While he slept, he dreamed of his lady back home. He dreamed of his sister, his father-in-law, and his own father, adoptive and otherwise.
It was night when he awakened again. The moon was full and the earth was damp with humidity. The sound of the ocean roaring in his hears was what called his mind back to consciousness.
He awakened to a cool, clammy feeling in his hind legs. It seemed to pas through him, into his very bones.
He shook his head, expecting sand to fall out, though none did. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the frigid seawater billowing over him. He blinked. It must have been a trick of the moonlight and seafoam, but it looked like his body was smoking with a ghostly film and that the water wasn't on him so much as it was through him.
He had blinked again, shrugged it off, and climbed to his feet. He walked to the nearest town, dazed and disorientated. The sun didn't seem to touch his fur, despite the heat of the Mystery Island summer, and he didn't recognize his face in the mirror when he saw it.
His eyes had turned red and lost a lot of their luster. No longer did they look like the bright-eyed boy that had saved his country, but more like...something dead. His skin was still smoking, and it certainly wasn't an illusion. It was filmy, intangible waves of gray fog that flowed off fur the color of moonlight through clouds.
He hadn't known. He hadn't realized.
He had walked through the village. Once or twice, someone would shudder when he walked past, or would look up at him with a shocked expression.
It was then that he had gotten his hopes up, calling out to the female Kyrii. She didn't respond to him, she seemed to stare through him, the way the sun and water had, and then she ran into her house.
He had been very confused then, very frightened. But he didn't know, not until he saw the island shaman walking down the street.
He had called to the shaman, but the shaman ignored him. He waves his arms, calling, begging, but the shaman kept talking to his friend, giving the Eyrie female some advice.
He put himself directly in the shaman's path, figuring he would have to take notice at some point, but the shaman kept walking.
Right on through him.
He shivers at the memory, the way it felt the first time someone walked through him, and the accompanying cold chill.
The funny thing about it, he thinks, is that the shaman didn't notice he had passed through a specter.
But there is nothing else funny about it. The memories pain him. There is no release from them. He is doomed to an eternity of remembering, remembering without forgetting.
Another memory that haunts him as much as the day he died and the morning after, when he realized he was dead, is the day he saw her again.
He had been sunning himself on a rock, trying to gather warmth, but it took a lot of time, since he had no flesh. He was staring out over the horizon, where the ship was buried and where Sylva and his body slept beneath the waves.
It was then that she appeared, pale skin and dark hair. She had wings the color of twilight that spread wide. She wore filmy silk that clung to her slender form and swirled in the breeze like storm winds.
She had walked right past him, sparing him a passing glance that told him she knew he was there, that she had sensed his presence.
If he had had blood, it would have run cold. His heart would have started pounding.
He knew. He knew who this passing Dark Faerie was.
The two of them had played when he was younger and grown so close over the years, despite the different worlds they came from.
Those eyes, deep and red, slitted and beautiful, had only changed in color.
He waits for her, waiting for her to walk up to the island to visit the Tombola. He will follow her, his only link to the past, as she plays the game, then perhaps walk to the Trading Post for research, or shaman for a laugh. Then he will escort her back to her home in the Spooky Woods, Number 29817 on Dark Forest Path.
But always he returns to the island, where he died. He is drawn there by some inexplicable force.
She has children, too, now. Four of them, a Shoyru, a Grundo, an Eyrie- turned-Korbat, and an Eyrie. She brings them, too, that Shoyru, her favorite, perched on her shoulder.
They laugh and talk, sharing silly stories about what her mistress, Jhudora, has commanded, or what happened in Mister Lupid's class that day during neoschool.
She and the Shoyru can sense his presence. They know he's there, watching him.
His fingertips burn to touch her one last time, his link to his past, his life, but he cannot touch anything.
She goes by a new name, now, suitable to her Dark Faerie station.
He watches as she goes to the Tombola, and wins two codestones and a hundred and twenty neopoints. He follows her back to the Spooky Woods, and leaves her at her door, for he cannot enter.
Then he fades back into the shadows, the Ghost of Time, and returns to where he is drawn.
And there, Jeran waits...