~Bird songs~
by Ola
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A/N~ I had a great day, so I'll post the last part of this fic. Again, thank you Gershwin and starbrat. Smile. In a while, I will add one last part, but it will only be all the chapters fixed up into one big fic, so people won't have to clic from one chapter to another. But it may take a while. Also, I have written a good part of another story, but none of it is typed yet, and since school started up again, it may take a VERY long while. Sorry. Ok, I'll leave you for the last chapter. Enjoy =)
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Part 13~
Would it seem strange if I told you that this had happened more than 75 years ago? I will be a hundred years old tomorrow; and I have never forgotten about the elves, nor about my promises to them. But I never promised that I wouldn't go back there. So that's what I did. I packed some food, a tent, a sleeping bag and a few other things, and I went to Canada. I was old, and it was a lot harder to walk those few miles with a backpack and a cane, but I had no intention of returning to the "real world," one way or another. Either I would find what I was looking for, or my mind and memory would finally abandon me for good. The sun was about to set so I settled down on a little hill, from where I could see the sky clearly. It was early June, but the evening breeze was cool; I wrapped my old bones in a green fleece blanket, sat under a tall, dark oak, and leaned against its rough bark. The stars slowly twinkled into life, and I watched them, feeling small and insignificant. I never tired of watching the stars. They held a surreal attraction I was drawn to. Some time later, the moon rose over a distant peak, and drowned this part of the world in its silvery light.
I could never hear him come, and he always appeared as if out of nowhere, as he did now. He was suddenly silhouetted against the pale orb; a dark figure in a slightly less dark night. But I knew it was him.
"You came," I whispered.
"No. You did. I was always here." His voice held no reprimand.
"You haven't changed. At all." I stated the fact, wondering whether I should be surprised or whether I expected it all along.
"No." he sat down next to me, turning his face toward the moon. He was exactly as I remembered him. His eyes were still…sad? And they sparkled in the night. I sighed.
"A penny for your thoughts." Those eyes, looking into mine.
"I wish you did not ask maelene. Not now." His arms felt strong around my shoulders. More so now that age had stolen my strength.
His head against mine; our hair intertwined, both long. Under the moon, both silver; each the symbol of opposite ends of time. His of infinity, mine of finished mortality.
"Don't cry maelene. Please," he whispered. My thoughts, love, are yours. They always were, and will be, wherever you go.
The moonlight caught a tear on his face. My fingers brushed it away. My lips curved into a little smile as I imagined how we looked. A grandmother comforting her grandson, while reality gave him millennia more than me.
"I don't want to leave you again Alrovir," I whispered, afraid that if I spoke just a little louder, this moment would end. I was afraid of what would happen if he said there was no place here for me. And I was afraid of what he thought about me now. Now that my face was hollowed and wrinkled, that my feet could not carry me as far and fast as they once did, that my hug felt to him like the touch of butterflies.
"You will never have to maelene." I smiled. And the night didn't seem so dark and cold anymore, nor my body so weak.
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Many centuries later, in the Canadian wilderness, it was said that every night, a tall young man in green and a lady clad in white sat on the Hill of Hope and looked at the stars. Their long hair, silver in the moonlight were like frozen cascades of ice; their figures seemed to glow with a fire within and under the lone oak that graced the Mont, could be seen from far away. The legend, told to little children at night, went that the young man was the spirit of trees meeting the spirit of air. Only at night could the two lovers reunite and spend time together. No one had ever seen one without the other, and at dawn, they disappeared under the cover of mist, as silently and unseen as they appeared at twilight.
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Forgotten under dusty prints of old newspapers laid a yellow obituary page of "The Herald" of an unknown village. Unrecognizable form all the other announcements, near the bottom left of the page, was a paragraph, special only because it was not exactly an obituary. No body was found and no funeral was performed, but death was in any case assumed because of certain circumstances. The lady in question was reported missing several weeks before the printing of the paper, and her last movements traced to a flight into the heart of the Canadian wilderness. She had been a somewhat known scientist, famous for her discovery of a specie of birds named by her as Alrovirae Elfina. At the time of her disappearance, she was nearing her hundredth birthday. No signs of her were found up to the printing of this announcement, which was made for obvious reasons.
May she rest in peace, wherever she lays.
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~End~