Author's Note:  This story is now completely planned out with 10 chapters and will probably be between 13 000 and 18 000 words since each chapter is turning out longer than the last.  You could assume that this will mean that since it is planned I will be posting each chapter quicker but if I were you I wouldn't count on it.  I never seem able to stick to my planning for this and so after each section I write I have to reconsider things which I planned to come after since I've usually just stuffed them up.  I will try, but Birds of a Feather is currently my priority since I want to finish that before May (I won't but that's the aim).

400 years ago

The lanterns scattered around the ward cast a comforting yellow glow over everything they touched.  Even the harsh, recently developed, worry-lines that made Julius' face look a thousand didn't seem quite so shatteringly real and severe in this eerie light.

Over the past days Julius' pacing had slowed, changing into wringing hands, worried, fleeting looks and half-startled, hope filled expressions whenever a doctor or nurse strode past his seat in front of his daughter's room.  Now, even the hand movements had stilled and he simply stared at the door opposite, willing it to open.  Knowing that, in all probability, it wouldn't.  And knowing there wasn't anything he could do about that.

At one point he had been hopeful, still in denial about the reality of the entire situation.  Now, hope had become resigned despair and denial had become a fevered wish, which he knew was about as likely of coming to fruition as the Mud Men making peace with each other.  And now he knew the real reality: He can't do anything for Sally now but he could have done.  It was his fault that she was so badly injured; he could have done more to help her, to save her.  But he hadn't.  And now he would have to live with the consequences.  And Sally might not live as one of those consequences.

Julius could feel the approach of one of the nurses but he didn't bother to lift his head from his hands to acknowledge her like he might once have done.  He had given up on receiving anything but more pity from the hurrying people around him.  So it was only once she had stood there, cleared her throat once or twice, and fidgeted around that he bothered to look up and even then he didn't meet her eyes.

She tried to speak but didn't seem to know what to say to him.

"What is it?"  His voice wasn't threatening or contemptuous; he was too weary with grief and self-condemnation for it to be anything more than a pained whisper. 

"Um... Sir, I..."

"Has Sally's condition changed?"

"It... I mean it had...  I mean…  I'm sorry to tell you but your daughter's dead, sir."

Julius' voice cracked but he made a fierce effort to not let his appearance change and, beside from a wavering look in his eyes and a slight biting of the lower lip, it didn't.  "Does my wife know?"

"A runner has been sent for her."

"Good...  Good.  Could you...?"

"Do you want anything?"

"I... Can I see her?"

"Of course."

And the nurse led the way into the curtained room and pulled a seat towards the bed for him to rest in.

"Would you li--?"

"You can leave now!"  He snapped uncharacteristically.

She nodded her head even though his back was to her and slowly left the room.  Looking back over her shoulder she saw Julius' head turn to the side away from his daughter's still face.  As though he was ashamed for her to see him weeping even if she was no longer there.

But although silent tears were streaking down his face, Julius wasn't weeping.  He was still hoping, hoping that they were wrong, that there was a mistake and she'd wake up and brush her little fingers over his hand in that way which was so infuriatingly ticklish.  He tried to concentrate his magic, force it out through his hand and make it heal her from this illusion of death.

His head wasn't turned in grief away from his life; it was turned in failure away from the one who he'd failed.  And only when the reality of his failure as a healer, as a father, even as a police officer condensed into one tiny, freezing hand... then he wept.  He wept for what she might have been, what might have happened ... what did happen.  All the terrible coincidences that could have happened to anyone but had, for some reason, happened to them.

What sounded like the wailing death-shriek of a banshee shook the halls and all the people in them.  The nurse who had delivered the news felt a tear in her eye and wished there was something she could do.  But there wasn't anything.  She just hoped that once Mrs Root arrived they would be able to help each other through it.  A Fairy that could not let go was a terribly tragic thing as no relief would come naturally for a long time and by then it was often too late.

When Maple arrived minutes or hours later, Julius couldn't lift his head from beside the body of his daughter even if he had been willing to try it.  She stood at the door in complete stillness for another painfully indeterminable time before moving slowly forward and pulling one limp, cold hand into her own, rubbing it as if she would be able to make it warm and living once more and then everything would be alright.

The sat in silence, both lost in thoughts, in grief, even though they could almost have prepared for it, almost could have known that it would come to this.  But how could they have truly known?  How can any parent really accept that their child was going to die before them?

"I'm sorry, Maple.  I'm so, so sorry."

"Why?  It wasn't your fault...  No, it wasn't your fault.  She... maybe it was her time to die.  Maybe... maybe there's a reason for it that we just don't know about yet."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be."

"But I--"

Maple leaned over Sally and grasped her husband's hand in hers.

"It was the fault of the Mud Men, if anyone is to blame, not any fault of yours.  You couldn't have--"

"I should have been able to protect her.  I should have been able to protect you."

"Sometimes there is nothing you can do to protect even yourself."

"I should have--"

"You should, you might've, you would have … you couldn't."

"But I--"

"Shhh... I want to watch our daughter rest for one last time."

Now

"I can't imagine that you enjoy coming here each year, Simon.  You must have better things to do than play the caring friend role to an old broken man like me.  I'm not worth the trouble and it doesn't help me, you know that.  And I doubt you could be getting anything from this either."

"But what kind of person would I be if I left you here alone, with only young lance-corporals who don't know that they don't really understand the real Julius Root?  Maybe the reason why I still come is so that I feel better.  Now, I've done my share and so it's not my responsibility to come back any time soon.  Maybe that's it, maybe it isn't.  But I don't know."

"How do you know that the people around here don't know me?  Why do you presume to know me?  You can't know who I am after 400 years.  People change.  Maybe the only people who do know me are those young lance-corporals."

"They're scared of you.  They don't think you're intelligent or worthy or their respect.  They don't even think you're a good officer."

Root opened his mouth with a comeback but pulled himself up.  Then, after a minute of looking down at his hands and staring wistfully at the door to the room, Simon was about to break the silence when Root finally spoke.  But the whisper was so quiet that a human would have brushed it off as wind through the trees; they were spoken more to himself than to his companion.

"Maybe they do know me." 

He looked up and met Simon's eyes with a ferocity which Simon had not been expecting.  "Maybe they do know me and that's who I am!  Maybe I'm a horrible officer!  Maybe I'm as dumb as a troll and as unworthy of note as a lump of moss!"  Then his voice softened once more to an almost scared, low tone.  "Maybe I am something to be afraid of."

"Possibly.  But what do you think you are?  Who do you think you are?"

Root looked back down at his hands, either in thought or in rebellion against the question.  Simon spoke again, his voice harsher than it had been in years.

"Well?  I know that you're an elf, named Julius Sparticus Root born to Ryannan and David Root who is currently employed as Commander of the Lower Elements Police-force Recon units.  But who are you?  Are you Julius?  Are you Root?  Are you a Commander? Are you a Captain?  Are you a piece of slime?  Are you Beetroot?"  Then his voice dropped in volume for the last options.  "Are you a father?  Are you a husband?"  And Root couldn't imagine that they were rhetorical questions.

Root's whole body was shaking with emotion as he listened to the options, listened to what he had been, and what he was, and maybe what he had never really been.  He had never been a proper father or a good husband; he knew that without a doubt.  He wasn't Julius.  Simon was one of the 4 people which still had the right to call him by that name and it was such a rarity that 'Julius' was almost a separate entity.  Was he a heart- and soul-less man who was defined by the harshness, cold use of his last name?  When was the last time he had introduced himself to someone as Julius?  It was always 'Commander Julius Root, LEP' or something of the like.  Did he even think of himself as having something as personal as a first name anymore?  Was he a Commander?  Yes, he was a Commander.  He knew where he stood with his officers.  But was he a good Commander..?  Maybe not.  There are others who are younger, more inventive and flexible, who are respected by the newer breed of pencil-pushing Council members and quite likely to usurp him sometime reasonably soon.  Was he still a Captain simply trapped in the rank of a Commander?  Maybe.  His heart was in the actuality of the recon job.  He had never been very good with the planning or administration and hated what that paper-work position said about him.  He wanted to be out in the field doing the dirty work, dressed in those old green knickerbockers and the annoying buckled shoes.  Out on an assignment knowing that the planning which those above him were doing was useless since when it came to the crunch you could never plan a recon.  And if the day ever came when you could you wouldn't even need recon anymore.

Who was he?        

Simon slowly sank back down into his chair without taking his eyes from his friend, automatically adjusting his injured leg so it would be comfortable.

"We all change.  It's not a bad thing and the idea of change is all that you can be certain about.  I've changed just in this conversation.  You've changed over the years; I can see it.  You can see it."

"But what if you don't know what you're changing into?  What you've already changed into?  Even what you changed from?"

"Then you're normal.  No one can ever put their finger on something like this and whenever they try the ideas slip through their mental nets.  But the inability to truly know yourself is half the fun, wouldn't you agree?"  His voice was forcefully and painfully cheerful.

"No.  How can you know anything if you can't even know yourself?"