"Dawn! Late as usual, I see."

The Hwenti leader couldn't deny the accusation; the tribe had made a quick switch from first-arrived after the Penni to last under her command, as she tested her assertion that coming late would keep the Hwenti in the spotlight, still the heart of the Avari even if the Penni held that position geographically. If it hadn't worked, something else had, because she still had at least a little more influence than the other leaders three millennia after Shade's death, if not the near-universal respect he'd held. "Hawk. Waiting as usual, I see."

The Kindi leader huffed. As usual, he was practically radiant from the varying golden shades of everything except his blue eyes. "You don't give us much of a choice, now do you?"

Dawn smiled disarmingly. "Shade taught me well." It was their only real connection—their relationship to a long-dead elf, him as a brother-in-law and her as an apprentice of sorts. She'd always felt like there should be something more to their relationship, that they could be friends if only they had something to bond over. It might have helped if she'd had children; even now, three of Hawk's—Sparrow, Osprey, and Oriole—waved to her from behind their Ada, standing around a fourth half-human, one of the ones so dark-skinned as to be almost the color of that cinnamon stuff the Kindi sometimes brought to all-tribe meetings.

"He did." Hawk saw where she was looking and chuckled. "I know, I know—just can't resist, can we?"

She tipped her head, wondering what it meant, but it clicked when she took a closer look at the fifth member of Hawk's group, who peeked at her from between the three siblings; what she'd taken as coloring heavily inherited from one of his parents and the muscle bulk male half-humans often had weren't such good luck after all. This was a full human, much like his western kin except for his coloring and some rather handsome differences in facial features. He could've been half-elven still, except for his rounded ears; Dawn had always found the shape of human ears kind of cute, like mouse ears. "Hello there, do you speak Avari?" Her East Common wasn't anywhere near intelligible.

"Yes," he replied hesitantly.

Aww, he was shy. Humans could be so endearing sometimes; it was only a pity they didn't live longer.

. . . . . .

"You came all that way by yourself?" Dawn repeated, intrigued.

Amar held his head high, looking rather proud of himself. "I did."

Her new friend's shyness hadn't lasted long once she got him off alone on the other side of the hill. "Very impressive," she assured him. "Do you like the Avari?"

"Very much, everyone is kind here. It's... different, though." A shadow crossed over his face.

Don't be sad, gentle little refugee human, she thought. He'd told her his story, and she'd been touched by his bravery in striking out on his own to escape the evil of his kin, something much more heroic than anything she'd done in all her years. "You miss your home, despite what they made you do."

He wrapped his arms around himself, seeming to shrink even further from her tall height. "It's... it's... I can't explain."

She tried to understand. "You left your family."

He nodded glumly.

"And your people. And all your traditions you grew up with." She remembered how different even the human villages near her tribe's region were from the Avari, and imagined leaving her family for them. Suddenly she felt terrible for Amar. "I'm so sorry."

He cleared his throat and blinked a few times, and she remembered that, at least in Middle-Earth, human men weren't supposed to cry. "That's okay," he said hoarsely. "Thank you. So—Dawn—" He said her name with a strong accent, one that didn't emphasize hard consonants as much as the Avari did, and it made her sound softer, less like the protector and leader she'd made herself into since her mother's return and loss. "—tell me about yourself."

She did, though her story was much shorter than his, even with thousands of years to compare to his not even two decades—even by human standards, which were astoundingly low, he was barely grown. Nineteen, he said. Nineteen years.

Dawn had never had to tell anyone her story before, not in its entirety—everyone knew her mother's fate, and how she'd become leader—and she was surprised by how much she reacted emotionally. Her mother's madness, Rose's leaving, Shade's death... she'd never told anyone before. Shade had told the tribes about the first two, and Raven had announced the latter.

She'd thought human females were allowed to cry, but from Amar's reaction, maybe not; he seemed not just uncomfortable, as some male elves would've been, but actually shocked by her tears, and unsure. Finally, after a few false starts, he gingerly touched her hand, and she grasped his tightly. He was clearly embarrassed, but held on and scooted a little closer after a bit.

"I'm not usually like this," she joked weakly. She hadn't shed tears since losing her mother.

"I didn't think elves cried," was what he said.

. . . . . .

"How old are you, Dawn?" Amar asked apprehensively two days later. She'd sought him out repeatedly throughout the all-tribe meeting, drawn by a magnetic curiosity he seemed to share, and found him to be cautious but brave, a little nervous, amiable, and fidgety—not evil-warrior material by any means. He struck her as fragile, too; he'd needed to stay near the fire last night even though the handful of Hwenti part-humans hadn't even complained of a chill when she checked, and a small scratch he'd gained from helping gather firewood still showed on his hand after a full day.

"Four thousand, maybe more," she replied, watching his reaction closely. She didn't actually know her exact, or even very closely approximate, age.

His eyes bulged as he tried to wrap his head around the number. "But you seem so human," he remarked weakly.

Dawn burst out laughing. "Human? That's great!"

Amar tapped his foot in annoyance, not sharing in her mirth, which made it all the funnier. "Like a person, then! Like a young woman, not old."

She stopped laughing, but only to raise an eyebrow incredulously. "I'm not old; Raven's old. He was one of the very first elves." As an afterthought, realizing this information might not have been provided as they wandered around the camp occasionally saying hi to elves, she added, "He's my father, you know."

The human's mouth hung open for a second, and then he threw his arms out wide and fell over backwards. Dawn prodded him with her boot to make sure that had been on purpose and she hadn't misremembered the length of the human lifespan.

"I can't," Amar declared, rolling over and smushing his face into the grass. "I just can't."

"Can't what?" she asked, not following his line of thinking.

"I thought he was your brother..."

She considered the prone human, wondering what about this was so significant to him; it wasn't like mistaking parents or children for siblings, or the other way around, was unusual.

—Ohhhh, right, humans looked different as they got older. What an odd little source of confusion. She flopped down next to him, giggling the way she hadn't giggled in years. She felt so much younger with him, and it was making her realize how much her role had consumed her; so often she was Dawn the leader, not Dawn the person. With Amar, an unfamiliar human from far away, now part of another tribe, she should've been Dawn the leader of a tribe he didn't know, Dawn the aloof, Dawn the immortal. Instead, she was just... Dawn. Why did he have that effect on her?

This human. A stranger here, still searching for words or mispronouncing them on occasion. Always looking over his shoulder for some unseen enemy, jumpy from a different history than the Avari. Mortal. Having maybe four, five, six decades left in him. Yet he captivated her.

Interesting.

. . . . . .

"I think it's my birthday," Amar remarked.

Dawn took his strange little bound stack of that "paper" stuff civilized folk had and squinted at the lines he'd marked with charcoal. His habit of counting the individual days and assigning them names was strange to her, though she was learning to read his scrawled handwriting as she could with Middle-Earth Common. "'Birthday'?" she repeated. "As in, you were born on this day nineteen years ago?" Avari put no significance on such days.

"Twenty," Amar corrected indignantly, snatching back his paper stack.

She frowned. "But you're twenty years old, how could you have been born twenty years ago? I don't understand." How bizarre, to imagine he'd been an infant less than two decades ago.

He looked at her blankly. "Yes, I'm twenty. Born twenty years ago? That's how age works, Dawn?"

"But you wouldn't have... you count age from when you're born?"

"...Yes? How else would we do it?"

She shifted, unfolding her legs from under her and stretching them out as she considered this new oddity. "You don't count the time babies are inside the mother?"

"...No...?" he said, as if the idea had never occurred to him.

"So you're twenty-one, then, by our reckoning," she reasoned.

Another funny look. "Still no—where are you getting those three months?"

What? No way. "Humans aren't pregnant for a full year?"

"Elves are—aah!" Amar fell over spread-eagled again, as was his habit whenever he was told something that counted as shocking in his world. Dawn ruffled his black hair (cut short; with her encouragement, he'd abandoned the Avari shoulder-length style), as had become her habit.

"I told you this already," Sparrow, Hawk's second child and one of the healers, said as he passed by. "To set the record straight."

"Loud enough for his human ears?" teased the female healer, a full elf named Moth. "Happy birthday, by the way."

Apparently this congratulation was considered proper, because Amar stopped making a face at the Kindi for joking at his expense. "Let's go somewhere quieter," he suggested to Dawn, taking her hand. They were, after all, surrounded by elves who unashamedly viewed them as the best entertainment available, and ignoring them only went so far. The Kindi had welcomed Dawn into their midst with enthusiasm and treated Amar like family even though he'd only been with them a year and a half, but they viewed him and Dawn together as a rare phenomenon—an object of genuine fascination as well as amusement. Even among the Kindi, elves didn't often let themselves fall for humans.

"Dawn," Amar said suddenly, urgently. "Let's talk."

They'd already had the mandatory but-what-happens-when-I-die discussion, soon after he'd realized she was coming with the Kindi because of him, in fact. He hadn't been comfortable with the conclusion, but her assurance that she wasn't cutting her life short for him had helped. Over the next few months there'd been a series of talks with the elves who'd married humans in the past. For him, she assumed it was something about how elves differed from humans—he didn't seem to pay much attention—and what this would be like for her. But for her, it was much more serious; mostly long lectures to make sure she grasped what the special nature of their relationship would be if she stuck with it, especially its eventual end and the expectation that she would continue on after or else would go home and not make any commitments at all. But there were other things, too.

Human biology was a big one—how best to raise or lower his temperature, how to care for him during the inevitable frequent illnesses, which berries that she ate by the handful could kill him if she gave them to him by accident.

A less-expected topic was the details of half-human children, which it was assumed they would have; you needed a reason to keep going for those first few years, however prepared you thought you were. This included the quirks of pregnancy, which was slightly shortened, and the different, rushed growth curve—more predictable with first-generation children than those born to two half-human parents. How to nurse them, too, when they were ill, and to slowly begin to test their tolerance for cold and disease and certain poisons that only affected one race. How to prepare them for the early loss that they were doomed to by their very nature.

And, speaking of which, there was always the looming subject of aging, what to expect and how to delay the inevitable as long as possible. It was a sacred rule among the elves who'd been through what she was approaching: make sure the elf knows everything, shove it in her face over and over so she has every opportunity to change her path before it's too late. You had to be absolutely sure you could take and survive what you were asking for.

So, she didn't know what could be left to talk about. "What is it?"

He knelt and took a stick. Dawn stood back to watch, curious; the longer she stayed with the Kindi, the more she began to understand that it wasn't just the new language that made Amar not-so-great with words, and he'd taken to drawing out his thoughts when he felt he couldn't express them verbally.

He drew a long line around him once, twice, three times, and sent the end trailing off out of the dusty patch, as if into infinity. "You."

"Immortal," said Dawn.

He nodded, and added a tiny dot in the middle of the spiraling line. "Me."

"Twenty," she agreed, and nodded when he looked up at her. The wrinkles in his forehead didn't disappear, so she took the stick from him, thought for a second, and drew a circle around his dot and the corresponding segment of her line. "Happy."

He traced the rest of her line despondently with a finger, around twice more and away into the grass.

Sometimes words weren't needed. She stepped delicately into the middle of the spiral and squeezed in next to him without scuffing the line, pressing up against him; it was odd to her that humans could be as warm to the touch as elves and yet lose that heat so easily. She laid her arm around his strong shoulders casually; the difference in their heights was barely noticeable when they sat like this.

She pointed the stick at her line. "This happens with or without you."

He nodded.

She pointed to the circle she'd drawn. "But this—this is special. This only happens with you, and I don't want to miss it." She tapped his dot. "Shooting stars only last a moment, but I still stay up to look for them. And I remember them long after they're gone."

But he was shaking his head. He took the stick back and drew another line, spiraling with hers, all the way around, around, around, and away. Then he tapped his dot again. "Why me?"

"Because you're a shooting star. Happy birthday."

. . . . . .

"Tell me you're joking," Raven implored.

"I'm dead serious, Ada."

Amar didn't shrink back behind Dawn, which was quite a triumph of will on his part since Raven was much taller than him and currently giving him a look that suggested he'd like to flay the human alive.

"He'll die, Dawn." Raven's voice was flat. "He'll die in the time it takes an elfling to grow up."

"I know."

"You can't marry him."

"I didn't ask your permission." Dawn strode past him. "Come on, Amar."

Raven fixed Amar with a stare meant to melt the flesh off his bones.

"Uh, welcome," said Moon, who seemed wary of befriending the human if it might earn Raven's wrath.

"New pet?" asked Winter.

"Oh no," Star worried. Behind her, the rest of the tribe stared openly.

Dawn cleared her throat loudly. "AHEM. Try again."

Fox pushed past his wife. "Hello! I hear you're a human? It's nice to—"

Amar was already waving a hand in front of Fox's face. Dawn swatted his hand.

"—meet you." Fox, of course, knew what the human had been doing, but politely pretended not to notice.

"He's blind?" Amar asked Dawn incredulously.

"You picked a smart one, Dawn," Winter remarked dryly.

Dawn shot her a look. "Watch yourself. He's not an elf and he doesn't know how we work."

Amar was still staring at Fox, but he shook himself. "Hm—Hello."

Fox smiled. "Hi."

"Hi, Amar," Pine added mildly.

Star sighed again, but followed her husband's example. "Welcome to the Hwenti, Amar... this is a bad idea..."

"Welcome, Amar," Moon proclaimed again, more brightly.

"You're really going to marry him?" Winter murmured disbelievingly.

Dawn pushed down a growl, but Amar tapped her arm and, smirking, pulled her down into a kiss. They'd been practicing on the way here. "Yes," she replied when he let her go; this man, she—and he—had decided, was going to be hers, and she'd be his, complications and all.

"Oh." Winter exchanged glances with Star, who didn't look any happier than she did.

Fox and Moon similarly communicated, but came to a different conclusion; "Congratulations," Fox told them weakly. Raven was nowhere to be seen.

. . . . . .

The first thing Dawn and Amar learned about their son was that he preferred being inside his mother and would like to be returned there immediately.

"He sounds healthy!" Star yelled unnecessarily as she hurriedly tried to approximate the baby's previous environment by wrapping him in a blanket and placing him on Dawn's chest. Her exclamation was also how they learned the second thing about the baby, which was that it was a boy.

"It's too cold for him," Amar fretted at the same time, turning the flint arrowhead he'd been playing with for the last few hours over and over in his hands. "Dawn—"

Sparrow and Dove, the two half-human healers who always supervised the births of new creatures of their kind, were already at work deftly prodding the baby in an examination that was over in moments. "It's not too cold for a half-elf," Sparrow assured the new father. "Just cuddle him a lot."

Dawn was already at work doing so, rearranging the blankets so the baby's skin touched hers and shielding his face from the winter sun and chilled air. "Is that better?" she crooned. "Is it too bright and cold out here for you? Poor baby, let's fix that." Sure enough, he began to settle down at the sound of her voice. He was medium-sized for an elven newborn (which, given her size and fitness, had made for an easy birth), and his brown-tinted ears already showed their shape—like an elf's but rounded at the ends, in contrast to many half-humans' shorter pointed ears. "Look at him, Amar."

Amar was looking, and doing so more calmly than he'd been doing anything for a while; he could be sensitive sometimes, which Dawn loved because it made his courage stand out even more. He lay down on his stomach, propped on his elbows for a closer look, but didn't touch. "Wow."

Dawn took his hand and laid it—with his cooperation—on the baby's back. "Ours."

"Ours," he repeated, and that was all that needed to be said for now.

. . . . . .

"Look, Flint!"

Flint wobbled over with interest, grasping his father's finger tightly as he tottered on his stubby little legs.

Amar knelt and pointed. "Star's making medicine, see? Isn't that nice of her?" What he didn't mention was that the medicine was to help him recover from the lung sickness he'd gotten from the wet weather, which still left him with a wheeze weeks later; Flint had gotten the same thing and coughed perhaps twice, which nevertheless sent his father into a frenzy.

Flint reached for the herbal goop, and Star lifted it out of his reach. "No-no, Flint, this is for your Ada, no eating."

"No ee," Flint agreed solemnly, and grabbed some loose leaves instead. The adults didn't stop him; he was in the learning-what-to-eat stage and had correctly identified edible plants, namely mint leaves meant to improve the taste of the medicine. He then wobbled off, testing his very new independent walking skills under the watchful eye of the whole tribe, though he didn't know it.

Dawn watched it all and smiled her gratitude at Star afterward; despite the sometimes rocky first year, her tribemates had accepted her husband upon getting to know him better and seeing how hard he could work, and they adored Flint as much as any full-blooded elfling. Star had long since apologized for her first reaction, even though she still said she wished Dawn had chosen differently. The one problem was that the tribe tended to regard Amar as Dawn's other child or a favored pet instead of an adult, but they were working on that.

And really, they weren't always far off, Dawn admitted as her human started trying to hack his lungs up and she realized he wasn't wearing anything warmer than the elves were. She retrieved the coat she'd made him and coaxed it onto him with a reproachful frown; if nothing else, she wanted him to set a good example for Flint, who was in a phase of pulling off his coat and hiding it when she wasn't looking, then shivering miserably until she noticed.

"Thanks," Amar told her guiltily, and pecked her on the cheek. She kissed his ear playfully and directed his attention to the bowl Star was holding out for him; he was prone to respiratory illnesses, and she wanted him healed up in case another wave of cold weather hit before summer. She wasn't really worried—he was still young and strong, even a little more in his prime than he'd been when they married—but their time together was too short for any unnecessary risks, and she was tired of hearing him cough.

Meanwhile Flint had found his way to the one elf who still openly disliked everything Amar stood for, though he was civil to the human himself. Raven wasn't an elfling person and hadn't spent much time with Flint so far, though he swore he'd do more when the boy was older and had stayed up all night once to rock him through a particularly bad stomachache (needed because Dawn had her hands full with Amar, in whom the problem had manifested instead as violent food poisoning). Raven also insisted he didn't know how to be a grandfather and would be better off just being friends with young Flint, even though Dawn told him to simply do exactly what he'd done with her.

"Hi gwanpa," Flint said, enunciating carefully. This was the first time Dawn had seen him show any interest in Raven.

Raven, who was chipping away at some of Flint's namesake stones to replace the arrows Amar seemed to obsessively steal (from other elves, not Raven), leaned down to something closer to the child's height. "Hi there. Y'know, kid, I've been thinking—why don't you call me by my name instead, make things simpler? Say 'Raven'."

"Waven?" Flint repeated.

"Yes, Raven. That's me."

Flint pointed. "Gwanpa."

"Raven. You Flint, me Raven."

Flint shook his head.

Raven nodded.

"Gwanpa."

"Nope."

Flint narrowed his eyes. "Waven?" he said, skepticism saturating every bit of his tiny voice.

Raven clapped a few times. "I knew you could do it. Now go bother someone else, we'll talk again when you're older."

Flint turned around to begin the long, ten-adult-steps journey back to his parents. "Bye bye gwanpa."

Raven's palm smacked into his forehead.

. . . . . .

"No! I'm not taking a bath, I'm not—!"

Dawn picked up her child and dunked him, clothes and all, into the river. If he insisted, might as well clean his clothes at the same time and let him change after.

Flint sputtered, and Dawn prepared to press him underwater again (he could hold his breath a long time, he'd be fine), but he splashed her instead. She splashed him back, much more vigorously.

"It's too COLD!" he shrieked. Though his head came up to her waist now, he still liked to scream dramatically when something didn't suit him, which only did him any good with his father; Amar tended to be overprotective of Flint, maybe because they shared some of the same vulnerabilities. Raven was snickering nearby as he washed a pelt in the meltwater, and Dawn was tempted to ask him to take over except that she didn't want one of Flint's few experiences with his grandfather to be the latter trying to drown him. Raven still hadn't interacted much with Flint directly, though he kept a close eye on him.

"Do I have to help you?" she threatened.

Flint quieted. "No..."

Dawn, arms folded as she stared down her dripping, miserable-looking son, sighed internally; she knew he didn't like the cold, but he couldn't possibly be that bothered by it if he refused to wear his coat all winter! "Good, because I don't want to. Make sure you wash your hair."

He did not look at her. His hair, which he'd cut short like his father's before deciding he hated it that way, was plastered to his face, accentuating his woeful appearance.

Amar was heading toward the creek as she made for the camp. "I heard screaming," he explained, apparently as a method for locating her instead of a concern, because he held out a string of rocks. "I made this for you. Took me forever."

She took the gift, a thin cord of plant fibers strung with little black-and-red polished stones with holes drilled through them; this must indeed have taken some effort and maybe several tries, since Amar wasn't one for crafting—humans, apparently, had clumsy fingers. "Thank you, I like it very much." She did, and—perceiving its intended purpose—slipped it over her head, thus donning the only necklace she'd ever worn. "Is there a reason behind it?"

"Oh..." He shuffled his feet. "I just thought... since you always remember my birthday... I'd like to give you something for yours this time." He smiled coyly and, before she could respond, slipped past her to rescue Flint, who was refusing to leave the water until someone was there to dry him off.

Birthday? It was true she'd never forgotten any of the ten he'd had since she'd learned they were significant to him—he was thirty now, and starting to display the changes she'd been warned about—but, as she'd told him several years ago, she didn't know when hers was, except for the vague season of early spring. Was he guessing?

Her Ada passed her, having completed his task, and she thought he might comment on her new jewelry—or, more likely, say nothing. Instead he tapped her arm and leaned close. "Happy birthday."

Aha. Now that—her father conspiring with the husband he disapproved of—was an even better present than the necklace. And she really did love Amar's gift, so that was saying something.

. . . . . .

One day Amar and Flint dashed into the camp, one bright-eyed with delight and the other a little out of breath. "That boy can run," Amar puffed as he collapsed next to Dawn, who sat down to join him on his level.

"He got my speed," Dawn agreed. Poor Amar, he could run fine, but already Flint was beginning to outpace him—and Flint loved to run. Of course, at thirty-four (Flint was almost ten, or barely nine if the ten and a half months she'd been pregnant didn't count), he was bound to be a little slower now, anyway. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He started to rise, then scooted over instead and laid his head in her lap. "He's getting big, isn't he?"

Yes, he was, and not only on the outside; though he still liked to complain about everything under the stars, he was starting to do his share of the tribe's daily work—the first real step toward adulthood for an Avari. "He is."

"Any signs of... you know?"

She sighed. "No." No, she wasn't pregnant again yet, even though Flint had come quickly. For once, she envied human women, who could produce many children in a short time; it wasn't as if anything was wrong with her, female elves just weren't meant to be pressed for time when having children. Anywhere from ten to fifty years of trying for a child was normal, and less than five as with Flint was extraordinary luck. It was just that half-humans took thirty-five years to grow, and Amar only had so much time left.

"Oh well," Amar said, and rolled over to watch Flint play chase with Star and Moon. Dawn played with his hair.

Flint was healthy, and though she'd like to give him a little sibling, for now she'd have to be content with this. She did love him so much, grumbling and all.

Amar verbalized a thought he must've been working on for a while. "This must be so quick for you."

She glanced down. "What do you mean?"

"The time that's passed. Fourteen years is... why don't you have math words? It's a lot of time for me, but not for you, yes? For you, it's like..."

She tried to do the math. "A millennium and a half. Wow."

"So..."

"You're not insignificant," she reassured him, as she had to every so often. "I'll never forget you, Amar."

"I know, but—"

She hugged him tightly, cutting off his protest. "Never ever."

"But—"

"EVER."

"Are you sure?" he checked, one last time.

"Of course I am, you wonderful man." Poor Amar, he said the loveless way his parents had treated him wasn't normal for humans, but the way he described them made it sound commonplace. No elf would ever tell their son he wasn't important.

"Oh. That's good, then." He tried to sound nonchalant, but his kiss to her cheek suggested relief. "But really, though; this, for you, is like a day."

"Not that short." She looked straight into his eyes—she'd pulled him upright during the hugging process, which had never really ended. "But if it's a day, it's the best day of my life. You got that?"

He beamed. "Well, it's the best millennium and a half of mine."

. . . . . .

"Look! Ada, Nana, look what I found!"

"Oooh," Amar agreed, looking in awe at the enormous black butterfly resting on Flint's hand. "What is it?"

Dawn forgot sometimes how young both of these special people were. "It's from the forest to the west, Greenwood. I don't know what they call them there, but every few centuries one flies over here."

"That's a long way for a butterfly," observed Flint, who'd been pestering Dawn into describing the geography of their range and the lands beyond.

Amar was even more amazed now, and stretched out his hand to coax the butterfly onto his own fingers. It obliged for a moment before fluttering away, back in the direction of its home.

"Wow," said Flint, but then he ran off to play, unlike his father, who stood staring after the butterfly, his mind a world away. Dawn understood, or thought she did; he was thinking he'd never see one of those again, since they came so rarely.

But he surprised her by murmuring, "You've come so far." Then he remembered she was there and blushed before returning to their previous task of shelling nuts.

. . . . . .

"DEVILS!"

"We don't want your kind, you hear us?!"

Amar flinched as an apple bounced off his temple—more dangerous projectiles were about to follow—but kept his protective stance in front of Flint. "Dawn, do something!"

As if she could stand by and watch while these monsters threw sticks and rocks at her husband and, worse, her little boy. "Stop that, NOW!"

The human villagers stayed their weapons, but kept them in hand. "Get out of here!" one shouted.

"Demon-worshippers!"

"Mongrel!" One of the young boys shouted at Flint.

"How...?" Dawn breathed in shock. After all this time teaching Flint and Amar the western Common tongue, why would these strangers act this way to others of their kind? Humans, like them?

It was Raven, with his extraordinary voice that could become a thunderclap when he wanted it to, who silenced the mob. "TO YOUR HOMES, ALL OF YOU!"

It worked; the humans dispersed, though many ducked into the nearest building to watch from the shadows. Raven spun Flint and Dawn around and marched them away, Amar following close behind. "C'mon, we're not welcome here."

When they were a safe distance away, Dawn heard Flint—fifteen years old and the size of an eleven-year-old human, they'd calculated—ask, "Ada, why do they hate us?"

Neither of his parents had an answer, though from the quivering of Amar's lip, Dawn was sure he knew.

Once again, it was Raven who found the words, maybe because he wasn't one to sugar-coat things. "Because your Ada comes from a cruel place, and these humans are too blind to see he's different. You, child, look like him, so they assume you must be the same."

Now Flint's lip trembled too. "B-b-but..."

"I think I'll go back there tonight," Raven muttered to Dawn.

She didn't ask for clarification.

. . . . . .

"There he is!"

Flint stepped back warily at the approach of the Kindi and Kinn-lai half-humans. He was twenty years old—somehow, the same age as his father had been at the all-tribe meeting almost twenty-six years ago, even though he looked significantly younger thanks to his elf blood. Amar, for his part, looked quite different, though Dawn thought he was just as handsome as the young human she'd met only a quarter-century ago. She was even getting used to the peculiar silver streaks in his hair. His personality had changed some, too, just like a young elf's might; he'd become calmer, more confident, but no less lovable.

Hawk's children were the first to greet Flint. "Hi there, nice to see you again," Sparrow remarked. "Amar, you look good." He was the only one to acknowledge Dawn's husband.

His older sister, Eagle, leaned down to Flint's level. "Welcome to the family, Flint! We've been waiting for you."

"It's good to fiiiiiiinally meet you," said Falcon, the tallest of the six, glaring meaningfully at her older sister.

"It was Sparrow's idea to wait," Eagle argued.

"Wasn't," he returned.

The next-oldest son, Osprey, rolled his eyes. "Not this again."

"Yeah, this again," replied Oriole, who had more of the golden Vanya skin than any of his siblings, hence his name. "Hi, Flint, we all wanted to come see you earlier, but—"

"Shush." The final sibling—actually the second-youngest, but who could remember?—pushed her way through. "Look at you! So big!" Magpie, so named because of a splash of white hair that fell over her eyes, tried to pinch Flint's cheeks, which did not go over well.

"I've told you not to—"

"You're not the boss of me, Eagle."

Sparrow jumped in on the oldest sister's side. "He doesn't like it."

"Stop that, you're making a bad—"

"You stop it, Osprey!"

"Don't yell," he snapped at Oriole.

Falcon threw her hands in the air. "Stop fighting!"

"Don't YELL—"

"Children," Hawk warned coolly as he stepped between them. They silenced immediately.

Almost formally, Hawk nodded to Dawn and her husband first. "Hello, Amar, doing well?"

The human smiled and took Dawn's hand. "Yeah."

The Vanya's eyes met Dawn's and became sober. "And you?"

She understood. "I made the right choice."

"I hope so." Then he knelt and looked up at Flint, acknowledging the half-human for the first time. "Hello, Flint, I'm Hawk. These are my children." He gestured behind him.

Flint's brow furrowed dubiously. "All of them?"

Hawk looked around at the sixty or so part-humans, now including the Hwenti and the few Windan and even fewer Penni ones. "Yeah, more or less."

"You too, now," Eagle added. "You're our little brother."

Flint wasn't too sure about this. "Why? Just because I look like you?"

"Because you are like us," Osprey said intently. "You're half-elf and half-human."

"Good luck avoiding us," Sparrow added wryly. "Some have tried."

Behind them, Dove raised her hand, nodding, and signed, "Don't even try."

"Hmm," was Flint's reply.

. . . . . .

"Dawwwwwnnnnn..."

"Ohh... what? What's wrong?" Dawn rolled over in her bedroll, ready to nurse a human sick with—what? A sore throat, a fever, a headache, a cough, a sore stomach, random pains, itchy eyes from plants of all things, a runny nose, a rash, another infection in his ear?

Amar snuggled in tighter. "It's cold."

Good, nothing serious. "Then let's..." There wasn't much she could do since they were already as close as they could get and with all their blankets stuffed into the bedroll, but there was one thing. "Flint!" she whispered. "Come here, your Ada's cold."

He would've refused for anyone else, but her son came without even a grumble to help his father, even though surely he'd been deeply asleep. She untied their bedroll, and in a few moments they tied it together with Flint's and were all snuggled up together, Amar in the middle. His shivering soon died away in the shared heat of his wife and son.

. . . . . .

"Just a little longer," Star promised. She got a moan in response, and replied by stroking her patient's ear, which, the Avari healers had discovered, had a powerful calming effect on elves. Unfortunately, it wasn't effective with humans.

"Will he be okay?" Amar was pacing as the healer treated Flint, who lay with his head in his mother's lap; the youngster had encountered a venomous snake much too close-up today, and the venom had him in agony. His ankle had been all swollen up and turning bad colors before Star put a tight bandage over it.

"He will, partly thanks to you." Star gave up on ear-stroking and switched to washing the sweat off Flint's face.

"Certain snakebites are the one thing humans are less sensitive to," Dawn explained to her confused husband; that was one of the things she'd learned from the Kindi lectures. "No one knows why."

"There's no reason it should affect us so much when most poisons don't," Star agreed. "But, since Flint was able to run away from me—" She clucked scoldingly. "—he should be better sooner than snakebite victims usually are."

"You mean snakes are even more dangerous for..." Amar looked queasy; he'd described to Dawn some of the snakes from his homeland and what they could do to humans.

"Hurts," Flint broke in, reclaiming their attention.

"I know..." Dawn ran her fingers through his hair, which was as black as his father's had been once; Amar's was now medium-gray, getting lighter every year.

"Have you learned something about watching where you step?" Raven had been silent until now, skinning a long gray snake, minus the head.

"Shut up," Flint retorted, sitting up enough to glare at Raven; even though his breathing was shallow from pain, Star was right; he wasn't severely weakened by the venom as an elf would've been.

"Good," said Raven. He held up the skin. "Want me to make you something out of this?"

Flint growled. "Leave it for me. I'm going to make that stupid thing into gloves."

Amar eyed the remains of the snake. "Can we eat the rest of it?"

"I like your thinking," Raven decided.

. . . . . .

"C'mon, Ada."

"I'm trying," Amar protested, but he'd paused yet again to catch his breath. "Please, let's take a break."

"Let's," Dawn agreed.

Flint trailed back to meet his parents. "We'll never catch anything this way."

"Flint," Dawn scolded.

"He's right," Amar agreed glumly. "I'm slowing you down."

Flint flinched. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It's true. I should go back."

Dawn sighed softly. Sure enough, time was having its effect on Amar—he was fifty-eight now, Flint almost thirty-four and done growing but still aging a little—and one of the things that meant was that he had trouble keeping up with the elves sometimes. He could still match their pace in their day-to-day travels, but the long-distance jogging they did while hunting was nearly impossible. His eyesight wasn't as good as it had been, either, and sometimes he fell and scraped himself up. "I'll come with you, we can walk."

"Let me go with him, Nana."

Flint needed the time with Amar more than she did. "Okay. Here..." She kissed Amar. "I'll see you tonight."

He smiled, and since she hadn't pulled away yet, stole another kiss. Flint rolled his eyes.

. . . . . .

"So there I was, surrounded by otherworldly immortal beings, when I saw the most beautiful of them all," Amar explained, winking at Flint. He looked a little older again than a few years ago, and the lines on his skin were becoming more prominent. "She had exotic red hair like fire, and eyes as blue as the sky, and she was tall, taller even than my commander in the army. I knew I was in love."

"...Right," said Flint. "I'm gonna... get some firewood..." He tried to stand, but a glare from Amar froze him in place; the human was growing picky about people listening to his stories.

"I want to hear Dawn's side of this," Fox put in.

Amar turned to his wife attentively, and so did everyone else.

Dawn laughed. "All right, then. I thought he was a half-human at first, he looked so much like Flint does now. He was very handsome, and very shy; I should've guessed he was in love," she teased. "Sweet Amar, you've grown so much since then. I'm so proud of you."

"Awww," went everyone else, except Raven, who managed a smile—and Flint, whose eyebrows tried to lift off his face. Amar held his head high.

. . . . . .

"Just one," Amar mused one winter evening, when he and Dawn were snuggled up with wooden mugs of steaming tea and a campfire to themselves.

This man would never learn to give context with his thoughts. "One?"

"Child."

"Oh." Yes, they'd given up on having another, since even Flint wouldn't get enough time...

"And no grandchildren," Amar added, a little sadly. "Make sure he has some for me, will you? In his own time."

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that."

He regarded her. The pupil of one of his eyes was becoming clouded, like Fox's eyes but less dramatic, which even the half-human healers couldn't do anything about; they called it a "cataract" and said it was something that could happen as humans aged. "You haven't changed at all, you know."

"Does that bother you?"

"No, no, it's a good thing." He tossed a leaf into the fire. "You really still..."

"Of course I love you. Do you love me?"

"You know I do."

"Silly question?"

"Yes."

"Yours, too." She ruffled his white hair.

. . . . . .

"Why did you do this to me?!"

"Flint—"

"I LOVE him, Nana, I don't want him to die!"

She sat back down and waited for the storm to blow over, and the nearby elves pretended not to hear anything. This blow-up on her son's part had been building ever since Sparrow arrived unexpectedly, promising to stay until Amar's life was over. Her husband wasn't sick any more often than usual, but he was becoming frail and, of course, his days were numbered, especially—as Sparrow pointed out—with a hard life like theirs.

"I-I..." Flint half-collapsed onto the log opposite her and started to sob. Unlike his father, he wasn't afraid to shed tears, although Avari were a tough lot and didn't cry often even if they weren't ashamed when they did. She reached out, but he jerked back. "Don't touch me! I—" He cut off before blurting something that was probably along the lines of "I hate you" and ran away out of sight.

Dawn gritted her teeth and stared up at the sky for a few minutes, then got up to find Amar. Whether Flint was right or not, it was too late to do anything about it.

. . . . . .

"Dawn—where did I leave the...?"

She turned around to find her husband turning around in circles, searching the grass. He looked far older now, thin and wrinkled and increasingly unsteady on his feet. "Leave what?"

"The..." He huffed in frustration. "You know!"

She knew humans had trouble remembering things as they got older, but the way Amar suddenly—in the last couple of years—began having trouble with words and losing things had caught her off guard. "It's not in your pack?"

"No..." He groaned. "Why can't I remember?"

Dawn understood why he was frustrated, certainly, and so was she. Why would Eru make humans so that not just their bodies but their minds began to fail them? It wasn't fair.

"Where IS it?" Amar muttered to himself, and just then he noticed Winter passing. "There! You took it!"

She stopped, confused. "What?"

"My... my..." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Carving knife! You took it!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, here." Winter handed over the knife that definitely wasn't his, making eye contact with Dawn over Amar's shoulder and showing her bewilderment with a tiny head shake.

Dawn played along. "Thank you for finding that," she thanked Winter, spotting her husband's real knife out of the corner of her eye now that she knew what to look for, and resolving to switch it out and return Winter's to her when she got the opportunity. Amar wouldn't notice; he couldn't see worth anything anymore, even out of the eye that wasn't clouded up. That explained some of the losing things and getting lost, but not the rest.

Amar shook himself. "Yes, thank you."

"No problem," Winter replied, and she shot another worried glance at Dawn before continuing on her way. Dawn pressed her lips to her elderly husband's cheek briefly before urging him to return to what he'd been doing.

Poor Amar...

. . . . . .

"Dawn, look!"

She looked, and giggled. Amar had made a tower of those flint arrowheads he still stole from everyone, and it was teetering dangerously. Indeed, just as she turned around, a breeze sent the tower tumbling over.

"Oh well," Amar said with a shrug, and carefully lay back with his arms spread out, looking up at the sky that was probably a blur of blue to him. Dawn lay next to him and watched the play of sunlight on his face. Fifty-five years, numerous illnesses, a few fights, a child, and plenty of wrinkles after their first meeting, she was even more in love than she'd been the day they married. His failing mind and body only made her more desperate to spend every moment with him.

. . . . . .

Dawn rubbed her thumb over the wrinkles in her husband's face very early one morning, trying to go back in time. He'd been sick with one of his coughs for much too long, and rapidly worsening in other ways, so that he often didn't remember who even Dawn was. And then today, of all days...

After a while, remembering the tribe would be awake the moment the sun rose, she slipped out of their bedroll and crossed the camp, stepping over Flint to the tree where her father kept watch. A click got his attention, and he knew without her having to say anything that it was time.

They found a nice peaceful spot a couple of miles away, in a patch of lush grass in the middle of a wooded grove. With the makeshift shovels they'd made a while ago, it didn't take them long to dig deep enough. Dawn hadn't been able to resist wrapping Amar in her spare cloak as if the cold could still hurt him, and she left it around him as she lowered him into the earth. With him she put a few arrowheads Flint had made recently, and a lock of her bright red hair she sliced off with her knife.

Flint was going to be devastated. She'd thought about letting him say goodbye before they filled in the hole, but she knew deep inside that it wouldn't do him any good to see his father like this, and Amar wouldn't have wanted it. Especially not today, with the plans they'd made...

She knelt next to the grave and reached down to caress his face one more time, and Raven waited silently. Tears ran down her face with the understanding that she'd never see him again, in this life or any other, but this was the choice she'd made, and now it was time to live with it. She said it one last time as she stood and scooped the first lump of dirt.

"Happy birthday, Amar."

. . . . . .

A few centuries later, Dawn lay in that same spot, feeling the cool grass under her. "Flint's doing better," she murmured. "He still misses you and it shows in everything he does, but he's healing. He's in love now, and you and I know what that can do for people, don't we?" She smiled. "You'd like Rain. She's perfect for him."

It hadn't taken long for Storm's prophesy to come true, and now Flint underwent a complete personality change whenever the new she-elf around, genuinely smiling even when he wasn't talking to her. Dawn hoped it would be enough to keep Rain with the Hwenti permanently, but if not, she would do whatever it took to hunt her down and bring her back for Flint's sake. It shouldn't be a problem, though.

What else? "I still wear your necklace every day. I have to restring it now and then, but I'll always keep the beads."

There was no response, of course, not even a change in the breeze that might let her pretend some part of him was still there. There was nothing here except memories, of course; even his bones had probably turned to dust. The only thing left of Amar's body was the grumpy half-human back at the camp whom she'd always loved more than her life and Amar's combined.

"This's the last time I'll be here," she told the empty air. "I'll never forget you—of course I won't—but I can't keep talking to you forever." She climbed to her feet. "So, goodbye, Amar. Flint and I love you, and when he has those grandchildren you wanted, I'll make sure to tell them about you. I hope I was as good a wife as you were a husband, and... thank you for the best fifty-six years of my life."