The Ancient

The Ancient (a continuing work in progress)
wc1990

As best as any mortal can determine, the reign of man began some 200,000 years ago.  Their downfall, as best as we can determine, began immediately.

Do not mistake me, however.  I enjoy their antics - humankind - and have always been fascinated by...an inherent...mortality.  The cliché exists therein: that the ever-present prospect of one’s own untimely demise might explain mankind’s determination...though it seems more akin to biological blackmail, if you will. 

Succeed or fail, man will fight for anything, and fight hard.  Whether a scrap of stale bread, armistice from the horrors of warfare, a desert-square of parched earth on which to raise a family, or the heads of their enemies...mankind will fight, and fight to the death if they must.

I have lived among them long enough to admire these particular qualities, though even an amoeba will at times exhibit them, and I cannot honestly say which is more noble by nature alone, mankind or amoebae.  Not long ago, I would have leaned more in favor of the latter.  Today, though, I am unsure...but perhaps I should explain.  There have been no victors here today, save the crows, but by the grace of the gods I live, and there must always be a history.  If such makes me the victor, perhaps the pen is truly mightier than the sword.

To be an elf is to live forever.  We are immortal.  We will never grow old.

To human ears, that alone may sound sufficient, but for our kind there is no looming specter of Death upon our proverbial doorstep, goading us into action; an elf is at risk of far worse than death, that of ennui.  Apathy, loneliness, listlessness...such is our heresy, an eternity of wasted sunrises, sunsets - an eternity without love...for that I could weep if I had the tears left to do so after these last forsaken three days of blood and suffering, man and elf alike.  That much have I also learned - that in death we are all equal, never to rise, never to love, and in the end all but forgotten.  So I will recount this ill-begotten history to the best of my ability, for the sake of honor, no matter how foolhardy the “honorable” have been. 

May the dead forever be remembered; may the living be forgiven.  This is our toast to the fallen, but as for the suffering we have caused...once I have finished here, I pray only to forget.  For to see this day, everyday, for eternity...
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Long ago, elf and humankind lived in concert upon the Earth.  The elves, I should say, are not bound to this Earth in the human sense, though we are viscerally bound to it in every other way conceivable.  Since the rise of mankind, for reasons both profound and circumstantial, we have periodically left this place and returned home into The Other - this is the only human word that approaches what we ourselves call it.

Our longest retreat into The Other was our most recent - just prior to “the Dark Ages," when all Reason fell prey to human cruelty under the pretense of piety.  We have no quarrel with mankind’s quest for Divine Presence.  Even the elves have been lost in clouds of doubt from time to time, and while I intend no sarcasm, we just happen to have an eternity to find our spiritual path and purpose.  There are some among us that claim to speak with the gods, though I myself do not, nor can I say with any certainty that either man or elf will indeed live on in some form of afterlife...death is a tragedy in every sense, and gods know, I have sown my own fields of tragedy and regret.  I have killed seventy men since our arrival, and I can tell you the color of their eyes, their age, and whether they died for their principals, or afraid and alone...

No elf may ever take a life unless threatened.  That is our pact with The Other; that is our payment for life unending.  Breech that pact, and we will never see our home again.  Murder, and we might as well be dead ourselves.  But any elf that takes a life, even when threatened, can in turn be slain.  We are warriors, but only when war is part of the Purpose.
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We returned from The Other only eleven seasons past.  Our elders met with our king - my father - and we journeyed through The Ether between the two.  I must ask your forgiveness, for I will not speak more than this of The Ether: if ever there existed a Purgatory of nightmare and regret, it would be there within that whirl of screaming darkness between our worlds.  There is no waking state within The Ether, only dreams.  Every failure comes forth to be relived, and relived again, and if an eternity gives you anything, it gives you ample opportunity to fail.  There is no respite there for your regrets, remembered or forgotten; they will be yours, but more importantly, so long as you remain, you will be theirs.  Some have crossed The Ether in a matter of days, but some...some are no doubt still there, forgotten to the living, screaming for help in their dreams.  From time to time, priests trained against The Ether will scour the darkness for weeks, returning with nothing but a raving husk that once conversed with orchids in bloom, or brought rain from blue skies with nothing but his outstretched hands and a fool’s grin - an elf will only fall in love once, and the world itself rejoices with them.  But with these memories that I have, I will likely never survive The Ether again.
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It was Spring when the elves returned; for a year we watched and waited.  Mankind had reduced the world to naught but crumbling pavement and blight, but we worked in shadow, tireless in our Purpose as bade by our gods.  You see, without one there is no other; without Earth, The Other will simply cease to be, as would we.  By the winter of our first year we had turned back the blight, and we made ourselves known.  By the next spring, our works upon the Earth had earned a level of respect for not what we were, but at least for what we could do.  But we made our share of enemies as well, for there have always been those that see the Earth as nothing but a means to their own desired end, and that, as elves, we cannot abide.  We are the custodians of a realm far greater than any mortal could possibly imagine, and there will always be those that will not compromise - man and elf, alike...

If I had known the havoc our return would cause, the warrior in me would have driven mankind to the ends of the Earth, but my royal blood and sworn fealty overruled, and now I fully understand the mistrust, the lies, and the agony that rode upon our shoulders into the world of man.  I am no philosopher - only an elf - a young prince perhaps, but I feel more human as I write this.  Six months ago, I would have expected any elf to see the good that will come of this war, that no matter how devastating the past may be to bear, there will always be the good that follows...always, and yet, I must leave any celebration of our victory for those still too young to bear witness to their ancestral bloodshed.

It is infinitely sweeter to remember that which you never knew.  We teach this to our children, though they will only learn its cold depths as I have.
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I followed an elf into the twilight once, through a rambling tangle of brush and blight, for what seemed like hours.  We had not been here long, and I must confess that my youth and my standing had gotten the better of me at first - a young prince, hardly a month upon the Earth, already suspicious as any human...stalking one of my own kind through the wilderness, as if hunting down a traitor.  What I saw then is why I became so resolved in my Purpose.  This elf - cloaked with his cowl pulled low to gather the shadows around his face - took me to a place of which not even my father was aware, for I asked him, then took him there myself.

Miles into the wild there stands a timeless structure, coaxed out of the Earth itself, made of stone and ironwood - no larger than a tomb, and no less sacred in its intention.  The interior is bare but for a single stone dais.  Engraved upon it are the words So long as there is life, May you be there to protect it.  We have many tenets, some come into favor and others fade, but only the elders had heard speak of this Earthly maxim.  I never saw the hooded elf again, but I was told of an Ancient - the Ancient, charged by the gods themselves to remain upon the Earth, one solitary elf alone in a world that was never his own.  It was his call that bade my people to cross The Ether, time and again, to bring Balance back between the two worlds.  One solitary elf, tasked throughout eternity with the salvation of Life itself.

They say that I was blessed because of this, by having borne witness to the one true messenger.  I wish that I could disagree, that I could spurn the existence of the divine, if not just to be free in my disbelief that there could be any Purpose in such waste over mere principle, or greed.  To be blessed at a time such as this, blood-covered and grief-stricken, feels closer to being damned.
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Eleven thousand elves died yesterday.  Fewer died today, but the count continues to rise.  There may be eight hundred of us left, perhaps more, likely less.  I said earlier that an elf will only ever fall in love once in their eternity.  Even so, an elf will likely only sire one child, if a couple decides to do so at all.  I will likely remain here, but there is hope that most will return to The Other, and there, I pray, the scars they carry here will not hinder them from bringing new life into eternity, but eternity is too long to hold a wager, one way or another.

I should say, for the sake of this “history” that I cannot comprehend the number of losses suffered by mankind, but our captains estimate it anywhere between 5:1 and 8:1, human to elf.  Mankind is determined, but an elven adolescent is more lethal with a blade of switch grass than any human with a gun.

There is an elven expression that There has only ever been one war.  It wages in our hearts, boils in our blood, surges through our veins...it is a war against something we hardly believe in to begin with.

Time.

We fight against it.  We fight for more of it.  And we die wishing we’d spent our time differently.  But time is never worth dying for, living for, or fighting for.  With time we measure our mistakes and force deadlines upon our dreams.  Time has no sympathy for the countless dead stretched for miles out before me as I write.  Time is nothing.  Time is not real.

But the time to go has come, and so I must.

The Exodus is upon us.  For my people, The Ether awaits, and The Other beyond.  I will remain and complete this unfortunate history, and, once done, I will again seek out the Ancient.  Perhaps, in searching for him, I might learn to find peace in my solitude here, alone for eternity in the red-stained world of man.