Ruminations of An Aging Elf

Hello my children,

I hope not to bother you so, for exams persist and tensions run high amongst all folk within this humble college of ours. However, even in the most extraordinary of circumstances, as the most extraordinary of people, one can feel quite insignificant and alone. I don’t even know why I would feel this way. I know, logically, that what I am experiencing is merely the natural course and consequence of having lived so long. However, it does not change my profound frustration by its implications: slowly, but surely, your beloved professor is dying.

Today I wish to speak about the aging of elves, and instead hope to return to discussions about subjects of levity at a later date.

Now first for some context: elven aging occurs far slower than that of most other folk. Smallfolk, strange as they are, display age rapidly and will remain that way until they shrivel up into a senile bundle of wrinkles and coal dust. I will take their word upon the noble virtues of working until death deep beneath the earth.

Humans, like a passionate flame that burns quickly through its wick, persist for but a fraction of an elven lifespan. However, they age at a far more consistent rate than feykin or smallfolk, and this reminds them constantly of their purpose. Humans are liberated from unmotivated mediocrity by their immediate mortality.

Elves, on the other hand, are the most perfect of beings. Our beautiful youthfulness is as warm as honey and preserved like the sweetest of wines. This, of course, is true until the very final years when we find ourselves as the face of death. If you cut the roots from a flower, it immediately begins that painful process of vanitas. Likewise, an elf leaves just as quickly, yet mysteriously, is unable to provide evidence of their disappearance. To my horror, when bathing yesterday, a hair fell from my wonderful locks only to theblack stone below, a wispy grey sliver of color spelling the coming doom.

This is what scares me the most, my children. The days seem to get shorter and shorter, and don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost as if time itself has wrapped its long, wispy fingers around me personally just to tamper with my perception of the world. I suppose that is the natural state of an elf, a point of time in one’s life where all must come hopefully not to a bitter end, but instead to a slow gradient into unknowing all that they have been privileged to have learned in the first place.

That doesn’t stop me from fearing the end. Something finite is scary to us folk. We enjoy boundless freedom and the endless possibilities of thought, but to have that stripped away from you as if it were ice exposed to a flame is indescribable. Or maybe, even, it is not my perception, it is not that my end comes closer, but that the world plays tricks on me and everyone here. The Earthmother plays games with mortals, especially those who hope to supersede her eternal, vast, unending influence. As you may already know, that is my whole identity.

Seeing this grey hair, and calculating the life that I already have lived, I at most have fifty years longer to study. Can you believe such a thing? I must take advantage of these twilighting elven years of mine, see the world in its entirety, and find once again what it means to be a person of study. After, of course, exams have ended and vacation comes. Thank you for listening to my musings every week, and I hope that your lives bring upon you answers instead of useless, ongoing questions.

Until next time,

-The Magician.