Challenge #01855-E031: Hello, Goodbye
Family photos, Wedding groups, school photographs. -- KnitNan
They say that Elves don't age. That's not true. They do age, just incredibly slowly. You can see it, if you journey down a particular hallway in a particular house where the city grew up around it.
They say that Elves steal children. This is a lie. They only take those who have clearly been abandoned. This Elf, once upon a sleeting autumn day, picked up an abandoned infant that had been left to die. He could tell by the way that the baby wasn't even cleaned or swaddled. Just born, and left to perish in the woods.
He was already one hundred and fifty, by then. And to human eyes, resembled a fresh-faced twenty. He strapped the baby to his chest, and traded furs for milk, clothes, and knowledge. The humans of the village that finally accepted him came to know him. Offered to help. Built him a house. Helped it become a home.
It's a mansion, now. Grown outwards like a snail's shell to house the Elf's human child. Then their spouse. Then their family. Then their family's family. And, we know, an assortment of children who had been left in baskets, abandoned in byres, or like the first of us, naked in the woods.
They say that Elves are uncaring. We know that is a lie. This Elf had love in his seemingly immortal heart for every lost and lonely scrap of humanity that nobody else - not even their mothers - had a care for. We have heard his purr as our first lullabye, his heartbeat as our first comfort, and his words as our life's best advice.
Should you walk along the Long Hall, you will see it. Portrait after portrait of one seemingly unchanging Elf with his family. Generation after generation for seven hundred years. There's almost always a baby in his arms, and you can see how carefully he clings to them. You can see the lines start to grow around his smile, and the silver start to touch his hair. Go to the end, where the Last Portraits sit. There's one where he is alone, his hair and eyebrows alike turned to starlight. You know the ones. The formal and the informal ones.
The formal one is stiff, and you can see in his eyes that he's uncomfortable in that old suit and with empty arms. You can see that his wrinkled hands are itching to hold another infant. That isn't him. The informal one, where he's devoting all his attention to bottle-feeding another daughter-by-the-basket, where he's smiling as he cradles another new soul... that's him.
That is how we will remember him. And how we will carry on the work that he has performed tirelessly, lovingly, ever since he picked up Thorn, seven hundred years ago. We are all his children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and we have always had a home.
They say Elves do not repeat the names of the dead. We know this to be true, because it hurt him too much to say them. But we are not Elves. And so, we believe that none are truly dead so long as their name is spoken. So as we say farewell to his mortal form, say his name.
We will remember him forevermore in the Greenfriend Foundheart Foundation for Orphaned and Abandoned Children. We know the care he gave. We will take it to those who need it most. To the lost, to the lonely, to the half-casts and the street rats. They will have a home, and it will be welcoming.
In his name.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Reana]
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