A Mortal Song of Sorrow

 Once upon a time, an elf took what was rightly his. He knew this, because he had suffered; an elf is not used to suffering, especially not at the hands of mortals. Though immortal memory fades in and out of a day and a year, there are those who remember deep sorrow because it is so rare. Too, there are those immortals who remember vengeance.

    In revenge for his sadness, the elf took the mortal's peace. He took their power. He took their wonder and their joy. When the mortals could take the weight of powerlessness and war and always knowing without content no longer, they traded him people to appease his wrath, which he took with wicked grins. Mortals are wont to sell out their own. He put these traded mortals who impossible tasks, relishing their twisted, everlasting frustrations, though his need for vengeance never abated.

    The mortals could no longer look at their faces in mirrors. Or in glass. Or in ponds, streams, lakes. Yet, they got on with life. Mortals do tend to get on with life. And though they remember linearly, there are some things that are easily forgotten, easier than looking some things in the eye. There was one, though, on whom the traded mortal lives weighed heavily. One who thought that she ought to do something to free them from the elf's wrath. She bode her time. Time was what it took to amass the power she needed.

    On the right day of the right year, she stole into the elf's kingdom. Something to do with the moon and the waning boundaries of enchanted lands. When she stood in front of the palace, she began to sing. A seeping song of sorrow. In the power of her skill, she broke the elf to think only of his sadness as it was, true and deep and sunk with aching. To not think at all of the mortals given impossible tasks that were freed one by one by the singing woman.

    When the last mortal went free, the woman stopped singing.

    She waited for the wrath of the elf.

    But when he met her eyes, there was no anger there. Anger, as it happened, could not survive such true sorrow.

    Perhaps in understanding, they fell in love.

    Perhaps in the one having healed the other, there was great gratitude and many gifts.

    Perhaps in wonder of a voice and of an enchanted realm, there was a humbling of sorts.

    Perhaps, instead, each went their own way.

    All the same, the sorrow stayed. And all the same, there was peace. 

     

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