The Moment the Knot Was Tied
I fell in love at first sight.
It was a notion I had never agreed with. Anyone who claimed such a thing was either a liar or someone who had never truly loved. They were people dazzled by surface beauty alone, incapable of loving with the heart — creatures of instinct who had no idea how to convey what they felt. Or so I used to condemn them.
As a man of the cloth, I heard these confessions often enough during the sacrament of penance, and each time I scolded rather than comforted.
Until I met one woman.
As the fighting against the monsters at the front grew fiercer, I was naturally reassigned forward to tend the wounded. Among those sent to the lines were elves from the Sacred Forest, every one of them so striking that they stole the eyes of my comrades without fail. I told myself I was different from the rest.
I was forced to revise that opinion soon enough.
When I first saw her, she was wearing a white hood embroidered with golden thread, and the platinum gleam of the hair that slipped free of it was what snared my gaze — the beginning of everything.
What extraordinarily beautiful hair.
I thought that, and was about to return my attention to my work, when she raised a hand and drew the hood back.
I genuinely never imagined that would be the moment I fell in love.
I had been taught to look upon a person's inner self, that the exterior was nothing but a hollow shell meant to deceive the eye. And yet her appearance was so perfect that, had her soul proven anything less than beautiful, I would have sincerely believed it the work of some devil's trickery. Call it blasphemy if you like — no, if that is blasphemy, then the one who levels the charge is the true blasphemer.
Her face was as though He Himself had shaped it, without a single rough edge. Even the pointed ears that set her apart from humankind did not strike me as strange. The golden hair drawn neatly up, the long lashes catching the sunlight, the high bridge of her nose, the red hills of her lips parting and closing with every murmured word — I forgot whatever I had been doing and surrendered my entire mind to her.
Then her golden eyes met mine, and I, not knowing what else to do, ducked my head and tried to flee my place —
"My, my. Staring at a stranger's face to your heart's content and then running off without so much as an appraisal is rather rude, don't you think, human gentleman?"
She caught my wrist. Held under her gaze, my mind froze solid and every word deserted me. Those golden eyes, bright as flame, stole the soul right out of me — and the strength went out of my legs as well.
"Oh — wait a moment, Father? Father!"
The incident spread like wildfire and became a standing joke among my brothers and sisters for a long time afterward. At first it was only the teasing of colleagues.
"I've never seen Brother Gideon stare at anyone like that before."
"I suppose even an elf's beauty can steal a heart regardless of gender — though I'd fall for Lady Thea myself, if I'm honest."
But the more I threw myself into my work and healed the wounded, the greater my renown grew, and with it the mischievous ribbing of my comrades, until the words elf and Thea began to surface even from the mouths of the patients I treated.
It was a strange thing. I was not displeased. I felt no urge to deny it. Every time I recalled the face I had met, a tight, aching pain closed around my chest. My face would flush for no reason, and once I gripped a bandage so hard while dressing a wound that I startled the patient outright.
"Is it because of that elf, Father? Well — she really is beautiful, I'll give you that."
But face, face, face. They spoke only of her looks. Not a single one of them told me who she was. And worse still —
"That elf Father Gideon was so stunned by — I hear her figure's pretty fine too."
"Pretty fine? Come on. She's incredible. Beauty bestowed by the Lord Himself."
It sounded like praise, but what they were really doing was baring dark, sordid desire without shame. My face twisted; my teeth ground together. Was it not right to treat such a woman with courtesy? If she was beautiful, if her appearance caught the eye, then that alone was what one ought to speak of. Why did their own appetites have to seep into every word?
And so, whenever those greasy remarks drifted near, I cleared my throat — deliberately, pointedly — and cut them short. I believed that was the right thing to do.
Day by day, I found myself less and less able to cast the elf from my thoughts. When I settled quietly in my room for the dawn prayers and asked for success in the day's work —
"...and grant that I may be joined with the woman I hold in my heart — ?!"
Somehow, without meaning to, I had begun speaking of her. That was not what I had intended to say. And every time I tried, with a devout heart, to begin the prayer again, her face drifted past me: that shining hair, white-gold enough to pass for silver; the soft curve of her eyes; the pale, lustrous lips.
...I was not supposed to feel this way.
Denying it was growing harder and harder.
I wiped the blood and pus from the sick, then sat astride a hill to catch a cool breeze and stared blankly at the sky. In the end, I had finished an entire prayer about her that morning. I had nearly set a vial of medicine in the wrong place while carrying them, and in the corridor I had even crossed paths with her as she hurried alone, for reasons I could not guess, toward some destination.
...Was this wrong of me?
I dragged a hand down my face and leaned back against a tree — and in that very instant:
"My, my. We meet again."
She settled lightly beside me and lowered her hood. Soft cascades of golden silk and a radiant smile closed the distance between us in a single breath.
"I — uh —"
Honestly, I had fretted endlessly over how I would speak to her if we met again, over how I would carry the conversation if chance brought us face to face. And yet, with her actually before me, I could not dare to utter a single word. My brain ordered my mouth to say, A pleasure to meet you again; I apologize for my earlier rudeness, and commanded the muscles of my face to form a gentle smile — but my body forgot every one of its duties and simply sat there, vacant.
And how could it not? Her bright hair, catching the sunlight and blazing with it, and that luminous smile washed away every care, every worry, every exhaustion of hard labor.
"Evan, was it? Your name?"
It was only a question of a name, and still I sat fidgeting, at a complete loss. My mind had become a blank white canvas, carefully painting nothing but her face — even though I needed to speak.
She only smiled, as if she found me interesting, and drew closer still.
"Why that face? Do I look strange somehow?"
"Ah — no!"
...Why did this body of mine creak and seize so badly in front of her? It moved with perfect ease when I treated patients. Now I was stammering, unable to climb free of my fluster.
Despair was about to settle over me when —
"Pfft — pffhh — ahaha —"
People say the eyes can smile. I had always argued that a mouth can smile, but how could eyes possibly do such a thing? And there, before me, her pretty, curved eyes danced with laughter.
"You're an amusing person."
I wanted to ask what was so amusing, whether I had somehow given offense. I did not want to admit it, but I also wanted to thank her for bringing about the meeting I had been hoping for. Yet I managed none of it. With a tongue gone stiff, I could only mumble some unintelligible language — and Thea simply offered me a merciful smile.
"What a foolish face."
A slender finger tapped the tip of my nose. The sharp, electric sensation that ran from that touch — in that single instant, I felt everything collapse.
All the feelings I had so carefully tried to deny, all the insistence that it could not be, that love at first sight did not exist — I had no choice but to set it all down. She was far too captivating a woman for the likes of me to refuse.
The way she bit into fresh fruit, one piece at a time, was open enough to slowly unfasten even my rigid self. She was a proper person — no, a proper elf. Not unrestrained, yet never closed off. In the pursuit of what she valued there was no limit, and once she believed a method was right, she never hesitated to act on it.
As we traveled together and saved many lives, I came to see her more often and to know her more deeply. Her favorite fruit was peach; the work she disliked most was treating fractures. She had the courage to stand unflinching even where blood and flesh flew, and yet she shuddered at writhing formless creatures and cursed them with that lovely mouth of hers. Somehow, that undeniable charm drew me in deeper and deeper.
And so, on the day we returned to the barracks beneath a rising sun, coated in the black blood and dust of wicked heretics, I failed even to consider how exhausted she must have been in that wretched state — and simply rushed at her.
I took her fine hands in both of mine and confessed my love. Shamefully, I cannot quite remember the exact words I spoke. Something vague about having come to love her beyond endurance, or about being enchanted by a woman who possessed both the beauty the gods had bestowed and a gentle heart... words of that sort, as I begged her to accept my love.
It was the first love of my life; I had no familiarity with it at all, and so it was unbearably embarrassing and mortifying. For a long while I waited for her answer, staring straight into her eyes beneath the brightening dawn, fretting over whether I ought to release her hands lest the sweat welling from my palms like a geyser offend her — and at that very moment, she parted her firmly closed lips.
"...In all my long life, I have never once been in love. And if that first love is to be shared with one of the short-lived races, the worry comes first."
The moment I heard her stiffened voice, my chest clenched tight. Rejection was not something that was allowed to exist. It was not something I could easily accept. And so I was about to tell her that being short-lived was of no consequence, that though all I could gift her were fleeting memories, those memories would remain with her forever even without me, that though I had nothing to boast of but my faith, the love I could give her would be as fierce as that faith itself —
What sealed my reckless, improvised mouth was the deep flush that rose across her face.
"But... yes. The faith you offer me seems stronger than anyone else's. I may have been a little drawn not only to your appearance, but to the strength of your inner self as well. So... will you take care of me?"
Hearing those words, I felt as though I had been saved. In a single sentence I had seen hell, and then paradise. I carefully took the fine hand she offered, sank to my knees on the spot, and cried out,
"O God, thank You — thank You...!!"
"Really now — is it something to be that happy about?"
She smiled and shyly covered her mouth with her hand, and my body followed its own pull: I embraced her once, then at the entrance to the square where our feet stood, I poured out my joy with my whole being.
Meeting her was the most radiant moment of my life.