Anticipation
I could not tell him.
That loving a short-lived one would mean cutting myself off from my own people. That our love would mean rejection by the First Tree and all who guarded it. That meaning—I could not speak it to him.
Because a man with a heart as gentle as his, a man who had always put me first, would surely abandon his own feelings the moment he knew.
“I present myself before the messengers of the First Tree.”
They arrived in the hour before dawn, when the sun had not yet risen, and surrounded me in silence, demanding the rite of severance. It was the same rite I had once witnessed performed by another who chose to leave the forest for love of a short-lived one.
I had decided to step beyond the laws of the forest. Therefore every mark that proved me one of its own had to be cut away.
I drew back my robe and folded it with care. A quiet ache stirred at the thought of parting from the garment that had been with me since childhood, yet the choice was already made. His kindness, shared across a single year, had grown far sweeter than any robe.
That robe had been with me through joy and sorrow alike. And though the word “elf,” the name of my forest kin, had bound and tormented me again and again even in so short a span, I turned the truth over carefully once more: in a year and a half, Evan had never once disappointed me.
When countless others lifted their noses and made my life a misery, he sat beside me with such careful gentleness. While the rest of the world rattled my days with noise, he brought only calm and quiet. Even when I poured out my weariness and my raw feelings, even when I set every burden down before him and confessed I was exhausted by it all, Evan never grew stiff. He never answered with coldness.
Everyone else demanded that I receive their emotions, yet the moment I asked them to listen they snapped at me. He was different. He simply sat and heard me out. When I said I disliked something, he smiled and helped me deal with it. After I once mentioned that I liked peaches, he never forgot; he began carrying them with him. The day I realized peaches were always at his side, a sharp, sweet ache rose in my chest and I sank down behind a window, unable to stand.
Remembering that feeling, I held the robe out to the one before me. The moment it left my hands I felt myself becoming more alone than ever.
I am certain I was an oddity among the forest folk. Golden eyes that seemed almost to burn drew every gaze. I could not see my own face clearly, yet the endless advances I received were enough to tell me I was, to some degree, beautiful. I do not think that was a blessing. It did not take long to understand that the attention of my kin was filled with filthy desire, jealousy, and hatred.
Even when I told him it was only teasing, I had wanted to say it was not. And so the fear that I might be placing too heavy a burden on him, the fear that a man might not accept what even my own people had rejected, gathered into yet another knot inside me. When I learned that he could gently embrace even that knot—when I learned that this fragile human, so brief-lived beside the long-lived races of this world, could boldly set aside his long-held office for the sake of love—I felt gratitude for my beauty for the first time. For the first time I felt happiness in every part of myself that had been able to draw such a splendid man to me.
“Do you regret your choice?”
“I do not.”
I felt the blade touch my left ear and closed my eyes with care. The thought that I would never again be tormented by my “kin,” the thought that they would no longer have even the slightest right to interfere in my decision or my love, settled my heart into unexpected calm.
Then that calm shattered.
“Thea! Thea!!”
His voice rose behind me. And then the dizzying pain arrived.
It hurt. Far more than I had expected.
I had believed myself prepared. Of course living flesh being sliced away would hurt, but still…!
“Who are you people, and what are you doing to Thea—”
“Ah. So you are the short-lived one. We had only heard the rumors.”
Why was he standing here? He should still have been asleep. Through a mind grown thick and distant I barely caught the voices around me and clamped a hand over my ear.
“Heaven… ngh—kh—”
Warm, sticky blood welled against my palm. The familiar yet still repulsive sensation made me grit my teeth and try to form a prayer, yet the words would not come properly. It was Evan who took hold of the ear in my place.
“O all-knowing, all-powerful One who dwells in Heaven, hear my voice and cradle the wounds of this pitiful soul…!”
A faint flash of light rose from the covered ear; the bleeding stopped. My vision, which had been steadily darkening, cleared little by little. I found myself already held in his arms and looked up at a face twisted with fury.
I had seen him frown many times while listening to my complaints, yet never before had I seen his face flushed so red, his eyes blazing as he glared at the three before me. That fierce emotion set my heart racing; the way it made me fall for him even harder could not possibly be wrong.
“…Aren’t you supposed to keep emotion out of your prayers?”
Anger still filled the voice that had healed my ear.
“You’re disqualified as a priest… heh.”
I offered the joke to ease him, yet his expression did not soften. I may have trembled a little at the sight.
“This is hardly the time for that. Thea, I think I need an explanation of what just happened.”
He watched the three leave in silence, my robe in their hands, his eyes hard; then he looked at me with sorrow and spoke.
“…Does this have something to do with what the hospital director mentioned?”
Of course. Anything that concerned me, he tried to remember without fail. He fretted over even the smallest details; I could feel how sincerely he thought of me. Falling in love with such a man was nothing strange at all.
A moment far too brief beside the years I had lived—a spark that could be called no more than an instant. To be captivated by the man named Evan, who shaped that spark into something beautiful, felt only natural.
“The ear… it won’t grow back, will it.”
I felt his fingertips brush the blunt edge with careful gentleness and took a sip of the tea he had pressed into my hands. Leaves with a mild analgesic effect. As the faint bitterness spread, the phantom pain that still troubled the ear seemed to ease a little. In truth that was precisely why healing miracles were never used on severed wounds, yet—
“It’s a mark. You don’t need to worry about it.”
An elf with one ear cut short was no longer under the protection of the forest’s laws. At the same time it proved she no longer needed to obey those laws. For me it was a necessary wound. Rules that had never protected me while I suffered such cruelty were rules I had never needed. How could I feel safe inside the laws of a people who tormented me? Evan, whom I had met here, was my only sanctuary; only he could comfort me. I suited him far better. That Evan was the human who fit me perfectly was becoming clearer with every day.
“It must hurt.”
“Thanks to you, I’m fine. I was a little startled when I saw you come running in such a panic, though. I’d planned to show you the ear and explain once you woke late in the morning… but since you already saw it, there’s no helping it.”
Perhaps it was the tea; my body felt a little heavy. I leaned against his shoulder, feeling the solid, reliable warmth that wrapped around me, and set the cup on the table.
“Choosing to live with a short-lived one… creates problems in many ways, actually. By the laws of the forest we are meant to live ascetic lives, so when we form close ties with emotional short-lived ones, many things begin to waver. Even leaving the forest like this is part of a trial—whether one has the confidence not to be seduced by anything outside.”
“Then I’ve become an obstacle for you…”
I cupped his face, whose eyes had drooped at the corners, and could not stop the smile that spread across my own. I hoped I did not look strange in his eyes.
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? That you were grateful, rather, for having left the path of a priest who receives the words of God? That you would seek the words of God within the life you share with me.”
“I… did.”
“I want to say that those words guided me. When you told me there are many ways to serve God, that gave me courage as well—the courage to love you.”
“But if it hadn’t been for me—”
“Then I would have lived never knowing happiness, surrounded by shameless people who approached me for nothing but my shell. I’m certain of it.”
In that brief span of time he had given me rest—peace and sweetness greater than any I had known. If I stayed with him, how much longer could this time stretch? The trial no longer held any meaning for me. Any affection I once felt for my kin had vanished long ago. He himself had said he would abandon the priesthood for the sake of time with me. And yet when I spoke of abandoning something, he carried such guilt and held me so fiercely. How carefully would he cherish me from now on?