I remember that year ended in six as well.

I brought a hand to the wound on my chest.

The hunter didn’t even bother sheathing his dagger when he heard a wolf howl, disappearing into the mist. The animal soon appeared, latching onto the elk I had only moments ago been trying to save from the human. It glanced at me in the middle of hunting what was now its prey, while I tried to rest on my knees after the fight, feeling the blood beginning to flow. I pressed down harder with a groan as I reached for the little pouch of medicinal herbs and bandages.

We were in a particular area of the Kalis Mountains, south of Calpheon, near Phoniel’s cabin. It was a protected area because hunters from the capital had been far too numerous there for too many years, and hunting was forbidden.

Hunting in itself isn’t necessarily wrong. Extermination is. And those are two very different things.

I had only recently started eating meat, something my family never did, but for the sake of survival outside the abundant, temperate forests of Kamasylvia, so full of magic, I had no choice. Sylvia didn’t strike me down with lightning for it, so… in the end, I was fine. Over the decades I spent away from my homeland, I discovered that nature, besides being beautiful, can also be cruel. The wind knocking down trees, water sweeping across the land and destroying the homes of otters, spiders trapping their prey in their webs, mothers eating their young before they grow, or the other way around as soon as they are born… all of that is nature too. All of that is life too.

Blood? Flesh? Mgh… There has always been this idea that we elves are superior beings, perfect, ethereal… I have never felt further from that.

Maybe it is very much like us to give off the impression of the colors of flower petals or a butterfly’s wings, but although we are long-lived, we are mortal. We have blood. Steel tears through our flesh. Life hurts us too. With a wound like mine, the only advantage we really have is good health, and that it is far less likely to leave a scar compared to other races. As my sister would say, “Absolutely and completely nothing more than that.”

The wolf, yes, treated me as an equal. It asserted itself as the owner of its prey, but as long as I minded my own business and tended to my wound, nothing would happen. Wolves… I remember hearing a legend in Grána that when a Luthraghon died, they were reincarnated as a spirit of Sylvia in the form of a great wolf. I had seen them before, and they always gave me that strange sense of familiarity… but no one really knows for certain. I always wondered whether I would become one of them when…

I took a deep breath. The herbs would start taking effect at any moment. I lay down on the damp mountain grass that smelled of earth, flat on my back beneath the cloudy sky, with my bow beside me, still affected from having channeled so many of my sparks through it. It was going to need a few improvements and a proper repair once I got back to the city.

Many broken leaves in the treetops looked dark as drops from the recent rain slid over them while the wind rocked them gently. Being winter, I could barely hear the birds singing, only the wolf nearby… Those were the sounds that made me feel comfortable. Nature never demanded explanations. It never asked who I was, never pointed at my ears or my clothes, never questioned why I hesitated so much when I spoke, or why my silences stretched so long between all my “aaa, eee”s.

That strange refuge on a January day was simply being out in the open, and somehow it was something my heart had needed without me realizing it. Years and years of directionless doubts needed a pause, a chance to drop an anchor into the sea of memories and finally slow down. To take off the cloak that covered me and ask myself whether the loneliness that followed me had already become too heavy, whether I could truly endure it.

But that was not the cloak I had been wearing since I left Grána. It had been over me long before that…

Maybe it was my lack of virtue, my shortcomings, not having any talent… My punishment for not knowing how to connect with people… There have been so many times when I’ve felt that introversion is quietly punished, that freezing up is misunderstood again and again… It is like “not knowing how.” And no one likes watching someone “not know how.”

Will I ever find an answer to so many doubts?

Then I had to narrow my eyes at a sudden light. A ray of sunlight had managed to break through the dense clouds of that grey sky. Going blind was about the only thing I had left to add to the list, but no. Even though it wasn’t a warm light, it was a light that invited me to hope, one that seemed to wrap itself around a lost and clumsy elf.

I closed my eyes and rested my head back.

And breathed.