Memoirs: Elefain Kelrieth

Memoirs: Elefain Kelrieth

I was scared when I first left Tendrithil. I wanted to turn back every step, even as I made it to the edge of the Duskwood, even as we climbed up the Gloomy Peaks, and when we reached the valley below. I even wanted to turn back once I was fully on this journey, and once I had admitted to King Gramnik that my father was right. Even when I admitted it to myself. For it was I who ran from the responsibility as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend, as a kin of the Duskwood elves. I abandoned my station as a member of that society in pursuit of higher morals.

How arrogant was I then to think that my understanding of the world was greater than that of my father, or anyone else in the village. Just into my seventh decade of life, I was young by all standards of the elves. We hadn’t even commenced the celebration of welcoming me into adulthood, the Drawing of the Veil as it is so often called. It is a fitting name. The childhood of an elf is often quite different than adulthood, and in the long lives that we live, it is said that there are many more transitions along the road.

In those adolescent years, elves learn the beginnings of what it means to be an elf. Being descendent from the feywild, elves do not sleep in the same manner as other beings of Mithia. The reverie that we enter is more akin to meditation, and during those first few decades, it is not echoes of your own life that you experience, but echoes of lives past. It is thusly believed that elves are continually reborn and that the soul of an elf is drawn back to the plane of the living to be reborn as an infant. I have another theory about this. I believe that we are all connected through a communal consciousness, and that we share an intimate connection with each other from birth, that we may grow from the experiences of those who have come before us. For why would Marovihn send us to Esen’naish, the elven paradise he has created for his people, only to bring them back time and time again to be reborn?

I can't be certain about this theory, of course, and have no way I could even hope to prove such a theory. But do any of us truly know? In any case, the reflections we experience, those echoes of times before, of lives not our own, whatever connection it is, whatever meaning it is meant to impart upon us in those earliest years of life, it shows that there is a deeper connection that mere blood for one who is born of elf heritage. That is why, even as every step further from my homeland becomes lighter and the weight on my shoulders softens with each passing heartbeat, there will always be regret burned into my consciousness like a battle wound that will never heal. There will always be the thought that I have somehow let my father down, that I had betrayed my sister, that I had forsaken my mother, and that I had turned my back on my people.

After all, if it were not for my sudden and unexpected departure from the forest, would my father have brought his armies against the orcs? Would we have ever again fought that evil Tiemriel? Would we have found ourselves at odds with that corrupted dwarf warlock and his cunning drow companion? For what stake did we have in the outcome of such a conflict between dwarves and orcs, other than a mutual disgust for the evil race?

Yet it was my heart, not my mind, that forced me into motion, that put wings on my boots before I possessed those enchanted boots, that guided my arrows with divine purpose before I wielded my father’s bow. It was perhaps not Marovihn who guided my steps, but Emella, the Goddess of Fates, the Celestial Goddess, who urged me forward. Perhaps my connection with that compassionate wizard Elrin Frostborn had struck me more profoundly than I had ever thought, and perhaps his Goddess pulled me away from Marovihn, the God of Elves, for was it not he, according to legends and stories, who first created the elves in the feywild? But perhaps Emella has greater purpose for me afterall, and perhaps when I die Esen’naish will not be my home like those of my family, but perhaps I will find a place amongst the stars at the behest of Emella.

So was I afraid? Am I now? Perhaps. And perhaps the answer to both of these questions is that the fear arises not from what might happen if I find myself in battle with one of the viscious orcs, or end up at the wrong end of a shaman’s spell, but perhaps my fear comes from the wounds that I have left on the hearts of those I care about: my mother, my father, my sister, and my friends. For just as each step away from my home pulled at my heart strings, I hold no petense that they weren’t similarly affected by my actions. And yet, I do not regret my course. Perhaps it is that I do ultimately feel justified in my action. Or perhaps it is in fact Emella calling me to the road. Or even, it could possibly be, that such a long-lived peace in the land has left the various races and civilizations scattered and disconnected in ways that they were never meant to be, and my action, though it led my people to conflict, ultimately brought the world back together. And that is no small thing.

-Elefain Kelrieth