A Man of Wealth and Taste

Sometimes I think it is my existence. To go on for so long. To continue to exist when so many of my brethren have faded away. The Sidhe are immortal. We do not age. Your notions of time do not mark our lives in an incremental dance toward death. But time does pass. And the world changes. It's changed so very much from the time of my childhood, lost in the mists on an island long forgotten. When a Sidhe grows weary of being unchanging in a changing world, he can lose the will to live. When that happens, he fades away into the Web. Back into the darkness of the magic we are made from. No heaven. No hell. Just the end, absorption into the strands that weave fate. No identity left. No individuality. Just...power that no longer has form.

There's a beauty to that. A simplicity and a grace and a feeling of peace. To let go of the pain and the burdens. To let someone step forward to take over my court. To lead my subjects. To become just an idea witches occasionally invoke.

I've been tempted. Danu knows, I've been tempted. Time and again, when the years stretch out long and bleak and empty, I have watched them and wondered why I hang on. It's not...it isn't comparable to your human idea of suicide. Individuality ceases and we are reabsorbed, but the magic lives on. It's what holds the world, the realms together. It's rest. It's peace after knowing your time has passed. That your kind are no longer important. We no longer matter in the world.

And yet, I've never done it. Never taken that final step. Always the thought comes, "What would she do if she came and I was no longer here?" There's part of me that believes it would have broken the curse, allowed her the freedom to live a full life. To find love and a normal life, not haunted by the tragedy that has been ours. But what if I am wrong? What if, instead, she would be born into that longing that pierces my soul whenever she's gone from the world? That hideous emptiness of knowing something is missing, something precious is lost. That chilling knowledge that you are truly alone in the world that no family can pierce because half of your soul is just...gone. And it would be like that forever for her. Every life until it ended however human rebirth ends.

But perhaps her soul would refuse to come back. Because she makes that choice. Every time. Every way. It is her choice to drink from Dagda's cauldron and be reborn. I have to believe it is to find me. And if she knew I was not there, would she cease as well? Would she stay in the Otherworld and find her peace there?

I can't know. I can't get there to ask her in the times she resides there. And she would not know now what choice her inner soul would make then.

More than that, though, there is the fact that all things change. And the world is marvelous. And humanity is beautiful.

The nagging feeling that I might miss something is far too annoying to let me just let go that way.

No matter how tempting.

The day I sent her back to the man who claimed to be her husband. Watching her eyes go blank, forgetting me. Seeing the smile she gave him -- that of a young girl in love. The cold smirk on his face as his hand closed about her waist and he led her out. I retreated to the highest tower of the castle atop the sidhe, staring down on rocks and more rocks as he pulled her through the field of broken bodies, fae and human alike. No. Not pulled. Escorted. I watched her look of horror at the carnage, eyes turned to him for explanation. Watched him smooth her hair back gently, set her atop his horse and ride away with her.

She never looked back.

It didn't matter that it was our choice. It didn't matter that we did it to save our people, to save those we loved from his wrath -- the same wrath that spurred my wife to curse our steps. I blamed them, you see. My family. My people. My position as their leader which meant their welfare came before mine. And she their Queen, she knew her role better than I. Knew I had to let her go to stop the war.

They came to me after, shattered and broken and fearing the king's return. We retreated deeper into the earth. I healed those I could. Tended to those who had lost loved ones. Moved through the centuries performing my role as King of the Underworld, Lord of Bri Leith.

I've never felt more alone.