Approximately 4 months ago
I glanced up as the bell over the shop door rang. “No fairies,” I warned.
The human boy stopped in surprise and looked at me, a bit dismayed. “I’m not a fairy?”
I could have pointed out that he was protected by one, but he seemed young and uncertain and apparently not good at reading old ladies with dry humor. “It was a joke. You can come in, make sure to shut the door behind you or it’ll get cold in here.”
My hair was all white now and I looked the part of an old lady who was probably old enough to be this boy’s great-grandmother. With age came more aches and pain, but I could still run my little jewelry shop – and keep trying to do something impossible.
“Why joke about not letting fairies in?” The boy asked curiously. “Do you not like fairies?”
I chuckled a little. “A very, very long time ago,” by human standards, at least, “I was good friends with a fairy. We were teammates in brawling – sort of elite fighting for supernaturals, if you will?” Since he was a protected human, I knew it was safe to talk to him about this. “She decided to leave me to marry another fairy and start a family. I held a grudge about it for years, and back then I probably wouldn’t have let fairies in the place, but it’s been a long time since I’ve held any animosity towards her." I gave up on that once I started facing real problems like trying to help the elves survive. In light of that, my grudge towards her seemed rather petty. "Now,” I set down my pliers and looked at him closely. “What can I help you with, young one?”
“I want a custom piece,” he explained, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolding it before sliding it across the counter to me. “You have a reputation for doing great custom pieces, according to the internet, anyway, so I was hoping you’d be able to do it for me?”
The design was simple and would be easy enough to do. “Is this a pendant?”
“More like a charm for a bracelet.” He was looking at the display cases now, clearly distracted. “I had an idea for a bracelet, too, but – can I see that one? It looks almost exactly like what I was picturing.”
I unlocked the cabinet and retrieved the piece in question, watching as he carefully looked it over. I could see him cringe a little at the price tag, but I had no intention of changing it. Sure, he probably wanted it for his girlfriend or whoever, but my work took my expertise and I was fine with charging whatever I wanted for it. If he couldn’t afford it, he could find someone else to do what he wanted – but likely not as well.
“Could you make that to match?” He pointed to the piece of paper, then motioned back to the bracelet. “Or actually….” He stopped, frowned a bit, and then placed the bracelet down. “Can you do the same thing in rose gold?”
I raised an eyebrow. If he didn’t like the price tag now, he definitely wouldn’t like it if I was redoing it as a custom piece. “I can,” I confirmed, “but it’ll be expensive.” I told him the estimate for both pieces he wanted and, predictably, he made a face and sighed deeply.
I expected him to politely decline, but instead he nodded. “Okay. Um, how long will that take?”
I told him, and then pulled out the required paperwork and started the process of a deposit when it was clear he didn’t intend to back out – even if he didn’t like the price much. Good. I could deal with customers like that. I could understand not liking the price, but it wasn’t like this was your cheap stuff you could get at a department store. This was elven made and came with a certain quality and detail as a result.
While I was preparing the paperwork, his eyes roamed the shop. I noticed him eyeing a few pieces, but it wasn’t until he saw the display case behind me that his gaze stopped.
“A crown?” He asked, incredulously.
“That used to be the elvish crown,” I informed him. “The crown the elvish royalty wore for formal occasions.” I glanced up at said crown with a bit of sadness.
Apparently the boy caught the grief in my eyes. “It makes you sad? Do you…miss the royals?”
“It’s more complicated than that. The end of the monarchy was appropriate, I think – people are more interested in democracy and freedom than in being forced to listen to one ruler and their family for who knows how long.” I turned my attention back to the paperwork. “But the crown represents more than just that, and it is the other part that makes me sad.”
The boy propped his chin up in his hands, his elbows resting on the counter while his eyes sparkled with curiosity. “How so?”
I hadn’t told anyone in decades about the truth of the crown, so why was I suddenly tempted to tell this human boy? Maybe that was just it – he wasn’t involved, he was a neutral party just listening to a story, and with his clear interest, somehow I was inclined to humor him.
Besides, it wasn’t likely I had many years left. Even if it was to a human boy who would never understand the value of what I was telling him, I kind of liked the idea of passing on the story once more.
“The crown,” I informed him, “was my family’s. To me it reminds me of my ancestors – not that I was particularly fond of them – but also of the power and future of my people. You see, according to legend passed down among the royal family, our people’s magic originated on another world, and the crown was the link to that magic.”
I finished the paperwork and pushed it across the counter towards him, handing him a pen as well. “But when the last royal was to be crowned, the king’s wife destroyed the crown in a fit of rage that she wouldn’t get the power instead. In breaking the crown, she destroyed our link to our magic, and since then, our people have slowly lost what magic we had, our lives shortening, our former strength virtually gone.” I glanced up at the crown again. “Repairing it did not fix the damage caused and nothing we could do since has resolved the problem.”
He frowned a bit, too distracted by my story to remember the paperwork. “So…elves are dying off? Because of the crown?”
“Basically,” I admitted. “The crown was destroyed decades ago, and our people still live, but our lives are much shorter now and the magic we once had is gone.” I sighed, remembering the way I had once dominated the brawler’s ring – something I wouldn’t have been able to do for over 150 years now.
“Well, that’s sad!” The boy protested. “I didn’t realize elves were dying! Why don’t most people know?”
I pointed to the paperwork, reminding him, and waited until he started signing to answer. “It was a choice we made – those of us who knew the truth – to allow elves to live their lives happily for as long as possible, without knowing that doom follows them around. In the meantime, we’ve tried to find a solution – tried and tried, for almost two centuries since this began, but without success. Everyone we’ve ever contacted, no matter how promising their magic seemed, has been unable to help us. They can’t relink magic that they can’t find because it came from someplace else.”
He finished signing but didn’t give the papers back, his brow furrowed. “Someplace else? Like…another planet? Is that really a thing? I didn’t think anyone traveled to other planets.”
I shrugged slightly. “That’s the legend passed down,” I explained. “It doesn’t mean it’s real. It’s more likely the magic came from another source.” What source, though, I had no idea. And how that related to the elvish people? Most supernaturals got their magic just by nature of being what they were. That ours was dependent on an object being linked to the original magic was…different. I had no answers for why.
He didn’t protest when I took the paperwork from him, along with his card for the deposit, instead looking thoughtful. “What were elves like before? Before the crown broke?”
I could feel almost a dreamy smile cross my face. “We were strong. When I was in the brawler’s club, I was at the top. Elves were less susceptible to poisons and most magic, could heal faster, and had longer endurance. We could fight literally for hours, against almost any opponent. We didn’t, normally, but – but we could. We were once a strong, powerful race.” I sighed. “I’d intended to make us stronger, actually, but when the affair with the crown happened, instead I’ve had to watch my people slowly fade and die. It’s a sad end for a once majestic race.”
The boy frowned again. “And…there’s no way to change that? It seems like something could be done!”
“We’ve tried,” I told him gently, touched by his earnest concern for help a race that wasn’t connected to him. “But whatever magic was originally connected to the crown can’t be found and reconnected, and nothing can fix that. All we can do is live our lives the best we can for as long as we have them.”
He grumbled a bit about that idea, but as he left I found myself sighing to myself.
Over 180 years of trying to find a solution, and now I found myself unable to go on. I was getting older and most of my confidants had passed on. With that many years of running into dead ends, it was hard to keep finding the will to search for an answer.
“I’m sorry, Nicole,” I murmured. “I wanted to keep trying, keep hoping – but I think I’ve given up. I probably don’t have that many years left myself, and I guess I’d rather just live my last few years as I can than keep disappointing myself.”
Sometimes I found myself regretting that I’d thrown myself so thoroughly into trying to find a solution that I’d never taken the time to really enjoy my life. I’d never gotten involved with anyone, never had a real family, and my friends were people working with me – for me, in a sense. My entire life had revolved around this obsession, with nothing to show for it, and sometimes – sometimes I regretted not giving myself a chance to enjoy life a bit more. I was old now, too old to go wandering the world just for fun or trying out some of the things humans enjoyed – like rollercoasters – and somehow that made me feel like I’d just ended up living all these years for nothing.
It wasn’t really nothing. I was trying to help my people, trying to save them, trying to protect and serve them as the queen I’d been raised to be, even if that title had long since been cast aside. Even if almost all of the elves would never even realize how much of my life and resources I’d given for them. Trying to save my people, even if it hadn’t worked out – that wasn’t a waste of life, was it? I hoped not. Because I wasn’t going to get a second chance at life.
I might only have a few years left – probably not even a decade. Hopefully even Nicole would understand that I wanted to retire, as it were, and spend my final years doing something for me for a change. Watching movies, maybe. Making a friend or two. At the very least, enjoying the satisfaction that came with completing a piece of jewelry with exquisite detail and exceptional quality that I knew would last. I might not have children to be a legacy, but I suppose, in a way, each piece I created was a legacy of its own.
Taking one more glance at the crown in the cabinet behind me, sighing to myself as I realized that I probably couldn’t give up on the idea totally as long as a solution hadn’t been found, I turned my attention back to my work.
I was all out of ideas on how to save my people, but I still couldn’t quite give up on hope entirely.
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