I was eighty that year.

At the time, it felt like millenia. I’d seen and done so much already, moving from place to place and learning everything I could. I still do that, still travel, still learn, but to my younger self it was monumental – Look at me! Look at everything I can do! 

I couldn’t believe how far I’d come from a sobbing twelve summer old child on the floor of a forest hut. I wore my patterns with pride, the glamour becoming a royal velvet cloak around my shoulders. Not a disguise, but an accessory. A badge of honour.

I felt like I could eat the world raw – young and fresh, but experienced and clever. Truly immortal. And, to top it all off, I had a king to share it with.

Leon.

Quiet, joyful, fascinated by everything around him. Even hundreds of years later, I remember the sun-through-honey colour of his eyes, the pale ice of his hair. His unusual colouring and quirky traits made him subject to the most awful of comments, every unkind word thrown at him drawing him deeper into his shell. I was the only person who could bring him out again, with gentle kisses and kind murmurs, warm embraces and sweet promises.

The day they took him away was one of the hardest in my whole life.

He was dangerous, they told me. Unstable. He needed to leave for his own good. But I knew him, better than anyone. Leon would never hurt a fly, I tried to say. This is wrong!

No one listened. They already knew, but didn’t care, didn’t want to hear it.

I lost it, kicking and screaming, desperately reaching towards his striking white hair that they couldn’t see the beauty in. I watched and died inside as they tied him to a mule, roughly shoving it forward while tears streamed down his lovely face. Shame and misery curled his shoulders forward, and it broke me. Who would coax him out of his shell now, who would cover his ears from the cruelty, give him gentle kisses and kind murmurs? Whose warm embraces and sweet promises would he feel now?

I didn’t know.

I still don’t.

I loved him, and he loved me.

It wasn’t enough.