Reithéama and Seirelan

Reithéama sometimes thinks about what will happen when she dies. The touch of the phoenix has granted her a longer life than most, but even that spark will fade, eventually. She is not immortal.

But Seirelan is immortal; she will live until the last star among all stars is extinguished, if she wishes to. Reithi had not counted on how bittersweet it would be to watch her love remain as beautiful and young as she was the day they met, while she herself felt the relentless weight of her ripening age - with every winter, a few more gray hairs.

(There is a sweet, selfish pleasure in knowing that her lover - her lover! - will remain eternally unchanging, though not eternally hers.)

There are many years yet between Reithi and the grave, of course. More than she could really ask for; they will make good use of them.

Still, the little edge of fear in her heart: will Seirelan be able to move on without her? Will she be alright without Reithi to take care of her? Will she miss their long walks at dusk?

Will she remember her?

(Reithi doesn’t know what she wants the answers to be.)

Seirelan has had many lovers, over the centuries. Sometimes they wonder to her, in moments of vulnerability, how they must compare to those who have come before. It’s hard for her to answer them; how can she compare the rose to the wildflower? But it’s true that she’s marked, indelibly, by all those she’s loved before.

She always remembers them. Wayfarers don’t forget because the worldspan doesn’t; sometimes memory slips away from them, but it always returns. Like her, slipping into Reithéama’s house at dawn after the wanderlust takes her and pulls her far from home.

(Memory is an odd thing. Her kind were always meant to be long-lived, but even then mortal minds poorly hold the weight of millennia.)

She grieves them all, when they die. Seirelan is very old; she has mourned many lovers. She will mourn many more. The grief of losing them is sharp and bright, always. (She fears the day it does not come.) But grief fades, given time, and in the end there is only the bittersweet trace of a memory fleeting, out of frame.