He had known this day would come.

He had not thought to face it so soon.

Abelas had been a witness to the inevitable crush of the passing of ages, time wearing away at the foundation of all he had ever known.  Time had swallowed away whole worlds, erasing even what rebellions and wars could not.  Time had been denied to the elves born after the sundering of Elvhenan – what had been the feature endemic to all the People had been denied in the legacy of all their children. They were mortal, now.  They would die, in their turn.

So many lives, like the sparking of dying stars.  Even the most ancient sun in the celestial firmament must, in its own time, fade away.  He had known the skies over Mythal’dhru’an as he had known himself.  Should but one star blink away from existence, its loss would have been keenly felt.  The Dalish were like such stars, but they were stars with which he was unfamiliar.  Some perished with great fanfare, brightening before the end, as always, claimed them.  Most simply…faded away, lost within the sparkling multitude.  They would be replaced, their stories forgotten.  It was the way of things, now, and Abelas had lived a thousand lifetimes, unchanging even as the world beyond the Temple did nothing but change.

And so the lifelines, worn thin and ragged, eaten away by the slow rolling of years, snapped ! –He was cast adrift into the void, purposeless when it had been purpose, alone, which had kept him aloft for so long.  What few of his brothers and sisters remained chose to stay by his side.  Abelas never knew, but it had been for love of him, and not the faded memory of a distant goddess, that had bade them stay.

What else had been left for them, then, but to wander the earth like the shadows they had become?  They were no better than the restless, homeless Dalish – distinct only in their sacred traditions and the knowledge, the memories they carried in their breasts.  They might have wandered like this for a thousand years or more – or else allow themselves to be claimed by the eternal sleep of uthenera. and this time, never to wake again.

But Abelas would not lay himself down for rest, not when the shadows of the old world still clung to the curvature of space.  Whispers of Elvhenan were locked in the secret places of the world.  The ruins, the temples, the hidden realms which opened only for those of the People.  It was not his way to abandon himself to mourning without cause.  He carried sorrow with him forever – but he would not be stopped by it.  Not even when he lacked a guiding principle to anchor himself through the ages.

{ And then she had given him reason to believe that purpose yet existed. } 

She had called herself Sanaa, and she had given him hope by showing him how he might, himself, find it on his own.  Mythal’s vallaslin had marked her as sure as the branches, green like a winter fir, reached across his own brow.  For a time, they had traveled together.  For a time.

There was a finality to everything is this world.  There was a beginning and an end, where once there had been eternity.  Once, long ago, Falon’Din might have eased the passing, guiding souls not to an end but to a journey begun anew.  He, above all the Creators, had known the liminal paths and the transitory nature of all things.  And then the Guide, himself, had been led astray.  He was a shepherd no longer.  The People struggled, living - and dying - alone.

So, too, had Sanaa been lost.  Abelas knew why she had felt she must, but hers was a life departed too early from this world.  He had come to love her, a pure, platonic love that bloomed with the thanks of being alive, being whole. She sought to save him – from the past and from himself, laying the foundation for the chance to make a life from the ashes of the old world. 

He had known, from the moment of their meeting, that he would live only to see her die.  He had not thought it was to be like this.  For a time, Abelas and his sentinels grieved.  They mourned her as they mourned for all their own, and swore themselves to the duty of honoring her enduring spirit. 

Yet, while his grief was real, Abelas had learned.  He had grown.  

He held on to the memory of her in his soul, along with all of his many dead.  She had been a light among the Dalish, challenging his long since held beliefs, forcing him to question all that he had not questioned.  The Dalish were still not his People, and could never be again.  For all that his life would extend into the ages, it was no longer his time.  But he might turn aside his sorrows and look to the future of this world, guiding the Children of the Dales as he had once guided the children born into a life amongst the sentinels.  Both had been born after the death throes of their empires existed only in living memory.  Both lived in want for someone with the heart and knowledge of the elvhen to guide them when their Creators could not - would not.

It was for their sake, and for his own, that Abelas knew what he must do.  In the wake of all his losses, he endured and would always endure.  Emma him Suledin.