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((Someday I dream of a full book about the life of Arturos.  This will be the last chapter.))

I don’t know if this is real, or a dream.  But I know I am home.  Lately I have a hard time figuring out much of anything.  Every where I turn, something seems wrong, everything I do seems not what I remember.  Sometimes, what I am most sure about appears to be not what it seems in the least.

This cave is cold, it is dark, but most of all it is small.  Smoke hangs near the ceiling, barely visible against the light of the cooking fire nestled across the room in the corner.  I must use for a fireplace, something cooks there now I just can’t seem to remember what.  The candles about the small bed I lie in flicker against the drafty cold air that licks against the wet walls.  I must have lit them to read, but I don’t see any books in the bed next to me.  I don’t see it on the table by the candles either.  I am not quite sure what I was doing to light the candles, but something tells me they are too much of an expense to have going without some reason.  Besides, they fail to let my eyes adjust enough to see anything that well. 

That may not be the fault of the candle that I can not see.  It may be my eyes that fail me too.  The way I feel right now, it seems there is little left that hasn’t failed.  When I lift my shoulders up to look around this room, my back twinges.  I feel throbbing in my foot, and when I look down at it, I can see the sock that contains it seems bigger than the one on my other foot.  My hands stiffen, and I fight the urge to grip and re-grip the fingers arthritically.  I realize this shell of a being I am in is as old as the trees; and it takes every ounce of my being to try to shift in some way to where I can rest again.  Almost to emphasize this, my chest starts to burn, and I cough with the lungs of the oldest of old. 

It was an onion.  I cook an onion in a kettle.  I remember that now.  But I have no idea how I am going to get there to get that thing or how I put it there in the kettle to begin with.

It is all too grey to me.  Slowly, things start confusing me.  How did I end up to be so old?  It seems I was just making cheese, now this.  It must be a dream.

How did I end up in this place?  Where is this place?  What magic is it that brings me here. 

My hand shakes.  I can’t seem to breathe right.  It all confuses me, it starts to scare me. 

My hand reaches to rub my arm, sliding up until the skin touches an area where hair no longer grows.  I look down at the skin and see faded black markings; the tattoo of a youthful boy.  One who saw himself as a fisherman for the rest of his life, and tattooed his arm to show community with his fellow fish hunters.  Only weeks later to end up in Karamoon.  Then Ravenscraig.  Then Dee.  Then … well, I am not sure where I went.  But I know this tattoo.  This must be me, this must still be my body.  This coughing, hacking, old body is the same of that youthful boy that curses me now from some other place.

This cough, this air, it scares me.  Not even the touch of my own arm seems to comfort me to think I am the right place.  I close my eyes and begin to recount, the way they taught me as a boy to do.  We were taught to recount our lives, when we are about to die.  It is supposed to let us know what is important in our lives.  But I do it to calm myself.  It seems I have done this too many times, and now when I recount, I can see again what my mind seems to lose grip on.  Once again, I feel the calmness of knowing my life was lost to my memory.  Things start to become clear to me now, and my breathing is within my grasp.

The candles were as long as I remember when the door open, blowing one out.  I know I must have slept; but must not be too long as they would have burned down for sure.  I know I slept as things were different than before.  Maybe it is the cold.  The door opening made it colder, but the cold of this place, it seems more so even before the door started to open.  The door was opening, because someone was knocking on it, and it wouldn’t stay closed with that impact of fist to wood.

I tried to get up.  I succeed, but with some cost.  I was slowly able to grunt my way to put my feet on the cold stone floor.  Doing so brought sharp pains to my hip.  It felt locked like my leg was locked into my pelvis.  It felt like bone ground on bone.  It hurt worse than any dagger plunged into my side, any spell burning my flesh, any of what seems like a hundred different evils cast down on me; none of that felt as bad as what this felt like in my hip. 

Fighting to hold back a cry of pain, I call out “Door seems to be open, come in and greetings”.

The way I press my hands into the side of the bed, the way my legs hang over the side of the bed, the way I bend my back to try to revive the muscles at the side of the bed; my eyes are forced to stay to the stone floor.  So it is her bare, scared feet I see first. 

Normally, in my youth, or whatever time it was since I last saw her, I would try to contain my joy in the presence of the elf.  My desire to leap into her arms is tempered by this poor shell of a body.  I want to spring forth, but I can only lift my head to gaze on the elf’s eyes.

It is the elf, Runa.  She was the elf that embraced me as many times as she cursed me over the years.  She was the elf that seems to be a constant for season upon season when it seemed nothing was truly constant at all. 

She is the stoic elfin presence now as much as she was back in those days.  Her auburn hair darker, the braids less orderly, the cloths surrounding her softer, the twigs in her hair & the rings in her ears are different but as understated as ever; but all these things were just slight variations of the Runa of my past, no different than possible if you missed someone for a few moons.  In those green pools that look over what was once her human, I can see now how badly I have aged.  She doesn’t hider her sadness and pity.  I am sure all the wrinkles, the faded parts of me, what is disappeared from my life; reads from her gaze upon what I have become.  As much as she hasn’t aged creates a contradiction to that broken old man who could not even raise himself from the bed.  But seeing her now, just as she ever was, it gives me comfort. 

I swallow, my nature fighting the urge to break my emotions free, as I shake my head and speak, “How … how long has it been?”  Words that one could speak to any old friend, but an answer that I can’t give myself.

She lifts a cheek to give a smirk, “I know nothing of time, man.  Have you learned so little in your old age?”

My laugh, as light as I intended it, hisses and whistles through my lungs.  “Same sharp tongue, tis good some does not change in us.”

Her smile brings light to this dark, cold room.  She stands in a soft dress no different than what she would have worn in the summers.  Maybe it is just I that feels this cold, it is too dark to see what else could be outside that door, and I can’t remember any more what season falls on this world.  She does what I am not able to achieve, and steps closer to me to put her fingers into my still rough and thick hair.  “You have turned white on me, man,” she says in reference to my locks. 

I give a light moan, the soft pleasure of her fingers stroking my hair, my eye closing as the light scent of honey comes through the dank.  I let this touch linger for some time.  I start to forget this pain.  Start to forget this body.  But finally I need to look upon her.

Her eyes come to mine, her motherly eyes.  You can see Gaia’s presence there as she says softly, “I found you.”

I don’t know what she means.  I can’t fathom what she looked for me for.  But it raises a joy in me I can grasp onto.  The weakness of the old man’s emotions clench down on my throat.  I try to cough to clear it, but the coughs are harder, too hard just to clear the air.  I put my fist to my mouth and hold fast the breath as I try to spit out.  “There is boiled onion on the fire,” I say between breaths, “if you are hungry.”

Her hand slides over my cheek, brushing the longer, whiter whiskers of my chin.  “I thought that smell was your socks.  You have no cheese?” she asks with a smirk.

I shake my head, as a flash of an answer comes to my tongue.  “Tis an extravagance these days, but I would offer it if I had some.”  Something in my mind flashes of how I got to this point, something about loss, something of poverty; something that sits on my soul with sadness and dire pain.  Something in me that suggest I deserve this hollow of a cave.  But as she moves to kneel down in front of me, there is a stronger force in my head to forget what I only now started to remember.

“I am not hungry,” she says to me with a smile.  Her hands slowly work a sock to roll down my good leg.  I expect to feel the cold of air, but find it warm.  Her fingers take their time, stopping to touch the light dark hair on my calves, bringing back just the hint of feeling to them again.

“Need not be modest, Runa.  I may be old, but I would offer what I have.”

As she rolls the other sock down my left, its thread thin and dirty, the foot inside reveals itself to be like the other.  Not swollen as I saw before.  Not throbbing.  Not in the least as dead as it felt before.  Without the sock in place, my feet look as alive as they were in my youth.  She seems not to notice as she balls the socks, and tosses them to the fire.  “Never understood why you wore those,” she says to the burning socks.

“Hey,” I try to protest seriously, “I need those to keep warm.” 

Her long braids slide back over her shoulders when she shifts to gaze up to me from the floor.  Her smile appears kind, dare I say with a feel of hope.  “Not anymore,” she says quietly.  She stands, lifting my legs until they are out in front of me.  Effortlessly, she helps to turn my body to lay again in the bed. 

Effortlessly for her.  The sharpness of the pain in my hip flares, and I suck hard into my lungs.  But once I am turned, the pain lessens.  Her touch is soft on my skin.  Something flashes into my head at that moment, but it’s not so clear.  “It has been years for us, since we have seen each other, hasn’t it.”

She shifts the pillows around me, helping me to rest.  She sits onto the edge of the bed as she does, tending to me.  “Have I changed so much for you?”

I slowly shake my head.  I lean back against my pillows to lie softly, and my back doesn’t fight these old bones.  “Quite the opposite, it as if you are the same that I knew; but … it has been …”  my breath gets the best of me.  All this movement, this effort, this excitement to see her; more than I think my body wants to handle.

As I settle back, she turns and lays herself back against me as well.  Her head softly tucking into my shoulder.  “Rest your mind, man,” she says in a soft manner.  She reaches for my arms, and wraps them around her body until I embrace her.  She rests in my arms, in a way that takes me back to days long long ago.  But seems as familiar as the time at this very moment.  I have a memory of her doing this before.  I have a memory that she would climb into my lap and pull these arms around her.  I would be her wrap, he bed, her place to rest.  It would be those brief moments in time, those too short of nights, those glances of time when she would be MY elf.

“How …” I said as sleep starts to near me, “how did you find me?  Why have you come?”

Her words, her final words as I drift away dance on the air, spun free into the my mind like butterflies and fairies on the wind.  “I have come to show you the way.”

Her body warms me.  The chilly of this cave seems to not be there anymore.  It is still moist, but no longer cold.

I can smell her as well, with her body so close to mine.  But it is not just the honey, but of trees, of grass of the earth.

Her cloths are soft, but memorable.  Leathers, soft soft leathers.  Like those I used to wear.  When I hunted in the wilds.  But its not what she wears is it, I wear it now.

The candles burn brighter.  Maybe it is that the door is still open and morning comes.

More than morning, it is daytime.  It is summer.

It is the grass, and trees, and all that grows forth around us. 

It is those days, the beautiful wonderful days.

There are flowers that rise, there are ferns, there are the flora growing around me.

I am surrounded by the spirits of the wilds.

I am surrounded by the energy.

I feel it surround me and take me.

I am free.

I am happy.

I don’t know if this is real, or a dream.  But I know I am home.