Single Strand of Silver

It was always the same moment where I stand in front of the mirror, wiped away the paint from my face, stripped myself bare of the thick clothing I had to don for the day, and allow my body to be free of constraint, my wings springing with ease after being released from their glamour spell, and when my eyes catch my own sparkling, violet irises in the mirror and my burgundy hair falls neatly behind my pointed ears, that I feel the most vulnerable.

Yes, I know it is silly and perhaps downright humiliating that I, who sprung from the loins of a vampire and a wood elf,two of perhaps the longest living beings as far as I know, feel this powerless, but alas, that is just how it is.

Because you see, not a day passes by when I don't jump, startled at the shadow of our cats, or even Demir himself, but somehow, when I feel his arms around my waist, and his warm lips against my own and his fingers knotting and unknotting my hair, my heart seems to be at ease.

Demir, sweet, sweet, Demir. Where do I even begin? Should I start by describing how his voice sounds like the trickling of a stream in a desert oasis that makes you realise that you are no longer on the brink of death? That sweet taste of his lips on my tongue that brings me back home, to vast forests of trees and flowers in more colours than you humans can even see with the extent of your vision, and the birds singing tunes that are too dangerous for any of you to listen to because your little hearts cannot bear the sheer sweetness of the sounds. Or perhaps it was his hands, his gentle, loving hands that cradled me against his chest, as I lay and listened to his beating heart, the sweetest of sounds that eased the very core of my being, and that is coming from me who lived in the Feywild. Or the Otherworld. Or the Enchanted Realm.

I know not what names you have for my home, but I am grateful that none of them are as nasty as the names you sometimes have for each other.

I smile at the mirror and my reflection smiles back, and the light from the small chandelier on our ceiling catches the silver of one my earrings, and it gives off a charming glint, as if it were smiling too.

I close my eyes and take in a deep breath.

And I smile once again, when I feel those familiar arms wrap around me, and those lips dotting my neck with kisses and causing blood to rush up to my ears, and the familiar, comfortable warmth around my abdomen.

"Mmm," I mutter as I turn and find his lips with my own, chuckling as I accidentally brush against one of his newer piercings. "How was work today, darling?"

"The same old," he replied, guiding me towards the bed where we sat and kissed for a while more, our arms nearly tangling at one point before he pulled away. There was a smile on his lips, but my heart sank when I saw that his eyes were reddened with tears.

"Demir, my love," I place a hand on his cheek and move closer to him. "Who hurt you? Tell me and they will regret every waking moment of their sorry life."

"No, it's not that, Rimi," Demir sighed, and I felt as though my heart was being torn asunder when I saw those soft, brown eyes drowning in so much sorrow.

"Tell me, I'm listening," I made my voice sound as calm as I could, ignoring the pulsating orbs of green and blue I could see all around Demir, particularly around his head and his shoulders, and I pursed my lips, purposely making my left fang get itself caught in my lip piercing, making him smile a little. "Is it your boss? He's a horrid man, he has nothing but an oily smudge around him, really not much of a personality. Even the driest among your race has at least some colour in their auras."

Demir chuckled for a few seconds and my heart instantly felt lifted. "Hmm, I have long decided he is worth nothing more than a few fucks and shits, that's all."

"A few fucks?" I ask, raising a brow and pretending to be offended. "Oh my, my sweet Demir! I thought I was the only one in your life!"

Of course, that response was met with a pillow thrown at my face.

"Fuck you, Rimi," Demir laughed, and I laughed along, and a short pillow fight commenced for the next few moments before Demir suddenly froze and sat back down, sighing deeply.

I sat down, my hands resting demurely on my lap and looked at Demir, my eyes boring into his, and my face as stoic as I could keep it. The orbs were still dancing about him, but their speed had decreased and they were now just floating about his head, like lazy fireflies in the evening breeze. I noticed that he was trying to avoid my gaze, and his cheeks were flushed pink but not from the kissing or the teasing as far as I could tell.

"What is it?" I asked again, and I felt the muscles around the wings on my back tense up and a chill causing the hairs on my neck to stand up not from fear, but from confusion. That was one other thing I never understood about humans, why does fear cause their hair to stand when all it does is to make you feel even more aware of your own awkward position instead of making you feel better? It made more sense that your body reacted to your emotions accordingly, and when your mind is racing with more questions than answers, creating a physical sense of increased alertness would be able to let you pick up even the minutest of details to solve your mystery. But that aside, my Demir was now in front of me, obviously sad and caught in some dread that he fears to let me know of, and it stung my heart knowing how unhelpful I was being by throwing question after question at him, but there was no other way I could ever know what he was thinking.

Demir sighed and then looked at me, staying in his place, his ears perked and his eyes wide and alert, almost as if he was suddenly afraid of being near me. "Rimi, I love you," he said, his voice laced with the weight of his sadness and my heart wept along. "I love you every much as I did that first day when I saw you. I love you for all that you, all that you have been for me, and all that you have done for me." He stopped here to collect himself, and I stood up and walked to him, placing my arms around him and kissing his temple, and sat next to him, letting his rest his head on my shoulder as I stroked his hair.

"Go on," I coaxed, and felt the words glide gracefully from my throat, with the tender caress of a feather against a healing wound. I willed the words to wrap his heart in a warm embrace, reminding him of all that he loved and all that was good in his world and mine, of the first glimpse of the sun after a hard winter, of the scent of freshly baked cinnamon buns gently wafting in the morning breeze, of the purring of a blissful cat at a chin scratch, of the familiar notes of a lover's song. I willed the two words to gently persuade his spirit from the darkness he was surrounding himself with and reminded him to smile again.

Without warning, Demir suddenly reached out and grasped my hand that was stroking his hand and looked into my eyes, pleading. "It is this," I watched as reached up to the side of his head and for a moment I thought he was brushing his own hair, but his hand suddenly jerked and he held out his fist towards me.

Puzzled and intrigued, I inched forward and touched his fist with a trembling finger. "Hmmm?"

A tear rolled down my sweet Demir's cheek as he opened his fist, and on his palm rested a single strand of silver hair.

I blinked and looked up at him. "I don't understand."

"My days are now numbered, Rimi," he stated glumly, his voice monotonous and stripped of the melodious lilt it usually danced with. "It is unfair and quite simply put, very cruel."

"You are perfectly healthy, Demir darling," I noted. "Your food intake is timed and balanced, and we ensure always ensure that you never have a day in which you do not go for a jog. You are happy and anytime anything bugs us, we talk about it and we settle it. You are the most careful person I met, and I am speaking of my own family here. I have never met a more careful man than you, Demir. I mean it. You know I can never lie."

Demir simply shook his head. "I warned you, Rimi, many moons ago when we first met. I told you that we are not as hardy as we look. We wither, we fade and we disappear, no matter what happens. We are pathetic, we are weak, even you said so yourself that we cannot bear to hear the songs of the birds of your land. I warned you, and you did not listen." He stopped and clenched his fist, and bowed his head, and my heart nearly skidded to a halt when I realised his body was hunched over and shaking with sobs.

"Demir!" I gasped, and throw my arms across him, holding him as close as I could towards myself, my wings and my robes wrapping around him and I rocked gently and peppered his hair, his neck, his cheeks and every other surface of his body I could reach with as many kisses as I could and I continued calling out his name. "Demir, Demir, my sweet, sweet Demir. Please don't cry." I felt the tenor of my own voice tremble and I had to clear my throat to keep myself from crying.

"It is cruel, Rimi," Demir continued, in spite of the rawness of his voice punctuated by the occasional sob. "It is cruel that I will get to live with you, all of you, and love all of you. But you? You will need to see me fade away one day, you need to watch me take my last breath and you will never get to love all of me as you deserve. As," he paused and looked up at me, his face red with his crying, "we promised."

"It is only you humans who make such a fuss about love only lasting until death does you part," I tried my best to console him. "As sweet and romantic it may sound, it is a lie. Love will not fade. Do not forget that I do not live forever. One day, I too shall pass and my days on this mortal plane will come to an end. It is just a matter of when, and why would that mean anything to us now?" I watched him as he listened, the orbs around him now floating lazily around his head and I tried to coax a smile out of him. "Our promise was to love each other, to be there for each other, to be witness to each of our follies and our triumphs. Never did we put a time to it. Or perhaps, is there something I am forgetting?"

Demir just smiled in response and said not a word. I took that a cue to continue.

"Neither time nor death is our enemy, Demir," I rambled on, this time, taking care to bind the words again to ease him out of his discomfort and his pain. I pushed aside a stubborn strand of his hair and smiled. "Remember that, none of this will ever come to end, and it will always linger, always live on through all that we have done and said. Through our words, through the places we have tread, the people we have talked to, the books we have read and placed back on the shelves of libraries. We continue to live through the tears, fears, laughter, the moments, the days, the months... You get what I mean. Like how your earth has seasons, we all live by seasons. And just as the world never ceases to be, we shall never cease to be. We are all eternal and sometimes, humans forget that." I leaned forward to kiss the tip of his nose and then allowed my lips to graze the side of his jaw and took my time to find his lips, moving slowly and allowing him all the time he needed to ease into the kiss.

Demir chuckled softly as he pulled away, gasping slightly. "You know, there is no man out there who is as lucky as I am. I love you, Rimi. I love you perhaps a little too much."

"Ah," I said as I pecked his lips again, adjusting my position so that he was leaning on me again. "I am the luckier man to have found you that night, you were the one painted my grey life into being."

"Who knew I would be in love with a poet of all people?" Demir sighed as he kissed me once again, his hands tracing the shape of my wing joints, and I fell against the soft pillows of our bed, and all the seasons of all the world melted into the arms of one, all-embracing entity and her name was Love.