It's Only Forever

        Haela found herself humming as she worked. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d hummed at all, let alone unintentionally, but she supposed it made sense.

        Jon had just stopped by the clinic for the first time in nearly two months, and they were going to spend the evening together. Jon had originally wanted to spend the entire day together, but despite the human nurses urging her to go, Haela couldn’t just leave in the middle of her shift. Jon had been more understanding than her coworkers. She’d only needed to tell him once before he kissed her knuckles and left her to her work. The other nurses had hounded her for another fifteen minutes, saying that no one would begrudge her one day off. They hadn’t really stopped. Haela had just gone into the back room to avoid them, and they didn’t follow her.

        “Don’t you think you’re taking this a bit too far?” Nima asked from the doorway.  

        As the only other wood elf who worked at the clinic, Nima was Haela’s closest friend, but when Haela turned, Nima was watching her with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.

        “Taking what too far?” Haela asked.

        “Jon,” Nima clarified, stepping into the room. “He’s in love with you.”

        Haela frowned. “I don’t see how that’s a problem if I love him, too.”

        “He’s human.”

        “And?”

        Nima groaned and rolled her eyes. “Humans usually settle down around his age. Get married, start having kids.” When Haela just continued to stare at her in confusion, she sighed. “You really don’t see the problem here.”

        “No.” Haela shrugged. “That sounds nice, to be honest.”

        Nima peered at her. “How old are you again?” she asked. “One hundred something, right?”

        “One hundred and twenty-six.”

        “You’re too young to get married,” Nima declared.

        “I think that’s up to me, isn’t it?”

        “Of course it is.” Nima waved her hand dismissively. “I’m just saying that it’s a terrible idea, and you’re going to regret it.”

        “Again, I think that’s up to me,” Haela said. “Besides, you’re the only one who’s said anything about marriage.”

        “You’re right,” Nima conceded. “Besides, he can’t get married when he’s still living in the barracks and running all over the countryside.”

        “Exactly. You’re worrying about nothing.”

        Nima pursed her lips again, but shook her head and left instead of arguing further.

        True to his word, Jon returned just as the sun dipped behind the rooftops, a few minutes before Haela’s shift actually ended. When Haela walked out into the lobby to meet him, he was trying to hide his bemused smile. Haela realized this was probably the first time he had encountered Anenwen, who had a slow, wistful way of speaking and was no doubt saying something completely ridiculous to him.

        When he’d stopped by that morning, Haela had been too relieved that he was alive and unhurt and there to really take in his appearance. Now she noticed that his stubble was now long enough to be considered a beard and his hair was almost shaggy. His clothes hung a little looser off his shoulders.

        Haela caught Jon by the arm and led him out of the clinic, giving Anenwen a nod as she did so. Even if they told Anenwen they had to go, she could easily keep talking for another three hours. Time meant even less to her than it did to most elves. It was better to risk offending her than to try and politely end the conversation.

        “So what’s…” Jon began to ask, gesturing back toward Anenwen.

        “She’s a high elf,” Haela said. “They’re all like that.”

        They went to dinner at their usual place: a small restaurant with unremarkable food but a warm, homey atmosphere. It was also quiet enough that Jon didn’t struggle to hear her as they talked.

        He asked about things at the clinic and her family, though he got her sister’s name wrong and admitted that he couldn’t remember her brother’s. She didn’t fault him for that; she rarely mentioned them by name. Besides, “Bess” wasn’t so far from Brelas. It meant more to her that he remembered that Brelas was the younger of the two and the one Haela was closer to. He remembered that Galmir had been trying to become a mage the last time Haela talked about him, and also that Galmir’s interests changed often, so he likely was doing something entirely different now. It was nice to talk about them with someone other than Nima, who didn’t understand why she was so often irritated with her flighty siblings. To Nima, the way Galmir flitted between life goals and Brelas tried to do absolutely everything at once was perfectly reasonable. That was how elves were, even if Galmir moved a bit quicker than most.

        Jon understood Haela’s frustration in his own, human way. “They have centuries. Why are they in such a rush?”

        “They’re impatient,” Haela said. “They’ll have time to do it all eventually, but they don’t want to do it eventually. They want to do it now.” She shrugged. “They’re young, so I guess it makes sense.”

        Jon thought for a long moment. Judging by the faces he was making, he was trying to do the math. Finally, he asked, “They’re not much younger than you, right?”

“Not in elf terms,” she admitted. “I think Brelas is a little over one hundred.”

“You think?” he asked with light, teasing judgment.

        “We don’t pay as much attention to age as you do. And I haven’t seen her in a while. Besides, it’s not like you know exactly how old your siblings are.”

        “Molly is eight years older than me, and Jed is eleven years older than me.”

        “Show off.”

        It was only after Haela had answered all of his questions about her and her life that Jon would tell her about his latest mission. Haela always thought it was interesting how he talked about his jobs. Most other soldiers focused on the battles, the monsters they’d slayed, how many bandits they faced. Jon told her more about the villages they’d gone to, the people he’d met and helped. He was more focused on the reason for the fight than any glory he could get for himself.

        After dinner, they took a long walk through the nicer parts of the city.

        “Captain Stuart says we’re going to be stationed in the city for a while,” Jon said after thirty minutes of walking and idle chatter.

        “How long is a while?”

        “His exact words were ‘for the foreseeable future.’”

        “That’s wonderful!”

        He returned her smile, and she thought he seemed a bit relieved. “I was thinking I’d get my own place. Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to get one together?”

        “You mean move in together?”

        Jon grew uncharacteristically flustered, but his eyes lit up as he blurted, “Only if you want to, of course! I’m happy with the way things are.”

        “I think that would be nice. I’m a bit sick of roommates, to be honest.”

        “Well, you’d still have me.”

        “You’re different from a roommate,” Haela said, bumping his shoulder. “I love you.”

        He smiled again. “I love you, too.”

It was definitely an adjustment to go from only seeing Jon when he wasn’t out in the field to seeing him every day, but they had been seeing each other for years, even though those years had been marked by frequent separation. Nima had protested when Haela told her that she was moving out of the apartment they shared with a few of their coworkers, and Haela’s assurance that she and Jon had been seeing each other for years only seemed to agitate her more, but she didn’t explain herself beyond reiterating that Jon was human and Haela was still young.

Haela had been right. Living with Jon was much better than living with roommates. Their personalities meshed well, though he was more easy-going than she was. They had similar habits, and though they didn’t have many common interests, they were each interested enough to ask the other about what they were up to. Haela couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so consistently happy.

Regardless of how happy Haela was, Nima continued to insist that the relationship was a bad idea. Haela was growing tired of hearing that Jon was human and she was only one hundred and twenty-six whenever she mentioned him. She knew there was something more to Nima’s protests, otherwise she wouldn’t be this persistent, and she wished the other woman would just say what the real problem was.

Over a year after Jon and Haela had moved in together, Haela was talking to Nima again, but this time Anenwen was listening, too.

Just as Nima got that look in her eyes and opened her mouth, Anenwen said, “He sounds like a good man. A pity that he will live only twenty years.”

Nima turned to eye her critically. Whatever her issue with Haela and Jon’s relationship, her constant vexation with Anenwen won out. “Do you mean twenty more years? Because he’s like twenty-nine.”

As Nima carried on, reminding Anenwen that several of the humans they worked with were older than fifty, Haela’s heart had dropped into her shoes. She could still hear Nima and Anenwen talking right next to her, but they might as well have been miles away. Somehow, Anenwen’s out-of-touch rambling had made her realize the obvious when all of Nima’s tentative arguments hadn’t.

Jon may live longer than twenty years, but he would still die long before Haela did.

Logically, she’d known that humans didn’t live nearly as long as elves. Everyone knew that. It was common knowledge. But somehow, she had never considered what that meant for her and Jon. How had she never thought of this? She usually thought through every little detail, but she had neglected something this crucial.

“It was never about me being too young,” Haela accused when she finally cornered Nima later that day. “It was about him dying.”

“It was kind of about you being too young,” Nima said with an uneasy smile. “If you were six hundred, him dying in fifty years wouldn’t matter as much.”

“You knew I didn’t understand what you meant. You should have said something.”

Nima gave her a flat look. “Yes, I should have told you outright that your relationship is doomed and your boyfriend is going to die. Because that would have gone over so well.”

She had a point, and that just annoyed Haela more. It made her feel like some stupid, silly girl that people had to mince words around. “Better than letting me get this deep without thinking about it.”

“You are incredibly hard to read. I didn’t know you were serious about him until it was too late.”

“I am serious about everything.”

“Yeah, I should have realized that much sooner,” Nima agreed. “But there’s still time to fix this.”

“How can we ‘fix’ his lifespan?”

“I was more thinking that we fix the fact you’re in love with him.”

Haela frowned. “And how do we ‘fix’ that?”

“Break up with him?” Nima suggested. “Move back in with us and tell him to leave you alone.”

That didn’t sound like a solution. That sounded just as bad as losing him to death. Actually, it sounded worse because then she’d be missing out on fifty years of happiness with him.

Nima continued, “It’s going to be hard either way, but the deeper those roots get, the more it’ll hurt when they get ripped out.”

“It might hurt more, but wouldn’t it be worth it?” Frankly, breaking up with him and cutting all ties seemed more like ripping roots out than him dying of old age after a full and happy life.

Nima shrugged. “Maybe. I just…” She sighed. “Elves who build their lives around humans – or anything that doesn’t live as long as we do – have a really tough time when those humans die.”

“Doesn’t everyone have a hard time when the people they love die?”

“When I’ve seen it happen, it seems worse than normal grief. It sometimes takes centuries to come out of it, and some people never do. I know I should have said something earlier, and I know he makes you happy, but you have to think about what will happen when it ends.”

After a week of agonizing over it herself, which only served to make her more agitated and confused, Haela brought it up to Jon. They were eating dinner in their kitchen, and during the third lull in conversation, she finally forced herself to ask, “Why have we never discussed the…lifespan issue?”

“I assumed it wasn’t an issue,” Jon said. “I mean, it is an issue, but I assumed that if you were worried about it you’d bring it up. Besides, most couples don’t really consider the whole ‘you’re going to die one day’ thing at this point.”

“Most people aren’t looking at centuries without their partner.”

Jon’s eyes went wide. “Oh. You hadn’t thought of this before.”

“No. I’m so stupid, it took one of Anenwen’s weird comments for me to realize that I’m going to live seven times longer than you. And that’s the best case scenario!”

He reached across the table and took her hands. “Like you said, I’m not looking at centuries without you, so I think this is ultimately up to you. I can’t even really wrap my head around living that long, but it doesn’t make sense to me to miss out on something just because it might end sooner than you’d like it to. And I think that something you’re that afraid of losing is worth hanging on to for as long as you can, right?”

“So, what do you think?”