Temporary

Two travellers, a hermit and a fae, walked together. The hermit told great stories of his travels, the fae whispered deep secrets of the forest and its creatures. As years of memories came to end, they reached the edge of the trees. The hermit turned and bowed goodbye. The fae asked if she would ever see him again. Maybe, answered the hermit. Maybe they would cross each other again. The fae reminded him that she could live hundreds of his lifespan, that he may never return to her here. What did it matter, she asked, if it were all only temporary?

“Ah,” said the hermit, “there is beauty in the temporary. These short lives together we carry in our hearts and minds. You have laid in me things that will forever follow me. You are like a book I have read letter by letter with eyes intrigued, words I will remember beyond their pages, a story of my own soul that I now recognize in you. I may grow old and you may live beyond, yet our journey will always be ours to keep, our life’s roots always and evermore entwined no matter how long they grow apart.”

“Then I shall grieve and keep what was” she answered back.

The hermit spoke again. “You grieve the temporary, we grieve what ends, but what is grief if not love stirred in memories, love with now nowhere to go, deep love that burns and now hurts in our chest? That is why it matters. So may your heart ache with the temporary and the magic it had brought.”

Then he kissed her forehead and waved goodbye.