I never thought I could show myself so vulnerable.

It was a part of me that I would normally hide.

That was, until HE came along.

It really was amazing. The autumn sun. I leaned forwards on the balustrade outside my room, on the warm, white marble indented with pink, smiling towards the warmth on my face, contemplating the vulnerability I could show to him, and to him alone. These last two years, from our first kiss that day I had asked him to train me just to have a reason to come close enough to kiss him, up until now, I'd shown more emotions to him than I had ever done in my entire before him.

I looked down on the glade in the valley that was surrounded by particularly beautiful trees with red leaves that bore apples. In the middle of the glade was a splendid while crystal, marking the place where my first love Nicholas lay buried. Wasn't it strange to think how a person that had been in front of you, alive and strong and happy and healthy, with a fire in their eyes and an overpowering hunger for life, now lay buried beneath the ground, cold and still and mesmerisingly beautiful?

"Why are you crying?"

He caressed my back with the palms of his hand, and I smiled at the touch, not turning around. So silent, so careful. Like a dancer. My dancer.

I didn't have to answer. He just moved so he stood next to me and looked down on the crystal.

"I miss him so much", he whispered. "I still find myself deciding to go to him for advice before I remember."

I turned to him, took his hand.

"You can go to me for advice", I said carefully, placing my lips on his hand.

"But who is to give me advice about YOU?" he asked, but there was so much love and trust in his voice, I just smiled. And I knew he was joking; he had so many friends here. So many who loved him

He looked beautiful, clad in a wine-red satin robe with golden embroideries, his hair reaching his waist and loose in the wind. On top of his head was a simple golden crown in the shape of leaves, marking him a king alongside me. I found that crown painfully erotic.

I pulled my fingers through my hair tentatively. It had also grown quite a bit, and hung straight and silken. Sometimes, when I saw my reflection, I jerked back, believing for a moment it was Nicholas I saw, but whereas he had been light blonde, my hair was white like the snow this valley had never seen, and never would.

I saw Izuna was twisting his wedding band, something he did when he was deep in thought, and even if we'd been married for half a year, I still felt a swelling pride inside my chest whenever I saw his wedding band marking he belonged with me, or whenever I looked down on my own wedding band marking I belonged with him. Our love had grown into something more mature, the first months being the frothy beating of the waves on a shore while our relationship now was the open ocean you would reach if only you dared go out further from the safety of land. We were now searching for a safe gulf to stay, to play out the rest of our lives.

It had been a beautiful wedding. After the war, Erika had said she never wanted to be in battle again, and had studied to become a priestess. In the humbleness of my room, she had wed us, nobody there but us three. It has been the best day of my life.

I had claimed the war to be over the instant I came out of the cave that day, commanding the remaining elves to step back and yield. An eternity had passed in the cave, but it had only been an hour, so a few hundred elves were still alive. Since then, I had worked with Izuna by my side to give the humans equal rights to elves. A few weeks after Izuna had asked to come live with me, the army of humans had come in piece to the valley of never-ending autumn, asking for his audience to apologise to him. He had declined.

"It's not out of contempt", he had explained. "I just don't feel like it."

I had said I understood him. He had started explaining himself, and I let him finish. But afterwards, I spoke sternly to him.

"Izuna. 'I don't feel like it' is a valid enough reason." You don't owe anyone anything, and you never have."

He had hugged me close then. He never interacted with humans again, but continued to work for their rights and the betterment of the deprived areas where they lived.

I came back to reality, looked at my husband where he stood by my side where he belonged.

"Have you read about telomeres?" I asked, seemingly out of the blue.

"Yes", Izuna said. "They're repetitions of DNA at the end of your chromosomes. For each time a cell divides, they become shorter and shorter. That's what's causing us to age. In the end, they're so short we die because the cells are just too damaged. The shortening of the telomeres is also the reason behind the signs of ageing."

"Elves have telomeres, too."

Izuna looked at me.

"No", he said. "Don't you dare..."

I took no notice of him. I knew the topic was sensitive, but we couldn't evade it much longer.

"Elves have telomeres. But we also have a codon coding for a protein that basically poisons us to death. Makes our hearts fail. This codon is placed about one third of the way up the telomere. It is transcribed only when it's at the very edge of the chromosome, which means when about one third of the telomeres are gone. So when we're about thirty. That's why we die before the signs of ageing has started to show."

Izuna immediately pressed himself to me, as if not wanting to wait another second of our remaining year by not being close to me.

"I'm sorry I can't be with you forever", I said.

"It will be forever", he whispered. "It's just not my forever. It's yours."

I embraced him then, bent down to kiss the top of his head, about where my ribcage ended.

And I breathed him in, this man of peace, the bearer of the amethyst sword, the best warrior in The Kingdom of Autumn Fire, who also happened to be the best person I had ever met.

And we continued our little life together a bit further.

Which was truly all anyone of us could ever do.

End.