'Tis but a few seasons to immortals.
Mariah leaned against the broken wall outside the cottage, Lucius's words echoing in her heart.
Twenty-five years, she thought. Longer than I've been alive, and it's no time at all to him. How long? How long until Miranda feels the same way? How long until I'm wrinkled and old and she'll still be young and beautiful and... A few seasons. Why would she stay? Can I really ask her to?
She was suddenly aware of Lucius, standing quietly beside her.
How long had he been there? Had he noticed her tears, amid the rain on her cheeks?
"Down there in the valley," Lucius said conversationally, gesturing down the mountainside, "are the ruins of a castle, that belonged to Lord Volpe. Famous fellow in these parts. He was mad about topiary.
"Actually," he added in a confiding voice, "he was just a bit mad.
"Long before Volpe’s forebearer built that castle, on that same spot was the great hall of a king. King Hengest. Now, you could walk from one end of Hengest’s kingdom to the other and be back to his hall in time for supper… but Hengest was fair and just. A good fellow. They named the place after him - Hengest's Ford.
"Before Hengest’s ancestors became kings, on that same spot was the cottage of a farmer named Baegla. He raised chickens. A fine fellow was Baegla. In fact, he gave me my very first chicken.
"I knew them all, you see. I saw them come, live their lives, raise their families and pass away to be all but forgotten, save for the echoes their names left behind, by the time the next came along."
"Merde, we must seem like nothing to you," Mariah sighed. "We’re completely insignificant."
"You are magnificent," Lucius said. "Do you know what gives life meaning, Mariah?"
"I’m twenty-one," Mariah said. "I barely know how to do my taxes."
"Well, that’s alright, because it isn’t taxes," Lucius smiled. "It’s change. Change gives life meaning. Without change, Baegla would still be down in that valley tending to his chickens… the same chickens, every day. Forever. He was a fine fellow, Baegla, but so was Hengest and, in his own way, so was Volpe. I mark my life not in years or deeds but by the fine people I have known."
"But they’re gone," Mariah said.
"As you will be, someday," Lucius nodded. "Don’t you think she knows that? She’s a Seer. There is no more inevitable Moment than death. She knows and she has chosen. Chosen her life with you because you give her life meaning. That is your gift to her. To all of us.
"You are magnificent, Mariah. Never feel the lesser, especially in the company of old immortals."
Standing there, looking out over the valley, the river and the town, Mariah found herself thinking about them. About Baegla and his chickens, whose name lived on in the Bagely River. About Hengest and his little kingdom of Hengest's Ford, now Henford. About mad Volpe and his topiaries, which the people of Finchwick still made on the village green. Most of all, she thought about this strange, quiet man beside her, this ancient immortal who had known them all, who remembered them, and valued them, long after everyone else had forgotten.
Miranda loves me, Mariah thought. She'll love me long after the rest of world has forgotten me.
I matter.
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