"But I don't know much about you," Mericlou groaned. "That's the problem right there. You've told me so little!"
"But what little you do know ought to have given you at least a clue," Aldrec replied. "Think back, Tulyr."
Mericlou began to understand, and remembered all the small things about him, the little things she disregarded in their time together: his strangely un-elfish behavior, the way he seemed inexplicably different from others of his kind. And then of course, there were the various anomalies that Sedriil had discovered concerning the plants in his garden, as well as her inability to guess his age.
It was crazy … it was ludicrous … but in the end, it was not at all illogical. It all truly did seem to make sense.
.
"If you are a High elf," Mericlou said, still skeptical, "then that would make you about five hundred thousand years old … or somewhere in that area, right?"
"Actually, I'm five hundred eighty-two thousand, three hundred and twelve years old," Aldrec replied instantaneously.
"Uh … okay," Mericlou said, more than a little shaken by his straightforward, exact, and rapid answer. "I suppose I was way off with all my guesses, right?" She laughed nervously, and then licked her dry lips. "Then tell me this: Why don't you look like one?"
Aldrec did not react in the way she expected, but then again, she was not certain about how he would react. Still, she had not anticipated this. She watched in surprise and confusion as two tears placidly rolled down his cheeks.
"Aldrec, what's wrong?" She said, and reaching over to wipe the tears away. "It at last comes to this," he said, failing to meet her gaze. "Now, I can no longer turn back."
"What are you talking about?" Mericlou said.
Aldrec smiled, facing her way once again. But this smile had been wistful, as though he longed more than anything else for something to have been different.
"You're right, Tulyr," he said. "I don't look like a High elf. Tell me, what do the legends say about them?"
"They say that they were creatures of both wonderful and terrible beauty, both horrible and gorgeous to look upon" Mericlou said, her words coming out in small spurts as she gleaned the info from long-dormant memory files. "They said that when you looked on one, you were never quite the same."
"Tulyr …"