"A … giant pair of old socks," Mericlou said, her expression ambivalent at the memory, long faded.

"Socks?"

"Socks." Mericlou said. "They ran across the street, as if they had a pair of invisible feet in them, and kept on kicking him in the backside." She then made a gesture that pantomimed feet running and kicking at set intervals across a road.

Aldrec raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know it's weird," she said, bashfully waving it away. "But it was the only one that I could recall that was silly enough to be worth mentioning." She made a thoughtful noise. "It sounded funnier in my head, though."

"I've heard of stranger ones," Aldrec said, putting on a false air of smugness.

"I'm sure you have," Mericlou replied. "Five hundred thousand years is a time worth a lot of dreams."

"Yes, it is," Aldrec mused. "You know, humans can only comprehend a century, and only barely, if they haven't lived that length of time. They can only comprehend a millennium in the detached way that a scholar can in historical literature, but not on a personal level. But five hundred millennia are half a million years, Tulyr. They say that this world is old, but they really have no idea."

As he continued, Mericlou had become aware of his voice becoming softer, more distant, as his mind recalled an unknowably distant past. She had also come to understand that Aldrec's musing this deeply had the disturbing effect of making him seem almost physically as old as his age.

"I have seen the civilizations after my people rise and fall hundreds of times, and have seen rivers turn into canyons and mountains worn down into plains," Aldrec reminisced in a near-sepulchral tone. "I have seen the death of an entire race because of their inability to live in peace. I have seen the way the common elves began to assume the stereotype of beauty and grace that humans gave them, and thus repeat many of our mistakes. And I've seen the dragons stand by in their ancient cities while their numbers grow ever smaller. I see them giving way to the bladed pendulum of time that carves them to inevitable extinction."

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He sighed, sloughing off the memory, and began to gently stroke the side of his wife's face.

"Tulyr, being an android, you may one day know what it's like to look on this world and see its age the way I do. And maybe then you will see the reason why I weary of it. I long to see my family once again. And I long to see the new realm that they have made for themselves. Perhaps it will be different there; I don't know, but at least things will be different for me. So now that I've fulfilled the prophecy, when the time comes for me to go, I will welcome it."




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