Too Soon a Goodbye

Do real people, like the storybook characters that enchant us as children, ever live happily ever after?

What is "happiness," after all?

When we're old enough, we ask these questions of our parents, and then we forget them as the dance of years takes its toll on us, and our child-minds become those of adults.

I, Roen of Sakar, was no different: a partner in that same dance of years, a slave to the whim of time, of education and integration into society.

I was born and grew up in Sakar, the largest city in the Republic of Natoia. My childhood education consisted mostly of elven schools, but I, being human, never felt entirely comfortable around their dour and predominately elven population. Regardless, I graduated with honors, landing a certification in languages and archaeology. Afterwards, I was transferred to the archaeological circles of society, spending my time excavating ancient Dwarven cities, decoding papyruses of dead elven languages and writing reports and overviews of my findings for universities and museums.

But over time, I discovered that my interests were becoming more introspective, my desires more toward self-actualization in what I wished to do. This feeling of detachment from my current job continued and increased until the time I’d turned twenty, when I at last decided to live my dream, instead of simply dreaming it.

Completely severing myself from my career, I gave up my friends, family, and the familiar life I knew in order to study the truly known and the truly unknown, and both lose and find myself, tasting the living cultures of my world.

I burned the bridges between myself and the places that I knew when I left Sakar, and made my first home in the countryside. I felt truly free there, miles away to the east and even farther away from the smallest towns and villages, but close to the ancestral home of the dragons. There, near the massive stone obelisks of the Dragon’s Gate, the ancient race thrived in their three hundred thousand-year-old city.

Normally expelling any trespassers-humans especially- from their lands, knowing their language gave me a rare advantage. Impressed with both my lingual skills and curious over my desire to learn from them, they embraced me with open arms and allowed me to watch and record life in their city, catalogue their songs, and read their lore.

Sotanathu was my first and closest dragon friend. I met her in the city’s temple atrium where she sung of the deeds and wisdom of Nairotkiv, the ancient dragon who, a hundred thousand years ago, aided the human and elven races in the foundation of the current five nations of Natoia, Cires, Lemsran, Daina, and Garushnit. And it was with these songs that she entertained her kinsmen and I for many days, I recording their words and meanings. In gratitude for my attention, she allowed me to board with her in her den until she constructed a fully furnished home for me on the southern outskirts of the forest near the Dragon’s Gate.

There were the mountains and Dragon’s Gate to the south, a river stream to the east, and arable plains to the west. Tana -as I grew to nicknaming my dragon friend- helped me to fashion a garden for food and supplied me with meat from her hunts in exchange for my attention whenever she played her songs. And it was because of this gladly given mutual exchange that I never wanted for anything more than an occasional change of wardrobe. This I acquired by bartering with the peoples in the villages of Loros and Quella some distance away.