I had dreamed, when I was a boy, of a woman crowned with fire. I saw her standing in a doorway of a tower, and the flickering shadows from her crown made her face hard to see. She held her hand out to me, and I took it.

I woke up then in terrible pain. I had gotten fasharal, a childhood illness which causes a high fever and often aggravates the developement of magic, causing it to grow out of control. It's a very rare illness, but one that my nanny was acquainted with, having nursed her nephew through it years before. She dismissed the fire-crowned maiden as a fever dream, and eventually I forgot her.

Until I saw her again, during my Test of Tears. I was about to become a priest in my own right, and had to undergo the final ritual. This ritual often provokes visions, but I didn't imagine I would see a vision of my OWN future.

I saw her for real the next day. She was wading naked in a pool in the forest, praying to the Lord of Shadows, begging his forgiveness before she went off to study with the Erendishae priestesses in Mierin. Humans don't know about the Lord of Shadows, or the Lords of Light and Darkness. Yet there she was, a tiny, orange-haired girl with a figure like a fourteen-year-old boy, who addressed the Lord of Shadows by name and was rude to the Lord of Light! I think I fell in love with her then, even though I thought she was crazy.

She left then, and as she was walking away, I saw golden eyes glowing in the forest. It was the Lord of Shadows, I swear it. I dropped to my knees and averted my eyes. The intensity of gave intimidated me, I admit. When I looked up, there were only a few black feathers form his wings. But the Dragon Lord came into my dreams after then, watching me.

It was a year before I saw her again. I couldn't get away from my studies, and I really didn't want to. I was a dedicated student. But I took a leave when given the chance, and went to explore Takerin, the closest human city to where I was studying at the time. Humans had fascinated me, in a childish way, ever since I found out they didn't have wings. I wondered how they got along without them.

So I went to Takerin, and saw her, sitting in a cafe with her sister. Of course I contrived to meet her. She proved to be lively and intellegent, and only slightly crazy. She was so much more than my fiancee Lindorie was. We eventually became friends, and although she was at first more like a child for me to care for, I realized I cared for her more than that. It only took a week or two.

I had to tell her what I really was. I'd been masquerading as human, easy enough in heavy winter coats. She had no idea I was an Aelfinn, I thought. I was wrong. She'd had a dream where I had wings, and when I showed her mine, she said I looked "complete", like I'd always been missing a piece of myself. That was when I found out she had a prescient ability that revealed itself to her in dreams and feeling. She insisted it was women's intuition, though. The more females I know, the more I'm inclined to believe it.

She went home that night, skipping merrily through the forest I'd thought she'd get lost in. She had a terrible temper, an unfollowable train of thought, and was the most indecisive person I'd ever met, but she had one hell of a direction sense.

The next time I saw her, though, she stayed. We met by the pool where I'd first seen her praying to the Dragon Lord. I told her I loved her. She said she knew. She was infuriating that way. But when she came close to me, and was suddenly in my arms, I forgot. I forgot everything but her, cloying as it is.

She became pregnant that night or shortly after, and the prophecies I'd studied most of my life were suddenly staring me in the face. The stories of the Half-Aelfinn, the Asara Prophecy.... All I saw in my divinations of this was pain, and I told her so. In spite of the fact that this was my child, I would turn it over to the Elders to monitor his whole life, and to finally put down like a rabid dog when his job was done. Maybe it was my training, maybe it was my guilt, but I wanted to give this child over to the Elders.

She cast me out. She swore at me, threw crockery... At one point, she almost started throwing her precious dragon figurines at me. That's when I feared for my life. But she caught herself before she hurled any glass dragons. She looked at me with those pale eyes like spring leaves, her fists clenched at her side, and said "Leave, and never come back."

I disobeyed her only once. My dreams of the Dragon grew more frequent, more urgent. He finally convinced me to go to her, to look in on his heart and soul. He loved her even as I did, I knew, and although he was jealous that I had had her and he could not, he encouraged me to see her. I think my maudling dreams of her were making him sick.

It was shortly after the child was born. She threw me out of the house. She was much more polite this time, although she did yell, but she still threw me out. As I left, though, she stood in the doorway, the light from her fireplace making her hair look like fire, and in her arms she held the child- a pudgy boy with a huge head, a wild thatch of black-red hair, her amazing green eyes, and six pale wings.

Those Who Fell From the Sky|Thanatos|Rise of Technology