Memory of the Forest,Unknown,50

—My children.

On this world blanketed in ash and snow, I was alone.

Before the earth froze, there were two thousand races upon this star. My own people, the Elua, were one of them, yet it was rare for us to be treated as equals to the humans.
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They owned us, degraded us, and at times killed us. Even among themselves their strife never ceased.

Humanity seemed to wish, eternally, to believe that the endless miseries born of their own genetic flaw might one day be solved―by love, or by hope, or by the ripening of their culture.

In the end, only those of us who foresaw the coming winter and prepared for it survived—only I survived.

It was I who summoned this winter.

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For nearly a thousand years after mankind perished, the ship was my shelter and my sole companion. Its name was Vind-Harl.

I spent most of each day in the ship’s arboretum. In that little forest, my small companion was growing. She had passed her second metamorphosis and had grown to the size of an adult’s thumb.

“Onev.” I whisper the name of the young mother.

Countless thousands or even millions of years from now, when the scars of this earth have at last healed, in a place untouched by the hatred and fear that destroyed us, in a world without humankind, she will carry you within her.

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I will become part of the forest and watch over her long solitude.

If the forest carries my memory, perhaps one day you too will come to know — the betrayal and sin I committed, the unending sorrow and emptiness.

Yet do not let this be lost amid those shadows.

―My beloved children unborn.

Your smiles that rise when I close my eyes were the only reason I had to live.

I pray, with all my heart, for the happiness of you who will be born into this star.
