Approximately nineteen years ago, in a house so ancient that its history was longer than Kimberly itself—the McFarlane manor.
“Hoh-hoh, hoh! My, my… A sight for sore eyes indeed!” an elderly witch said with a cackle.
They were in a medical ward, protected by every manner of magical barrier, the elemental density in the very air carefully controlled. The witch was washing her newborn great-granddaughter. The baby’s ears had been pointed at birth but were now rounding themselves off.
“…Undoubtedly a half-elf. And a rare morphling! Even I have never encountered one outside the pages of a dusty tome. And for it to be a babe that carries my blood, bathed for the first time by my hands…”
Her voice was filled with joy and exaltation. Pulling the infant from the bath, the midwife dried her off and wrapped her in swaddling cloth, reverently offering up that little bundle to the mother. To the very woman who’d brought elf blood into the McFarlane clan, now lying exhausted on the birthing table.
“Well done, Mishakua. Birthing this babe does the McFarlanes—nay, the magical world—an enormous boon. Perhaps you will live to see the results of—”
“Hold your tongue, child.”
With a word, the witch was silenced. Not another person in this family would dare speak like this to her—but even the head of the McFarlane clan could not talk back to Mishakua. The elf had been a mage far, far longer. In a meeting room, perhaps the witch could have wielded order as a shield, but at the moment of this child’s birth, no one had labored harder. A dash of rudeness provided no excuse for protest.
“You had to make it hard for me,” Mishakua whispered, smiling at the fussing baby. “Was my belly that comfortable? You were far too reluctant to leave. We almost had to cut me open to get you out.”
Here, her gaze turned sideways to her husband, who’d said not a word through these proceedings.
“Hold her, Theodore. While I make amends to my ancestors.”
“……Mm.”
Theodore nodded stiffly and took his child in his arms. Seeing the fear behind his eyes, Mishakua repressed a smile. He’d barged alone into her home village yet betrayed no such emotion. This was a man long past fear of death. And yet—what he held now reminded him of what that emotion felt like.
“……?”
As he stared at the baby, the terror in his eyes gave way to tears. A fact that flummoxed him. Seeing her husband at a loss to explain these tears, Mishakua saw right through him.
“You love her, right? Despite it all.”
That choked Theodore up.
This was not his first child. More children than he had fingers bore his blood. Yet—he’d not been permitted to treat a single one of them as his own. They were children of branch houses, and Theodore was never their father.
He’d grown accustomed to that process. Forgetting to fret over it, no longer letting it get him down—and so he’d been sure he could not love. Even if he finally got a child to call his own, he’d been sure his heart would remain frozen over. And from the moment he learned his wife was pregnant, he’d feared nothing more than holding this tiny body in his arms and feeling nothing.
How wrong he’d been. It rocked his world. The moment he held his daughter in his arms, all the emotions he’d bottled up came spilling out. He was allowed to love her—and that fact alone made tears gush down his cheeks, splattering on the baby’s face. Mishakua smiled at the sight of it.
“That’s how it should be. If you cannot love me, love her instead. Love her for all the children you cannot,” she said to him. “What’s her name? You said you had one in mind.”
She spoke like a teacher collecting homework. Holding his child in shaking arms, staring into the baby’s face, Theodore answered:
“…Michela. I chose a name reminiscent of your own. And…”
“Ah. For once, you outdid yourself.”
Mishakua grinned and held out her arms. Theodore nodded, knowing what that meant. He handed the baby back to her.
Cradling the tiny body in her arms, the elf who’d ventured into human land whispered to her, “I am sorry, Michela. You’ve been born into a cruel world. You may loathe me for it all you like. But I do love you. That fact cannot be changed.”
She held her close to her heart. No matter how cruel a fate the future held, the love they felt here was real.
✦ ✦ ✦
The laws of the world granted elves exceptionally long lives, but the speed at which they grew was no different from humans. Half-elves like Michela were the same. A few years from her birth, she’d grown a lot, and like all children did, she took an interest in anything and everything around her.
“Do I not have any brothers and sisters, Father?” she asked one day.
Theodore was relaxing on the living room couch with her and smiled awkwardly.
“…A difficult question. One could say you do, and one could say you don’t. Our family is a little unusual.”
A vague answer, and he picked her up. It was morning, and her ringlets were freshly set. They swayed as he held her.
Catching an anxious look on her face, he asked, “Are you lonely? Being an only child?”
“No, not at all. I have you and Mother,” she replied. “But—if I do have brothers and sisters, I thought they might be lonely.”
Innocent kindness that broke his heart. Love and sadness welled up within, and he held her tight.
“You’re so nice, Chela. I don’t deserve a child like you.”
“Why not? You’re always nice, too!”
Knowing nothing, Chela smiled. A smile without a cloud in sight.
Theodore wished she could remain ignorant forever, all too aware that was a fragile hope.