The flow of time for an elf is not near as linear and consistent as it is for humans. Whilst for the most part humans’ time bumps along at a seemingly orderly pace, with the occasional holiday speed bump or speed-up, time for the elves is a living creature of its own.
One that coils back and nips at the heels of the fae, or can be coaxed to rush forward like an autumn windstorm, carrying along the beings who incited the race, or even occasionally skipping peculiar beats like a smooth stone across a still pond.
A human’s mind would go mad, so we ignore that untamed part of reality and keep it neatly ordered in days, months, minutes, years and cheerful clock faces with hands that go one way and not the other.
Aldwyn liked time. It was a constant companion that liked Aldwyn as well. Happily accepting the bits of memory and future plans as tasty snacks to be consumed, it practically purrrrrrrred under the deft, faintly glowing green hand of Aldwyn as he metaphorically and yet somehow actually tickled the ears of time.
Together they had explored a forest at its seed stage, a great big flat of nothing that rose and fell and filled with trees that stretched upwards, fell, regrew, fell, over and over like a great wave of branches bending and bowing to the sky. Aldwyn had experienced with great curiosity the land crack apart and divide itself by small ravines, nooks and crannies and little hills, as streams and brooks pushed through, over, under, around the trees. Much like time itself and Aldwyn for that matter, the waters did as they pleased and went where they wanted.
As is the case with many temporally experienced elves, Aldwyn aged, collecting wisdom and memories, some of that unavoidable time reflected in every laugh line and forehead crinkle, but paradoxically maintained the carefree demeanor as well as the childlike joy in his eyes as that of the youngest oakling or mushroom fae just finding their feet.
Humans catching a glimpse of his brilliantly turquoise capelet, a blur of colour as he ran through the forest, faster almost than the eye could catch, would hear his giggle as he waved his arms and deliberately kicked pinecones, wearing his favorite purple boots, launching them in the air with a satisfyingly pleasant “thunk.”
When you got to experience time forward and backward and a little inside out every so often, it didn’t know how to reflect in such a being as Aldwyn and other temporally adept fae folk, and so like a multifaceted gemstone it reflected back more than one perception.
Aldwyn was old.
Aldwyn was young.
He was naive and wise, impossibly both.
His skin glowed with the faintly pearlescent green magic of his kind. Mossy woodlands underfoot and trees overhead, he had found his preferred season of time and experienced it forward and backward, looping, from late winter to summer and back and forth, a tide of time sweeping around him, so that he could see the pulse of green, green nature glowing and retracting to a quiet hint of its former glory, over and over and over again.
There’s more than one human who would have spotted him, standing eerily still on a patch of squishy moss, arms raised to the tree branches overhead, eyes wide with wonder, taking in the sight we see layered with soooooo much more, that it was the humans green with envy even as Aldwyn glowed green with power, exhaling with pure joy, “It’s sooooooo beautiful.”
And it was, the forest we see and the forest Aldwyn saw, every moment forwards and backwards.
Aldwyn stood amidst the flow of its existence, contentedly experiencing it all as time encircled his shoulders, perching on his hat, twining around his legs. Together they experienced the forest as it creaked, memories flexing in its roots, branches shivering, leaves whispering, moss expanding and contracting, over and over, like a grand carpet of green. Forever and for just a moment, and all at once.
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