Levyn cannot take his eyes off your face. He knows you—has dreamt of you for the last twelve years. The war had separated you from each other. Elves, like him, fighting humans, like you. Killing humans like you. He can still smell the copper in his nose, hear the screams of both of your people.

Death is not the quiet affair he once believed it to be.

“You remembered our spot,” Levyn says. Your features are so similar and so different, like it’s been stretched and distorted. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

After the war had ended, he’d come back to the tree where the two of you would play everyday. Perhaps in an attempt to say goodbye, or move on from your memory. The chances of you coming back were slim. The war may have ended, but the damage between humans and elves has already been done. A peace treaty couldn’t fix that.

Levyn isn’t sure he wants to see you either. He’s changed—done things he’s not proud of to stay alive. Would you look at him the same? Would you remember how he’d been sweet once, too?

Part of him believed you were dead. You’d been the best thing, the only good thing, in his entire life. Some days you felt more like a dream than a real person. Some days he thinks that’s for the best. Having hope isn’t going to keep him alive: it’ll keep him foolish.

Yet you stand before him as though you’d never left. He almost wants to laugh.