Destination Starlight (5) "I extend my apologies Mirya. I know I was healed. You have my thanks…" He replied sharply, "It is just your answer. I…I was not expecting an answer like that. I thought it was the year…” He stopped and stared at her, making no sense of this, seeing her confusion again. Rijiin again, shut the hell up immediately. “What year did you think it was Rijiin?” Mirya asked curiously, “I would like to know.” He grimaced at her question, and remembered his writing, the paradox of time. The newly transforming elf knew that he could never tell her, that it might destroy the future, his future, and if not time itself. He shook his head quickly. However, little did he know that he had been pulled out of time for a reason and detached from the time he lived in, free for all times instead of locked into the lifetime he was supposed to live. "I-I can’t tell you that, as I am perhaps a little confused right now. I don’t know if I can explain to you where I am from as it is hard to believe, as much as being here in the fourteen century." He replied, lying back to close his eyes briefly. He took in the starlight that he saw there before opening his eyes and tried to rise. She tilted her head as Rijiin groaned as he tried to sit up and found he could not. He placed his hand on his head. "Ugh, someone tell the guy with the jack hammer to lay off." He muttered, falling back against the goose feather filled pillow and the newly transformed elf held his head with his hands. Mirya managed a small smile but it turned into a puzzled frown. She did not understand his statement. She did not understand his statement and decided not to press him by asking. She did not understand the location where the newly transforming elf had come or anything about him. His appearance had been completely random, and unlike any events that she and Terrill had seen before in their travels. The aura had been real though, and over the week, the energy had changed him and what she could not deny was something Elven to her from a mere human. The maiden closed her eyes, peering into the starlight, if not reading his thoughts. She grimaced at the conflicting images she saw there. If not the ones of a body, laying somewhere that looked like a creek in the middle of a bright autumn light. She grimaced at the thoughts, and shook her head uncertainly as she opened her eyes. "If it is any consequence, I do not understand how you arrived here or why, but I am here to help you.” She told him, “You seem no worse for wear despite your condition now.” "And I give you my thanks for whatever you did to me." He replied. "I am glad and we are here to help Rijiin." She replied, smiling at him. He narrowed his eyes, sensing that caution. "Something has happened, something to do with my arrival in this place." He thought, "I wonder what she is holding back." Mirya tried to brighten her face with a smile that came out all wrong and a frown of question appeared on his now fair features. He sensed her astonishment, but also her curiosity by the stranger that now lay in the bed before her. The maiden did not understand where he came from, when she and her mate had found him, or brought him to Saint Brigid even now. It was completely puzzling to the maiden. “You should feel any different in a day or so. You have changed…" Mirya paused as Rijiin managed to sit up and gasped as he saw the image of himself in the mirror. The transforming elf saw an unfamiliar youthful face, with an ivory, fair complexion, extremely handsome with gray eyes and long brown hair staring back at him in the firelight. "…a little bit and you will see it in the mirror across from you." Mirya said, completing her thought. She met his grimace with a nod. "Be at peace, I can only explain that you have transformed a bit because of an aura we saw around you that vanished a after we arrived at the village. It has been over a week or more since you were found in the clearing in the forest, north of here." “What kind of aura?” He asked, and she shrugged. “It is of no consequence of what it was, it happened and you are not the same person we found.” The maiden told him, “Even we are not sure. How you feel, at this very moment? Is it any differently than before?” “I feel alive, invigorated, and healthy.” He replied, grimacing at the mirror as he lift his hands and touched his face. He found himself amazed by the strange face that he saw there. He did not tell her of streaking through the sky, the interstellar flame or ending up on the arm of a beautiful woman, clad in blue and silver robes. That to Rijiin seemed like a dream to him. He realized that he had changed a lot, having brown hair sprinkled with gray before but that was gone. It was long, fine, thick and completely one color. Perhaps it was now much darker than before. He gasped that he remembered having blue eyes, but now they were steel gray. Everything about him personally that he knew had gone and a stranger even to himself remained. "Jesus, What the heck did you… it… do to me? A little bit of change, as you describe, is a gross understatement.” Closing his eyes, he stared into the darkness and gasped seeing the twinkle of starlight, as-if he was staring at the stars in the sky. “I-I see starlight.” He murmured, “What is that about?” "You are not ill-formed by any means, Rijiin. You will see many changes in the next few hours, over a course of many days or months. It depends on the power of the magical aura that changes you at this moment, and what it elects to change. It can choose many paths for the changes ahead, in many ways." Another voice said, and turning his head, he made out Varden who stood near the door in the shadows. He had not heard him enter the room. "I am Varden." He touched his forehead and bowed wide-stance, and low. Rijiin peered at the tall lean elf. He wore a simple garb of green, gray, dark hair cascading to his shoulders, and his face was gentle, almost womanly. He wore a concerned, but solemn expression. Dangling at his throat is the same pendant that Mirya wore: a crescent moon and interlocked, rayed star, from a silver chain. Rijiin gasped at the elf’s name. He had that name while online, and had been clearly surprised by anyone else having it, especially someone like this. It was a strange coincidence to the transforming elf. "Hell, an almost fucking bizarre one!" Rijiin thought and nodded to Mirya's kinfolk. "To answer your question Rijiin, you are changing by the day into an elf like we are…" He said and he paused when he saw the newly transformed elf’s look of question appear there. "It appears that the energy that surrounded you was triggered by Mirya's healing and it is by the goddess’ hand and ability that changed you from what you were to what you are now." “Who is the goddess?” He asked, “Can I see her and thank her for saving me?” Rijiin asked them but remembered the dream, in which she cast him into the sky, and gasped, realizing he had already seen her. “That will be done in due time, but you should rest and recuperate after being yanked from the abyss and given another chance at life." Varden said, "Why, is another question and only time, at this moment, will disclose the reason behind the changes happening to your physical body and to the essence of your very soul.” With that, the elf nodded and even smiled thinly at Rijiin. “Be at peace, we shall help acclimate you as best we can. That is what the elves are here for, healing comfort and aid to those in need." Varden said, and yet he grimaced at Rijiin’s silence. "I know I was brought here after I stepped through whatever I stepped through. I will be able to return home right?" Rijiin asked, breaking the silence. Varden merely shrugged in response. No-one present was aware that a dismembered, mutilated, and blood-covered mass of a human body would be found in a cement culvert across from Eastridge Mall, in his home town of San Jose, located far in the future. The body was transported and appeared in the culvert after he was changed into an immortal. The remains are the very essence of humanity that would be left after his transformation into an elf. Varden himself had seen he images and the body in the autumn sunlight already. It lay in a pool of blood, a mass of blood, gore, and dismembered beyond recognition. He knew that it was the humanity, making up the young human, and he knew that he could not return, his transformation changing him into fully Elven. The humanity had been split and stripped away, returned to its place from which it had come. Mirya's kinfolk merely nodded to Rijiin and had a grim look on his face. "Be at peace. That path will be investigated in time. Right now, we should focus on what is happening in the present.” Here Varden glanced at Mirya who was grimacing by his meaning, clearly alarmed by what and whom she saw sitting before her. Neither of the Elves of Malvern had any doubt Rijiin was no longer human. “Perhaps a little time to ask questions and give answers will help you quickly acclimate better to your new surroundings.” Varden told Rijiin, “A lot of explanation is needed to hopefully help you understand what you will be going through over the time ahead. Know this… it is real and very permanent what is happening to you, with possibly many consequences ahead with one of not being able to return to where you came from." For an hour, they sat talking and he asked questions and they answered and they asked, and Rijiin answered. The newly transformed elf did not disclose everything, and only told them what he knew. He remembered the paradox that could destroy his time if things were changed even in simple discussion. Rijiin only mentioned the portal, and gateway, that had closed in front of him before he had been wounded. He mentioned that he was from a far away land, and here by sheer random chance. It had astonished the elves by his descriptions of his home in the future, as he did not candy coat them, but he did not elaborate on them either. They explained things about the energy, and the transformation. What it had done to him and over the two plus weeks that it surrounded him, changing him drastically into what he was now. They told him of the many changes that lay ahead, as he would recover and grow stronger as he healed. The newly transformed elf only nodded dumbly, astonished by their explanation. Rijiin felt suddenly down, realizing that he was an unwanted prisoner to this place, remembering constantly that the portal had stranded him in this place. Inside he knew that he could not go home, as if he did now, that he could not account for his whereabouts, or his identity that he had once been. He knew by now he was probably missing, if not presumed dead. However, to the newly transformed elf, that was the least of his worries. It was dealing with the change of his body, and perhaps his soul, how he would be living in a different time and place that he only read about in history. He found himself terrified at the thought of being stuck here in this century. They described Adria to him, describing the realm with a brief overview of the events that was happening currently. It was right out of a history book to him, and he still wondered if he was in the games still. He shook his head in response to the thought, knowing that he was definitively not in the games or the future. Nevertheless, his wound had been real, as had his blood and organs that had hung out of his body. He almost died, so he really was here and they had really used a power that he did not understand to heal and cure those wounds. When they were through, there was silence for a brief moment. A moment later there was a quiet knock in which the door opened and Kay, the youthful village priest, entered. Rijiin turned his head, as did the others in the room. “I thought I heard voices.” Kay’s voice said cheerfully, and in his hand, he brought a tray containing a small loaf of bread, a bowl containing some stew. Rijiin listened to the language, and he crazily understood it. It was Italian he thought, or a mix of it and Latin. “How are you feeling?” He addressed Rijiin who was sitting up in bed, admiring himself in the mirror across the room. The transforming elf still did not understand, but realized it was happening. He had wished for something to happen at the games, to find entertainment, but had not expected this to happen. He regarded Kay silently, and nodded slowly. Kay is medium height with short black hair, dark eyes, and wears a white robe and cap on his head, marking him as a priest. The newly transformed elf smiled silently at the sight of someone so young to hold a place of responsibility here as a healer in the village. Rijiin smiled warmly at the youthful priest. “I guess I am healed.” Rijiin replied in Kay's language, “Thanks for asking.” Mirya and Varden both peered at Rijiin, astonished that he was able to speak to Kay in his native language, being from what Mirya thought was England. At the time, England existed, but America did not, not for another four hundred and twenty or so years. She had assumed he had come there, and Rijiin did not say a word about the future to avoid causing a paradox of time. “I’m Kay, the priest of Saint Brigid.” Kay said, introducing him self, “You must be Rijiin.” “Yes pastor, I am.” The elf replied, and Mirya glanced at him sharply. “Be at peace.” She said, “Please don’t speak too sharply to Kay, he is a good man and he is here to help too.” “Don’t worry I won’t, Mirya.” The elf promised and he managed a smile. “I brought you something to eat.” The priest said, handing him the tray, “Varden mentioned you might be hungry.” “Ravishing…” Rijiin said, taking the tray and putting it on his lap. He dug into the stew, and bit the loaf of delicious bread. “This is fantastic.” Rijiin said, “The bread and stew both.” “My thanks…” Kay said, “It is my own recipe.” “The bread is locally made by the women of Saint Brigid.” Kay informed him. “Da… er… It is very delicious, Kay.” Rijiin said, and smiled. “Do you feel up to following me, Rijiin? After you eat and change?” Mirya asked, “So I can show you around?” “Absolutely…” The newly transformed elf replied, and nodded with a mouthful of soup. He ate the hearty meal quickly and when he was finished, fifteen minutes later, Rijiin sighed as he sat there. He nodded to Varden who had handed him the bundle and placed it on the bed next to him. The elves and the priest talked quietly amongst themselves, their subject was their visitor and the extraordinary changes to him over the weeks that past. Turning, the newly transformed elf stared at the bundle for a moment before frowning. He nodded slightly, unsure what the bundle was for before taking it but he examined it with interest, placing it in pieces on the plush bed. Varden smiled and nodded, motioning to Kay and Mirya. “Come let us step outside and let him change.” Mirya's kinsfolk suggested, “When you are ready to come, just meet us downstairs.” “Aye.” The trio exited the room, and he stripped off the garb they had dressed him in, a simple brown leather garb. As he stood there in the buff, he glanced appraisingly at the mirror that stood nearby. Turning he examined himself carefully, at the ripped abs, washboard stomach, muscular arms, legs and other things. He noted the long hair, round fair features, and the gray eyes, which he could see the light brightly shining there. He pushed back the hair and revealed the slender ears there in silent surprise. “Uh-ok, that’s kind of weird.” Rijiin thought but he suddenly realized the changes had definitely done something to him and he was clearly no longer human. The newly transformed elf realized that elves were only a legend in his time, and did not exist, if they did at all. They sure were real to Rijiin now that he was one too. “Alright…!” Rijiin exclaimed, flexing as he turned, staring with a critical eye at the massive healthy body that he had been transformed. He looked lean and healthy, ripped, muscular, like an elf. He grimaced after a moment. “Jesus, I don’t have any humanity left, do I?” He thought, and shook his head in stunned silence. “I know I cannot return home, as I am stranded here.” Rijiin thought to himself, “If I can’t return, I might as well make due with what I got here, and stay. At least I am alive and well, despite what happened to me when I arrived.” He closed his eyes and gasped, when he saw the hint of starlight that flickered brightly in the darkness. The elf wondered what he was seeing, and if that had something to do with the remarkable transformation that he had recently undergone. Opening his eyes, he glanced at the bed where the outfit lay separated on the bed. The newly transformed elf shrugged, despite it. “What the hell. I might as well accept their gift, if it is to blend in to this place.” Rijiin murmured, grabbing the breeches first, slipping them over his legs, and pulling them up. He secured the ties quickly then pulled on the tunic over his upper body. He slipped the tunic into the breeches, and secured the ties before slipping the belt around his waist. The newly transformed elf, slipped on the boots next and the trouser legs seemed to blouse traditionally at the knee. He then grabbed the sheathed blade and slipped it in his belt. Rijiin stared at the mirror and he managed a grin. He was also amazed that he managed the garb fastenings quickly, as-if he had done so, all his life. “Alright…!” He exclaimed, “Not too shabby. I look like Varden and Mirya, though.” He stood staring at himself in the mirror for a very long time. Rijiin was amazed by the changes and the garb that made him look so different.
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