Ten years is not even one percent of my life so far.

A little background: in the setting of Middle-earth, elves are almost like gods. Unless they die unnaturally or suffer endless grief, they remain in the world forever. There is also a melodramatic saying that an elf who falls in love with an ordinary human becomes ordinary too.

Frieren is one of the few surviving elves. So she does not grow old and has no sense of time. I actually envy that: sleeping in late, taking afternoon naps, and sleeping until noon without a care. I know deeply how it feels to keep sleeping when I am sleepy. I can never have too much sleep.

Having nothing to do, staying in a forest for thousands of years: elves are peaceful by nature and follow the way of nature.

Once death no longer exists, most anxiety would disappear too. But I cannot know what the anxiety of immortality feels like.

When Frieren was over a thousand years old (fifty years before the Era of King Aureole), she and the Hero’s party defeated the Demon King after a journey of ten years.

There were two humans—a hero and a priest—a dwarven warrior, and Frieren, an elven mage.

Their lifespans are roughly: hero [blue-haired] < priest [wearing glasses] < dwarf < elf.

An ordinary human’s lifespan < a priest’s few extra decades < several centuries < ???

At the end of their journey, their celebration happened to coincide with a great meteor shower that comes once every fifty years. Frieren said she would keep collecting magic and take them next time to a better place to see it, then simply left.

“I will come back to see you all once in a while.”

“…” Every companion knew Frieren had a poor memory, but just as expected, none of them saw her even once in the following fifty years.

After wandering for a while, she returned to find that the hero had become an old man. After watching the meteor shower, he closed his eyes and passed away. Looking back, it hurts a little. It feels as though he held on just to see Frieren one last time.

“Hero and Frieren” were a pairing too, an impressionistic kind of pairing. On the day of the hero’s funeral—the first year of the Era of King Aureole—Frieren finally realized, belatedly, that she had never truly tried to understand him. And that it seemed already too late. Her delayed reactions are truly long, and that is exactly why she is so adorable.

From then on, all she could see were statues of the hero, and her pairing would forever exist only in memories.

They were both so young in those scenes. They had spent only ten years together. For Frieren, that was only an instant.

“Why not take on an apprentice? At least you would have someone to keep you company on the road,” the dwarf once asked Frieren.

“An apprentice? Even if I pass on everything I know, they will die soon enough anyway,” Frieren said.

“That is not how relationships work…” the dwarf replied.

In the eleventh year of the Era of King Aureole—perhaps; I cannot remember exactly—Frieren was set up by the priest Heiter to take Fern as her apprentice.

I call her Chubby Fern because she was really round as a child.

Fern grew up quickly beside Frieren. Seven years passed in a flash; when she was small, Frieren could treat her as a daughter, and when she grew up, Fern could be the mother.

Fern also made Frieren understand that humans feel time very differently from her. Whenever Frieren tries to spend half a year or several years looking for something, she unconsciously watches Mama Fern’s expression.

Time slowed down for Fern. In Frieren’s world, people were no longer wearing open-crotch pants one moment and leaning on canes the next.

But even slowed down, time still moves. Fern is human after all. Frieren has already had her share of white-haired people carrying coffins—well, she really does have white hair.

Yet there is no avoiding it: Fern will grow old, and Frieren will watch her grow old. Fern will die, and Frieren will probably watch her die too. From the time Frieren realized at the hero’s funeral that she should understand people better—when she decided to try to understand them—she also had to grieve for the deaths of the people she came to understand.

Though ten years were less than one percent of her life, those ten years changed her. Or rather, the hero changed her.

So what happens when Fern also leaves, when Frieren is alone again? Does she return to nature? But after receiving the warmth of Mama Fern’s companionship, the natural harmony she once had will only feel lonely and cold. Separation is unavoidable, and she must be alone again, carrying everything by herself, just as she walks on carrying the hero and Fern with her. Does this elderly elf’s delayed reaction only arrive after she loses someone?

In the end, she still has to be alone.

Is what passes insignificant or precious?

This is the dividing line of pessimism. Do you believe memory is nothingness, or that it has weight?

Schopenhauer’s view was perhaps: “What has passed is as insignificant as if it had never existed.”

Yet I still think that moments like these should be cherished more. I am not yet sure whether one person should carry the past forever. But I think, borrowing a line from Nichijou:

Every ordinary day we spend may be a miracle happening continuously.

Moments—ordinary days—like these deserve to be cherished. Though for me, as a human, time still keeps moving forward.

I have always felt it is easier to find myself in solitude. But if relationships like this exist, perhaps it is easier to find the real thing.

I want the real thing.