And then came the day I woke up on a bright, sunny beach. All the feeling returned in a painful rush. The sun hurt, the sand hurt, moving hurt, and the noise of the waves was agony.
My clothes were in shreds. The Void had done awful things to my skin, and worse things to my hair, and I didn't recognize myself the first time I saw myself in the mirror. My muscles didn't want to work, and I kept trying to count my fingers and toes because I kept coming up with a different number. And try as I might, my elfsong was gone. I had been silenced.
Worst of all, I was alone. Lyran elves never went anywhere alone. We needed someone else to keep our shared aura functioning, preferably three or four others, or we became seriously ill, mentally and physically. There were whole songs equating being alone to drowning.
I promptly panicked, of course. There was just too much of everything all at once, and I couldn't handle it. To add to my woes, fate decreed that an actual human wizard came to investigate the noise.
Back home, there were several different ways to do magic. We elves, for example, sang it. The words weren’t important, but the melodies and harmonies were, as well as the number of participants. Wizards were the ones who relied on their Words to activate their carefully crafted spells. One well prepared wizard won in a magic fight against elves every time, solely based on the amount of time it took to cast.
So when I heard someone yelling, “Who’s out there? I’m a wizard, you know!” I braced myself for the worst.
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