Even the passage of so much time cannot erase the emotions induced by that first near death experience, or the changes it wrought within me. Rarely have I ever been as profoundly effected by an event as I was then, no matter how much I tried to cover it with humor and bravado in my journal, and it left its mark on the rest of my life.

It may be a result of the length of time my race lives, under normal conditions, or perhaps it is our legendary ego. It is probably a combination of the two, but either way we are encouraged from a very early age to believe that we are eternal. A thousand years may not seem all that long when you are a youth of a hundred years or so, but when you have lived as long as I have and have savored all of life's pleasures so often that they lose their flavor, a thousand years seems an eternity. Most of my people willingly step across the veil, believing it to be far preferable to the agony of a bored existence.

That has never been for me, I have never been that bored. There will always be one more lock to pick, one more dungeon to crawl, one more evil to defeat. I am very old, though, and I find that I must rest much longer between adventures. That is when the true danger comes, when I am sitting alone by the fire and memories come unbidden. There are times when I stare into the fire and think to myself that perhaps I have grieved all that I can, and that I am not strong enough to bury any more friends.

So far I have always found something to occupy my time, to keep me busy and distracted from the pain, like this work with my journals. But I feel it coming, that time when it will no longer be enough, and I too will take that final journey.

But it is not now, and I am yet strong enough to continue.