Running Before I Can Crawl

(Wilhelm Dragonsong)

Though the way I put things may seem somewhat simple maybe even a bit carefree, if I had to describe my life up till now or at least my remembered life I would have to say one word: difficult.

Don’t even mention social interactions because I am in fact still working on them, let me instead move on to things more easily to talk about without embarrassment.

For example the way I interacted with magic was so instinctive and different then the people of this world used that learning to use magic ‘their’ way was akin to speaking in reverse or dancing backwards while singing.

The ‘spells’ and other methods alone that my Master taught me let alone the complex stuff I later learned at school were until I figured it out, were hard to the point of near hatred.

Of course what the spells were supposed to accomplish were excruciatingly easy to me to do with my own personal magic, but that is exactly what made things so very difficult.

I guess you could say that I felt like was born running and not just running but capable of leaping and dancing and I had been happily doing it for some time.

Then soon after seeing and interacting with others and after being confused to no end I meet my Master who essentially ‘takes me out of the woods’ and explains things, by saying that not only is running an impossible thing but leaping and dancing are legendary existences and even something as simple to me as standing is something that only grandmasters can do.

So in her opinion the only way the impossible existence that is myself will be able to understand others is if I stop running and learn ‘from the beginning’ along with the majority of other people.

So despite my confusion I still deeply desired the ability to understand, so I stopped my running, awkwardly got down on my knees and attempted to learn how to crawl.

It was painful, humiliating yes but at the end I think it was undoubtedly worth it and strangely illuminating in its entertainment value.

Once I got past a certain point and overcame my understandable pride in being able to do what seemingly no one else could do, and started to reverse learn how to crawl decently, I was hooked. After all while things do seem beautiful up in the sky there is something to be said for things down on the ground as well.

I learned every language and magic language that I could find in this world, and then in my exuberance I read just about every book and magic book that I got my hands on…actually I confess that there was one large period of time maybe a decade or two where I spent almost all my time and energy in ‘research’.

Luckily my friends eventually dragged me out of that pit of obsession otherwise I would probably still be reading even now and would have probably missed the war until it came with in hearing distance…cough-cough.

Anyway still, once I realized how fun and interesting doing things in such complicated and unnecessary ways that the magic practice of this world required was it became a major part of my life that I have never regretted.

So much so that it helped me to if not completely love at least to more easily accept and come to terms with my life in this world. For though I have lived here for over a hundred years I have never really felt truly a part of it.

In explanation let me say that even back then at bare minimum, I didn’t ever think that I come from a place anywhere near ‘here’. Actually I don’t think I even come from this world.

I have many facts to support this and didn’t come to this theory lightly. First and foremost among the evidence is despite my explorations all around this world I haven’t met a single person who recognized me or even thought that I looked familiar, shouldn’t there be at least one person in this entire world who knows where I came from if I indeed came from here?

Even if I came from the most back woods of places then at some point I should have been able to find it no problem I do have magic to help me after all but yet my magic always came up a big blank when I tried it.

Secondarily is my unclear ancestry, I know from a few of my fragmented memories that…among other…things my blood contains the blood of elves. But the elves of this world though in many ways similar are also equally completely different then the elves and elven magic of those memories.

Also among those ‘other things’ I mentioned are races and creatures that are not only exceptions to this worlds equivalents in millions of unheard ways but also in the case of some already extinct and long gone to the point that they are considered merely legends.

Next but not least, though I won’t speak of more for now is the fact that I have never felt fully comfortable here, though I can’t know for certain without my memories, nothing that I have seen here looks familiar. Everything seems ‘not enough’ or in a few rare cases ‘too much’ nothing I have seen or experienced in all my years of wandering had sparked any new memories.

So being an alien in an alien land, I think it is understandable that I thought I should rely on what I already had, rather than relying on something that I didn’t even have a hope of putting into worlds let alone having the chance of even knowing if it even existed or was actually possible in the first place.

Though it is obvious that I have gained much in this remembered life treasures and equally treasured friendships and more recently some undervalued fame as well, I have never been able to forget about what I have forgotten. Despite the great strides I have made in my understanding of how to act like a person of this world, in the end no matter what I do I don’t think I am a person of this world and more importantly I don’t think I ever will be.