A Meditation on Grief, Death, Loss, and Elves (Pt.1)
“You have a duty.”
That phrase repeats over and over again in the opening novella of The Timeless Ranger series, which titled The First Duty. If you’ve read it, there won’t be any spoilers here, and if you haven’t read them yet, I’ll try to dance around it as much as I can before driving to the point.
As I have stated in previous posts, one of the themes I wanted to explore with Shylilias and my elvish Dharva was the notion that everlasting life or immortality, like the kind my Dharva are endowed with, was far harder than it looked and conversely, is also being used as a mirror to the difficulties we face in our own short, mortal lives. The character of Shylilias appeared to me in the midst of an existential crisis after my son was born after I was overwhelmed by the realization that in some profound ways my youth had ended and I had an end date that my child would have to suffer through one day, just as I will have to suffer through the loss of my parents on the days they come.
Shylilias and the elves of the Dharva have to deal with the question of how to keep their lives vibrant and refreshing amid the fact that time, save for physical injury, is not a consideration they must make like we do. Where we must decide what to do with our short days, which are shorter for some, what if you had the lifetime to do everything?
What happens when being able to do everything loses its flavor? What happens when the day-in-and-day-out becomes so monotonous that the mere notion of an “end” carries such maddening, wonderful, ludicrous excitement along with it?
What if death, and the thought of it, became a joy?
As you can imagine, this sort of thinking carries us into darker places.
So the Dharva tried to give themselves a purpose by observing/inferring from the legend of their origination. When the dharva first “awoke” in the “summer world”, they saw in the midst of their great forests a golden, glowing child dancing his way through the trees, with every sort of plant and animal seemingly falling into line behind him. The dharva join this dance with Fiddus, one of their gods, and go onto venerate the dance, the movement of the giant trees (who remained moving), and their immortal duty to maintain that celebration—which to them is what it means to be dharva.
So The First Duty is to be Dharvan. It is to hold sacred the lands, waters, air, and creatures that exist around the great Ohigmos, which must be protected most of all.
But then, if Dharva understand their duty, what is The Second Requirement?
The First Duty of the Dharva only took them so far into their history before problems began to arise. What happens when the dance for endless summers become boring to an immortal body? What happens to the mind when the days and nights, the sun and the two moons, no longer exist as days and their demarcation, but simply a wheel that torturously spins above us forever? What happens to a soul when the body holds onto it too long?
All things must die, pass, and fade, like the rot of the autumn leaves, so new life can flourish forth and find its way. Things that stay too long eventually have to fade as well, and as the centuries wore into millenniums, the Dharva conceived of suicide as a meaningful way to end their lives—or at least meaningful for those who select to take part in an assisted and ritualized suicide.
Much like people in the midst of endless pain and wasting may wish to bring an end to their physical existences, the dharva formed an idea of how to end their existential wasting and pain.
So the Second Requirement became to serve one’s family in these times of loss and ending.
I wrote The Second Requirement because I know one day I have to lose my Mama. I’ll have to lose my Aunt Frances. My father. My sisters. And one day I’ll lose my wife and my son will have to watch both of us leave him. And despite all of this, I desperately yearn to be there for all of them when the day comes, even with my own passing. I think the Fantasy I found in Shylilias is that I will be brave enough to do it, to be there as long as needed to help see them to what they need to get to next.
At the heart of grief lies a hard lesson that all of us have to face death alone at some point. Its highlighted and given a rousing beat by the sheer fact we lose those we love (and those we hate) along the way. In the story of our lives we never plan for conclusions, though we love them in our fiction, and the suddenness of the conclusion is further compounded by the fact at the story goes on in real life—and will go on without us too.
But the stories of those we lose matter, as do ours. And though the Dharva might have timeless existences, they are as marked by loss and change as any other. In fact, such sorrow must be worse for immortals—how does one linger, let alone carry onward without the ones they love the most? Tolkien gives us a very pointed example in Arwen Evenstar.
What do we do with the time?
Strangely, I think if grief is given its proper course and dues, we discover choices outside of suffering and sorrow—and we each find ourselves a third choice.
And Shylilias, my beloved ranger, will figure out what that is in The Third Choice, which is the final entry in The Timeless Ranger series. I hope the answer she settles on is that answer I need to keep going towards these dark days that I know lie ahead, and maybe find brightness in them again. I hope these stories end up doing that for others too.
The Third Choice will be available on September 24th, 2026 at all major eBook booksellers!