About The First Duty and my Dharvan (see: “Elf”) Ranger

It took me nine months, from beginning to end, to write the rough drafts for The Timeless Ranger series, though back in 2020 it was not called that, nor did I know I had a series on my hands.

All I knew is that when I was truly, truly scared to death, Shylilias appeared to help me through that lingering night. Strangely, that fear was struck into me on the greatest day of my life, and a day when life meant something new and different.

It was the day my son was born.

There’s this moment where I decided to take pictures of him. Not just because I knew that he would changing from that moment forward, that I’d never see him again that way, but also because I wanted to know the moment when my mortality truly set in for me.

There’s nothing harder than realizing that one day, no matter how hard we wish otherwise, our loved ones have to leave us behind to go on a greater journey, but nothing hits harder than the moment you understand you will end up on that march as well. The moment my son was born, I knew that time was a finite thing for me because there’d come a day when I couldn’t be there for him no matter how much I want to. It also struck me, then and there, that my parents would be next, as would my aunts and uncles, and one day I’d be among the generation of people my children and (I hope) their children would have to endure watching pass from the world.

Even now, as I write this post, I’m struggling. I’ve been struggling. A few years ago I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, which I hope was taken care of, but I will always have to be aware of it. I then lost an uncle who was very dear me after a long, hard siege with Parkinson’s and dementia with Lewy bodies, and then the aunt who lost him that is next to my mother in importance had to battle breast cancer a second round. My dad went through some real struggles, as did my sister, and along the way I realized my mom is unhappy too because the world simply is.

For all us, the days run out, but that does not mean that every one of them does not weigh.

For Shylilias, however, the problem is in reverse. As one of the immortal Dharva (see “elf”), her life has no end without meeting physical violence or absolute heartbreak, and what that heartbreak means to an immortal is no less poignant and meaningful that it is to our mortal, finite days.

In many ways, we both face the same dilemma:

What does it all mean in the course of our lives, long or short?

For us mortals, we are always running out of days. We either use them to our fullest or we waste them, and many have passed from their lives wishing they had spent their days doing something more meaningful than what they had labored to do in their place. We do not get those days back.

But what if you had all the days in the world to do everything you ever wanted? What if you wanted to be anything and everything to your heart’s content, and had to the time to pursue it to the fullest?

What happens when the thrill, the triumph, and the zeal from life runs out?

The greatest challenge in our lives is accepting that somethings are truly out of our hands, that we are dealt the cards we are dealt, and the only thing we have to bring to bear against this predicament is the choices we make, like how we decide to live after we’ve lost those who are so important to us—and know, somewhere in time, we will go with them.

How do we live on this journey while we prepare, knowingly and unknowingly, for others beyond our simple mortal reckonings?

The hardest choice, truly, is to decide that “I will keep living.”

Some of us are alive and living silent deaths that our bodies simply haven’t caught up to yet. Some of us have also lived more years in a single day than most will ever have to suffer. What we do we our time and how we measure its worth is as much the existential conundrum of our existences as anything else.

Tolkien attempted to solve it by having his elves leave the mortal world for Valinor to live with the gods of Middle-earth and once again be in the light of Eru Illuvatar. RA Salvatore takes his legendary character Drizzt Do’Urdon, who directly inspired Shylilias and her adventures, and explores the difficulties of moving on with life by living in slices of “human time”, so to speak. For me one of the fascinating experiments in the subject of elves is of course Frieren: Beyond the Journey, where the titular character explores her unexpected grief at the passing of time, memory, and the experiences she had as a member of THE PARTY that saved the world by re-engaging with a life full of relationships, quests, but more importantly, relishing the life she has to live.

I take from something from each of them in the formulation of my immortal dharva as she tackles this problem, which I think is both part of and mirror to the problem I face:

What do I do with the time I have?

And what do I do when what lays ahead will be full of sorrow, rigor, and often sadness?

What do I do the day I don’t have my mother anymore? Or forbid it, my wife? What happens for Ben the day he has to live the same?

The First Duty is not only Shylilias duty to her homeland as a Dharvan ranger, nor the duty she is avoiding to her mother (that we will get fully into in The Second Requirement, which is Book II), but the duty to herself to decide to stay alive and keep living, especially when we do not know what sort of impacts we might have upon the world if we don’t.

That is her ultimate duty: to keep living.

And I hope, beyond my readers enjoying this story, that it might give them hope or another reason to keep going as well. Especially in these times.

I hope you will check out the first novella in this series by clicking the link here!

(Or, if you wish to purchase through Amazon, you can click here!)

Safe Journeys,

Jay