Arsirl

This is just something I spit out while thinking about a story idea. I may write more about the same story, but I probably won't revisit the narrator of this. This could be someone talking about events that happen in a much bigger story. I may revisit this, I may not. If you want to do something with this, go ahead. Consider it to be creative commons.

The elf? Yea, I met the elf. I met him in a bar about two weeks before the incident. It was a small dive over on the east side called the Oasis. It's the type of place that hadn't been redecorated since the mid seventies. The place was mostly empty that night. There was a group of punk kids playing pool were the only patrons before I got there. I wasn't in a mood for company, so I got myself a whisky, and then sat at a corner table not far from the bar.

When Arsirl came in, I could tell he was having a worse day than even I. He was wearing a stocking hat, which wasn't out of the ordinary since it was chilly that night. The way he was dressed, at first I figured he was there to hang with the punk kids where were there. He wasn't exactly dressed in the punk rock fashions, but he looked to be about their age, and he certainly wasn't clean cut.

Nothing about him stuck me as being particularly odd until he ordered his drink. He ordered a wine. I mentioned that this place was a dive right? Yea, this really wasn't the type of place where one normally ordered wine. It's not like he just comes in and says," I want a red wine". No, he ordered it the way you'd order in one of those pretentious wine bars. I don't remember exactly what kind of wine it was. I'm not a wine guy; I really didn't give two shits what kind he ordered. It was just strange that he ordered fancy wine.

Anyway, the bartender gave him a funny look, before digging out a bottle from beneath the bar and pouring some red liquid into a glass for the guy. It wasn't even a wine glass, just a regular drink glass. I really doubt the bottle contained what he ordered, but he didn't seem to care.

After he got his glass of wine, he paid the bartender with a handful of crumpled bills. He then came over and sat down at my table. I was doing my best to look like I didn't want someone to sit with me, but he didn't take the hint. Maybe I should have been more forceful in my insistence that he sit somewhere else. But if I had done that, I wouldn't be telling you about him now.

So, he sat down, and he says to me, "I've had one hell of a day."

As he sat there, I couldn't help but start to feel sorry for the guy. I dunno, as much as I wanted to wallow in my own self pity, the guy was really likable. He talked in a funny accent, but something about him really made you want to like him. I could see if he were cleaned up, he could have gotten himself into any fancy bar in town. You know that kind of guy.

He said something about it being really hot in there, which he was right, it was hot in there. Then he took his hat off. I noticed right away that his ears had points to them. I didn't say anything about them as I figured that they were those fake things the science fiction people put on their ears to look like that Spock character from Star Trek.

Deciding that I didn't really want him to go away, I thought the best I could do was be civil to him. I asked him to tell me what had happened to cause him to have a bad day. Besides, maybe hearing about his rough time would help me forget my own troubles.

He told me that he was an elf from another reality parallel to our own. He told me that ours was one of several realities separated by barriers. These different realities contained all of the mythological creatures from our stories and legends. Our reality is the normal one that all of the other ones are tied to. When the barriers between the realities weaken, then things can cross over.

According to his story, the reason that the tales of the Greeks talked about things like the Chimera, is that they really did exist. It had just crossed over from its own reality into ours. The same thing went with all of the elements of different Mythologies from around the world.

He told me that the barriers had been strong for the past several hundred years, and that's why we hadn't seen anything in such a long time. Being an elf, he was immortal, and was still here since the last time the barriers had been weak. He was the last living thing on earth from another realm.

Of course, I thought he was just making all of this up. Trying to be smart, I asked why we didn't find remains of all of these things. If there were dragons running around hundreds of years ago, then we should have some evidence of them. His explanation was that when the barriers strengthened, all traces of anything that didn't belong here got erased. I asked him why he was still here then. He said he didn't know.

Deciding to humor him, I asked what all of this had to do with his day, and why it was so bad. That's when he told me that a barrier was starting to weaken. He had spent the day trying to stop it, but he wasn't sure he had succeeded. It was being damaged by some science experiment going on at the University. He said something about breaking into the University to break some of their equipment to prevent what they were doing.

I asked him if we were going to see a dragon running around central park soon. It's kind of ironic that I had to ask that exact question. He said he hoped that we wouldn't see that.

As my drink was empty, I thanked him for the story, and left. I still didn't believe anything he had told me. I still figured he was just some science fiction nerd with an overactive imagination. His story did help me take my mind off my own rotten luck that day.

As you can imagine, I was pretty damned surprised two weeks later when I flipped on the news to find that there was a dragon running around central park, and that this elf that I had met was trying to reinforce the barrier between the two realities. I know he got the barrier back up, and we're not in eminent danger of being attacked by dragons anytime soon, but now we know that there are things out there. I'm sure the scientists won't rest until they find a way to pierce those barriers and find out more about what's out there.