The sky was like slate, and the world was slowly emptying.

Shalim threw open the door to Dr. Nanaea’s office in fury.

“What!” he yelled, brandishing his essay, “is THIS!”

Dr. Nanaea sputtered as she spilled her tea, irritably grabbing a handful of post it notes to dab it off her desk. “We’ve talked about appropriate entrances before, Mr. Hadad, and I think you’ll find you know exactly what it is.”

Shalim glowered at her.

“You think,” he hissed, “that because you have a piece of paper on your wall, that you are the arbitrator of truth. A power tripping queen of a pathetic little kingdom, exerting control in whatever way she can.”

The professor leaned back in her chair, tilting her head. “Very eloquent. Can you get to the point?”

The angry student slammed the offending paper onto the desk and drew himself up to his full height of 5'9".

“You. Gave. Me. A. D!”

Dr. Nanaea waited for a moment.

“And?” she prompted. Shalim felt fury rise up against the smug little woman.

“How dare you give me a D on an essay about Ugaritic culture! I was there! You have read about it, dug up its bones, played in its ashes, but that was my homeland! Its gods are mine, its people are mine, its glory is mine, and you would steal it all away from me! Have you no shame, you harpy?”

Shalim rocked back on his heels, breathing heavily, righteous anger flowing through his body. The professor sighed.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Hadad.” At first he refused to budge, but after a brief staring match he huffed and sat in one of the leather chairs besides her desk. The professor stared at the degrees on her wall.

“The day the Immortals went public meant a lot of things to a lot of different people,” she said, quietly, “Many people were scared. Others were jealous. A lot of my friends were hopeful that this would lead to breakthroughs in medicine and science. But do you know the first thing I thought was? ‘I can’t wait to hear the stories. No more guesswork and squabbling and piecemeal recreation from fragments. No more resignation about civilizations lost to sand and time.’ You see, Mr. Hadad, that piece of paper you despise so much represents a decade of my limited life, dedicated to the study of cultures like yours. So when I heard you were going to be my student, I was overjoyed. And then you turn in work like this.”

Dr. Nanaea picked up the essay and started leafing through it.

“No thesis statement, no cited sources, no conclusion, just a list of personal anecdotes with no historical frame of reference, jumping from time period to time period, with some of the most atrocious formatting ever witnessed by god or man. To be honest, a D was generous. This isn’t an essay, this is my drunken aunt’s Facebook post.”

Shalim crossed his arms defiantly, jutting out his chin. “Why should I cite sources? I was there!”

“Yes, you were, but we need to establish that. As a primary document, this could be very useful, but that isn’t the assignment. Look,” Dr. Nanaea leaned forward, “if all you want to do is share your stories, we can do that. I’m a historian, I can interview you, we type up the transcripts, I can format things, we can publish. But that won’t work if you want a degree. If you want a history degree, you need to be able to write an essay. I know you don’t want tutors, but trust me, I have a list of master’s students who would jump at the chance to help you in exchange for collaborations.”

The immortal hesitated, and Dr. Nanaea continued.

“Please, ask yourself what it is that you want here. Do you want to contribute to history? Do you want to learn new skills? Do you want to share part of your vast store of knowledge? Or do you just want to lord over the pathetic mortals? Because if it’s the last one, you can leave. I’m not going to beg for scraps of my heritage. But if it’s anything else, then let us help you.”

Shalim bit his lip, sinking into his seat.

“I will…consider your offer,” he mumbled. Dr. Nanaea nodded.

“Very good,” she said, looking pleased. She hesitated for a moment, then asked,

“Did you really interact with Ea-Nasir?”

Shalim’s face darkened.

“That jackel,” he snarled, “do you know how much copper he owed me? It was outrageous!”

Shalim dove into the story, gesturing enthusiastically. Dr. Nanaea’s laughter could be heard echoing down the halls.

Hafael sat at the corner table of The Dragon’s Heart as was tradition on Midsummer’s Eve, the anniversary of the night he and his friends had first met so many years ago.

What a motley group they had been! Katcha and Cortex had sat side by side, Katcha holding a tankard of mead that looked tiny in her hands, Cortix wearing scarlet robes which were entirely too big for him. Poor Pralthaaleroth was about to shed and could not sit still, to the annoyance of Song of Rain, who wanted nothing more than to drink in peace and silence, and they all were a little annoyed by Janson, who was playing his lute in an effort to make a few coins and was not yet very good at it.

And somehow, fate had chosen that moment to bind them all together.

He had been young when they first met, young for an elf, at least. Janson, as a human, had laughed when he found out Hafael was ‘only’ a hundred and had called him Grandpa for weeks. Then 'Cupcake.’ Then 'The Bean Machine.’ And 'Captain Crank.’ He cycled through nicknames until the incident with the trolls and the pigs and the cult of the Rising Sun led to 'The Kite’, which caught on with the rest of the group and stuck. At that point Hafael had learned to accept the names as the mark of affection they were.

Hafeal smiled at the memory and looked around the tavern. Not much had changed; there was a new bartender, of course, and much of the furniture had been replaced over the years. But the fireplace still had the chip from the barfight they had intervened in that first night. And if he looked under the table, he would find the place where Song of Rain had scratched their names with her claws.

Someone else should be here by now.

He wasn’t expecting all of them. Cortex had only ever come periodically, complaining of the responsibilities of heading the Wizard’s Circle, and then had never appeared again. It was only years later that Hafael had learned that the gnome had been killed in a duel. Learning there was foul play involved, he and Katcha had gone out to find those who had murdered their friend and brought them to justice. Afterwards, he remembered looking over and realizing that his goliath friend was old, and very tired. She didn’t live long after that.

It had been satisfying to see Janson himself become a grandfather, and then some; it was less so to hear the bard’s progeny repeating less than flattering tales about himself. But Hafael hadn’t been to see the family for some time, and now Janson had not come for the last few meetings.

Pral had the longest journey to make, but was ever faithful in making it. The old dragonborn was usually the first to arrive at these meetings and the last to leave, which Hafael suspected was partially so his friends would not witness his frailty. It was certainly not for the beer, which Hafael noted had not improved in the decades they had spent coming.

And then, of course, there was Song of Rain. His Song. She was always there, even though he’d lost her so long ago. The night he confessed to her she’d laughed at the fate which led an elf to love a tabaxi. “Our fate is not a kind one,” she’d told him, wrapping her arms around him, “but I would have no other.”

His face was wet. Hafael wiped his face hurriedly and looked to the dark windows and saw stars.

No one else was coming.

He was the only one left.

When Song took ill with the Golden Blight, he hadn’t accepted there was nothing he could do. The party had disbanded, but he had rounded them all up in a desperate attempt to find a cure. Pral had been the one to sit him down to tell him to stop.

“There is no cure for Blight,” Pral told him, voice hissing gently, “generations of tabaxi have looked for it. All you can do now is be with her in the time you have.”

It was then when he realized why so many of his people refused to have anything to do with outsiders, much less love them. He was still young for his race. As he stood with Song’s family at her funeral, they spoke of her being taken before her time, as though twenty years more would have been anything more than a drop of rain. As though anything but eternity by her side could ever have been enough.

It was a fate he had chosen, though, and even knowing the pain, he would not choose otherwise.

Hafael lifted his glass silently in a toast to his friends, tracing his finger over the names carved underneath the table. As he stood to leave, he noticed a group sitting nearby. A motley group to be sure, and with his experienced eye he sized them up quickly. The young tiefling with the badly carved staff would be a druid, the half orc had a club which was too small for her and would likely work better with a warhammer, the earnest looking dwarf had a holy symbol around her neck, and the halfling had a spellbook tucked carefully under his arm. He made eye contact with the dwarf as he walked past and quickly realized his mistake.

“Excuse me, sir,” the dwarf said, rising to her feet, “but by the sword on your hip you look like a man who can handle himself in a fight. I’m assembling a few people to go on a rescue mission in the old mines. Would you be willing to join us?”

Fate may have brought him to this place long ago, but he had been the one to embrace it, to choose friends with lifespans a fraction of his own and to love Song of Rain even though he could only hold her for a moment. Looking at the faces before him, Hafael could feel fate moving again, with its tragedy and bitterness and joy.

“You would be right,” he said, “I will gladly join you. My name is Hafael, but my friends call me Kite.”