**PART I:**
It has almost been a year since I passed through the portal. I know because of the way the crescent moon is tattooed on the still, Autumn night-sky.
Strange. The stars here are vastly different from back on earth, yet the sun and the moon remain the same. Particularly the moon. The way it caresses the leaves of the trees and cuts through the canopies is eerily similar to the way it shon off the high-rises back home.
I knew it had been a year because I got that tingle. The tingle I used to get when Bessie and I shared that city moon. Now we only share memories. Or maybe we don’t even share those?
Maybe she’s forgotten them already.
*Mathieu, enough!*
I snap myself out of it with some internal dialogue and a masochistic swig of some elvish wine.
Tonight is the night I meet her. Tonight is the night I leave earth, Bessie, and all of those memories behind.
Her name is Jasmine, the queen of all the elves in Hectorville. I haven’t seen her, but I have been told of a beauty beyond comparison.