My home was almost exactly how I remembered it. That's where I went after living eight years with the elves. They all staid the same and I think I forgot that I was aging at all when I was with them. But as the wrinkles began to appear, tiny, but there, Alanna would look sadly at me, or Niphrodil would turn away. His eyes never ceased to amaze me the whole time I was there, they weren't sad all the time, I finally got to meet his Elanor, and he wasn't sad with her. But he was sad with me. And it made me wish I didn't seem so old, only twenty seven and feeling old! I needed humans again let me tell you. So I went home.
Back to Papas Inn, back to my sister and two brothers, my mother and my father, I wondered how things faired with them often when I was in Silmatar. But like I said, things hadn't changed. My mother cried when she saw me, (did she really have grey hair?) and my sister berated me for days on where I had been and what I had been doing for eleven years without her. She asked me about men, and I told her nothing, but then she asked me about the man I had ran of with and I told her I didn't know what happened to him. I cried that night. My brothers looked the exact same, and though they admitted that they missed me, they did it reluctantly. The same with my father, but what can you expect from men. "Oh, I thought you were dead. Good, now we have another maid for the Inn!" thanks for that bit of sentiment dad.
But it was hard, being back. After three years of constant adventure, and then eight years of friends and comfort and living in the house of the king, it was certainly hard to resist running of again. "This isn't the life I was born for" I read one night in one of my old journals I had kept in my adolescence. I still felt that, but this place still felt like home. At least it would for a little while. I knew in my heart I couldn't stay here forever.
One late afternoon I was sitting at a table in the kitchen of the Inn with my younger brother Tanis when my sister, Katrian, came over to me and pinched me lightly in the side. I jumped slightly and pinched her back.
"What!" I asked her roughly, smiling. She shrugged casually,
"There's a man here asking for you." I shrugged back and was about to ask her why, there were a lot of men in town wondering why I wasn't wrongfully paired of with a sluggish ball of local lard in what they would call marriage. I had been back for only two years, who were they to say they loved me? When Katrian said the most remarkable thing,
"Its very odd Twyla, he's not from around here, blue eyes, dark brown hair, tall and I suppose handsome If it weren't for a scar on his cheek he would look just like the man in that wanted poster you keep in your drawer. And he's here with a younger man who looks just like him. He told me to ask if you had stolen anything lately. What in the name of Trinn was he talking about Twyla?"
I nearly pinched myself to make sure it was no dream and I was off my chair so fast it spun and fell over but by then I was out side and in Derths arms.

He made his promise good, he never let go, and he came back. We lived happily ever after from then on, if there is such a thing as happily ever after. You can decide for yourself what love or happiness is, but I think Niphrodil would tell you if you asked him, he knows, I saw it in his eyes, how everything about him changed In the presence of that blonde of his, just another woman to anyone else, but the only woman to him. Or ask Alanna, she has that dark man that I only met once, but I could tell then. Or Erinian, she will live forever, and that's an awful long time to be with someone, but she faces each day with joy and love for her king and her children. Even Androse I think knows something of love, or Trystans strange love for a brother he never knew, that drove him to search all his life for love he never had, hoping he could find it there. Or you could just ask me, and Derth of course, we were together for years and it wasn't until faced with the prospect of being apart that we knew there was love, and then came happiness. Personally, I think it is in the eyes of the beholder, is the glass half empty or half full? It's up to you. The decision to be happy, to be in love, is eternally yours, and ask anyone, that's a very long time.