Saelas, a wasted life

The tone of this song is both sad and bitter. Saelas sings of his youth, and the duty he knew he'd take up when he was old enough - to keep the Pact of Song, and to live the life of a Guardian. The song begins with a feeling of hope, excitement and the bitter refrains of knowing his hopes would be unfulfilled.   As a young Guardian, he left home to live among the Fae. The pledge to protect them in sleep, and to ensure they could return safely to a Grove when they ventured outside. He expected to have a life like his grandfather Tragus - to serve generations of Fae as a companion on great adventures, and to be a trusted member of a Fae family.   His hopes were quashed almost immediately. The Fae he was asked to protect rarely left the Grove. Rather than going on grand adventures he was reduced to a butler in the service of a noble family of the Fae court.   When the first Fae he served neared the end of their life, Saelas was hopeful that the next Fae would be different - after all, so many Fae became so many different things over the course of their life - surely the next one would be less of a homebody. The next Fae he guarded, however, while less politically inclined, seemed more interested in gardening and tending the trees than exploring the outside world. The one after that lived as a merchant, but limited their trade to safe routes and nearby cities. As Saelas watched, it seemed like not only were the Fae he guarded unlikely to truly adventure, it seemed like many Fae were withdrawing from lives of risk and danger. Within two centuries, his service was assumed, and at one point, was treated as the object of a wager.   The Fae, he says, behave as though entitled to his service without respecting the sacrifices that their Fae ancestors bought that service with. None of his Fae partners visited his home and so he spent only a decade each century living among his own people.   He rails against his fate at the end, bitterly asking how the elves of Drifting Song can keep to the Pact even after the elves of Entwined Vines abandoned their city and their ties with the Fae. He entreats those who hear his song to remember that a promise made to a people with lives as brief as a thunderstorm will surely endure long past the day the floodwaters recede.