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There are many people in this land, in this world, who seek answers to life's questions. They all want a definitive answer for everything in life, and everything after life. Much fewer are those who live life free of those questions, of the drive to find all the answers.

They study and conduct tests. They assume that there are answers for every question simply because a few people have managed to answer several simple questions.

What was it like, this world, before we, as a species, existed? What was the world like in the very beginning? How did it all start? Where does it come from? Was there anything at all? Were we, was this world, created from nothing? What were we before we were born? Most importantly, what will we become after we die?

It is my fervent hope that these questions may never find an answer. With what are we left if there is no more mystery to life? What hope is there, if we know all the answers? Why is it, what so drives us, that we must unravel all the mystery?

I believe that it is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear born of the many uncertainties of life. Fear of the greatest and most final of mysteries, fear of death. Live free of those fears. Put the questions aside and you will be free to watch the truth of the world.

There is indeed magic all about us. No scientific formulas, no special numbers can explain its existance. If it is not magic, then what is the speech of the captain to his men before battle, evoking in them passion and courage? Or even the peace a babe knows in its mother's arms? If not magic, what is love?

I believe that the cruelest of all tricks in life, for any creature of reason, would be to live in a world without mystery.

No, I would not want to live in such a world as that. A world without mystery is a world without magic or faith. A world without mystery would be a desolate one indeed.

For without mystery, without magic and without faith, what is there to live for?

Who am I?

I do not know the truth of that answer yet. I could give you the many labels put upon me by life, for surely that is who I am, is it not? No, it is not. It is but many words that will provide for you a general idea of what I must be. Surely, that is not who I am. Surely, am I more than that. If that is the case, then who am I? I am the sum of my thoughts, the sum of my beliefs, of my principles. I am the sum of all that guides my actions, of my actions themselves. Even knowing all of those, you would only know a part of me, for I am so much more. I am my own and I must live with the judgement of others, false or true.

I am an ancient. I am born of that feared race known for its underhanded trickery and insatiable lust for blood, easily recognized by the unnatural hue of my eyes. To see my kind is to know fear, know hopelessness, for once you are in our sights, you will not survive. All know me as such once they catch a glimpse of my eyes. Only those willing to see past those labels thrust upon me can begin to know the truth of who I am, of who I am become.

I am Aoi.

So much time has passed since I left my homeland. Nearly two decades, actually.

I have now found all that I had desired when I walked away from my people those years ago. I found a place I could call home. A place of friendship and peace. A place where I was free to live my life relieved from the values of my people. In this place, my friends and I know peace and we prosper in this simple life that we have chosen for ourselves.

My life is by far better than it was in my distant homeland. Here is my destiny my own to choose. The forecast has never looked better for the future, for the continued peace and continued security. And yet, I feel mortal. So very mortal. For the first time, I look to what has already passed rather than what there may still be to come. I look to that life I fought to leave behind in the city of my people. I look to the trials that have brought me, finally, to this peaceful life. And for the first time since I left the place to which I was born, I have the time to do so. And so it is that, for the first time, I feel like I am dying.

But, I remind myself time and again, that the choice is mine alone to make. Mine is the choice to remain in this place I now call home, to live a quiet and peaceful life with my friends. Mine is the choice to strike out and find adventure where I may.

Friend. Often do I ponder the meaning of that word. Friendship…it seems such an obvious thing, and yet it often becomes so very complicated. Would a true friend allow a one to walk alone along troubled and dangerous paths alone? Or should we shadow our friends, watching over them?

I do not think so, though I admit that I am not at all certain of this. I believe that there is a fine line between friendship and parenting and that the result is often disastrous when that line is crossed. A parent who strives to make a true friend of his or her child may well sacrifice authority, and though that parent may be comfortable with surrendering the dominant position, the unintentional result is to steal the necessary guidance from that child and, more importantly, the sense of security the parent is supposed to impart to the child. On the opposite side, a friend who takes a role as parent forgets that most important ingredient of friendship: respect.

For respect is the guiding principle of friendship, the principle that directs the course of any true friendship. Friendship demands that you respect. And respect demands that you trust. While it is sometimes a hard thing to accept, I believe that it is better to allow a friend to do what they must in troubled times, but, perhaps, it is best to be close by to offer them silent support and help when it is requested.

I am not afraid to die. It is the simple truth, not for show that I say such. It does not mean that I wish to die, does not mean I'll go blindly searching for death. Quite on the contrary, I wish to live forever beside my friends.

So why the lack of fear towards death? It is not due to any faith in a deity or afterlife as many believe in. It is not because I know the answer to what awaits me when I die. It is because I know that I am but a piece, a single piece in the puzzle that is life. It is because I know that I walk a road of the best intentions, a road that is an honest one. It is because I live my life to the best of my ability, following my heart and what it tells me is the right thing to do. My heart is my god.

It is pointless to fear that which you do not know. Fear the unknown and you get nowhere in your life. It is far better, I think, to plunge in and do the best that you can in the situation to find yourself. If you do the best you can and live your life rightfully…then why should you fear death? We will all of us die eventually, whether it is in battle, illness, or in old age. There is nothing you can do; no way you can escape death. So I say again, just live your life as best as you can. Why then fear it? Live your life well and die well. There is no sense fearing that which you cannot change. Embrace it.

I am not afraid to die.

With all that I have seen, I must still shake my head in wonderment. Is every corner of this wide world so possessed of people so filled with hatred that they must take up chase in order to vindicate themselves against a perceived wrong?

I have passed these people by, run from them in a desperate attempt to save my own ideals and have heard countless stories of them from travelers of every known land. But I now know that I must not run from them, that I must instead fight them by remaining true to what I know inside my heart to be the rightful course.

I take heart that there are others out there who follow my same ideals, that when it comes my time to perish from this land, my ideals will not die with me. I know that when I do die, that which is important will live on in others.

This is my legacy and I know now that I am not alone.

When I die...

...will I be alone? At this point in time in my life I do believe strongly that I will indeed die alone, no matter who might be beside me.

This is perhaps the most basic question of mortal existence...and yet it is ever a question to which there can be no answer, unless we are to base that answer on faith.

When I die I hope that there may be friends who will carry on the joys we have shared as well as the pains, who will be there to carry my memory.

That is immortality, our ever-lingering legacy and the fuel of grief.

Grief is a strange emotion, its focus always shifting. Do I grieve for those that I have lost? or is it for myself that I do grieve? for the loss that I must endure to the end of my days?

These thoughts are not actually so dark as they may seem. Thousands of times, I have said farewell to the people I hold close to my heart, to my friends. Indeed, I have said farewell every single time that I let them know how dear they were to me, every time my words, my actions, affirmed our love. Farewell is said by the living to the living, every day with love and friendship. It is said with the affirmation that the memories are lasting even when the flesh is not.

So my grief is for me, for the loss that I know I will feel to the end of my days, no matter how much time may pass. But within that loss is a serenity. I firmly believe that it is better to have known any one of my friends, to have shared those very events that now fuel my grief, than to have never walked beside them, never have looked at the world through their eyes.

If I could chose that life that would be mine, it would be this life where I am at peace with myself. Even though I live a life constantly at odds with those around me, an outcast, forever standing on edge for the possibility of attack, I am at peace with myself. That is all I can ask for from life, and at the same time, it is more than I could hope for. The constant threat of danger around me means nothing in the light of that peace.

That is the risk of living in this world. To live forever under the threat of danger, where one mistake will surely cost you your life, and yet it is so unlike the land to which I was born that I can accept these risks and do so gladly. They cannot compare to, and they are infinitely better than, the treachery of my home. I can use the dangers of this world I have come to to serve as a reminder to me day after day of the greatness that is life. I will gladly face the trials thrown my way every day for surely they are better than living a quiet life of ensured security. To me, such a life is too easily taken for granted and thus you easily lose sight of the joy that is life, coming instead to fear the coming of death. Surely, this life is better than that one.

Here is there no such security, only a false sense of safety that will surely steal that very life away from you. It is my belief that you can only come to appreciate life more when you live so closely to the constant threat of death.

And when you can share that life with friends, that life becomes a paradise. Never did I dream that life would bless me with such friends as those I have found. Never, after all those years in my homeland, or those spent in servitude, could I have imagined that I would find such a treasure with which to surround myself. We are all different in so many ways, be it race or character, but in our hearts, we are the much the same.

I have met few people in this land who accept me despite my heritage, and yet, I have managed to find these few who, more than all others, have become my dearest friends, my family.

Why them? What makes them so special? We have all come from very different worlds, arrived in this land by different roads, and yet we have all come together to form such a strong bond. Maybe it's because, despite all our differences, we share the same beliefs about the world and the way it should be.

They are all with me, despite our differences, despite my heritage, having seen me, instead, for who I am. I am living in a land where you must be at your best at all times, at all times alert, a place where harsh beauty and reality collide. I am home.

I call this paradise.