Элк Харкстен

The text describes a star traveller, an alien whose race humans mistakenly call "guests". Long ago, her kind left their apparently doomed world, driven by war or other catastrophe. They set out on a spaceship across the vast reaches of the stars, beginning their wanderings. Over an unimaginably long time, memories of their home planet faded, and all that remained was the hope to return, but since the way home was forgotten, they were left in despair. In their agony at being unable to find their former planet, through devastating efforts, they created a new world in the image of their own, populating it with emnetwytes. As a result, that world became their "tiny garden on the outskirts of the universe" and a place where they could find rest. This is how the planet Earth came into being, as Willam knew it. At first, Elk simply wanted to "become someone", and this was her only desire. For most of her life, the little girl lived in a dream, in a secure little cocoon, unable to go outside - within this cocoon existed a small world, isolated from the outside world. The reason was simple - her alien race was so powerful that even a brief presence outside the cocoon was capable of overwhelming the minds of all living beings and plunging them into madness. Almost all of her ancestors and other elders had to shatter their souls into tiny fragments in order to live in the external environment. However, the Potos, deities who had always been by the side of the "guests" and guided them through life, did not want their last mistress to follow such an example. Even when she was in her cocoon, her three gods (Jade Neyel, Ebo, and Karma) fought with humanity, who wanted to prolong the existence of their civilization at the expense of their mistress, which ultimately resulted in a bloody conflict that claimed the life of the traveller herself. She was stabbed by Senyoris, and it was Lilia Aspley who did it, but even after dying physically, Elk did not experience death and, subsequently, watched over the world as a spiritual entity, imprisoned within Shiantor together with Karma. The soul of the "Guest" was shattered into halves by the followers of the "True World", but the incorrectly reproduced process ultimately backfired on all of humanity. At the same time, even the smallest fragments of her soul, separated from the remaining piece, did not perish, but took on a new form - they became fairies, while still maintaining a connection with their former mistress. Observing them, Elk comes to them in visions and dreams. Each such fragment of her soul undergoes an endless number of reincarnations, and each subsequent death of its carrier gives birth to a new little girl. It should be noted that the erosion in leprechauns is a natural process, caused by reaching the limit of their capabilities and serving as a bridge for the penetration of the memories of their previous generations into the fairy's memory. However, unable to cope with such volumes of information, they lose themselves and everything they remembered up to that point. Willam's acquaintance with Elk took place at the Collinaduuce hotel, where he ended up completely losing his memory. Elk's current incarnation is nothing more than a revived corpse, a shell that looks like a child, with immortal flesh. Unlike the emnetwyte left behind by Nilsen, she has somewhere to go. There are also those she would like to see, but Harcksten, burdened with guilt, cannot leave the hero in his current state. She is sure that if she leaves everything as it is, in the end Karma will come for her, and they will go in search of Ebo together.