Excerpt: Fallen Elders

I often visit my children though they are never able to see me. Sometimes it feels like some of them might sense me, briefly, as I pass among them. Oh, how I long to feel them, to take their hands in mine, to hold them close and make all their troubles go away. That is, unfortunately, a part of the prize I paid to bring them to life. In return for their life and breath I gave up all hope of ever getting to know them. Of them getting to know me.
In a way I am glad that they cannot see me. Two ways, to be honest. First, and perhaps hardest, I have no way of interfering in their actions and decisions. I must simply trust that they will be able to take good care of themselves and each other. Second, they do not blame me for their creation, something I fear they might otherwise do.
It strikes me as odd, now, that I cannot remember the time before their creation. What came before, why I made them, how life was, if I even had a life. All I remember is them, my children, as they first struggled to find themselves and learn what they needed to exist in the world.
The world. Another unknown. I do not remember walking through their world myself, yet I also do not remember creating it for them. Often, when I sit in my chamber late at night I wonder about these things. And always the conclusion is the same: there was nothing before me.
There are seven of them, in total, each as different as fire and water, wind and earth. All of them living their own lives, following their own dreams and goals. I have a feeling that some of them would never be able to live together. Yet they work together not just when needed, but also when it is not. Some of them more often than others, granted, but none of them never back down when the need is great. That was how I made them, that was my plan: to split myself into seven ideas so that each idea could flourish and become perfect.
What was not my plan was that they should follow so closely in my footsteps. How I hope they will not undo what I have done.