I do not have pointy ears.
I am not unnaturally thin.
I am not naturally thin.
I am not willowy and over six foot tall, or short and wear pointy shoes.
I do not age at a ridiculously slow rate, or expect to live hundreds of years.
I do not have exceptional dexterity or otherworldly grace.
I am not a magicKal expert.
I am not able to completely cross over to some Faerieland.
I do not perfectly “remember” some elven society from a previous lifetime that “justifies” my use of the label.
I do hear things that I shouldn’t be able to, and people often do not notice me when I am perfectly visible and making an average amount of noise.
I do have people who don’t know about me say I look elfin, or that they thought, out of the corner of their eye, I had pointed ears, and “how silly is that”.
I do have a relatively low constitution, often getting ill from strange allergies or too-heavily-processed food products.
I do spend an excessive amount of time alone wandering natural settings.
I do try to live quietly and in as much peace with this Earth as I can.
I often wander mentally into other worlds, be they completely in my head or otherwise.
I do work with some form of magic, based on flows and currents in the world around me, channeled and directed, woven without formulae or incantations but with the instinctual direction of my spirit.
I feel completely detached from the boisterousness, the brightness, the primal loudness, in which humankind lives, when they really live.
I feel completely detached from the lifeless greyness in which humankind lives, when they really don’t.
Most importantly, it feels right. Elves are a very old archetype in Western mythology, and many other cultures have their own, similar ones. I’m not talking about the little live-in-trees-and-make-cookies or live-at-the-north-pole-and-make-toys-for-a-fat-man elves, but the very alien fae elves, both primal and enlightened, living with grace, beauty and magic, solitary and wise with a sense of honour and their own moral code.
It is these starlit creatures I am spiritually pulled to, more than any purely “human” archetype I have found. They are one I wish to embody, not solely out of a desire to separate myself from humanity and pretend I’m better than everyone else, but because the character traits and base “feel” associated with them are things I already have, or wish to acquire. It is a path of becoming for me, not a statement of fact about my physical form or tangled memories from previous incarnations. I don’t care whose definition of “otherkin” this may or may not fit. I am elfin. It is part of my Path, and I will walk it in starlight.
–wynde’nai