Present Day
Could we be so foolish as to expect that magic would become extinct, that it would become something only written about in books and seen in movies? How would it be possible for a curse to continue through the ages if magic itself became extinct?
No, the magic continued as it always had but at some point, for no explainable reason, it became a thing hidden in the shadows again. Almost as if those that practiced it feared persecution like the times of old when witches were burned. Despite all magic not being evil, even those that walked the line between good and evil magic and those that practiced only good magic took to the shadows. There were ways to find the practitioners of magic though as long as one knew how.
Lark had now lived for many centuries. He had long ago given up on Emma and any other incarnation of her. The hair she had given him when he had last seen her alive had again turned to dust some twenty years later at which point he had known she had been reborn. He had not gone looking for her this time. He could not see the point in doing so if it would simply end as it had before.
Many times he told himself he was a quitter but then he would look at it from a different angle. So what if he lived forever? At least the curse that had been created was thwarted differently. By turning his back on the love he had for Emma, she could live life after life without the interference of his life and the curse.
Even though Lark did not see Emma again, the universe still found a way to tell him when she died. He would transform for the briefest of moments before changing back to his usual self. He assumed the first time this happened was when she had been reborn. But he had been wrong. After it happened the first time, it happened again two days later. Lark then realized that the first time had been her death and the second her rebirth. He had initially panicked when the transformation occurred thinking that somehow, Emma, whoever she now, was had found her way into his life again.
The transformations both happened while he was at home alone which made him realize that she was not anywhere near him at all and it was thus indicative of something else, namely her death and rebirth.
“You could have found a less confusing way to tell me,” Lark muttered at the universe. “Even better, don’t tell me at all. It should be obvious I don’t want to know and I don’t care.”
Even as he said it though, he knew he was lying. He wondered what her life was like without him, who she married, and if she was happy.
Lark tried moving on to other relationships and each one failed. He came to accept these failures and simply enjoyed the time he had with each of the women.
Over the years Lark continued his magical learning and built up a massive store of magical knowledge, books, potions, and items that he believed he might one day use.
He stayed away from other persons of the magical arts as far as possible but it was always inevitable that he would need one now and then as he was unable to find the knowledge he needed in the books he had collected for a spell he was experimenting with.
For the most part, other persons of the magical arts were happy to assist with no further thought given as to why a person might need a specific spell or a bit of knowledge. There were others though whose interest was piqued by others practicing the arts, especially when they could recognize a curse that followed such a person.
A curse was like an alarm bell to those that practiced magic, especially if they practiced the dark arts. A curse created curiosity. A person generally had to be of some importance to have been cursed and so, when Lark, purchased a spell from a witch on one occasion, he had no idea that she could read his aura and tell that he was cursed. In the time that he interacted with her, she read enough of his aura to know what his curse was and that he had been alive for hundreds of years already.
The curse lay dormant in his aura though. It was enough to tell the witch that he had tried to distance himself from the person his curse involved. It told the witch he had accepted that he would live forever and the witch wondered at the mass of knowledge he must have collected over all the years.
To the witch, Lark represented an opportunity far too good to miss. She imagined all the knowledge she would be able to access if she could gain entry into his life. How much knowledge had he gained over hundreds of years and where was he hiding it, she wondered? What could she do with the knowledge he had? She lied to him and told him she needed a drop of his blood for the spell he wanted. He complied hesitantly and gave her the drop of blood she needed. Now all she needed was a strategy…