After Henri's response to me bringing Asher to the bar, I think it might be a good idea to take a break from me and talk about his past.

For most of my childhood, he didn’t tell me many details: just that he hadn’t had any family in a long time and was grateful to have one again. I was eleven when he sat me down and shared more. I’d had a particularly rough day at the bar, followed by a particularly rough near-death experience during an errand, and I came to him crying about how I wanted to run away because Henri would be better off without me.

So he explained his past to me, and when he was done, he knelt, took my hands in his, and promised that he would always, always be glad fate had brought us together. His lilac eyes did the intense thing where they feel like they’re staring into my very soul, but that day, I didn’t mind.

Even then, though, he left a few details out. I just didn’t realize how much until I showed up at the bar with Asher, and then he told me all of it.

I’m going to relay his story, the full thing, comprised of all the pieces I’ve slowly learned. It kind of puts his response to Asher in perspective.

The first thing you need to know is that Henri has been alive a long, long time. The second is that all griffins, including Henri, have near-perfect memories. Even though he is thousands of years old, he remembers everything in excruciating detail. The painful parts, especially.

He’s one of the most ancient beings alive today. When he was born, Neverland was significantly less developed than it is now; the colorful cities and organized communities weren’t built yet. Most of Neverland’s inhabitants—there were a lot fewer then—lived in small towns, largely separated by species. Believe it or not, Griffin's Edge has done quite a bit to break down barriers between races. They weren’t always so social.

In fact, in early times, the lines between species were drawn in blood. Inhuman crime may not be common now, but interspecies violence was widespread once. Vampires and werewolves feuded, dragons attacked anyone who came within ten miles of their hoards, witches ate anyone they found wandering alone.

According to Henri, he was born on a stormy day in a tiny village consisting of all the griffins that existed at that time. Only about two hundred; griffins have always been rare.

His parents were young, recently married, but deeply in love. They were so excited to discover that they were having not one but two babies. That’s right: Henri and his twin sister Charlotte were born eight minutes apart, and he never let her forget that he was a whole eight minutes older.

He spent his childhood confined to the griffins’ village, by direction of his parents for his safety. “Beyond the boundaries,” his mother said, stroking his hair, “we can’t protect you. It’s dangerous out there. Vampires will drain a cute little boy like you dry. Witches will curse you if you so much as look at them funny. And those harbingers…” She shivered, her eyes drifting to something he couldn’t see. “They’re bad news. That’s why it’s so important that you stay in the village.”

Henri nodded, promising that he would, and ran off to play with Charlotte.

That worked for several years. After all, there was a school, there were stores, there was a park. It was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

Henri said he always felt this yearning, this curiosity about the other creatures out there. He listened to his parents because he knew he should, but as he got older, he understood their logic less and less. He wanted to know why they couldn’t try to befriend other species. He could see them sometimes, if he went to the top of the highest hill in the village: the smoke from other chimneys beyond the trees, figures in the distance that looked nothing like him, with wings or blue skin.

When he was the equivalent of about twelve, he asked. He’d read all the history books they had in the village, and he knew the many past conflicts. But no one ever went into why they couldn’t be mended; they just seemed to accept that the divides would always exist.

But he heard the same from his teachers or his parents. “We’re just too different,” they said. “Many of them are dangerous.”

“We’re dangerous, too!” he argued. “But we’re also civilized enough not to blindly take it out on others! They have villages. I see the smoke. They must be civilized too. With some rules, surely we could…”

“No,” came the vehement response from all the adults in his life. “You’re too young to know what you’re talking about.”

He was told that repeatedly as he grew into a teenager, and after a while, he almost started to believe it. Even Charlotte encouraged him to drop it for now, saying that he could venture out when he was an adult. But for now, there was a local girl interested in him, and he should focus on that, see what it grew into.

But Henri had started to dream of another girl: a young, auburn-haired elf with pointed ears and big green eyes. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, he’d say when recalling it to me, centuries later. And the dreams were so realistic, I’d wake up with tears in my eyes from missing her.

He eagerly read everything about elves he could find and learned that some could visit others in their sleep to walk in their dreams. And his new dream companion confirmed just that: she’d stumbled upon him in the dreamscape accidentally at first, but after a few conversations, she was returning intentionally. He was, too; within two weeks, he found himself spending the day waiting to go to sleep, so that he could see her again. The best part of his days was the part where he was unconscious.

Charlotte teased him, joking that the local girl must really be something if he was walking around with such stars in his eyes. He was too embarrassed to correct her, so he simply nodded in agreement and smiled awkwardly.

But his desire to meet the elf in his dreams only added to his desire to leave the village. And one night, he woke up from a particularly vivid dream in which she had admitted that she thought she loved him, his heart racing and his palms sweaty. And he decided right then that he was leaving home.

He left that night, only hours later. While his parents and Charlotte still slept, he packed a small bag of his things, dropped a hastily-scrawled note on his pillow, and snuck out the door.

Henri felt bad not saying goodbye, but it was quickly drowned out by the excitement he felt at finally meeting the literal girl of his dreams, and at leaving the borders of his small village for the first time in his life. As he crested the hill at the edge of town and looked back, seeing the cluster of lights as its occupants slept, he felt only exhilaration.

It took him a few weeks to travel to her town, though to be fair, he wasn’t hurrying. He enjoyed his freedom for the first time ever, and attempted to speak to every being he came across. Some went well—he made a few friends, at least one of whom is among the group of ancient friends Henri still consults today. Some went less well; he almost died during a rough encounter with a troll. But griffins are tougher than they look. He could handle himself.

Still, after some time, he reached it: a quaint town built at the base of a waterfall, nestled in a grove of willow trees. A place that was so beautiful it almost wasn’t natural, and perhaps it wasn’t. Elves have a way of bringing out the beauty around them.

It took Henri’s breath away, but it was nothing compared to how his heart exploded when he met the elven girl in a small cave behind the waterfall. He walked through, somehow completely dry despite passing under the downpour of icy water, and met her in the dim light beyond. (“She was the most incredible sight of my life,” he told me, his eyes misty as he remembered. “And she continued to be the most incredible sight every single day I woke up beside her.”)

He held out a hand to shake, praying his hands weren’t sweaty, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss instead. When they finally pulled away, she giggled and said, “I’m Lucille.”

“Henri,” he said, butterflies flapping up a storm in his belly. “You have no idea how much I wanted to meet you.”

She looked at him shyly. “I hope I was worth the wait.”

He pulled in closer. “Nothing has ever been more worth a wait in existence.” And then they were kissing again, and the whole world faded away until it was just the two of them, and nothing else mattered.

Lucille’s parents didn’t approve of her dating a griffin. It wasn’t long before they left together, determined to carve out their own path regardless of anyone else’s opinions. For several years, they lived happily on the outskirts of one of the first blossoming cities. A fairy Henri had met during his travels turned out to be on the city council, and she invited Henri to work in their office. It was the first real job he’d had, and since they were working to build a multi-race city—and making plans for more after it—he was eager to help. He felt like he was making a difference, shifting the culture of his world to something he had always dreamed of.

For a while, everything was perfect. He and Lucille got married as soon as the courthouse, a shiny gold building with a green roof, was completed. He moved up in the city office until he was on the council, making major decisions every day that impacted the city and future cities. Meanwhile, other inhumans were beginning to move to the city, including other cross-race couples. He had never been happier.

But you can probably guess that his happiness didn’t last forever. Not even close.

Suddenly, everything that had been perfect in his life began to collapse in on itself. It started when he received a letter from Charlotte. He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d snuck out and left home behind; he wasn’t even sure how she’d tracked him down. But the letter sounded urgent.

Henri, it read. It’s been a while. I hope you can help. Our people are dying. There is a sickness killing off so many, a plague, but there is something else too. A killer who comes in the night, who sneaks into the village and takes innocent lives.

I’ve heard of your fortune. You have power now. Please, you must be able to do something. There are already so few of us left. I wouldn’t turn to you if I had any other choice.

I miss you. Love, Char.

He panicked, of course. Inhuman-on-inhuman violence had been steadily lessening; he’d worked hard to see it happen. Walls between races were crumbling every day. And even back then, someone sneaking into a home in the dead of night to commit murders was…abnormal.

He was panicked enough that he decided he had to set out for home right away. Lucille wanted to come with him, of course, but he wasn’t willing to risk it. After all, they’d recently learned that she was pregnant.

“Lucy,” he insisted quietly. “You need to stay here, where it’s safe. I’m just going to go check. There’s probably nothing I can do except get my family and any other survivors out of there. I’ll be back with Char in tow before you can even miss me.”

So he set out. Looking back, he says he should have known better than to go alone, but he wasn’t thinking straight. He just wanted to get to his village as soon as possible—plus there was a little nagging fear in the back of his head that bringing any species other than a griffin to his hometown would only cause more problems than it would solve.

A few days’ journey later, he found himself approaching the hill above his old village, filled with excitement, anticipation, and dread. The smoke billowing from chimneys was a welcome sight—until he reached the crest of the hill and realized that it wasn’t chimney smoke at all, but rather rolling black smoke from a blazing fire. A fire which was spreading from building to building, burning half the town.

His heart dropped to his toes. He started sprinting, shouting the names of any friends, neighbors, or family he could think of. Even with the fire burning, the streets were empty: no panicking residents, no one fleeing or fighting the flames. Just…silence. Like the place had already been abandoned.

He ran for home. The fire hadn’t reached it yet; there were a few houses in between. Heart racing, blood running cold despite the heat of the embers around him, he burst inside, praying that someone was still alive.

He was greeted by the worst thing he could imagine: his parents lay dead on the floor, bodies riddled with the signs of disease. And directly ahead of him, a mysterious, dark-hooded figure bent over the motionless body of Charlotte.

Henri thought it was a vampire, at first, drinking her blood and her soul. He ripped his pistol off his belt, took aim, and fired two shots directly into its back. The bullets had garlic in them; if it was a vampire, it’d at least be enough to injure it, if not kill it. “GET AWAY FROM MY SISTER!” he shouted.

The figure calmly rose to its feet, black blood oozing from its wounds. “You’ll regret that,” it growled.

It turned around, a hood hiding its face, and stepped closer. Henri wrapped both trembling hands around the pistol and fired again, directly into its chest. More black blood dripped from the wound, but then Henri watched in horror as it began to knit itself back together in front of his very eyes.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t a vampire.

The creature pulled back its hood, revealing a pale, dark-haired man with entirely jet-black eyes. No whites. He grinned, a wide, hungry grin, as it advanced. “This was your sister? Tell me, then, why I haven’t seen you around these parts. Such a grand hero as yourself should have saved the day sooner, don’t you think?”

Henri tightened his grip on the pistol, more for comfort than for any practical use. “You’re the one that’s been killing them.”

The man grinned. “Oh, yes.” He held up its hands and waved his fingers playfully, stepping to the side just enough to allow Henri to see the ashen handprint on Charlotte’s face. He nearly threw up at the sight. “Such a pretty thing, death. A delicate thing. Quite lovely.”

Henri’s mouth was dryer than it had ever been. Still, the monster advanced. They were only a few feet apart now. “You’re a harbinger,” he said, barely a whisper.

His mother had told him about them: so called because they were held in high superstition by other races, widely believed to be omens of death. Perhaps that was because they often were; they crossed the border between living and dead and pushed others over that line too. They were meant to keep the balance of things, to guide inhumans to whatever awaited them after death, something only they knew. And mostly they did that; they were a very private people, keeping to themselves, and if you saw one, it likely meant they were waiting for you to die—that your time was near.

But they weren’t supposed to kill inhumans for no reason. They were supposed to be good, mostly, albeit creepy. For one to be murdering griffins in cold blood just…didn’t make sense.

The harbinger’s grin widened. “Very nice,” he purred. “You’ve heard of my kind.”

Henri couldn’t stop staring at the handprint on Charlotte’s face. She didn’t have any of the physical signs of sickness that his parents did; she looked completely healthy, except for her glassy, dead eyes. The harbinger hadn’t killed her as an act of mercy. “Why?”

He laughed, spreading his arms. “Because I can! I am the balance between life and death, and I have decided to take matters into my own hands. All this nonsense of waiting for them to die to guide them along—what a waste of time. I have the power in my hands to cull some of the unnecessary weeds of this world, to speed the process along.” He wiggled his fingers again with a chuckle. “Quite literally. I will make the rules now.”

Henri couldn’t take it anymore, not after hearing the madness coming from this man’s mouth, or the fact that Charlotte had been called a weed. He lunged forward, tackling the harbinger to the floor, and wrestled with it, trying to pull out his knife and avoid its hands simultaneously.

But the harbinger simply shoved Henri off with its arms, sending him flying into the wall with a surprising amount of strength. As he laid there, dazed, the harbinger crouched next to him. Henri thought this was the end; he thought he was about to feel hands on his skin, leaving a similar handprint and ending his life. I’m sorry, Char, he thought. I’m sorry, Lucy.

Only the harbinger didn’t kill him. Instead, it reached into the pocket of his open jacket, where the photo he carried with him of his pregnant wife was tucked. The monster plucked it out, holding it up to the light between pale fingers. He chuckled. “Well, well. Isn’t she a beauty.”

“Don’t—you dare—touch her,” Henri spit out between groans.

The harbinger laughed. “I’ve always wanted to go to the city,” he said, slipping the photo into his own pocket as he got to his feet. Henri had hit his head; the world was still spinning. But shakily, he attempted to stand. Every inch of his body ached from the impact…but his heart ached more. Even the dread he had felt upon seeing the fire over the hill was nothing compared to the dread he felt as the harbinger walked towards the door, paused briefly to turn and grin, and purred, “I said you’d regret it.”

Then he was gone in the blink of an eye, vanished into the flickering shadows of the fire burning outside, as if he had melted away into the darkness.

Panicking, Henri shoved himself to his feet. His head still felt blurry, but all he could think about was Lucy, how he’d told her not to worry, that he’d be back soon. About his unborn child. And about his family, who already lay dead at his feet, who he hadn’t spoken to in decades and would never know how much he had missed them over the years.

But he didn’t have time to mourn. The fire had reached his house; the heat was rising, forming beads of sweat on his skin, and smoke was billowing through the windows as flames began to lick the walls. Not to mention that the harbinger had likely gone after Lucille. He had to get back now.

He staggered to the door and glanced back at his family’s bodies, unceremoniously lying on the floor. They deserved better, he knew that. He couldn’t give it to them. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I love you.”

And then he ran. As he ran, as he gulped in cold air beyond the town’s borders, he let himself transform. He took his natural form: that of a mighty griffin, of lion and eagle, and flew as fast as his wings could carry him, leaving the blazing remains of his town far below.

Griffins are powerful creatures when they want to be. Their wings are larger and stronger than any bird’s, and they fly incredibly fast. What had taken him several days to traverse on foot took less than three hours of flight. And every second he spent riddled with grief over being unable to save his family, and wracked with fear that he wouldn’t be able to save his wife.

He didn’t know if harbingers could travel fast; he hoped he’d beat it there. He landed on the doorstep with a gust of wind, transforming back in a puff of purple smoke, and barreled through the door.

Lucille was standing by the stove, near the back window, stirring a simmering pot. Henri had never felt more relieved in his life. She turned to him, overjoyed, but her happiness at his return quickly faded at the look on his face.

“What’s wrong, love? Is your family alright?”

She took a step toward him, and he saw the movement in the shadows behind her half a second too late. “LUCY, MOVE!” he shouted, trying to lunge forward to push her aside.

He wasn’t quick enough. The harbinger had been closer; its hands closed around her neck while he was still halfway across the room. He met her big green eyes as the light dulled in them; he reached her just as she collapsed, and caught her lifeless body before it hit the floor.

“No, no, no, no,” he muttered over and over, cradling her in one arm and placing the other hand on her neck, attempting to heal her. He’d healed so many injuries before; he’d even healed Lucy, when she’d broken her ankle falling down the stairs. For an elf, she was surprisingly clumsy. They’d joked that he’d be healing skinned knees every week once their child was old enough to run around and get into trouble.

But his healing hands couldn’t reverse what the harbinger’s ashen touch had done. He knelt there, Lucille’s body in his arms, tears silently running down his cheeks. The harbinger stood over them, grinning. “I told you,” he crowed. “I am life and death. I am the reaper of souls. I am—”

He didn’t even have time to react. According to Henri, it was the quickest transformation of his life, and also the least thought-out. Purely on instinct, driven by rage and grief and adrenaline, he let Lucille fall to the side and transformed, attacking the harbinger before he could slip away again.

Despite his near-perfect memory, Henri doesn’t remember much of those few moments. He says it was a blur of emotion and revenge. He knows that he shredded the harbinger, enough that his black blood sprayed across the floor, enough that his body couldn’t heal the wounds.

Thick blood welled beneath Henri’s talons, muscle tore and bones crunched, and still he kept going. It could have been seconds or it could have been hours. But when there was hardly anything left, Henri tore off the monster’s head. And only then, when its eyes were as lifeless as Lucille’s and when the ghost of its last grin echoed on its blank face, did Henri stop.

He didn’t leave Lucille’s side all night, even though his skin was stained with dark blood. He cried over her and their unborn child for hours. He cried for his sister and his parents, too. For everyone he’d loved who he hadn’t been able to save.

The next morning, he went to the council and said he wanted to banish harbingers, to exile them for good. The others agreed; harbingers had always been bad omens, and a few had gone rogue before, using their connections to death in unfavorable ways, not unlike the one who had killed Lucille. He wasn’t the first, and he probably wouldn’t be the last. They were just too dangerous to allow in society.

At least, that’s what they decided. And Henri, who had championed the breaking of racial barriers and the union of Neverland since he was a child, spearheaded the effort. Fueled by sorrow, regret, and rage, he wanted them gone. No more chance of what had happened to him happening to anyone else, and no reminder of his own tragedy.

They were banished not long after, before ground had even been broken on the second Neverland city. Outright executing them was too much, but they essentially sentenced them to a much slower death: the harbingers, all few hundred of them—for they were a race as rare as griffins—were exiled to the dark forests, never to leave its borders again. The forests, of course, were full of unspeakable monsters and no livable land. Everyone knew it was a death sentence, but no one said it outright.

And they went. I mean, there wasn’t much they could do, not when it was all the other races against them. They didn’t want to fight. And Henri felt a tinge of guilt as they disappeared into the darkness, but he pretended he didn’t.

Until he began to dream of Lucille again. She began to visit him every night, just as she had when they had first met, only now she was always sad. “I know you miss me,” she whispered to him, cupping his face in her hands, “but this isn’t you. Don’t let my loss harden your heart. You have so much good left to give, Henri.”

It took years for him to sleep soundly enough for her to visit, longer still for him to heed her words. By then, it was too late to bring the harbingers back; they had been erased from the history books, and any attempts to contact them went unanswered. The few inhumans brave and foolhardy enough to venture into the dark forests in search of them never came out. It was assumed they had gone extinct.

So Henri did the best he could to make amends. Now regretting his revenge-driven decision to send the harbingers away, he threw himself harder than ever into the establishment of new cities, of the union of Neverland races. If he couldn’t right his past wrong, he thought, at least he could make up for it.

He never fully forgave himself for any of it, of course. Not for his family’s deaths, not for the deaths of the harbingers. Even as colorful cities blossomed and the gaps between species began to be bridged, he carried a heavy guilt on his heart. He was never truly happy. And griffins mate for life, so he had no desire to find a new love. His heart would always lie with Lucy.

Then, one night, he dreamed of something different. Not of Lucy, but of a place where all beings could be on equal ground. Not just werewolves and dwarves, either; oh, no. All beings, inhumans and humans alike. For someone whose lifelong goal had been to mend the divides of the world, it was the perfect dream.

He did what Henri does best: research. He read every book he could on dimensions and the structure of reality and how to cross between the inhuman and human. And after a few mishaps, he found it: the edge of reality. The spot where the two dimensions meet as equals, where anyone can step foot safely.

And that’s where he constructed his bar. Once Griffin’s Edge was up and running, it started small: his old friends stopped in, they passed on the word, a few more visitors came. It wasn’t long before word got around that there was a bar, run by the last griffin in the world, where you could meet anyone from any dimension and get a reasonably-priced drink to boot.

Seeing humans and dragons drink together, well, it was the closest to happy Henri had been in a long time. There was still a hole in his heart, but it was smaller now. He hung Lucille’s picture over the door and blew her a kiss every morning for luck. He told himself it was enough, that he was okay with never having a family again, because the bar gave him all the family he needed.

But then, eighteen years ago, a baby was left on the path outside. After hours, of course; no one saw who left it. He heard it crying as he swept up for the night.

Henri says that the moment he walked out and saw that baby, he knew that he’d been lying to himself: that he wanted a family, and that this was it. He didn’t know what species it was, whether it was human or inhuman, but it didn’t matter. He would love it like his own.

That was me, of course. And it’s true: through all my ups and downs—which must be more than even he bargained for—Uncle Henri has loved me like his own.

That is, until I brought a member of the very race that killed his wife and sister, that he banished to the dark forests in the darkest moment of his life and thought extinct, to Griffin's Edge.