She had lived for a thousand years, dancing through Persian gardens and weaving moonlight into dreams. They called her Mahtab – the last of the pari, keeper of ancient magic, daughter of light and air. She had survived the fall of empires, the burning of libraries, the forgetting of old ways.
But she could not survive love.

Prince Darius found her by the palace fountains one dawn, her feet barely touching the water's surface, her hair a cascade of starlight. He spoke of poetry and promised her eternity, not knowing she had already lived several of his lifetimes.

"Tell me of forever," he would whisper in their secret meetings, and Mahtab would smile, for what did mortals know of forever?

She broke the most sacred law of the pari – she showed him her true form, wings of gossamer and eyes that held the wisdom of centuries. Instead of wonder, she saw calculation flash across his face.

That night, as she slept in their hidden garden, he cut her wings to sell their magic. The betrayal was swift, but her dying took hours. As the last pari faded, the world grew a little darker, a little more ordinary. The fountains stopped singing, the moonlight became merely light, and magic retreated further into story.

Prince Darius lived to be an old man, wealthy from the price her wings had brought. But on quiet nights, when the moon was full, he would hear the fountains weeping, remembering when the last pari danced upon their waters.

In the end, he discovered that forever was not in the living, but in the remembering.