"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty." -Mother Teresa

“In the garden of memory, in the palace of dreams... that is where you and I shall meet.” -Lewis Carrol

What would it be like to live the way the elves of fantasy are said to live?  What would it be like to live for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years?

As physical immortality is the long sought after dream of so many, it is worth asking what it would be like.  I suspect you can already see it in the eyes of the elderly who have already watched their loved ones and friends pass on.

Biological immortality after all, would be an end to aging and the destruction of one's DNA.   It is not the same as immunity to death.

The potential to live forever would not mean that a plane crash or a car crash couldn't kill you.  You could be burned to death, you could drown, you could still die many a violent death.  There would be always be ways to for the world to remove you.

I ask because this story opens with the story of a spirit, mistaken for a god.   Holo the wise wolf is a potentially immortal being.  Even she does not know how old she is and she does not age.

Long ago, she wandered the earth, long from her northern home, that had long winters and short summers.   She was simply exploring with every intention of returning soon enough.

While in the south, she befriended a human male.  Noting her powers, the friend asked her to take some time to bind herself to the local grain. 

In an act of compassion, she did so to insure the village's food supply for a time.   Time being meaningless to her, she would see her friends in the north soon enough.

Even Holo doesn't know how long she was there.   Her young mortal friend passed away long ago.   As she says, as many years may have passed as there are hairs on her tale.   

She was happy with the bargain, until over the decades, the village began to hate her.  The original bargain was long forgotten and the villagers began to blame her for any of their harvest troubles.

Holo began to know the village hated her.  That said, she was stuck by her own terms of the bargain.

She could only free herself from the bargain if a traveling merchant brought foreign grain for her to inhabit.  This happens with one traveling peddler named Craft Lawrence comes by holding foreign grain in his cart.

Holo materializes in his cart.  They meet for the first time and make a business arrangement to travel north.

Thus, the story begins.   It is a story of merchant life in a world of pre industrial Europe.  It is told through the Shinto eyes of a Japanese author.

This is a story about peddling and trading on the surface.  If you look deeper, its a story about making your way and companionship.

It is when they travel and become fast friends that things change for Holo.   Her dreams begin to warn her that just like her former human friend, her immortal companions in the north may have passed on as well.

That's all I can give without going into spoilers.   Very few watch this without it become one of their favorite anime.

I can't recommend this one enough.  If you were looking for one to watch with a significant other, this is a good one.   It's available on Crunchyroll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_and_Wolf

To quote wiki,

"Spice and Wolf's story revolves around Kraft Lawrence, a 25-year-old traveling merchant who peddles various goods from town to town to make a living in a stylized, fictional world, with a historical setting with European influences.^[6] His main goal in life is to gather enough money to start his own shop, and he already has been traveling for seven years while gaining experience in the trade. One night when stopped at the town of Pasloe, he finds in his wagon a wolf-deity named Holo who is over 600 years old. She takes the form of a 15-year-old girl, except for a wolf's tail and ears. She introduces herself as the town's goddess of harvest, who has kept it blessed with good harvests of wheat for many years. Holo has experienced increasing isolation and disillusionment at the townpeople's move away from her protection towards their own methods of increasing the harvest. She is especially hurt at their forgetting of the promise made between her and a farmer when she arrived in the village and their criticism of her as a "fickle god" for needing to replenish the soil with smaller harvests. Because of these changes, she wants to go back to her homeland in the north called Yoitsu; she believes the people have already forsaken her and that she has kept her promise to maintain the good harvests. Holo also wants to travel to see how the world has changed while she has remained in one place for many years. She manages to bargain her way out of the village by making a deal with Lawrence to take her with him. As they travel, her wisdom helps increase his profits, but at the same time, her true nature draws unwanted attention from the Church."

/salute