loss and love for an immortal

Being alive for five-hundred years is bound to make you a bit of a bastard. And irrevocably numb. Seeing so much death, and life, and horror and beauty. Existence begins to lose its meaning. In a way, nothing exists after a while. Only you. Everything else is weightless, pointless. People become less than individuals, and more of simply mortals. Temporary bursts of existence; electric, naive, passionate, and pathetic.

She had seen her heart die far too many times. Seen it buried, or burnt and scattered. She had known, and loved, and lost, so often that it lost its significance. It was only loss. Only death. Only removal. But never replacement. What a terrible trait to have as an immortal, loyalty.

That was perhaps why she lived in such a decayed house. Too unbothered to have it renovated. Too tired to worry about its appearance. Too attached to the ancient building. But it was for this reason, loyalty and loss, that she eyed the matches and the can of diesel in the back room of her house. Her haunted house. For there was a scent that lingered in the dim halls. An echo of laughter that had gotten caught and twisted up in her messy bed sheets. A smile that stuck to the rim of the mug, still sitting on the windowsill. An ache, that rose in her chest, somewhere inside that cage of bone, that cavern of darkness and blood and an ancient beat. A tug at something that was suppose to be buried and gone with the last love she had known.

It was that tug, that thing clawing at the walls of her insides, that made her drag the match across the box, then toss into the small puddle of diesel. She didn’t bother to run from the spark igniting behind her. Didn’t bother glancing at the house as she walked through it, then away from it onto the gravel road that led into the night.

Mortals, what fools, she thought as she saw the figure in the second-floor window, she sighed before being swallowed by sudden panic. Caught a glimpse of her and felt a weight sink in her chest, before she could process the fact that she had just set that house aflame. Weariness before fear. But fear surely followed. And she cursed her heart as she set off into a run, back towards the century old house.

‘Mortals’. She muttered angrily. But the small fire that she had set was steadily eating up the old wood. The wood was so weathered, the foundations far weaker than reasonable or safe. Especially as it burnt. Her heat hammered in her chest. Thumping under her wrist, in her feet, as they pounded against the gravel leading toward the door, a bright orange light rimming the frame.

Heat licked at her skin, sweat gathering in her pores, as she ran through the door, through the creaking house being steadily eaten by flames. Her feet pounded against the thin wood of the staircase. Calling out a name that was both sacred and cursed. Willing the name of her lover to tear through the walls and flames to find her. An answering shout had her frantically whipping her head towards the direction of the sound. In the end bedroom, her bedroom, there was a woman standing at the window, as far from the hall of flames as possible. It took her four quick strides to reach her, barely a moment to pick her up, and what felt like forever to carry her through the house, through the heat of flames and the thick smoke. When they finally reached the gravel of the driveway, she set her back on her feet. Watching her wobble for all of two seconds, before gently sitting her on the ground. And she stayed like that for all of five seconds, coughing into her elbow, before she looked up with angry eyes, meeting her stare before she rose from the ground and stood defiantly across from her.

‘You know you’re a goddamn fool. You know that right’. The older woman said with as much indifference as she could muster. But the quiver in her voice, the rapid rise and fall of her chest. The slight shake in her fingers as she dared to reach out a hand and pluck out a piece of ash from the dark hair before her.

You could be jaded. You could go numb. You were bound to at some point. Life did that to everyone. So, five-hundred years of it, that wretched burden of a beating heart, it was enough time to drain you, and fill you. Then drain you and fill you, again and again. Perhaps not life. But people. And the woman in front of her, eyes more ablaze than the inferno raging behind her, had filled her so thoroughly, that it almost hurt. If they were butterflies, or bees, or flowers, or thorns, they were invading her lungs, growing and flourishing in her veins, outlining her arteries. Weaving through her. Her body that had been born again with each death of a cell. It was difficult to swallow, with all that matter, all that mess, all that feeling stuffed inside her. She had to wonder for a moment where it came from. How a being who had been alive for so little time, could contain such things.

She had never physically died. Only had pieces of herself, her soul, pulled into graves with the dead. But this, she imagined, was as close to death as she had ever been. Because she couldn’t breathe past the thing in her throat. Couldn’t feel anything past the erratic beat of a heart against her rib cage. The echoing answer of her bones, her ancient marrow, singing back to soothe it, or urge it on. To lure it out of her chest, and into the hands of the woman before her. She stood there. A mighty being reduced to a breathless mess, wanting nothing more than to offer herself up the woman in front of her. The eyes that washed away every day of her existence up until that very moment.

It would hurt. When time took its toll. It always hurt. But she suspected this would be a breaking. An agony she had not let in for centuries. The fierce woman before her didn’t flinch at the raw red wound on her arm, and it made her quiver. Made her feel small, insignificant. Same. It made her feel like she was the same, like whatever she had been trapped here for, why ever she was cursed to life for so long, it didn’t matter. Nothing did, beyond the fact that she was alive, she was okay, she was here. Of all places in the world to be. Of all the times to be born in. Of all the places in the world she had settled, and roamed, and run from. She was here. With her.

‘Thought you could get rid of me, you old bastard?’, her lover spoke hoarsely through a rogue grin.

She didn’t answer. Words were too small to express the thing she felt inside herself. A fine line crevice splintering open. For a very short moment, that she would likely never admit to, only her eyes were an anchor in this old world. Not the one she stood on. But the world she had carried with her for the past five hundred years. The only world, she supposed, that could really kill her.

Loss whispered through the night, brushed the shell of her ear; She has no time, it reminded her. Time will always follow.

But as she looked at her, she thought that perhaps she was meant to love and to lose. Perhaps that was her curse. Or her blessing. 

p.s I don't think this is very good at all, and it also isn't well edited, but I haven't written in a while and I just wanted to try and get back in the groove and try some things out again. If you are still reading this, and made it this far, thank you, I applaud you.