The lonely everlasting

Noah Chelus

A young woman sat back on her heels, staring at the papers on the floor, all the research she had agonized over for months. Each page gave her the same answer: she just needed to make a wish and acknowledge how much she wanted it. The woman sat back, stunned. How could it be this easy? She shook her head and moved to her knees. Her breath trembled while she raised a hand to her rampant heart. Eyes closed, mouth barely open, she uttered her wish.

“I don’t want to die. I want to live forever and stay with the people and world I love forever.” She thought her heart would leap out of her chest as it beat faster and faster. Suddenly, the air in front of her face grew hotter and colder and light filtered through her eyelids, but she didn’t dare open her eyes. She kept pleading until she screamed at the top of her lungs. When her voice finally gave out, she looked at the figure in front of her. It was both solid and intangible, light and dark, grand and humble, everything and nothing --- just as Time is. She felt as if her brain was going to explode from what she saw.

Time smiled as if it knew exactly what she was feeling. It did know, she registered. How could it not? Time knew all the mistakes and pain of her past. It could alter the future, stretch and warp reality. Nothing could be hidden from it. The woman rose to her shaking feet and faced everything she had ever known and everything she would ever know.

“Hel-” she cut off. This was not a force that needed to be welcomed. It did as it pleased.

“Time,” she resumed, looking away. “I wish to be immortal. I never want to leave those who I love or this world.” She bolstered every bit of her courage to glance back at Time’s face. Her eyes widened as she took in the incomprehensible. Its face constantly shifted, sometimes completely blurred and ethereal, and at others the visage of vaguely familiar figures. Some she had never met but had a feeling she would at some point.

In one second, Time moved forward until it settled so close to her that she thought it would swallow her whole. Do you really want to live forever? She stepped back. Despite her completely unclear expectations of what Time might do, asking her this question was still shocking. She wasn’t even certain Time had truly said anything; she could have sworn the words were from a faint memory, told to her long ago. But something in the way Time held her gaze with no eyes and stood in front of her made her suspect it was waiting for something, an answer to the question.

“Yes.”

Time retreated to the other side of the room. Another whisper filled the woman’s mind. Well then. Enjoy eternity. Her mouth fell open slightly and tears filled her eyes. This was actually happening. She would live forever, stay with the people she loved forever, do what she loved forever, and experience everything life had to offer! She looked at Time’s deep, shadowed eyes and down-turned mouth and thought it almost looked sorrowful. Almost regretful. She wasn’t given even a moment to ponder what these emotions meant for her future before Time reached out a cloaked hand. The space around her swirled as Time faded in front of her eyes. She attempted to cry out for it to wait but found her voice was also being consumed by the vortex.

The pull stopped abruptly and the woman slumped to the floor, realizing how exhausted she felt. Time was nowhere to be found. She wondered if it had kept true to its word and actually made her immortal. Almost immediately after she started to doubt if the past few minutes- no past few hours as the clock told; a probable effect of meeting Time- had truly occurred, a small pendant dropped to the floor in front of her. She scooped up the small, dark trinket and turned it over to read the short note Time had left. I only matter depending on how you use me. Anima vivit in aeternum: The soul lives forever.

The immortal released a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She would live forever. She thought about getting up and gathering her forgotten pages but stopped. She had an eternity to clean. Right now, she just needed to rest.

______________________________________________________________

A young-looking woman sat on the edge of a building overlooking a tall, crowded city of skyscrapers. She could only hear the excruciatingly loud pedestrian sounds from below but did her best to ignore them. She exhaled as her watch, which was never relevant apart from this one second, ticked. She watched until the hand pointed at the exact moment she always waited for.“Another year gone.” She had lost track of how many years passed since she negotiated with Time but estimated it had most likely been around seven hundred years. She waited for salty tears to stream down her face, but none did. Two hundred years before, give or take, they would have flooded out of her eyes like a rushing, grand waterfall of old. How long had it been since she’d seen a waterfall? Many decades at least.

She placed a hand over her heart. It felt numb and cold. It still beat, of course. That was part of the deal, but nothing apart from deep grief, pain, and endless boredom filled it now. She had done everything available to her these past centuries but eventually, nothing satisfied her. She had succeeded and failed at everything, except for dying. Her eyes had seen the opening and closing of countless devastating wars that made her question what being human really meant. Not that she could truly judge, being the immortal she was. Everyone she cared about had died, and after a few centuries, she stopped trying to make new relationships. No one she met was truly unique. She would have met a revolutionary or star like them before and couldn’t bring herself to attempt a connection anymore. It was pointless. She was pointless and just wanted to be done.

The woman rose to her feet, balancing precariously near the edge of the roof. She recalled the instructions from that one night: just make a wish and acknowledge how much you want it. She closed her eyes.

“I want Time to take back what it gave me so long ago. I want it to help me move on and die.” She said her wish only once, knowing that it would be enough because there was nothing else to say. Embellishments and frills would not make this any more meaningful. She turned around to face the city again as the space behind her grew impossibly hot and cold. She smiled slightly as she watched her shadow stretch in front of her from Time’s light. She waited only a minute more before turning around to face her old acquaintance, her friend, her enemy. Time stood there, just as paradoxical as it had been the first time they met.

Do you truly wish for me to take back your eternal life, to let you go? The woman tilted her head, studying Time. She still couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing despite having it looming by her shoulder for so long.

“I want to talk first.” Time seemed unsurprised, naturally. She knew it had anticipated this since the night she summoned it. No, she corrected herself, Time knew what she would say since the beginning. But the beginning of what? She sighed and gave up on thinking about it.

“Why did you give me immortality if you knew I would be miserable and ultimately want to die anyway? Why is eternal life even available?” The silence rang louder than any city noise the woman had heard.

Did I give you eternal life? After all, here you are, asking me to help you die. The woman stepped back. Her mind swam from the implications of this question. After a good bit of reflection, she returned down to the edge of the building.

She laughed incredulously at the ridiculous situation at hand. Time moved to join her. The two looked out upon the chaos of metal and glass, so unnaturally mixed. Humans were never made to live forever. Your brains can not even comprehend what “forever” is. The woman’s heart ached at these heavy words. She couldn’t imagine what living the past few centuries again and again would be like. Each of her imagined futures had an end, albeit an unclear one. Even when facing Time, she failed to wrap her brain around what she was seeing or how Time knew everything. It just wasn’t for her to know.

“We get bored after a while. Ironically, I suppose that’s what makes us ‘human’. At one point, we exhaust our resources and opportunities. It’s a useless way to live. It’s not even living; it’s just existing,” she noted bitterly. Time gave a semblance of a sympathetic nod before rising. Are you ready?

The woman took one final look at the city, her world, and the sunset. She turned to Time.

“Yes.”

Time reached out its cloaked hand, just like it did on that night. Instead of pulling her, the air started pushing her back. She felt like she was falling into nothingness except it wasn’t nothingness, she realized. Memories from her past drifted around her but they weren’t of her. They were of her children, laughing, playing, graduating, helping people – living. They were of her friends talking to her, dancing at bars, and living in every moment. The memories contained so many deaths, but they were the deaths of people who lived their lives knowing that any day could end their time on Earth and utilized each precious second. Every scene was beautiful and raw and just so human. As she kept falling and watching her past, she could feel herself fading away. When she didn’t think she could keep her eyes open one moment longer, Time spoke.

Goodbye Pandora, anima tua vivet in aeternum.Your soul will live forever.

Pandora felt a tear slip from her eye. It had been so long since anyone had called her by her name. It felt like going home at last.