The Gift of Mortality

The roses were blooming again. I paused long enough to pluck one from its wild, entangling bush. The depth of its color made my hand seem all the more pale. Its petals were so soft, so red, so alive. Unlike me. How I yearned for the warmth of life once more, pulsing through my body, coloring the ever fair apples of my cheeks. There was a time-I remember it with some difficulty, for I was young then, even to human standards-there was a time when I had the gift of mortality. Clenching the rose tightly in my hand, I pressed it to my breast and found my way to my chosen place in the deserted castle; a stone balcony overlooking the rest of the gronds and the forest that was slowly taking back the land that had been stolen from it all those years ago. 'For civilization!' they had probably said as they destroyed the ancient trees, ripped up the earth. 'For the betterment of mankind!' But such is how we-they; humans-always think, always have thought, and always will think. I find myself, as time goes on, slipping farther and farther from those thoughts, and more and more do I lose myself in thoughts seemingly not my own. I am losing myself, I think-sometimes all I do is think for hours at a time, possibly days; time slips by me so-and yet I cannot summon the will, the strength, the energy, to be afraid. I am only cold...only empty, forever empty. Though however devoid of life I may be, I will never die. I think one day I shall become merely a ghost, a wraith among these ruins in days when no one will remember my times; I barely remember them myself anymore. Possibly an explorer, someone young, will happen upon the castle in ten years, or a hundred, or a thousand, and will see me, just a lost figure of an eternally young woman, wandering, with no purpose or meaning. Just a figure-just a pale specter who turns haunted black eyes upon the world, but no longer thinks or acts or anything having to do with a free and unencumbered mind-I shall just wander.