And well, here I am with the second version of "Ageless", a short history born from the prompt "A person doesn’t know why he or she has stopped aging" from a list of fantasy prompts I got somewhere (can't remember). The prompt doesn't specify if the main character ever learns why it doesn't age, but I asumed it did so at the end of the previous version and at the end of this one. Maybe in the 3rd it would stay in the dark about it?, maybe, I feel like for that to develop into something, it would require more pages than what I've been trying my writing to measure, but we will see.
Check the 1st version here: https://steemit.com/writing/@dranuvar/estranged-stories-week-1-ageless-v1
The passing of time is merciless. Everything ends up being either destroyed by it, or buried in the true death of oblivion, and while it waits for whatever end it may have, it deteriorates, it suffers.
All of that is even more noticeable for living beings, and humans in particular. So awake in their senses and reasoning, they live trough whatever years they have, some conscious and desperate for the inevitable end, others trying to keep the thought at bay. No one is an exception, usually either one or the other.
But certain anomalies occur, a disorganized mix of perceptions and body changes. It may be someone with less wrinkles than normal, an occasional childish behavior in an adult, or a natural energy beyond the actual years of age. They all make it seem, make it feel, as if the passage of time and the deterioration it brings isn’t so bad, as if we can just live trough it with a smile.
That thought holds some truth, but it is ultimately false. I was one of those that tried to keep the thoughts of death at bay, to make them go away with a joke and a laugh, because the creeping terror of old age was always there, patiently waiting.
It was easy to ignore that kind of future when you had all those time-body anomalies that defied time, it made waiting more relaxed. And as such, everything was good until the moment came for even those things to falter and let decay show its first sings. I stayed the same while my friends and family kept getting old, and to everyone, it was weird, it was abnormal. I had to go away.
To the other side of the Atlantic I went, to the old lands where my family came from. Ironic that I hoped to get a new future in a place related to the most remote past, but it was new for me. Time passed and things felt somewhat right, for them I was the young American who came to the motherland, and for me they were still away from my secret.
At some point I started to look for registers of my ancestors, because I knew that these peaceful days wouldn’t last forever. Ancient tomes, beautiful calligraphy, tons of dust, but barely any identifiable name. I was anxious and starting to get desperate until I met a certain college professor who mistook me for an old friend: “He looked just like you, maybe less distraught”. I asked the name of that person and the answer was a mispronunciation of my last name, one that had appeared in books of 150 years ago, but then no more.
That was a turning point and that professor became my confident. That friend of his tended to keep to himself, to act happy but never tell about his past or family, he also knew stuff and had some habits uncommon for his age. And the reason was something that the professor couldn’t believe at first, but with time he knew its truth. That person, just like me, didn’t age.
I asked what else it told, I screamed, I shook him by his shoulders… and then apologized by my outburst. He understood, and told me what he learned from his friend. His (and mine surely) was a very old family, not too big or famous, but with roots in the most remote written history of Great Britain, and then some more.
A family with legends and myths associated with them, one of which told about “The Old People”, non-human inhabitants of the land from a more mythical time, and how while exiled to other realms, “their true blood shall never run dry”. Every 100 years or so, one descendant will be born ageless, and with powers unknown by modern times.
That man the professor befriended was actually 160 years old at the time, and a little while after confessing his secret, he disappeared. I decided to look after him and get some answers.
That was some time ago, 25 years to be more precise, and 30 after I ran away from home. Now, subject to memories and the thought of a mission, I was back in the family house, abandoned after the city’s development team condemned the area to a slow death for not being adequate “for modern times”. Modernity could bite my ass. Of the things I learned, the things that “cousin” told me, is that the tide would turn, and death for the new would be quick if not prepared. The Old People will return, and we Ageless had to choose a side.
