Oblivion

How can a single moment last so long?

You stare into the dirt, in silence. Your motionless second-husk sits beside you, casting a long and cold shadow in the warm flame. You once treated it as a companion—now it sits quiet, unnerved as you are by the thought of your only friend being a piece of yourself you carved away. You would rather speak with the silence, content in the knowledge that at least it will not reply with your voice.

The centuries have contracted behind you, condensed into singular points of memory, each with a billion facets many of which are simply too fine to see. The future dilates ahead of you, a long and plain road decorated with corpses and creations yet to come. The thought of this once excited you; the advancement of your craft, charting the boundaries between here and the dark, and yet... now, it is merely the promise of future slog. But would that you could not walk from creation to creation, from task to task, the road would fall away beneath you into a void—or so you worry.

Or hope, perhaps.

Now, though, you merely gaze into a flame, eyes burning and unblinking as you dread the time to come. You dread the now, as well—the unforgiving emptiness and fullness of the forest, the unbearable waiting, the long and equally pointless travel ahead of you. You thought that after a few centuries time would start to pass so quickly, as the scale of your life grew and your worry of death could be put to the side. And yet, a minute now feels longer than ever, each one weighed not by fear of death, but by the worry of the work to come. The worry of having to drag your weary mind and body through another century of this.

The thought of being an immortal creature, a force indefatigable, felt so good. Didn't it? You would fill every day with joyous experimentation, and the daily worries would simply start to pass like whispers. You would take to anciency so well and so gracefully, no longer concerned with mere minutes or seconds or hours or days, spending years like days of your endless life to continue your work. But no. The day feels longer, not shorter.

Everything grates, now. The chirp of the crickets rankles you; you wish they would shut up. The crackle and roar of the fire makes you fidget in your seat. The rustle of the trees, the fertile smell of a forest in bloom, the subtle tug-of-war between the heat of the flame and the chill of the night on your skin—it's all so much, and yet now is the quietest moment you've had to yourself in some time. A moment you spend in dread, going over the same epiphany you have a hundred times, that your immortal life will collapse under the weight of every petty, stupid thing you have to do that gets in the way of your God damned work, every moment you have to spend rotting by a campfire all by yourself, and if not that—then it will collapse under the weight of your work, instead.

...

Perhaps that's why you long for the forest to fall away. For the fire to snuff, though you would feel quite cold. For Hollyhock to vanish, as cruel as that feels. Maybe you would have a moment finally, truly, to rest from the eternal chore of having to be.

In... oblivion.

...

Ghh.

You lift your head, again, sucking in a deep breath of the cold forest air.

And there it is. The very desire that gives you drive. You will rebel against it, as you always have. Its claws will grip your mind again in time, and you will break them apart and move on. As you always have. Time and again.

Forever.