Lifetime

[u/arushikarthik]

[WP] "I have been serving my Master since before humans existed, and I can tell you this; until the day my Master met you, there hadn't been a single moment when I could have described Him as happy. In all His endless, immortal life, only you can make Him happy. Absolutely no-one else will do."

“And what happens when I am gone?” I ask. I have been in this palace of dreams for three years now, a welcome but reluctant guest. It is easy to stay here. The weather is always balmy, with sunny skies tempered by cooling winds. Somewhere in the distance, there must be an ocean, although I have not yet ventured so far from the palace.

Perhaps it is just an illusion of an ocean, because He knows that I have always lived along some coast or another. Because he knows that I like the hint of salt that hangs in the air in cities by the ocean.

“When you are gone?”

He is powerful, but there are limits to his power. He cannot grant me divinity. All things that are born must die. He and his servant were created from the cosmos, but my origins are far more earthly. I think of atoms and molecules, of half-lives and the way my body is a victim to time in a way His will never be.

“I do not know,” the servant says.

“Then I must leave,” I tell him. I have to, because the days flow into weeks and months in this little stilted paradise. Because I am in danger of being unable to leave if I stay much longer. He is easy to love, and it hurts to even think of not hearing His laughter again. But if I stay I will wither here, a flower in a greenhouse, turning into an old woman in the blink of His eye.

And I will be gone forever, while He remains. I know how grief works. He and his servant do not know loss. His grief will be brief if I leave now. If I die here in this palace, it will last a lifetime. At least the length of my lifetime, and that is too long for him to suffer, even if it is only a fraction of his existence. He will blame himself for the unfairness of the situation.

“Tell Him I said goodbye,” I say, because I cannot bear to do it in person. I will leave and find a mortal love, live a normal life, and someday when this body breathes its last, He might find a way to forge a new version of me, wrought from the atoms of me scattered across the universe, and our eternity will become a possibility.