A being cursed, or blessed depending on whom you ask, with immortality. They want to join their family in the next world and, despite multiple tries cannot. They spend days and nights in sorrow. Then they meet Wraithvine and friends. -- Anon Guest
One thing they never mention about undying immortality, it's that recovering from otherwise fatal injuries really, really hurts. And if there's nobody to help you, you end up healing wrong, and it hurts worse.
Asking a healer to help you fix that is a trial.
My name is Temporyn, and everyone I know and love is dead. I'm cursed because I cannot join them. Existence is meant to be a cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and somehow, one important step keeps passing me by. I thought that nothing could improve my lot.
Then I found someone far more experienced with the phenomenon.
Someone had left me on the doorstep of a hospice, where conflicted healers battled their consciences to fix my injuries by hurting me again. My promises that I was used to it only alarmed them more.
Then an Elf with ancient eyes and a young face came by my bed. It wasn't the first time someone with a patchwork wizarding hat had passed through my extended life. This was the first one who seemed to recognise my suffering.
They drew on my body with a piece of chick's down, and my body... rearranged itself without pain.
"Nobody else was able to do that," I said, finally able to speak coherently after a thousand years of seeking help. "How?"
"A little temporal magic, I'm afraid. I pulled away the time in which you hurt yourself." A moment of sadness in those ancient eyes. "Two thousand years?"
"I'm not meant to live that long," I said. "Everyone I knew, everyone related to everyone I knew... they're all gone. I don't have anyone, and I was never made to be lonely."
"I'm sorry I took so long to find you," said the Elf. "If you will walk with me for a time, I can teach you the skills you need for your eternity."
That was when the clues clicked together. "Wraithvine? The real Wraithvine?"
"Regrettably so," said Wraithvine. "I'm only one being, and I can't be everywhere."
I couldn't help it, I asked, "Can you cure me?"
"I can try," allowed Wraithvine. "And just in case, I can teach you how to adjust. Starting with... all those people lost to you? They are still with you, in your cherished memories."
It was a beginning. Which, I would learn, is one of the better things.
[Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash]
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