It’s already late afternoon, and my human still hasn’t woken up.
I’ve been pacing this damn forsaken room for hours.
The hell am I doing?
This is what I get for letting myself become attached.
Immortality is nothing but a curse in a world made of mortals. It’s a curse that dooms you to be alone.
She’s going to die. Someday, she’ll die, no matter what I do. And then what?
I drop to the creaking old whitewashed floorboards, the familiar rhythm of exercise pulling me in.
I could be anywhere.
I could be back in that damn void all over again as time flows by around me.
I’m vaguely aware of the door opening and closing as that damn old woman comes back in, leaves, and returns again. The light through the window grows deeper orange, then fades, but I don’t stop.
Not even when my muscles burn, sweat drenching my shirt and my back and my hair and dripping down my jaw.
It’s like a trance.
A trance that keeps my mind from wandering, from thinking about what I’ve done. About how attached I’ve let myself become.
In the void, I could keep at this for days, a trance of sleep and work, keeping me from feeling.
Maybe I’m getting weak.
Maybe being tethered to this human has made me weak. Maybe I’ve not yet recovered from the distance, because blackness swims at the edges of my vision.
But I refuse to stop.
I keep going until my arms feel like burning lead, until the drop of my chest toward the ground, the flexing of my biceps as I push back up is the only thing I can remember.
You
It’s dark when you wake up, but there’s a ray of golden light drifting in from the hall.
And a strange, rhythmic creaking noise emanates from the floor just to the side of your bed.
Your head throbs, and you groan, sitting up.
For a moment, you can’t remember where you are.
Then it all slowly, dizzily flows back.
You blink down at the dark shape of toned shoulders, of Ziros face-down on the ground, his muscles taut, dropping lower, then pushing back up.
“Ziros?” you ask, “What are you doing?”
If he hears you, he doesn’t stop.
Just keeps doing push-ups, the floorboards creaking with his every move.
“He’s been at it for six hours,” says a wry voice at the door, and there’s Eli, Elena’s grandson. “I’ll let Gram know you’re awake.”
“Hang on,” you say before he can leave. Glancing back at Ziros where he seems to be in some sort of work-out trance, you ask, “Did you say sixhours?”
