The Immortal?s Dream
By
Macoza
What is the dream of one that never dies?
How may one ever even surmise?
The dreams of many are to have what they have not, reaching until death for things most mortals fail to reach, wanting what most mortals eventually resign themselves to never obtaining, broken by their failures as rocks are by strong blows.
Mortals are limited by time, bound by it, their entire lives ruled by this cruel and merciless master. They try in vain to conquer or at least defy it, knowing not that they play a game that was lost before the very origin moment of their lives. Each advancement man makes essentially fails to stay this brutal enemy, uninhibited by the mores and limitations of man. All things therefore are reduced to a simple race against the clock, a battle to accomplish a set goal before a certain deadline is reached. The dreams of man are likewise set against a deadline, though this deadline is the final deadline: death.
Time, however, holds no influence over an immortal?s being, the timeless creatures of an unknown plane. As mortals are powerless before time?s might, time itself is made powerless before the immortal?s agelessness. Without that accursed limitation (unless, of course, the immortal or immortals in question are dealing with something or someone of the mortal realm), what then remains to repress these beings.
A simple thing represses these timeless beings, able to last forevermore. Their eternal nature, one of the mortal realm?s most sought after desires, is the sole cause of their oppression. The very thing that would free us places them in chains of unsurpassable strength. Why should this be so, when they are free to acquire all that we wish to have?
Simple.
A desire is a desire only if its acquisition is at least not guaranteed, if it is not a strict impossibility. For this reason, the ability to obtain everything kills the desire for anything, and leads to eternal discontent. Mortals, marred by discontent, can at least take comfort in the knowledge that their suffering must inevitably end.
The immortal, however, does not receive this consolation. The inability to die for them leads to unending torment, changing what we would consider the highest of all goals to the greatest of all banes; the curse to surpass all others.
As suffering inevitably leads to hope, a dream arises from the immortal?s torment. The dream is a simple desire, a goal that to us is an undeniable fact.
This dream, the immortal?s dream, is simply and surprisingly of death.