Forgetting History

The Mood is Write

Mom-de-Plume
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Invitation Status
  1. Looking for partners
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per day
  2. Multiple posts per week
Online Availability
It varies wildly.
Writing Levels
  1. Advanced
  2. Prestige
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Nonbinary
  3. Primarily Prefer Female
Genres
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.

My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.

My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.

I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Millions of years, Elizabeth had been a Councilman. She watched people come and go from her life, though she clung to them desperately.

Family. Friends. Coworkers. Subordinates. Enemies.

None lasted as she had. For centuries, she fought to fill the holes left by their absences, but in the filling, the holes only grew. No matter how she grasped and struggled, fate and choice forbade all from remaining.

Rare was exorcised. Ober, Seela, Kyoko, Bear, and other Hunters were killed. Crow suicided. Martin, she assumed, stopped being able to convince the judges to let him retain his memories. Poppy, Juni, and Sylvia, their nanny, were found dead in their home.

Elizabeth still didn't know what killed the three.

Jerry, Bril, Vinnie, and Victor died for her missions.

Falren—

She was with him when he died. He smelled so strongly of that hero's scent that it choked her. Nobody was left to answer her call for help for him—the Hunter organization was entirely gone, and so too were Ozymandias and Sinclair. All she could do for the man was cradle him and keep a strong face for him until life left him.

Her tears came in an unending and strangling torrent after he passed, but no longer. Ancient scars on heart and flesh did nothing to tighten her chest or bring pain anymore.

Why she alone survived what those around her did not, she had no idea. For centuries she tried to pull new people into her life to try and fill the gaps, but none remained. Personal choices and fates stole away each, and often it was her own doing.

No, not merely often. Each death was brought by her hand at its core. Each person who walked away from her side did it citing Elizabeth's faults—from her nitpicking and smothering to her age and appearance.

The Councilman ceased her efforts toward happiness, but duty bound her to continue extending her protection as far as she could across the loneliness of Existence.

And then she found that even the Unifiers couldn't outlast her. Their base in the void between universes was destroyed by chance as two particles came together, and a chain reaction began that ended with a new universe's formation.

The birth of that universe caused such a massive shockwave, it sent two universes into early heat death, and the shockwave caused irregularities in countless others.

Elizabeth pondered these and more as she looked out from under her black and obscuring hood at the stranger who stood below. This one would also leave at the whims of either fate or choice. It did not matter that they had arrived beyond this moment. She simply had to see to what they wanted and send them on their way.

"What do you seek?" Elizabeth asked in a quiet rasp. Her body didn't move—couldn't, anymore—as she remained seated on a petrified stump, surrounded at back and sides by the stony remnants of bark. The stump had lush green moss when she first sat to rest weary legs. Now, it bore only lichens in the wasteland around Elizabeth.

"You."

The stranger's answer returned Elizabeth's attention from past to present, and she watched for several long moments. It was an attention-catching declaration, but her pulse and breath didn't quicken. This was neither the first nor would it be the last stranger to say they wanted her.

"Do as you wish," she replied, and her eyes slid shut under the preternatural shadow, "You will find limited uses for me."
 
The strangers cloak, looking worn and tattered from it's time spend shredded by the sands on the wind, lightly battered even now. He looked weary... Thin, and dry skinned. The cloak was once a head wrap... But his journey to find her seemed to have taken a toll. Yet, here he was.

His pale earthy skin cracked around his lips as he looked upon her. He had journeyed far... And didn't bring enough water for a return trip. He didn't intend on making one. To think, after such an arduous quest, that she would say something like that. Little use? What did that mean?

"Call me Ishmael."

He begun, hanging on a little long after every word. "You grant wishes... Right?" At this point, it almost didn't matter. Indeed, it didn't at all. Even if this was all for nothing... He wasn't leaving this place. In the face of her silence, he raised dried and cracked hands with dried and cracked fingers into the air, like a surrender, or a plea.

"Please, spirit... Grant me this wish..." Apparently, he was under the impression she was some apparition of the dessert. A lot of rumors fly around about immortals affixed to a fossilized log within the dessert.

"Satisfaction!" He declared, throat sounding dry as he looked. "I demand... Satisfaction! I have come so far... My life, discarded at this chance at it! To drink when I am thirsty, to find comfort in simple things..." His hands, shaking a bit, started to make their way down as he hunched forward a bit. Apparently, the exertion fatigued him. "To feel well again... To have a... a woman who loves me the way ever man dreams..." Then, up came his hands again. "I wish for satisfaction! Spirit!"

His enthusiasm, though his travel here wore on him so bluntly, just barely matched his misery as evident by the weak plea that escaped his lips quietly. "Please..."

He had put a lot on the line to make it here. His life, for something as absurd as getting a wish granted? Most didn't actually believe there was such a thing as wish granting, but he risked it anyway. He didn't come asking for immortality or power. No, he thought he had the perfect wish.

Because even if he were to die like this... Hopefully, he would die satisfied. That was worth throwing his life away to achieve.
 
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The dark-wrapped woman stared down at him, unmoving and seemingly without reaction.

She remained silent for a long time as she pondered how to break it to this man that she was no genie of any sort. She was... nothing of such importance.

Under her hood, in the darkness that his eyes could not penetrate, she closed her eyes.

"Come here, Ishmael," she said finally. Beside one of her arms, a small pool of water rested. "Have a drink and sit in the shade. Catch your breath."

He was in for a long walk back home, she felt certain. Best he do so rested and hydrated. The desert, while not the hottest place she had been in her long life, was one of the driest.
 
As her words reached him, he was still for a moment. The grim feeling of disappointment practically radiated off of him from the way he let his hands fall back to his sides in silence. It seemed hard to tell if he was already feeling foolish, or just holding out the slightest hope that his satisfaction was still within reach. Though, obvious, lacking the instant gratification of a wish well granted seemed like another weight on him.

In silence, he began to drag his tattered feet again, pulling one foot in front of the other as he silently approached the dessert spirit. Upon seeing the puddle, surprisingly, he didn't seem to rush. Quietly he walked to it, lowering himself down to his knees. In sullen silence he dipped his dry hands into the shallow pool, hunched over it as he brought it to his lips for a drink.

He took his time... Drinking while saying nothing. He didn't bother refilling his canteen he had hung from his side... Merely picking himself up as he sat on his legs, taking a deep breath... And letting it go.

"... You don't grant wishes, do you?" He asked, throat a little whetted now. He turned a bit, now so close by her. His eye peeked through his own hood, a dim grey. He seemed gaunt of features... But, not old. More sickly, dried up. He had scratches around his neck, skin peeling from the dessert taking away so much.

"... Now that I see you clearly, you don't look like a spirit either." He took a deep breath again, turning back to look down at the water. "I... I think deep down, I knew it was a fool's errand. When I caught sight of you though, sitting here on that slab, for a moment it seemed the stories were... true."

That was all eh apparently had to say, sitting there on his legs. He looked out past them, into the dry dessert that surrounded them. A part of him must have been prepared for this possibility... And now that he was here, it was simply finished.
 
She watched him, head turned to face him beneath that concealing hood. The shadow was black and opaque, as though there was no face within.

He drank, but not like she expected. He questioned, slow and thoughtful, and a heavy breath escaped her as he admitted his hopes. Ishmael was disappointed, but accepting of his fate, having come this far without enough supplies.

"If you would like, you are welcome to remain until you have recovered enough to return home."

Unaccustomed to speaking so much, her words came out quiet and almost breathless.

"It is my duty to protect people," was all she offered as explanation—her words marking her as one who didn't view herself as one of them.
 
Ishmael heard her, lifting his gaze to turn to her again. He didn't have anything to say... What could he?

He was not returning home.

As the time quietly passed by, Ishmael remained sitting on his legs... Looking out into the dessert wordlessly. Despite everything, he almost seemed at peace... Or, perhaps he was just tired. He sat there long enough with her for the sun to move in the sky... Before he finally stirred again.

"I think... I know what I should do." He muttered, sounding dry again. He turned to face her once more. "You've acted as sentry here for long enough..." However long that may actually be. "Please. Your shift here must be long over. I am not going home..." He finally shifted himself, lifting a leg, slowly working himself back up to standing before fully turning to face her.

"I must have come here to take your place. Yes... That must be it." He took a little step closer, looking down to her in her seated position. "But I think... Who ever will find me, they will know that they have nothing to find here."

He did not know her. He did not know exactly how long she had been here... How far back her past stretched. He didn't even know why. He knew her from the stories she inspired... The legend and myth that surrounded her. He came here because of them... But he would stay to tell others what he knew now.

There are no wishes granted here.

To the weary traveler who makes the same journey he did, they would see a skeleton on this seat... And hopefully, that would be his message to the world: There was nothing but dust here.

He had no idea the sort of immortal he was before now. But, he seemed to not need to know to come to this conclusion.

"Surely, you must be tired of being in one place for so long..."

What that meant to her, he could never tell. What she would even do, he didn't consider. The world she knew and the world that he came here from could not have been more different, with time sweeping away even the oceans. Whatever she might of remembered from before she planted herself here never to move again... Was gone, and forgotten.

To this little mortal though, she was no more than a sentry who's job ended a long time ago.
 
He presumed to know so much, and assumed a lot about her. About her role. About many things.

He was wrong. Had she emotions anymore, she might have laughed. Instead, perhaps a mercy to his pride, she simply exhaled quietly before she spoke.

"Lift my arm, and roll back the sleeve." Her instructions were quiet, almost breathless from her exhaustion. Beneath her robes, stone arms and legs rendered her immobile.

And after so long without conversation, mere speech took such a toll on her. She felt ready to fall asleep again—her typical way to pass the time, but out of courtesy, she forced herself to remain awake—to keep talking to the unfortunate soul who put his life on the line for a myth's chance at contentment.

Some part of her wasn't satisfied to let him try to journey back, nor to keel over dead, though. From that, she opened her eyes and looked again towards the small pool of water.

"Drink." The order was firm, but quiet. "I do not grant wishes. I only offer guidance... You will—"

It took another deep breath before she could continue.

"—You will remain here with me until you are ready to receive what I offer. I will provide food, water, and shelter."

She made no mention of what he might offer, because she could think of nothing she wanted.

Anything she had wanted before was no longer attainable. Ishmael, too, would be gone before she could blink, but duty called her to make an effort for him.
 
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Pulling back her sleeve, his already tired eyes seemed to dim all the more. "... I see." He muttered. What else could be said? She was cemented here, permanently. No wish, no real myths to uncover here. Certainly nothing worth coming this far for. How...

Disappointing.

He shut his mouth again, this time not sure if he'd ever open it again. Standing there, letting his knees lock, things got quiet between them again. Then, her order. He had nearly fallen asleep on his feet, stirring at her voice. He wasn't expecting anything of her, so her firm order for him to drink was rousing enough.

Food, water, and shelter? She really wanted him to leave this place, huh? He mulled it over... She couldn't possibly know him or why he came out here. The events that lead him to this place on a one-way trip to get the one thing he wanted. Still... He looked down to the water again, and quietly let his body move on it's own as he sat back down and began to drink from the pool again.

He drank rather slowly... Hunched over the pool for what felt like hours, before he silently laid himself down on the ground beside her. His belly was full of water, and his journey here had been very long. Now more than anything, he just felt so tired. His back touched against the side of her slab as his cloak covered him and kept his skin off the dry sand, eyes slipping closed as he laid down quietly to sleep.

He wasn't sure what he would do tomorrow. He never imagined he'd make it that far. The nights in this place were as cold as they came... So maybe, for all he knew, this would still become his resting place near the foot of the figure he'd come so far to find.
 
Morning came, the light bright as the day warmed, and Ishmael's weakness from the day before seemed lessened. A voice spoke to him from above, quiet and hoarse.

"Ishmael. Wake up."

His coverings were whole again, and before him rested a dead rabbit, not present the night before.

"If you don't have a knife..." she forced a deep breath before she could continue, "Find my inner breast pocket. There's a knife there you may borrow."

Her head, still hidden in the mask's unnatural shadow, began to sag, and her hood followed the movement.

She'd been up all night, watching over the would-be-wisher, ensuring no local predators stole away his life—why it was so important to her, she didn't know.

It didn't matter, though. A pang shot through her chest as she recalled that one day, he would leave, so she mustn't get attached...

Her heart wanted to bond, though, but the urge was so weak she couldn't tell.

"Eat," she murmured, "So you can grant your own wish... Humans have..." a pause for breath, "Remarkable capacity for... for doing the improb... a... ble."

Her words grew quieter as she drifted toward sleep.