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Years may change, and customs tend to do too, mortals carry on with their lives blissfully ignorant to the tide of time sloshing ever so slowly all around them, the ebb and flow not felt by them even as it surrounds them. For mortals never get to see much time, no matter how much things seem to have changed in their eyes, but in the grand scheme of things, each is no more than a small shard of stone, insignificant in the unending ocean that is time.
Nations are insignificant in such things as well, no matter how everlasting they seem, the ocean of time will always be chipping away at them, shaping them and wearing them down until their eventual collapse, to be swallowed up by It is what many nations fear vehemently, some have already accepted their fate, the rest doomed to live their twisted lives with the constant fear of true death over them like a shroud, some find it oddly comforting, knowing that one day they will fade into the abyss, but still fear it, and others, mainly the younger ones still truly fear it, afraid of the day they will be lost to the ocean of time.
England and France, two of older nations both having been battered by time and shaped into the horrors that people have seen them as, and as the mild mannered men they seemed as today, they both saw countries be born and die, empires rise and fall, their own empires included in this carnage brought on by Its relentless flow.
They witnessed the worst fighting the planet had ever seen, mortals dead and infrastructure, some from centuries prior, reduced to mere rubble by the relentless bombing of a mere child, one who lacked the characteristic old world relation with death and It, where It is accepted as an inevitable, some leaning into the idea (some far too much) while others, though they accepted it, tended to keep it far away from their active minds and consciousness, thinking about it for too long made them lose what little faith they had left.
This child, a boy of no more than 150 summers now, a babe in arms for the ancient ones such as China and India, he carried a fascination for the "old" world he had heard so much about, being nought more than a wayward waif for what little he had experienced, and he could remember even less of it than he thought, not remembering the exquisite balls that the time was so known for. Not knowing of the drama and debauchery that happened then.
A few conversations spanning late into the night with a certain French and Englishman, covering so much of what he had missed, the two elders admitted that what they were showing him was through rose-tinted glasses, but nonetheless, it was adjacent to magical for him, seeing two men he had always pictured as bitter rivals dancing a slow Etude under the moonlight, looking ghostly and ethereal with England's almost faery like looks and the grace in which France moved, controlled and followed to the music was truly a masterpiece in his eyes, seeing the practised movements and the way they looked at each other as if there was nothing else in the world.
Conversations took a darker turn more often than not, all three laying In the same bed, staring at the ceiling and eachother as they spoke of the natural state, whether they had souls or not, the endless and constant ebb and flow of time, how it was both like the ocean, unpredictable and wild, chipping away at everyone and everything with seemingly reckless abandon, at least to Germany this was what it seemed. England believed time was like clockwork, seemingly unpredictable, but underneath a fine tuned system of gears that turned and cogs that whirred at just the right time for the world to function as it did. Cyclical in the way that the seasons changed and people were born and died and with such precision that only a machine could do.
France tended to stay silent during such conversations, staring either into their eyes or into the darkness, he always found England too comfortable with the idea of death, whether permanent or not. He feared death, but he knew time as a cruel mistress that would nit stop for anything or anyone, and who was he, a nation of 2000 years against a constant from the beginnings of the universe and perhaps even before, one that was an ocean, unpredictable and fascinating, luring you deep into the abyss and swallowing you up when you got too close, but like clockwork, running smoothly and cyclical, a perpetual motion machine that never stopped hauling the world and all its changes on it's back.
Sleep always followed these conversations, even as England and Germany rarely slept enough, but like this, all warm in a bed made for two yet accommodating three, three fitting together well, England in between the embracing Germany and France.
Three weary souls of men who have lived too long, two longer than the other, but still tired from it all.
Rest your weary minds my children.
Rest.
For you may know when you shall be able to do it again.