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It was funny how quickly time passed, how milliseconds turned into wide expanses that separated centuries and worlds of indifference. It’s almost like it moved even existed, the way that the earth blended into itself over and over again. A colourful haze of evolving nature kept Robin grounded, and soon he was the weight holding most people down. It didn’t matter if he was alone, because he was never alone, he had the breeze and the birds and the people whose lives seemed liked specks in his big, wide world.
They were hardly insignificant. He remembered everything, every birth, every marriage, every fight, every bitter or amicable end. He watched them ascend, secretly hoping they would take him. But that hope had crumbled long ago, a castle built on a mountain made of sand. It held no foundation for now he loved the visage of life so much that he couldn’t wish to leave it. The little things, they kept him grounded. The idea of things being so much better when seen from the ground. Like Moonah.
The world was so easy to love that it was so inconceivable to think that he’d ever hoped to leave at all. To think of all the things mankind missed out on purely for the time they were created in. Some people were built for different eras, and Robin reckoned he was built for them all since nothing ever surprised culture wise. Julian sometimes surprised him though, purely because the things he said and did were perfectly tailored for only the two of them to enjoy. It was bittersweet, if anything, to think that two strangers dying thousands of years apart were such perfect companions.
There were a million different people who would never meet the perfect person, because they were already born, already lived with something missing. Plus, they never got to torment others with the miracle that is technology.
Humphrey didn’t get to enjoy such advances, or be able to actually view them. He had no choice, most of them time, and Robin often lost him in his own whirlwind of excitement. Humphrey was so used to it by now that it wasn’t even sad on its own per se, it was more sad that everyone consciously decided not to bother most of the time. They knew, it would be slightly, only slightly, better if they were completely unaware. Maybe then he could pretend it was an accident.
The great thing about such foresight was that Humphrey didn’t feel sorry for himself anymore, it was dull and pointless and only made him miserable. He preferred life, well, death, to always be on its way up. So he appreciated the glimpses he got, like he was peering through almost closed eyes trying to hide his awareness from the world. He supposed he could be more upset, but some ghosts with no heads were probably in an alleyway somewhere, or out in the street, or in some lonely old castle. He counted himself lucky.
Fanny didn’t practice such gratitude. She wasn’t, in the traditional sense, ungrateful for her circumstances. If there were any group to be stuck with, it would be all of them, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. However, they all also couldn’t deny that if put in the position of life, they would choose this over death. Just once, just for a moment. Fanny truthfully didn’t know what she would do if she had that chance. From the standpoint she had died at, Fanny saw her whole life in front of her clearly, there was no illusion of grandeur or excitement. She would wake every day to the repetitive loneliness, and she would’ve never had the power to change it.
Fanny had so much power now, but she didn’t know how to use it. No, she knew how to use it, she didn’t think she had to. She was so used to holding back, so used to being limited, that she had no idea how far she could truly go. And now she had all the time in the world, but it didn’t change how she felt. It would’ve been just as easy for years to pass by, over a hundred, and she wasn’t any more or less comfortable within herself. Fanny had wasted so many experiences waiting for the next best thing, the ounces of freedom she was allowed, that life didn’t get the chance to be exciting.
When it came to exciting, or more exhilarating if anything, Captain was smack in the middle of it. He believed, really believed, that war had been the fond memory people tried to enforce on him. Captain saw all the posters, all the medals, all the bodies, and he felt so disconnected from the man they wanted that he became the amalgamation between that man, and the one that he was on the inside. His internal self slipped through the cracks like sand, and the once understandable world plunged into a war he would never recover from.
It came to him in darkened nightmares sometimes, sending him into moods that even had Robin avoiding him. Captain couldn’t look himself in the mirror on those days, fearing the shattered reflection looking back at him.
It followed him. In the firm press of his feet to the ground in a marching motion, in the austere manner that he conducted, in the way his voice trembled at the sound of a minuscule compliment. It hung from him like a thick aroma, it clung to his skin through the uniform he couldn’t seem to pry his body from, no matter how much he tugged and tore and shook. Maybe this was what he wanted, he had wanted this, he asked for this. He stood in front of them and wore his uniform and told them he was prepared to die, where was that person when a threat entered the vicinity? Hiding. And he’d spent his whole career there.
It was funny how quickly life caught up to you if you let it.