Immortality sounds fun on paper. Never being able to die, there’s no reason to fear…..anything really. You can just give your problems to time and eventually the problems will go away on its own, gradually, slowly.

But the same applies for feelings too. With time they fade, they become memories, then soon, a blot in your life. Fall in love with a girl, see them grow up, fear them having to see you not age anymore, leave. Eventually, it becomes so…..empty the only thing you can ever see in them is what form of sexual pleasure and interest they give you, if only to see how people treat it differently then their peers decades prior.

But I can’t love them, as much as I had fun with them on those nights. I know my lives can’t cross with them, I know I……

No, perhaps there was one. Fifty years ago, resplendent skin, eyes that reflected the ocean, white yet youthful hair and a body as bewitching as Aphrodite herself. She was magnificent, in all forms. And for the first and only time in my life, I felt a chord had struck my heart. On that night, as we melted into pleasure, I could feel my soul and hers becoming one. But, I knew I had to let her go. I couldn’t become attached. For people like me, getting attached to something that has the same lifespan as a flea relative to you……is just a recipe for sadness.

Yet, after all those years, I still couldn’t move on. My flings, became sparser in nature, I started to grow…..responsible. I couldn’t continue offering my body to others, it felt…….wrong. Eventually, it spiralled from flings, into slow walks on the beach, wandering, searching for her.

I knew it would be fruitless, she’d probably be dead by the 40th year I continued doing this. But I persisted. Deep in my heart, I wanted to believe too.

And now, fifty years later. Trudging in the sand, I could see her, and I knew, she saw me too. Speechless, I could feel the words stuck in my throat, wishing to call out to her, and yet I could not, fearful of how she would see me if she knew what I did. But, I never needed to. With tears welling up, she ran over to me, arms stretched, hugging me tightly. Even though she looked the same, I could feel the scars she had on her body, even though they long since faded. Her feet, though the same as before, walked in the same manner a weary traveller would. And her eyes, once full of the ocean, now greeted me with sights from all over the world, the splendour that once faded, now returning to her eyes. My sight started to blur as I hugged her back, the hot tears racing down my cheeks as the rowdy beach soon became but a backdrop to our plight.

We had been searching, and we had been found.