Thanks! I try.

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"By the look of you I would hazard to guess that you're an Akkadian," I said.
With a thought I gave him his tongue back.

"You can kill me, but we will never stop until we give you your final death," the man said in English that sounded American, or nasal enough to pass as such.

"We have an opportunity here for a palaver and that is what you have to say to me?" I asked.

The Akkad descendant -how many generations down his line would he be- gave me his best sneer of proud defiance. I started the outboard engine and forced him to return to his seat and steer our course further out to sea. Akkad children did not always work alone, some of my worse encounters had been from sibling pairs.

I raised my voice over the wind and the engine noise. "Do you even know why your family has spent so many generations hunting me?"

"We have to save the world from you," the Akkad assassin glared at me with zealot intensity.

"I've heard that one from your family before," I nodded. "But you have been saying that for millennia now. Has your family long forgotten why you hunt me? Because I certainly have if I had ever known why."

Confusion on his face, but only for a moment before the sneer and pride reasserted.

"You want to trick us, make us think that this is all some kind of mistake," the Akkad man tried to spit at me but I did not permit him to. He settled on calling me a bitch, then a cunt, then a few terms I had yet to learn but were most likely more of the same.

"Spell it out for the old bitch then," I prompted. "What did I do that makes all these tens of centuries worth it?"

"What? No, it's not what you did because you haven't done it yet," the Akkad man said.

"Come again?" I prompted.

"You are going to be the ruin of the entire world if we don't stop you," the Akkad man said. "We're running out of time, but fuck it. I bet I came closer to killing you today than all my ancestors. Maybe it will be one of my grandkids or-"

I cut his speech short with a thought to freeze his face for a moment. I forced him to cut the engine so I could speak lowly, and slowly.

"Am I to understand that more than four thousand years ago your family took up this fucking hunt because of some vague prophecy?"

Even after I gave him his faculty of speech back the man took a few moments to compose his words. "The last of our line sent a dream to our progenitor, every new age something from the dream comes true. Every century we see proof. We can't stop until you can't take away the future of everyone yet to be born."

For a moment memories overwhelmed me. Memories of all the children I had lost, the husbands, the wives, and all of their futures taken from them in order to get to me. I wanted to rend the man before me, to flense his flesh away and dip him in the salt ocean to hear his screams. I took a breath and set those feelings in the field they belonged in and not in this moment.

"Have you considered that this is is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy?" I asked.

"It is because of your family I stopped having families. It is because of your hunt that I have to distance myself from people. From love. From my own humanity. What if, some day far from now, I just can't take it anymore and I burn down the entire granary just to get you, the rats, out of my life? Has that been explained away in whatever dream your ancestor had?"

The man stared at me, uncomprehending. What had I expected of him, some epiphany? Some doubt for the cause he had been born into, raise for?

"We are going back ashore," I said. "You will go home and you will hold your children in your arms. I want you to think hard on how you would feel were they to be taken from you. I want you to think on how that would feel to happen again and again. And when your family's mind sickness makes you want to turn those feelings into redoubling your pursuit of me, I want you to reflect on how long before you turn me into the hunter. Just so I can have someone to hold in my arms again without waiting for your family to take them from me."

I sat down next to him while I made him turn on the engine and turn the skiff about.

"A dream sent from the future," I said to myself. "Some Akkadian has a nightmare and passes that on to his entire line. Who has he made suffer more I ask you. Has it been me or has it been his descendants giving their happiness generation after generation to make that nightmare come true. Just something to think about when you see your family."

"But if I can kill you that all goes away," the man said to me.

"Of course," I patted his knee and put my head on his broad shoulder. "Because if you can't tell yourself that what else did all your ancestors die trying to accomplish? Just like everyone else. One more conquest. One more genocide. One more ethnic cleansing. Then, oh then, the nightmare will be over and all will be Elysium. Please tell me of any such success."

The man brooded, his body locked in my spell.

"Of course," I sighed.

The docks were a few minutes more away. I could at least enjoy some simulacrum of company with the man, as a symbol of another constant in my life even as the centuries rolled on like seasons.

Nature is my only constant. The feel of sand under my feet and the sound of waves breaking on the beach is the same as the first time I ever heard it. Empires rise and fall, languages change like clouds in the sky, everything about the world people create is in flux and always will be. But the sensations of nature orient me, focus me. Every time I begin to feel myself becoming lost in memory I retreat to the closest place I can to feel nature's hand.

The whipcrack of a bullet barely missing my head is also the same as the first time I had been shot at, centuries ago. One hand goes to cover my ringing ear as I run into the surf. I don't hear the second shot but I see the fountain of sea spray come off the wave ahead of me before I can dive in properly. Water becomes a better shield the faster the bullet is. I claw at the sand at the bottom, helping the undertow take me out to sea. My eyes sting with the salt and entrained stand, but even through the blur I can see the cavitation bubble trail of another shot at me.

The undertow has me in hand, I put my trust in it and go limp. With preparation I can hold my breath for several minutes, but I had no time to prepare. Any person can slow their heart and persist long after their lungs feel like they are burning. I had learned far more on down the long years. In moments I had quieted my heart and distanced myself from the coming complaints of my lungs. By the time the ocean carried me to the surface I had estimated more than ten minutes had passed. Still, I remained limp, my heart beating rarely. Barely any part of me would be above the surface. If another shot came I knew I would have to take more drastic action. A minute passed. I raised my face to part the surface and take a breath. Another minute without a following shot. Either a very patient sniper or they had lost sight of me.

I righted myself in the water until my entire head was above the surface. My heart proceeded to race as soon as I had unrestrained it. I gasped and panted for a few moments. Then I heard an engine. It took a moment of coming about as I treaded water to find the skiff. Persistent. Although with the waves carrying both shooter and quarry to and fro, up and down it was almost impossible that-

The shot skipped off of a wave ten cubits in front of me. The bullet then struck my hairline, snapping my head back into the water and taking some shiver of my skull with it. I did not have to try to sink beneath the waves. I was three cubits under them before I could think properly again. In the last century most of the cults and societies that knew of me had fallen to history. Of the handful that remained I had a notion of which one had spawned this assassin.

Two minutes later I was far deeper and had a view of the hull of the skiff. Now, would the assassin be stupid enough to try and enter the ocean and pursue me? The water blurred my sight but an errant flash of white warned me that something had been dropped. Then the grenade exploded some twenty cubits above me. My eyes clouded with stars while my ears rang loud enough to drive thought away for an instant. I sank deeper and forced the pain to a distant realm above the clouds in my mind. The assassin tossed more grenades, varying the depth by cooking off some of the timer before the toss. I hoped I had more time than they had grenades. How many could they have brought in anticipation?

The assault stopped with the deepest detonation yet. The assassin had probably thrown that down as hard as they could have. Now it was my turn, but I had several minutes yet in reserve, no need to breach like a whale. I swam up with deliberate slowness, conserving my wind. I eased myself along the shallow keel to the still propeller. Once my hands were on the plate and my feet on the skeg I let the rocking of the boat dictate my timing. At the downward rock of the stern I lifted my head and shoulders above the water but below the lip of the gunnels. Another pause for the ocean to tell me when to raise myself again.

My assailant sat just before me, his elbow on the tiller as he scanned the water with some kind of electronic binoculars. Apparently, his conclusion had been that I had fled further out to sea. I raised myself again to the rock of the skiff. Once I had my right foot on the gunnel I took hold of the man, wrapping his throat into the crook of my left arm while I locked out the elbow he had had on the tiller. We crashed to the deck and I wrapped my legs around his thighs to lock his knees together. He was strong, quite strong, but my thews had aged like oak and I overpowered him despite his superior size. His mind left him, his brain starved for blood.

That gave me the moments I needed. I released him, turned him over, and wrote the mandala I needed on his forehead in my blood though I had to scrape at my wound to bring forth the bleeding again. A few old words later and the man's body left his control and entered mine. I sat him up and enjoyed the terror and confusion in his eyes as he regained consciousness in a body not under his dominion any longer.

I tried English. Everyone seemed to speak some English these days.

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