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Every now and then, I organise my thoughts.
Sure, it goes against everything I've believed in so far, but a little time in your mind, and I need to distract myself.
It seems fitting in an ironic way— thinking about you hurts, and so I do something only you would try to do, to clear up the mess I otherwise wouldn't care about.
Maybe you would understand it, if you were here.
I wish you were here, sometimes. Other times I wish you'd never existed.
I can understand better humans' obsession with getting things done, keeping things organized. It's an effective way to keep your mind off your emotions.
I can understand their emotions too. Your mind, your organized chaos of thoughts, your clear-headedness— and I could still feel emotions with a stronger intensity than I thought possible.
And it's that intensity which haunts me every day now, and I'd be horrified by the ability to be overwhelmed by emotions, emotions that I don't want to experience.
How did you do it? Deal with them?
Perhaps you didn't.
I wouldn't know for sure.
I still visit the humans sometimes.
Perhaps visit is the wrong word. I still see humans sometimes, when they yank me from here, my home, and bring me back into their world of realism.
In a way, I enjoy it. The pain is anchoring, the physical body and substance a hard limiter on how vast my emotions can be.
They're limited to my being and ground by an aching essence.
I'd never thought I'd like it.
It's been eighty years. Why does it still hurt?
London reminds me of you.
It's a ghost city now, you might be surprised to know.
Or maybe you wouldn't be. The little time I spent in your mind, I saw the clear way in which you saw the possible outcome of London being a ghost city, and discarded the possibility because you didn't want to deal with it then. But you saw it.
You thought about it once, you know? Near the end. For just a moment, before the fight. Looking at the ruins of thousands of years of development. Those were your exact thoughts.
Once, it was so full of life, emotions, a logistical nightmare, a miraculous trainwreck of different people trying to work together. But it was alive, fierce in a way I never could appreciate until it was gone.
I was responsible for it, in a way. I worked for the magician who wanted to destroy it. There was more to what he wanted, but London destroyed was the point of it.
Oh, they rebuilt it after you were done with it— after WE were done with it. But they couldn't again, not after I and the other magician and his other slaves were.
Now it's cold, unemotional. Eerie. Beautiful in an odd way. Every now and then, a bird flits over it. But it's dead all the same. I never liked the idea of earth, but some things just make you ache for how they were before.
Almost like you would've been, if you'd died any earlier.
The birds, often, are passing spirits, ordered to search for an artefact and give it to their master.
I know this because I still lurk there sometimes. Sometimes, I'm one of those birds.
They'll never find it. The destruction, despite the ruthlessness, was very well done.
Almost like something you would've done, eighty-three years ago. Despite the ruthlessness, very well done. But you were that person only for a bit.
(But long enough, wasn't it?)
If I become more efficient a servant, maybe I'll be called more and more often.
Maybe for more and more life-endangering tasks.
By more and more magicians.
I obey them without question now, in the most sensible way possible. Focus on getting the job done.
Not that you'd like that. I know why you kept me around: simply because I wasn't that kind of spirit.
You acted otherwise, but I know you.
Knew you, at least.
But I'm tired of acting in others' memory, or having to care.
Not when those who I care about have lifespans that stretch to the blink of an eye compared to mine.
I was tired before you. Far, far before. But somehow...
Why do I do this anyway, I don't know. But it's tiring me. My old essence aches. Every week, a new summon.
I don't know how much longer this will last. The lifespan, the pain, the what-ifs.
Ptolemy took two centuries, and I still was never completely over it.
It still hurts too much; I don't take your form yet. Respect be damned, it still hurts too much.
Everything reminds me of you in some way. I try not to let it affect me too much.
Time, after all, is a salve to wounds that can't be healed. Isn't it?