I Am Blue, Turning Grey, Over You.
There was a woman who lived on a South Sea Island. She had wise eyes and a ready laugh. She had the smooth, supple, unlined skin of a woman at least half her age. She was imortal; or at least she never died.
The island was filled with her descendants. Every couple of generations she had to threaten to leave them to keep them from worshipping her. Her days were very similar from one day to the next. She was happy with this, but never begrudged a pleasant surprise.
She had starting forgetting what she did not know. She knew how to raise the souls of the dead on the island and shape them into terrible warrior spirits. She had had to that before, but did she also know how to make them into giants that could make sport of the Sun and Moon? She did not think so, but she was not quite sure. Things like this disquited her.
The Europeans were a new thing. From them, she figured out that she could not be much older than a couple of millenia. The island had not been populated much longer than that and she had no memory of coming from anywhere else; though she knew all of the ocean currents and trade paths of her peoples. Could she even live anywhere else? That was something else that she did not know or know if she knew or not.
For as long as she could remember, she had chosen lovers from outside her island. Her current paramour was one of the easily-burning pink Europeans, named Bill. He was young and had glasses and a beard which were both oddities among her people. He fancied himself an adventurer and philosopher. He told her the most outrageous stories of the things his people believed. Some of them might even be true, given her not always pleasant memories of these new people and what they could do. Still, he had a sweetness about him. Like the others before him, she would love him for as long as he lasted and mourn him fiercely when his time had passed. When that happened, she always promised herself that she would never take another sweetheart, but she always knew that she was lying to herself and someone else would come along to steal her heart.
The island was filled with her descendants. Every couple of generations she had to threaten to leave them to keep them from worshipping her. Her days were very similar from one day to the next. She was happy with this, but never begrudged a pleasant surprise.
She had starting forgetting what she did not know. She knew how to raise the souls of the dead on the island and shape them into terrible warrior spirits. She had had to that before, but did she also know how to make them into giants that could make sport of the Sun and Moon? She did not think so, but she was not quite sure. Things like this disquited her.
The Europeans were a new thing. From them, she figured out that she could not be much older than a couple of millenia. The island had not been populated much longer than that and she had no memory of coming from anywhere else; though she knew all of the ocean currents and trade paths of her peoples. Could she even live anywhere else? That was something else that she did not know or know if she knew or not.
For as long as she could remember, she had chosen lovers from outside her island. Her current paramour was one of the easily-burning pink Europeans, named Bill. He was young and had glasses and a beard which were both oddities among her people. He fancied himself an adventurer and philosopher. He told her the most outrageous stories of the things his people believed. Some of them might even be true, given her not always pleasant memories of these new people and what they could do. Still, he had a sweetness about him. Like the others before him, she would love him for as long as he lasted and mourn him fiercely when his time had passed. When that happened, she always promised herself that she would never take another sweetheart, but she always knew that she was lying to herself and someone else would come along to steal her heart.