The Sandman: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman, and Jill Thompson, Dick Giordano, and Vince Locke.
Title: The Sandman: Brief Lives.
Author: Neil Gaiman.
Artist: Jill Thompson, Dick Giordano, and Vince Locke.
Genre: Fiction, literature, fantasy, adventure, mythology.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1992-1993.
Summary: The story revolves around Delirium's wish to reconcile with her brother Destruction. To this end, she first contacts Desire and Despair, each of whom refuses to accompany her on her quest; and finally persuades Dream.
My rating: 9/10.
My review:
♥ There are not many of them, all things considered: the true old. Even on this planet, in this age, when people consider a mere hundred years, or a thousand, to be an unusual span.
There are, for example, less than ten thousand humanoid individuals alive on this planet today who have personal memories of the saber-toothed tiger, the Megatherium, the cave bear. There are today less than a thousand who walked the streets of Atlantis (the first Atlantis. The other lands that bore that name were shadows, echo-Atlantises, myth lands, and they came later). There are less than five hundred living humans who remember the human civilizations that predated the great lizards. (There were a few; fossil records are unreliable. Several of them lasted for millions of years.) There are roughly seventy people walking the earth, human to all appearances (and in a few cases, to all medical tests currently available), who were alive before the earth had begun to congeal from gas and dust.
How well do you know your neighbors? Your friends? Your lovers? Walk the streets of any city, and stare carefully at the people who pass you, and wonder, and know this: They are there too. The old ones.
♥ All labyrinths are one labyrinth. All mazes meet in the center. There is a portion of space that all labyrinths share, a space common to every place in which paths fork and join and diverge once more.
Turn. Right. Left. Left. Turn.
One by one the other maze-walkers vanish. Slowly the high wooden walls begin to change their shape, to spread out and change, to branch and diverge. The walls become hedges. Odd items of statuary begin to appear.
Right. Left. Right again.
They step into a patch of mist: above them carrion birds caw and shriek, and then are silent forever. Briefly, it is night; then dawn begins to lighten the sky. They cross a river: their feet trip-trap across the little wooden bridge. They keep walking.
An old gray sun hangs low in the gray sky. This is not earth. This is not now. This is Destiny's Garden, that is a place to itself, and exists in its own time. Paths connect and diverge in this place.
Dream respects his brother, but the Garden of Destiny disturbs him. It is usual, however, for the Endless to feel uncomfortable in each other's realms; only Death travels wheresoever she must, without misgiving. The garden of Destiny. Look behind you: shadow-plays of memory are forever being enacted, on paths you walked too long ago.
♥ "I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend."