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Well, so there were were, me 16 and my sister 20 and we hadn’t seen each other in 100 years. We are immortals and that’s how my story begins.

The last time we saw each other was right after World War I.

I was living in California back then as well, though was quite a new arrival, getting there right after the earthquake.

My sister had been living in New York for the past decade and I thought she was still there, until one morning I woke up and felt her.

When you live with the knowledge of someone for so long, you can feel the changing souls from the other side of the planet, and that’s where she was, or close enough, in France.

I could tell there was something wrong with her, that she was in some great pain, but there was no way I was going to France while there was a war. Ever since the Germans sank the Lusitania I knew it wasn’t safe to cross the ocean.

Still, I travelled to New York to wait the war out, every night having nightmares about my sister. In the nightmares she sat in a dark corner, her eyes completely lifeless, just staring at me. It was the most horrible feeling in the world.

About two months after I first felt my sister’s distress, the war ended on November 11th.

As glad as I was when the war was over for the obvious reasons, I was more relieved that now I’d be able to safely cross the Atlantic.

The only thing worse than drowning, was continuously drowning.

It wasn’t hard to find her, not when I could feel her soul burning like it was. I really just had to follow the horrible feeling in my stomach.

I found her in some battle worn town, whose name I never bothered to find out, but it was in northeastern France, in Meuse, and I found her in a broken down building, only standing because it was made of concrete, probably the remnants of a bunker.

As in my dream, she sat in a dark corner, just staring with those lifeless eyes.

“Well,” she spoke quietly. “I knew you’d show up, that’s why I didn’t bother starting my journey.”

She was caked in mud and dirt, and probably blood, and wore a trench coat she had most likely stolen off some poor dead American soldier. She looked like she had been through hell and back, and considering she had been through the Great War, I figured that was close to the truth.

“Journey?”

“Away.”

“Hm,” my sister liked to travel away, away from me mostly. Even when she was living in the same country as me she had to be on the other side of it. “And you couldn’t have waited for me elsewhere?”

I could hear her soft chuckle. “Elsewhere, you mean where there was no war.”

“Imagine that, I don’t want to witness the aftermath of war.”

“You can’t stand to look at your dirty work, can you? I bet it grates on your nerves,” she smiled in the dark. “I mean, if we hadn’t been born, there would be no wars… right?”

It was best not to say anything. I had always imagined my sister writing out these speeches of hers and then spending countless hours reciting them to herself as she waited for me to be her captivated audience.

“But you know what’s funny about it all, something I figured out a long time ago? Humans were stifled before us. They had reached the end of what evolution had deemed them capable of.”

I hated when she referred to humans as though she weren’t one herself.

“But then suddenly maliciousness and evil was thrust upon humans, thanks to our lovely tribe, and suddenly overnight-” she snapped her fingers- “human civilization appeared.

“Think about it, just for a moment, the dawn of civilization was 10,000 years ago and we’ve been around for 10,000 years.”

Not too long ago my sister had told me how long we’d been around for, but I wasn’t sure if she was right. First of all, she counted years in centuries, when she bothered to count them at all, and secondly I had no way of checking her sources.

There really was no practical way for me to check how old we were. We didn’t even know where we were born, but we were fairly certain in was somewhere in the Middle East.

My sister had a bit of a direct line to the Goddess (the Goddess who made us immortal), which sometimes she lorded over me like it was a privilege, but I knew she detested the Goddess and their chats and I knew the Goddess kept having chats with her because my sister liked to get into trouble… the kind of trouble that cursed us to be immortals in the first place.

“So really, humans owe us a debt of gratitude that they can never repay us.”

“Oh yes, I can see them lining up in droves to thank us any day now. Thank you, my whole family had to die in the way, but at least I have my radio.”

“No really. I’ve thought a lot about this…” she continued, “because I have a lot of time to think. But that’s all we really have, isn’t it? Time… and the vastly nothing that awaits us when the sun expands,” she lifted her hand into the air. No one loved dramatics as much as she did, “and consumes earth.”

She closed her hand, crushing the imaginary earth held within and started laughing.

“Oh well be so fucked if we don’t get off earth by then. It’s one thing to die that way… quite another to live on through it.”

I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t seen her get like this in many years, but still I had seen her get this way – countless times – and I was all too used to it by now. I sat down in the corner next to her.

“I’ve have to burn my clothes after staying in this rat-hole for too long.”

“Nonsense, I ate all the rats weeks before you showed up.”

That was probably the truth.

“Why not just tell me what’s wrong, eh? We could have a real sisterly conversation. Tell me what happened here.”

She looked around the room in confusion. “Isn’t obvious?”

I shrugged.

She smiled.

“The Great War marched through here like an unstoppable parasite, having its fill on what little good humanity has left to salvage.”

“Oh by the Goddess, fine, I get it, let’s pretend like I can’t feel your emotions and nothing of great importance happened here.”

“Nothing of great importance? I think calling it the Great War deems it to be of great importance.”

“Oh please, there were wars before this one and there will be wars afterwards.”

“Yes… and they’ll only get worse. Not the people in them, they’ll stay as evil as they always were, but the technology. We jump started civilization, but maybe it was always meant to happen… maybe we just pushed it forward… but maybe we pushed it too fast.”

“Stop trying to sound all-knowing.”

“Mark my words, the end of humans will be humans.”

I couldn’t argue with her, because for all I knew it was true. Guns and bombs and planes, what was next? What war machine would show up next for humans to kill each other with?

“Well since when have you cared what happens to the mere humans?”

My sister came slowly to her feet. It wasn’t hard for her to look menacing, especially with eyes that looked as dead as hers. Even if I couldn’t die, I found her a little imposing, a little frightening.

She didn’t say a word to me, she just walked out of the door and I didn’t bother going after her, because it was pointless and I knew it was pointless.

That was the last time I saw her before she showed up in L.A., wearing the same trench coat and same lifeless stare and about to completely change my life.

And when you’re immortal, that’s almost impossible to do.

(I cut about 250 words from this off the beginning, because as all these short stories are really parts of a chapter, I realized the beginning had more to do with the novel than the past, and I didn’t want to post that. I was supposed to post another chapter of this book awhile ago that tied in with the Beowulf novel, but never got around to it. I promise I’ll try get that up here one day in the future, but it needed… tweaking. This chapter was more fun for me to write than it might be for you to read, because I know what great tragedy happened. Oh, and how I lord knowledge over the masses.)