Beyond All and Everything


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I am all. I am nothing. I am everything. I am no one. I have tried to be someone, I guess. Someone I was never meant to be, apparently. Have the Gods bestowed this fate upon me, or was it Fate itself that decided to cross my path? I cannot remember who I was. I lost... myself along the way. There is not much I dwell upon, and certainly not about the ways of those... entities far above myself. I may be something, I may be nothing, but I am not a God.

Until now, I have never been tired. My body... what passes for my body, does not feel exhaustion, hunger, thirst, pain. I can walk through walls and pass through doors. If I want to, I can appear and disappear at will. I can even touch... but I cannot touch what I want to touch.

I want to touch life. I want to feel warmth again. The sun, the touch of one another, a bruise on my arm. I do not mind, I do not care, I just want to touch and to feel. It is so hard, and I wish I could have forgotten. Sometimes I wish I were the one to lose my memories. It would have made things a whole lot easier. Now I am left to ponder, to wander around in this void, this world, the other worlds, darkness and light combined, not knowing what to do.

His memories have been found and restored. His soul has been returned to the Afterlife, where he was welcomed by his father, friends and loved ones. It had been my task of the last millennia, to see that the Pharaoh was reborn, reunited, and returned. Home. I know how happy he is. I have seen for myself the brilliance of his soul; strong, balanced, confident.

Maybe I will tell him that I knew his name all along. Maybe I will tell him that I knew why he had to go through all these endeavours to discover his name again. Maybe I will tell him that I knew... I just knew. I just knew, and I never told him. The words that leave my mouth are twisted and ambiguous, tied together in a mass of incomprehensible vowels and consonants. They say my words are mysterious- to me, they sound like nonsense. Whatever I want to say, it is lost in an ocean of misinterpretations, of good intentions gone badly.

What... what am I doing here? Why am I not the one who receives or finds the answers he is looking for? Why is it that I do not have a quest to fulfil, a mission to accomplish? I can look, I can see, I can hear, I can tell... but I cannot touch, I cannot feel. I have been an outsider for so long that there is nothing left for me but to contemplate, to ponder, to think. I am sick and tired of thinking and pondering. I do not wish to contemplate any longer. I want to hold something dear; I want to feel overjoyed, happy, and sad. I cannot express any emotion and my face always looks the same.

I have asked myself a lot of things. I have asked myself what I did to have become the one I am now. An empty shell, not even moving by myself. I was tied to the Pharaoh's Court, I was bound to oaths, and yet everything has been broken. I have been pushed into this direction, answering the will of the Gods, following the path they laid out, pulled by the strings of fate. I do not think it was a conscious decision. I would have said a heartfelt 'no' if I had been properly asked.

Believe me, I do not wish this to happen to anyone. I thought I was to die when the Items were destroyed, buried by tons of sand, when the Pharaoh was finally home, his soul at rest for eternity. I did not think that I would continue to exist. Where would I be needed now? What was there left for me to do?

I feel abandoned, and maybe that is the only thing I can still feel. From everything that I see, everything that I hear, there is nothing but these feelings of being abandoned that are dominating my life... no, my existence. This is not life. This is... being. I am a being, not the man I used to be. I can contemplate until the end of time and still not have felt anything physical, anything emotional beyond this... abandonment. I would consider it hell, if I was not attached at life itself. I call it life, not my life, but everything around me. I am an outsider, but I am also a watcher. I know, I see, I hear. I do not feel. I do not touch. I do not hold anything dear.

Maybe there is something left out there for me to do. The Gods know that I have plenty of time on my hands to search for it, maybe my final mission to accomplish, maybe another Pharaoh that needs to be guided home. If this is immortality, I am not really sure if I like it or not. I do not think I want to give it up. I do not think I would like to find my eternal rest, even though the thought had crossed my mind.

Why?

Do I like being the bringer of doom, the one that speaks in riddles, the man whose arrival will be feared? No one invites me for a cup of tea; no one asks me how I am doing. I have shown nothing but being a mystery, and maybe that is what I am- a mystery, too profound to be solved, a cruel joke of the Gods to make people feel uncomfortable and burden them even more.

No, I do not think I like it. I think that I am not ready to leave this mortal plane even though there is nothing left here for me to do. Maybe I am just forgotten by the same Gods who have steered me, maybe they are sleeping in their heavenly pantheons to leave poor little old me behind, with nothing on his hands but to think, think, think, and make him yearn for everything that is out of his reach.

Forgive me. I have no more answers, only questions. So many questions... I have to find their answer. That will be my purpose for now. People are intelligent. Mankind is wise, at least some of them are. One of them must know the answer; few of them must be able to help me. I do not care if I am deluding myself at this point; delusion is all I can live with next to my abandonment.

I do not live. I am not alive. I want to be able to feel again, to feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, the cold of the winter numbing my fingers, the rain soaking me to the bone. I am convinced that it is not meant to be... if I already survived three millennia, and the Items that made this survival possible have been destroyed and I am still here... what is there left for me? Dwelling around for eternity? All these questions... won't they drive me mad?

How I wish I would know everything. I may be around for centuries, millennia to come, and I still will not know. I am lots of things, but not a God, and certainly not all-knowing. I tried to become someone, but I forgot myself. I even forgot how to breathe. I only wish that I forgot everything about my life as well... but yet again, fate has always proven itself to be cruel.

There is nothing left for me but to move on, keep dwelling, and hoping that I will find the answers... and keep longing, longing for that one little possibility that will make me feel again. One day. I have all the time in the world.

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