Ambassador of Death

A girl, a Wizard. In the fullness and the fury of the stars, which shine down upon us with open eyes
forever, the wizard offers an elixir that Death might never find her.
Wizard: The body, with such a potion, may be tricked to live forever, but the soul cannot be made less
rich in the coming of its time. Our hearts and minds do not decay because they must degrade, but rather
degrade because they must decay. Richness is the juggernaut rolling, and its avalanche the aggregate of
excess. Your cup shall need a tray and that tray shall need a tray, so that as the fountain spits her velvet
pearls caught in mason nets, so you shall be an effervescence ever caught up in yourself. It is a terror to
be God.
Girl: It is terror to be me, is it not terror to be you? I live, and love, and laugh, but sunsets come and
sadness reigns. What waxes on is the devils gift of understanding pain. If I were as old as you, would I
then comprehend your words? Should shadows fall but never follow, am I not then something whole
than something to-be-hollow?
Wizard: You know not what it means to live forever. To never be nothing is a sin, it must be. Yet to be
something has its price, and only those foolish enough to pay it offer what I carry. If there are no
barriers, if the human is in fact the infinite, does it not recoil upon itself? Are we not birds who pluck our
feathers? If I am forever, then I am forever.
Girl: But to die of sleep is an end not worth living for.
Wizard: An end is all we live for. More life is salt inside the well, when the threat of senescence is gone
is when earth becomes a paradise called hell.
Girl: What if my passion is prepared to prevail?
Wizard: I say only that you are doomed to fail. This is a land perched above a bottom, and there is too
much freedom to fall. Neither sea nor seamen is saved. What you want is what youll get, it will be the
first and perhaps the last.
Girl: Why give this gift if you call it a curse?
Wizard: There are as many reasons as there are people to excuse. Sometimes anothers pain can save us
for a moment from our own suffering. In my business, a moment becomes long indeed. But I do this not
for myself, I do this for you. You might say I have lived for you. Living for others is prime virtue, and I am
nothing if not virtuous. Tell me will you live or will you die?
Girl: I will live, I say, or else Ill die.
Wizard: Here is the potion then, become what you are wont to be.
Girl: I will be what I will be. She drinks the potion and becomes immortal.
Girl: It will be years before I rid myself of death. Let us meet again when I can forever hold my breath.
Wizard: We will not meet again, though we may see each other by the way. We may converse, we may
embrace, we may smile, we may laugh, but my child, my poor defenseless child, we will never meet
again


Situation and circumstance here replace rhetoric as the major vehicle of metaphor. Rhetoric is not
discounted here, nor lazy, but rather secondary to the shape rather than the shaping agent.