[ WP ] You live on a world full of immortal beings . For the first time in the history of the world 's existence , somebody has died .

`` **How long have you been a part of us? A few hundred years? A thousand? You are young, naive, you know much less than what you've observed. **'' Somewhere in the darkness a voice like the gentle light of a single candle called out. Silence, followed by a second voice. 
 
 `` *I know enough, Aeternus. I know that this happening is as much an infant to you as it is to-*'' 
 
 `` **Nothing is infant in my mind. Every notion I've ever had is ancient and crooked. They shuffle to and fro in time to a series of steps they know so well it might be assumed they created them in the beginning of all things. You are young. You can not understand. **'' 
 
 A wisp of shadow lifted an appendage of influence that barely shifted the murky smoke of existence. It crept forward. Found a place where something was laid gently down, an empty space quickly filling with nothing. It had been something so shortly before. Something else entirely. 
 
 `` *It had... was... being. It is no longer*,'' the second voice wavered like a light flickering against the wax, `` *It is... was... mine own, was n't it? *'' 
 
 `` **It was. **'' 
 
 `` *It then... *'' the appendage seemed to grow more solid, seemed to press down hard. 
 
 `` **Left, young one. It then left, and is no longer. What you feel now is pain. What you feel now is loss. What you feel now, what you've never known, is the burden of feeling. **'' 
 
 There shone a ray of color on the bleak edge of nothing, a bright white flash that was its own body for the briefest of moments before leaving as quickly as it came. The second voice made a series of noises like syllables struggling to take their first steps. Wordless grunts and choked half-phrases. Each sound was torn to ending, cracked, raw. The child was becoming more real in the dark. what had begun as a limb of just barely realized existence was filling in with matter and magic and thought-stuff. It rested on the same empty space it had known. The empty space that had been anything but empty, that it could fade into the fabric of non-existence ached in the Second speaker, burned and clawed and made everything it was feel tender and unsafe. 
 
 `` **This is what would be called death in other places**,'' the first voice, Aeternus, seemed puzzled. `` **It is something we left behind in a world far from here. When we became what we are. **'' 
 
 `` *Not far enough, not far enough, this thing, this death is not a goodly thing. It is not a fair thing. It is... *'' the Second voice trailed off, and turned his gaze away. 
 
 `` **It is the way things are for most. Not for us. Not for you. I am sorry. **'' 
 
 `` *Sorry? Sorry?! *'' A young thing of solid stuff moved angrily in the inky black, thrust limbs wildly and without knowledge. A desperate attempt to throw from its frame the agony that wracked it. `` *How can you be sorry?! You simply are! Have always been! All knowledge and existence rests on you, and this thing, this one thing, this would destroy me, this thing that would make me... bleed, *'' he only realized the word as he spoke it. The new thing fell down and hit a surface below. The Second voice seemed more hollow from this huddled mass of existence. `` *You c- can not work against this thing, you can not give me what I no longer have, you can not be sorry. *'' 
 
 `` **It is not for your loss that I grieve. That is as it must be. Yet I am sorry. **'' Aeternus' spoke evenly as fresh ice, a good deal colder. The newly born something curled in tighter on itself. 
 
 `` *What then*,'' it asked. `` *What gives you such... sorrow. *'' 
 
 `` **For what must follow. We do not die. We do not feel. **'' 
 
 `` *I am changing. What is happening to me? *'' there was a soft scraping as the Second voice pulled its arms across its knees. It could feel itself fading `` *I... am. In a different way, I am. What is this? What have you done? *'' 
 
 `` **Tell me of what you lost. Tell me while you can. **'' 
 
 There was a whimper, a ragged, shuddering breath. `` *I've lost... what I had. I... I feel I... Did I love... love it? What I've lost? What was mine? *'' The thought was utterly alien, lost. At once, the Second voice felt unfamiliar to even himself. `` *What am I? *'' 
 
 `` **More important is what you are no longer. I am sorry. You were young. Dreams, however, do not die. Dreams do not love. You are no longer of us. As these things are, you are being reborn. Goodbye. **'' 
 
 `` *I... I loved. I can not... I must be more... *'' the word rolled easily from a mouth unfamiliar with even the core concept. The second voice was familiar, however, with truth. This was truth. It was fading faster now. The mass of choice and freedom so recently congealed in the ever shifting dream-dust was quickly melting away. Aeternus sighed loudly. Pushed the last remnants of a young fantasy past the veil with a will that even he did not quite understand. The darkness stopped its shifting. Nothing filled all. Dreaming was as it always was. 
 
 Somewhere far from nothing, far past the skein of belief and reality, a child opened its eyes. It opened its mouth. Remembered. With a sorrow grown feral it began to scream.
