Title: Old Man

Rating: K

Word Count: Drabble ~240 Words

Author Notes: Wrote this for my friend, MiryBrac, who wanted a bed time story...


There once was man with the face of a young man with the memories of Ten life times. He was a tired old man on the inside. On the outside, a lively youngster with a Christmas list in July.

His bright eyes held a darkness within them, remnants of his past. He tried to hide behind childish mannerisms and foolish dalliances but at the end of the day he knew he was old. Too old, far too senile to continue on this life.

He felt incrementally more tired as the days passed, one day melting and blending in with the next and the next. Weeks were nothing but flashes, distant memories packed away in his memory palace.

Friends came and went, living their lives as he continued through his. They saw the change in him but did not comment. He liked it that way. The unspoken truth hanging between them, each unwilling to break in front of the other. A truth he already knew. He was dying from the inside out. Sadness of almost one thousand years of loneliness, of being unable to be happy, had left a hole in his chest - one that he had never known how to patch up.

Perhaps one day he would be able to admit to himself that his path of life, his choices, were wrong. But for now, the old man with the face of a young man, kept on.


The End.