This story was inspired by fanfic I read a long time ago, about a boy receiving his family's fire pokemon. One was a charizard that had lived for centuries, and so on. But what caught my attention then was a throw-away line about a rapidash.
Decades
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When, a yearling, he was captured, he was happy.
His kind were not long lived. They were born. They grew, they grew stronger – or, mostly, died. Were eaten, failed to eat themselves, sickened, died in accidents. The odds were against them. If they lived, for three years they grew and grew stronger. On the fourth, they weakened and found that fate had not been avoided, only postponed. And they were eaten, or they starved, or they sickened, or died in accident.
To be captured meant food. It meant safety. It meant a chance to see things beyond the small forest. Most importantly, it meant his life.
There were battles. He was fed at times. Sometimes he was released for a task. Mostly he remained inside. There, no time passed.
The boy said that by being inside there, he would live longer. Not just to the three years that was all he could have hoped for. Not just to the fourth, in weakness he could survive with a human, and through the fourth as his body failed, until he did what could never otherwise and died without being killed.
But for decades.
When it continued, he was grateful.
The passing of time was hard to tell, but his trainer grew, from a small boy into a larger one. And he grew as well, from small to larger, and then, in a burst, to his adult size and form.
Inside, the boy who was growing older told him, time didn't pass. If it wasn't for this, he would not have been trained. He would only live two years with his catcher, be able to truly fight for one of these, be at his strongest for not even that. And raising him, how hard it would be, trying to pack in so many battles, so much training, into such a short period.
When the boy said this, he was confused a moment, because to him, the training was constant. And then he understood again, because he knew the battles were spread out in location, even if time had stopped for him, and he realized the boy meant that it would be impossible to find so many battles fast enough.
And why wouldn't he be grateful for this?
And when it only continued, he thought nothing of it.
He thought nothing, or little enough. The times to think were in battle, and there was only the lunge and dodge and hit.
If it seemed harder, who could say? The opponents varied in strength. His trainer was growing into an adult, moving up in the ranks.
And if his fur had a touch of dullness to it, what of it?
When he realized, it was already past.
It was not a sudden realization, but something that came up upon him so calmly, and he felt as if he'd known for a long time. How what used to be effortless took effort. How he was slower and stiffer, how he never seemed to have the boundless energy he remembered.
How, even if time had stopped, even if he had not lived, he was still past his third year.
He had been told he would live for decades. And it was true, that such time had passed, that his trainer had been a child and was no longer. It was true, that he would have been long dead without capture.
But he had not lived for decades, could never have lived for decades. His life could only be paused, not extended.
He took it calmly. There was nothing else for him to do. He had entered his fourth year.
If he reflected that he had not lived for decades before dying, what of this to his trainer? The last few months of his life could be spent, would be spent in ten minute intervals of battle, and in this manner last, and this would bring the trainer further along his path.
And if he reflected sadly that he had not lived, what of it?