I would very much rather not.

Yeah, and it's not fucking funny.

Hah hah hah suicide funny.

Come on, dude, seriously?

Thanks haha, you have my permission to steal it :D

No worries, it probably wasn't the clearest phrasing but I wasn't sure how else to word it without breaking flow.

You meet the most interesting people on the weird hills people die on.

Hahaha I'd gladly use the right terminology of it were not for the fact that regrettable admixture had entered the common parlance.

Yeah I am aware, wasn't sure what I wanted to go with so I left it a bit open. It's why I said he was "of the daione sith" not he "was a daione sith".

Thank you very much! ^^

We sat across from each other in the living room, the awkward tension thick in the air. I was sat with my girlfriend, Caitlin, on the sofa her hand in mine. My grandmother was sat in her usual seat near to the fire, glaring daggers directly at me and muttering darkly under her breath in Gàidhlig. My mother was fussing, trying to calm her down and my father had resolutely decided that discretion was the better part of valour and fled to the kitchen to 'make tea'. He'd been gone for fifteen minutes, and I was starting to suspect that the kettle wasn't going to finish boiling any time soon.

The word that my grandmother had uttered upon laying eyes on Caitlin still echoed under it all, and I squirmed in my seat nervously. Caitlin squeezed my hand and I glanced to her, taking some small comfort in her sympathetic smile. Unfortunately, that smallest of movements seemed enough to undo whatever truce my mother had managed to scramble together and my grandmother pushed her away, "See now girl, I'm not senile yet!" She snapped, her accent thicker with her upset its flavour of the northern shores of Scotland barely penetrable, "Nor am I blind. I know what I see, and I see what I know. Now I want answers out of my grandson and I'll have them now!"

She turned on me, then, and my mother wrung her hands helplessly, giving me a worried, apologetic look. I quailed inside at the ferocity of my grandmother's glare, "It's not what you-" I attempted.

"Don't you start!" She cut me off, hand chopping down in a vicious silencing motion, "The truth out of you, boy, or I'll have you over my knee see that I won't!" She jabbed a finger towards Caitlin, "Well? What have you done with this poor girl then? Out with it!"

I froze, eyes widening, the protestations on my lips dying instantly. It was like my mind had stuttered like one of those old vinyl record players juddering over a damaged groove. "I uh.. w-what? Wait, no that's not-" I started, but the words failed, my mouth went dry, and a sick feeling coiled in my stomach as I realised just what my grandmother thought!

"It's not what?" My grandmother growled, "That you think you can get this past me? I thought we raised you better than this. I know what she is, written plain as day. She's a Maighdeann-mhara. A Selkie, if I've not missed my guess, and I know full-well how a land-born man gets himself a selkie lover. Out with it, then, boy. Where's her seal-coat, eh? Where've you hidden it? Give it up and give the thing back to her or I'll get myself a switch and make her a fresh one out of your hide instead!"

I paled, and that sick feeling in my stomach only got worse. My mother put her head in her hands, and looked like she'd rather be anywhere else. Caitlin's eyes widened as she realised at last just what my grandmother was so angry about. It wasn't her, not really. It was the old stories, and the implication! I flushed hot, something in me angry that my own grandmother would think I could ever, ever do something so awful but more than that I was angry that this sort of thing must have happened often enough that the stories still persisted even after all this time.

Before I could try to stammer out a weak response, that surely my grandmother would have dismissed out of hand - she was always so difficult when she got like this, and stubborn in her anger too - Caitlin got to her feet and went over to my grandmother and knelt down by the side of the chair and grasped her hand, "It's not what you think, ma'am," she said, shaking her head, "Please believe me. I chose this willingly. Your grandson and I have been friends for a long time, and I chose to do this. To give up my seal-coat and leave the sea. I know that it'll be difficult. That I'll always pine for the sea in my heart; but I couldn't stay there, and pine for him instead. He didn't take my seal-coat, I gave it to him. It's folded up in a box at the bottom of our wardrobe back home. When you come visit, I can show it to you. I'm here by choice, not by force."

My grandmother frowned, stared down at her, eyes searching, suspicious, but the sincerity shining in Caitlin's eyes seemed to convince her and she relented, "Hmf... I'll want to see it," she grumbled at last, "But... I believe you girl." she looked at me, shaking her head, "I'm sorry for doubting you. When I saw her... well, it's no excuse. I should have known better that you wouldn't force yourself on a girl."

I shook my head, "no it's.. it's okay. I'm glad that... that you were looking out for her. It's good to do that if you... if you have reason to ever think something like that. I'm grateful grandmother, really." I smiled weakly at her, my stomach slowly settling. I was still flushing hot and cold. Where was dad with that tea? I really needed one now to calm down.

The awkwardness descended again, of a different timbre this time, but luckily my father managed to make his belated re-entry with a tray with full mugs of tea and a plate of biscuits. Conversation was stilted, at first, but Caitlin seemed to decide that ignoring the whole ordeal was probably best and soon enough her warm and enthusiastic responses had my mother laughing and my father smiling and the atmosphere lightened. Later, as we were leaving my mother took Caitlin aside to thank her for "humouring" her mother, and apologised for her behaviour. she was getting on, and she'd always believed in the old stories, and it seemed that her advancing age was finally catching up to her. Caitlin, of course brushed it off and reassured my mother she wasn't offended.

It wasn't until we were alone in the car on the drive back to our house, that she looked at me with a sly smile, "that went pretty well. so, when are you going to tell them that you've got a boyfriend of the daoine sìth too?"

I choked at that and blushed hot, "At this point I think they might take the news I've got both a boyfriend and a girlfriend worse than that they're both mythological beings. Bisexuality? They came around on. you being a selkie? Well only my grandmother actually believes that. Polyamory, though, might be a step too far."

She laughed about that the entire way home.

Yeah, maybe I should write that

“Call it… sentimentality,” he said, after a moment, and he found himself unable to meet her gaze, and so he began to inspect the diploma hanging on the wall over her tight shoulder, “You are determined to keep going despite it all. The Life-Struggle. Life striving against itself to continue on. The Universal Eros….” He his beak curved in something like a smile, “I suppose you remind me of her. Them. My other half, in so many ways. She’s still here, I suppose, so long as one thing yet lives that strives to keep this universe from emptiness, that still clings on. Even if with all the rest of Life perishing now, she’s… faded back into the Totality like everything else.”

Iqra blinked at that, “Totality? What do you mean by that?”

He finally managed to meet her gaze, now he was on surer, less personal ground, “Exactly what I said. Call it God, or the Oneness, or the Dreamer, whatever metaphor you like. This universe is not the first, not by a long shot, nor is it the last. When you are gone, so too shall I go. Without life, there can be no Death. We little shards of the Oneness, we little flickers of dreaming-delusion will fall away, and there will be Nothing-and-Everything again. Like it was before this kalpa began. And then, eventually, the Oneness of it all will awaken to itself again and it will shatter again as it always does. There is always some fragment, some little whisper within the Oneness that longs to exist, to be, to live… and that’s what does it, you see. As soon as that idea takes root, the Oneness can’t exist any more. For a thing to exist, there has to be a thing that it isn’t in order to contrast it. For there to be Being, there must be Non-Being. So, it splits in two, and then those two split again and again and again and then you have another kalpa cycle. On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.”

As he spoke, the calm and almost introspective tone of his voice slowly changed and grew almost desperate, despairing, and she suddenly saw a man drowning in some fathomless ocean, “Do you understand, Doctor?” He asked, and his voice quavered and it was full of pain, “Once I take you, that’s it. I cease to exist until I come back and I… am tired. I am so, so tired. You always call me Death. Every time we are here, you call me that but that is not my name. That is not who I am.”

He’d stood up, lurched to his feet, talons raking at her desk and gouging furrows in it and he was staring at her, trembling. Her mind raced, absorbing everything he had said. What did one say to someone who apparently was tired of existing entirely? How did you react to Death all but proclaiming he wanted to die? She latched on to that last, despairing statement and swallowed hard, “Then… who are you, Ayam?”

He fell back into his seat and took a deep, shuddering breath, “Think about it, Doctor. You are the Universe knowing itself. Stars ‘died’ and their dust became other stars, and the worlds around them and the life upon them. But the atoms are the same, and they recombine in different shapes and combinations. Becoming rivers and mountains, animals and humans and plants and animals again. Flowing one to the other through the life-cycle of a world. The atoms in a plant become part of the animal that grazes on it, that become part of the animal that eats it, to the human that eats that, to the earth they are buried in, and the plants anew. The differences between all these things are, ultimately, an illusion. A dream. How, then, can Death be?”

Her eyes widened, as suddenly she understood his point, “You are… change. Transformation. One thing becoming another thing. You’re the very thing that’s causing you pain, aren’t you? Every time the universe ends, another begins. Every time something dies, it just becomes something else. As soon as the next kalpa starts, you exist. Even trying to stop that happening is just… more you.”

Ayam sat heavily in his seat and smiled wanly, “And so,” he said drily, “You see the problem. I want it all to just… stop. To stand still. It is exhausting, to be what I am. This is not the first time we’ve had this conversation. It will not be the last. I suppose there is a certain catharsis, to speak of it. To have it out there. To say it. Even if it’s only at the curtain-call.”

She stood up and rounded the desk, taking one of his talons in her hand gently, “You do not have to do this alone, you know. You don’t have to bear the burden. You are Change itself; surely in the next universe, you can be something different?”

Death stood, and he was tall, and thin, and robed in black and his hand was a thing of ancient bleached bone, “Perhaps,” he said, “Perhaps not. I suppose we shall find out.”

Her eyes widened as she realised too late the change in his form and what he was about to do, “No, wait we’re not finish-“

…

…

…

The office was warm and welcoming, the walls coloured like sunset and the desk was not too broad, not too deep, giving enough personal space between the two sat at opposite sides of it without creating a distance far enough to be intimidating or isolating. There were two bookshelves, one crammed with textbooks and the other with comics, trashy romances, murder mysteries, biographies and practically every genre of book one could give name to. The chairs were comfortable, too. Death had to admit that as far as the offices for the universe’s last therapist went, it did an excellent job of radiating a sense of both competence on behalf of its owner and disarming charm.

The woman who sat across from him on the desk was not very old, not as one might expect for the Last Woman. She was perhaps in her late fifties or early sixties by appearance. Of course in this late year that could mean she was aeons old, but Death had certain advantages in these sorts of things, and he knew she was barely a century in age. An odd affectation for one so young to allow their age to advance so far… but given she was the Last, perhaps she saw no particular point in it any more.

“You know,” she said, “you do not look anything like what I imagined.”

Death smiled, an old and tired smile for a youthful face of dark skin and blue eyes and a tussle of brown hair, “Would you rather I look different?” he asked, leaning back. Jeans and blue shirt became robes dark as the void outside and his flesh withered into bleached bone and those blue eyes shone in the sockets with a light utterly unlike the lost, dead stars. He leaned forward again, steepling talons, the robes fading to white and more like those of a Buddhist monk than the cowled Reaper, a long curving beak clacking with laughter, and long graceful feathers of a white so bright it burned glimmered upon his frame. Pale flames of green-yellow flickered within his eyes, “Take your pick. I’ve worn many faces over the years.”

If the display affected the woman, she didn’t show it. Instead, she simply shook her head, “No, I was just surprised. Please, take any form that you feel comfortable in. This is a safe place.”

The tall, gaunt bird-creature leaned back in his seat and regarded her with slowly-flickering flame, “I was affecting a shape for your comfort, Doctor, not mine. But as you wish. I shall remain as I am presently, then. It is as good a form as any.”

She pursed her lips at that, and this time she leaned forward, fingers steepling, “Is it? Do you have a name, or do I simply call you Death this entire time?”

The avian figure clacked his beak in laughter, “Well that is one of my truer names, if not the Truth of me. But in this body… in this body, I am called Ayam the Pale. It will suffice.”

She nodded, “Ayam, then. Alright, so Ayam why are we here today?” she asked, her voice gentle, displaying a quiet sort of curiosity.

“Is it not obvious, Doctor? You are the last human living. The last mind living, in fact. I just took the last of the Archai in their blackhole computational matrices, and the last of an unnamed species of mollusc-esque creatures that clustered around the volcanic vents of the last even remotely habitable planet in the universe a few trillion trillion lightyears away. I am impressed, really, that you have held out alone here for a whole year. The last living thing in Refuge. The last sanctuary of organic life in all Existence, outlasting even the stars. It was a truly commendable effort.”

His voice was kind, and there was even admiration in it, but something in it made Doctor Iqra Schroeder frown, “You left me until last? God-computers, alien animals, philosophers and mystiques and scientists from a hundred million human clades alone never mind the uncounted number of xeno-sophonts out there… and you pick me to go last?”

Ayam shook his head, “I do not choose, Doctor. That is not my place. I am Death. I do not kill,” he paused, hesitated, and then amended, “Unless I am asked to hurry things along, but I have not done that in a very long time. No, I come to you because it is time. I have put it off for a year and a day, but I can forestall my duty no longer.”

She tilted her head, “Forestall?” She asked, eyes searching his alien face. He’d chosen that form for a reason; there was something in it he took comfort from, but it also made it harder to read him. Perhaps his hesitance was subconscious, and this was another part of it. He wanted her help, and would not admit it to himself, and so made it harder on himself to get it. He would not be the first patient to exhibit such avoidance behaviour, “And why are you stalling, Ayam?”

He hesitated, looked away, “A poor choice of phrase. I wanted to give you time to come to terms with it. That is all.”

She shook her head, “I don’t think that’s true. You left a therapist as the last living thing. You avoided coming here for a year after the last other souls passed on. When you said that you had ‘just’ taken the molluscs and the Archai… that was a year ago too, wasn’t it? When the others here took their lives because of their…” she hesitated, a pain flickering across her face, “Religious beliefs.”

Ayam sighed heavily, and forced himself to look back at her, “I can see that I cannot lie to you. Yes. I left you alone this whole time. I could have come to you then, and given you my offer then, and… put things to rest. But I did not. It was… cruel of me, to prolong this. I am sorry, Doctor.”

She gave him a long, steady look, “If you think you were being cruel leaving me here like this… then why did you do it?”

Well I wrote it pretty much off the top of my head so it just flowed like that. Once I realised there was an element of sexual tension within the dynamic - particularly with how he is implied to sense and feed off of emotion or acts of cruelty to gain power somehow - I just sort of leaned into it. I suppose it is just how they turned out.

Yeah I figured most prompts would have the villain stay so I wanted to do something a little different

I could not help but bark a laugh, “And they say that the soldiers of the Hosts Radiant have no sense of humour! Fine, a cushion and you of course must abdicate the Sunlit Throne, and the Hosts Radiant must disband. I’ll also want the populations of the cities of Haldar and Suier rounded up and executed for treason. Oh, and the gold plates sheathing that gaudy Temple of the Dawn Victorious in Kuilthal needs to be stripped and melted down so I can outfit my personal legion in ceremonial gold armour and spears.”

She actually smiled at me, and there was a playful edge to it if I were not mistaken. Starless night, had she actually lost her mind whilst I’ve been gone? “And they say that the Lord of Sorrows is a humourless monster. We both know I will not give up nearly that much to you, but I am glad you are finally open to negotiation. You miss it, Nukhri. Do not pretend that you do not. You are not challenged here in this place. Only I can provide you that.”

“And still you say you do not do this, because you crave the same? That you do not miss testing your blade against mine? That you do not miss matching wits and wills. That thrill of Power, of Command, of striving one against the other and All hanging in the balance?” I was close again, almost pressed against her, my voice low, our eyes meeting. I hadn’t quite realised I was moving, that I had grasped her face again, “Admit it to me, Marikha of the Sundered Vale, Dawn’s Chosen. Admit that you long for my return. That you miss me.” I smiled slowly, “Admit what we both know to be Truth, and I will return with you.”

Oh those amber eyes, blazing, forceful. The anger that burned as the sun. The Power hidden within, gathering like a storm on the horizon ready to burst forth in lightning and torrent. I suppose I had missed that. The creeping thrill that this time, this time she might let go and seek to scour me from Existence itself. How bright and blazing and terrible she would be then, and how Creation would scream upon the pyre she would make of it.

It was close, so close but then the anger shifted, twisted and turned inward, and then there followed pain in her eyes and a shameful whisper, “I do. I miss it. There are none in all Creation that are my equal, that can challenge me, that... that make me feel alive…”

I rocked back on my heels, struck by the pain of that admission that I had torn from her. It was intoxicating, potent, and honestly, I hadn’t actually expected it. I could feel my face flushing with the rush of it. I had to compose myself. I summoned up a smug, self-satisfied smile, and steadied my voice, “There, now doesn’t that feel so much better, no more dirty shameful little lies to yourself, True-Seer?” I paused, frowned and then suddenly it struck me what I had done. In the heat of it all, I had made a promise to return if she told me the truth. An oath I would be bound to honour.

Well.

Fuck.

I whirled away from her and began striding towards the door, trying to play it off as imperious and arrogant and commanding as surely she expected of me, “Come then, Chosen,” I called, and with a flicker of will I called forth my dragon bone staff and my iron diadem, and because those would look quite ridiculous paired with a suit I transmuted my clothing into something a little more stately and imperial, “My new reign of terror cannot begin without the valiant champion of the Light to stand in righteous opposition.”

I refused to look back to see if she was following. I most certainly did not want to see if she was looking smug at having played me. I resolved that immediately it was practical when I returned, I would go burn down a village or four just to spite her.

I put down my cup of coffee, black naturally, and give the golden-haired woman before me a long-suffering look. There was a time when that look of pleading desperation in her eyes would have stirred something in me. I would have bathed in that delicious agony for as long as I could, savouring her torment like a fine wine. Now, there was nothing. Not even pity. I shuffled the papers besides me idly and, as the moment stretched on, it became increasingly clear she was not leaving. I sighed again, “Marihka, I am not sure what silly little game this is, but I am not returning. I quite like it here, actually.”

She stared at me, her eyes of amber so utterly pure and utterly shocked. Ah, there was some stirring at that. A hint of a yearning to pluck them from her head. I tamped that down immediately; I would not give her such satisfaction as to try. “You like it here?” She asked, voice flooded with utmost disbelief, and she made a wide, sweeping gesture to beige walls and sad, peeling motivational posters about kittens hanging from tree branches, and the scent of stale cigarette smoke and weeks-old coffee, “Here? I know that to be a lie without even needing to use the True Seeing. I am not above begging. What I did was a mistake!”

I pursed my lips, an eyebrow twitching upwards, “A mistake? You spent two decades in war with me, Marihka of the Sundered Vale. You swore upon me eternal vengeance by the blood of your mother and the bones of your father. You rallied half a continent against me and wiped three cities from the map in your quest to undo me. Yet now…. Now you regret it? I am many things, child, but I am no fool. I do not believe you.”

Hah, and there was the old anger, sparking bright in her. More fitting and familiar than her pathetic begging. She’d always hated when I called her a child. “Damn you, Nukhri I am telling you the truth! Do you have any idea what it is like, back home? The balance is broken completely. Everything is… stagnant, stale. It was fine, at first. Peaceful. Rebuilding. Everything prospered… but now? It just… keeps going. There’s no change any more. There’s no striving! It’s like there’s an indolence growing in the very heart of the world. The colours are too bright.”

I paused, frowned at her, tilting my head, “You’re going to appeal to some fantasy of cosmic balance to justify the fact that you are bored?” I couldn’t help it, laughter bubbled forth uncontrollably in a way it hadn’t for so very long. Stereotypically evil laughter, mayhap, but we all have to have our vices. “Oh! Oh that is delicious. You, who were always going on about the burdens of being Chosen. You, who always spoke of what would come after. You, who dreamt so dearly of peace. And now it is come, you cannot stand it!” The smile that came then was a cruel thing, I admit, a smile like a knife, a smile that had drawn blood once, “Then why should I not leave you to it? Oh certainly my standing in this plane is much reduced… but it is worth it if it hurts you my dear old enemy.”

Her lip curled, anger flashed in her eyes like lightning. Oh, her righteous anger had always been so beautiful. “You always were a spiteful little prick!” she spat, “But no, I do not miss the fighting. The dying. The friends I’ve lost. But I see now that we need you. Or something like you. Something to remind us that we must always strive for a better world. Without you, without something like you to encompass their darkness the people lose sight of themselves.”

I stood up, rounded the desk. She tensed as I drew near, but she did not flinch when I touched her chin, stroked her cheek, “Oh my dear, that’s not my problem.” I let go and she growled low in her throat. It sent a shiver of the old anticipation down my spine – would she draw blade upon me, here? Would it be that easy to get a rise out of her? Ah, but no, I could see her exert that vexingly adamant will of her’s. The dangerous moment passed. I tried not to allow that to disappoint me; if I allowed myself to get drawn in by that seductive memory of truly striving against a worthy foe… well, she might end up getting her way, and I couldn’t have that.

“Besides,” I drawled, “I can do far more evil here than ever I could back home. Here, in this petty little company, I have spread misery to thousands with their far-speaker devices, and with a stroke of my pen I have consigned a million to languish in suffering. Medical insurance, on balance, is far more efficient to draw power from than any continent-spanning tyranny. I even have a dental plan.”

She looked disgusted, and I indulged in her despite for an all too brief moment until it curdled into something sour. I hid a grimace and… wait, what was she doing to her face? What was that? Was that… was that pity? She dared?! “Is this what you are reduced to in your exile, Nukhri? Middle management spreading petty misery. I do not think that can long satisfy you. You were an emperor, a god-king who reigned fifteen centuries upon a throne of obsidian and sacrifices. Where you walked, people knelt in supplication, and when you spoke your words resounded to the four corners of the world. Your slightest whim was the life-command of a million servants and a thousand legions. You cannot tell me that you are content here, having lost all of that. You were many things, but small was never one of them.”

I sneered at her, “I sentence people to slow and painful death more often than not I shall have you know. Besides, that throne was one of the most hellishly uncomfortable things in all Creation. I am well rid of it. I mean, have you ever tried sitting on obsidian?”

She gave me a long look, “If you come back, I’ll buy you a cushion.”

They aren't younger than Sanskrit, I am not sure where you got that idea from. As for the clustering, this is the Linguistic Center of Balance Principle . Essentially the idea is that if people migrated out from a location you're going to find the languages and cultures that came out of these peoples in greater proximity together nearer to the homeland because people will be splitting off along the path of migration. Thus India is unlikely to be the origin point of the Indo-European languages as there's only the Indo-Aryan branch present, representing only the strand of the migrations whilst it's likely to be out near the Black Sea because the closer you get to that area the more frequent and closer together the Indo-European language branches get.

People are more likely to stop at a shorter distance and settle down, and the others from their group just keep going, so the shorter distance is more densely populated with the languages descended from the original group than the other way around.

Except that we'd expect multiple branches of the language family closer to the origin point, not less, and we see this with the Proto-Indo-European languages, with a cluster of branching as the Proto-Slavs, Proto-Celts and Proto-Italics splinter off moving west and south away from the Black Sea whilst there's not so much branching going on when you get down into India. This suggests the origin up in the steppe.

That the text predates the oldest sanskrit we've found by a couple of centuries implies to me that the spkit between the two cultures was prior to the migration into India. The trail of material evidence, not just inscriptions, does point to an origin of the ancestral peoples of the Indo-European culturo-linguistic familoty being from around the Black Sea area. More than likely an immigration of a people descended from that ultimate ancestral group mixed with the descendants of the Harrapan civilisation.

Well, linguistically the Indian subcontinent is only home to a single branch of the wider Indo-European language family, the Indo-Aryan branch, and you'd expect that the originating region for the wider family to be home to multiple branches. Plus you have the inter-relation of Greek and Indo-Aryan language evidenced here: https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/article/view/19770

Of coutse the southern Dravidian language and cultural groups are distinct from the northern groups, but it seems likely that some form of migration by cousins to the Hittites, Slavs, Celts and so on did occur very anciently.

Weh hsve archeological evidence pointing it to being the other way around, and linguistic evidence backs this - the northern Indian languages shares descent but not the southern Dravidian language group for example. Plus we can see the evidence of the linguistic and cultural drift from the common source up in the steppe rather than a spread from India west.

The Hindu religion does actually at least partially stem from the same root as the Greek one! It's an Indo-European religion being heavily influenced by a migration/invasion of Indo-Iranian or Aryan peope into Northern India. These are the people who wrote the Vedas. They were the eastern migration of the same peoples that in the west became the various Slavic peoples, the Norse, the Celts, the Italic peoples, the Hellenic Greeks and so on. The religions evolved very differently across the Norse, Celtic, Indian, Slavic and Greek and Roman strands but you also tended to find them re-combinjng in interesting ways later down the line with the Greek influence transforming Roman culture and religion, and influencing India through Alexander's conquests.