Time Flies

1

Immortality isn't something you want.

Most people think it's fun, to be able to live eternally without a fear of death.

It isn't.

My name is Emma Taylor. I was born on the 28th of July 1903, in Manchester, England. Notice anything about that date? Perhaps something majorly traumatic happened on my 11th birthday, like one of the biggest wars in history starting? Young 10-year-old me didn't believe a war could start, but she was wrong. She knew there were political issues, but she never expected a war to begin, let alone one of the bloodiest wars in history. 5th, to be precise. So, when it finally happened, it scared the hell out of me.

I sat on the train, head against window, with my bag next to me. It was quite big, with only the essentials and a few small extras. A few changes of clothes, about 10 lots of underwear and 10 pairs of socks (we can wash them), a couple notebooks, a few books to read, a sketchbook, a pen and an art set with some pencils, a rubber, coloured pencils and a pencil sharpener. There was also a pencil lengthener with it. I had a packet of Oreo cookies and a Coca-Cola to eat and drink on the journey. After a few hours I arrived at my new home. That was, until the war ended. I suppose I was lucky, my new family didn't live far from my best friend Pearl, I could still send them letters, maybe even go out and see them if I were lucky.

My new mother introduced me to my new room. There was a bookshelf, with some books already on there. I put my own books on the empty bottom shelf and placed a couple bookshelf ornaments on like my peter pan clay model I made 2 ½ years ago. It was surprisingly correct for an 8-year-old. I folded my clothes and put them in a drawer before putting my sketchbook, art kits and notebooks in my desk. I didn't put one of my notebooks in, though. On the front it was labelled "Emma's diary" so, as you can probably imagine, that means it's my diary.

I finished writing about today and then picked up Peter Pan and started reading, until my new mother (I should probably mention that her name is Mrs Jones) called me down. She then told me something that would affect the rest of my life, eternity even.

She gave me an ability.

A choice.

I could pick anything, any superpower I wanted.

And of course, the stupid 11-year-old me chose immortality. I was so foolish making that decision. Of course, I'm curious to know what the future will be, anyone would be but why was I this stupid? Why did I choose to live forever? That way, I'll endlessly be alive, even when the sun has exploded, and the Earth has been burnt to smithereens in the universe. I'll have to go and live on another planet, and what happens when the universe collapses? Will I just exist, nowhere, doing nothing?

Ok, I'll stop with all the philosophical questions now. I just hate myself with a burning passion for that. I also hate Mrs Jones for accepting it and giving me that ability. Normally when I think about that, I just think about her flaws, that I could bully her for. Then it's just funny. For example, the only thing she can pull being a push door.

Anyway, Mrs Jones did some ritual thing and I felt warmth shoot through my body. She put her hands on my shoulders, focused, and then drew a circle around me with her finger. I was so confused, but I think it worked. I never really believed in magic, but the sparkles around me, the glowing blue circle, it couldn't be explained by regular physics. Mrs Jones told me most people near to here can give superpowers to people. I considered that Pearl maybe was close enough...

While this was happening, I wondered how my little brother is doing. He was 7 and was unfortunately separated from me. I hoped at his new house he was happy. He was probably reading Peter Rabbit most of the time. I was so sad that we were separated. I missed him so much, and still do at the time I'm writing this.

He wouldn't be near enough. But Pearl – what if she was? I refused to believe that. But she could've still be near enough, there is that possibility. Even then, what were the chances she picked immortality? Maybe it was time I learnt to let go. I'd live forever. She won't.

I decided to go outside. The grass was emerald-green, and the paths were simply small rocks stuck inside the flattened turf. I then saw a creature.

It had two deadly horns to attack people with, four legs, probably used to pounce upon and kill humans, a mouth for chewing on our flesh and a giant body that could murder even the strongest person who ever lived by just slightly touching them. I ran inside Mrs Jones' house, screaming. Mrs Jones turned and asked me what was up. I told her the truth: there was a murderous animal outside that wanted to kill me. "It had horns, to attack with!" I cried, "and it made a terrifying noise!" I was gasping for air while Mrs Jones stirred the food she was preparing. "It had six sides, and it had a tail on which hangs a brush!" I was scared to death by this thing but somehow, Mrs Jones wasn't scared. She looked outside the window and saw the animal, and she calmly said, "Don't be silly Emma, it's just a cow."

The countryside, I decided, was scarier than Germans. And Germans are scary. But I tried to face my fears and stay outside while Mrs Jones cooked. There were another 3 kids playing out nearby, Mrs Jones had told me to go talk to them. As I got closer, I saw one of them was Pearl: the other two were boys. I shyly waved and whispered "Hi." Pearl spotted me and ran towards me. She introduced me to the other two boys. One was a blonde boy with bright blue eyes who looked around 13 or 14 called Charles, or Charlie. The other was an extremely pale boy with white eyes and long white hair. He looked maybe 9 or 10 and his name was Mike. He looked a bit like a short haired girl. He wore a golden tank top with jeans, and he had a lemon-coloured ribbon tied around his neck as a bow.

We all became rather good friends. Me and Pearl were already besties, which made it a little easier. We met when we were 3, on the 17th of November 1906. We've been friends ever since. Pearl had just turned 4 at the time, but I was still 3. She was the nicest girl I ever met. We spent almost all our time together, but neither of us ever made any new friends. We just stuck together our whole lives and didn't socialise outside of that. Now that we're here, in the countryside in Wales, we are socialising a bit more, I guess. I found out that Mike was Pearl's new parents' son, and Charlie was their other evacuee child.

Sometimes I think about the boy I used to have a crush on. We weren't friends or anything, just acquaintances, but I had a crush on him. I thought about that after eating my tea that day and I realised that I had never had a crush on him, I guess I just wanted him to be a friend. Maybe I could even call him a distant friend. I felt the same way towards Pearl to how I felt towards him but stronger. It's kind of funny how I never realised he was more of a friend than a crush. Maybe it's because he was a boy, and I was a girl. I'm not quite sure why even to this day. It probably was because of the gender. Maybe not. Hopefully, that was the reason, though.

Anyway, we played hopscotch for a while after I came back out before we got bored. Mike ran back to his house to get a ball for us to play with, and we played football. It was boys versus girls, and us girlies won. Then dodgeball, with the boys winning there. Mike was surprisingly talented at it. He apparently went to America in a boat in December 1909, when he was 6. He was a lot closer to my age than I thought, having been born less than 2 months after me, on the 19th of September 1903. There he found out about dodgeball and started really enjoying it for the past 5 years. I think it was similar to Pearl's talent at football, my talent at volleyball and the talent Charlie had that I later discovered, at basketball. Why do all sports have to be American?

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Question of the chapter: What's your favourite part of history?

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Thanks for reading this! I hope you all enjoy this story as much as I enjoy writing it and the idea. The chapters will be quite short (1000-2500 words) so I apologise about that. By the way, the story does go up to 2021, meaning it takes place over a period of 107 years, and therefore there will be a lot of chapters. It may take a while, maybe even years to finish, especially with my other stories, so I am deeply sorry about that, but I will update as often as possible.