Memories. Cold and painful like a dull blade in your flesh.

It stabbed again and again, just to keep that miserable heart in your chest from healing.

How long had you been trapped in this endlessness?

You couldn't remember.

Tears clogged your eyelashes. You hadn't cried for a long time. At least not because you were sad. Now it was just a habit of desperation to show that you were still existing.

The heart in your chest was still beating.

When would eternity come to an end?

Once upon a time, someone had said that immortality was a curse. For centuries you hadn't believed it, only laughed and mocked.

What fool wouldn't want to live forever?

Endless time meant endless possibilities. Endless choices. Endless pain.

Swallowing hard, your hands searched for anything but bare stone, black and lifeless. Cold reigned in this place. Even ice would have been warmer.

Suddenly you remembered something, a boy. His hair had been so black that even in the blazing sun it hadn't shone brown. Sometimes it had looked like it was literally swallowing up the rays of light.

You remembered so little, but so much about him. He had been just a child, loathed by his father and rejected by his mother.

Like so many children back then, he had fought with the street dogs to see who could win the attention of the merciful ones.

Although he had been dirty, dressed in a shirt that didn't fit him and trousers he was too skinny for, you remembered his eyes.

They had been as green as two pieces of polished jade. He had been intelligent, so much so that he had never shown it to anyone.

Instead, he had begged in their faces, only to empty their pockets as soon as they turned their backs on him.

You had taken him in, like many children before him, and feasted on his suffering. It was suffering that turned back the hourglass of time for you.

Immortality had its price and for you it was negative emotions that you had to reap and sacrifice. He had been so full of it, tainted without ever being guilty of it.

His name was lost in the darkness.

Why couldn't you remember his name?

It had been stolen, snatched from your memories like the boy had been snatched from your arms.

"Please never leave me.", he had whispered in your ear that night as he crept back into your bed.

He had only been thirteen, but already almost as tall as you. And scrawny, but would probably have changed over the years if only he had had the chance to grow into a man.

A smile had formed on your lips in the darkness as he had rested his head on your chest and you had caressed his dark hair.

You remembered so much about him, the way his face had felt under your fingertips, slight stubble from the first growth of beard he was beginning to sprout.

Sometimes when he slept deeply enough, little sounds would slip from his lips like a black cat lying in the sun on the windowsill, letting its fur be warmed.

You remembered how he had looked at you, so different from the other children. They had always looked at you like a mother, someone they looked to for protection and security.

He, on the other hand, had watched you with eyes that had something in them that he desired. His intelligence was only equalled by his curiosity.

It had taken him barely a year to figure out what you really were: a witch, immortal as long as she fed on the darkness of others.

"Take everything.", he had said on another night. "Take my feelings and thoughts. And when there is nothing left, take my skin, my flesh and my bones. But please don't send me away."

That's what you always did. When the children got too old, when they found happiness, you let them go. You weren't a good creature, but you weren't a monster either.

He, on the other hand, refused to consider this possibility so much that he attracted misfortune for years. Yet he was the best thing the void had ever given you.

"My little echo.", you had answered from time to time when despair had shimmered in the green of his eyes. "I will never be far, because where I speak you will appear."

And he became what you could never have imagined.

When had his ability first shown itself?

You could not remember.

But what you did remember was that he was an incredibly quick learner. He was not only gifted but blessed. The power that slumbered in his veins could not be surpassed by anything.

From that moment on, he was not only the source of your immortality but also an ally. A friend. Magic so rarely manifested itself in people, even more rarely in men.

And yet he had stood before you and made a whale swim out of the sea into the sky as if it had been nothing but a trick.

You didn't remember why exactly you had kept him, but you knew the consequences.

"My little echo.", your voice echoed in the present from the stone walls of your prison.

For thousands of years you have been sitting in this cave, surrounded by nothing but cold and stone. Emptiness accompanied you.

Only your own despair kept your immortal heart beating. It was an eternal cycle of despair and decay, devouring and rotting.

And yet you could not break away from this place. Because it was the very one where you had lost him.

Even though you knew they were coming, you hadn't sent him away.

"Don't leave me!", he had begged again.

He had crept into your bed again. He had turned fifteen that night, barely a man and yet no longer a boy.

"I won't.", a tear had run down your cheek.

The first shed in centuries.

They had attacked you at your most vulnerable, dragged him out of your arms into the night. You still remembered the rage.