Late Resolve in the 5th year of the Reign of Yale Redwater, On Alshain Magna
His birthday had come and gone without him realizing until days afterwards. By all standards, it was even a significant day. He was fifty years old, and that was supposed to mean something. He felt no different, no older, no weaker than he was before, or perhaps he was deluding himself on that point.
Twenty thousand days he had spent in this Galaxy, and the celebration of the completion of a 400-day cycle of them did not seem all that important. Perhaps it was because of all of those milestones that were supposed to be associated with ages, he had experienced none of them. He had walked and talked some time before the designated ages, had never believed that girls had a made-up infectious disease transmitted through contact, had barely noticed puberty amid the roil of a thousand problems, had sex not at sixteen, or eighteen, but at thirteen. Voted far before he was of age, drank before then too, ran a business, emancipated himself, murdered people long before one was allowed to join an army and do it, went to college and finished it in a headlong rush. He hadn't gone through a mid-life crisis, unless it was waiting to sneak up on him, and he was gongn to live to be a hundred.
He had seen no need to celebrate, because one day hardly added anything to the pain, the suffering, the triumph of his days piled upon another until he thought their tail would become unmanagable, as if he were a bride at a too-formal wedding, dragging around a dress train far too long to move with.
And so, with great finality he had refused all celebrations and drank a glass of the best port, and done nothing else.
He didn't know whether he wondered, or merely dreaded, where tomorrow would find him.
Salamah went to sleep early that night, too tired of being awake to stay up.
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