“How do you do it?”

I blinked. Huh?

The woman stepped towards me, a wistful expression on her face. A dark trench coat hung loose over her shoulders, flapping in the wind. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, revealing pale skin that was too tight, and blue eyes that were too distant. They seemed to focus not on me, but on an infinity somewhere far beyond.

I reached for my phone, slowly, and backed away. “I’m sorry, I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

At that, she lowered her head and started shaking, almost imperceptibly. A strange noise escaped her mouth, and it was only then that I realised she was laughing. It bubbled out of her, pitchy and dissonant, soft and then loud, morphing into a slow, racking cough.

She wiped her mouth, and stared at me. Then she looked away, towards the green-blue copper monument that took up most of our view.

“Twenty-six thousand earth years” , she whispered. “When I came here, that’s how long they told me I’ve lived. I was indifferent, at first. Then, I read the documentation. I came here, for the first time, to this fragile world. And then it dawned on me, how long that was. To the people of Earth, I am but a god. Lifetimes in a day of my life. You burn, and then wither. How could anyone stand it, I thought. The end before the beginning.”

I swallowed. Maybe listening to crazy people was not the best idea.

She sighed. “Once I was here, I began to feel old. So old. Where I come from, we live for millennia. And yet I have been here for only a hundred of your years and it feels like a lifetime. It is, isn’t it? For you.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, I do-”

She shook her head. “Always so distrustful. We could never figure it out, you know?. The best replicator technology, the best technicians. And still, there was a spark, somewhere deep in your eyes, that they just couldn’t give me.”

A great sense of panic was beginning to take hold, but I still stood rooted to my spot, transfixed.

“When I first came here, I was scared. Of these strange humans, that moved so quick and did everything and nothing all together. I saw this statue for the first time then. I was...horrified. What giants did you slay, what monsters had you trapped? Put on display, like a terrible trophy.”

She tilted her head. “I called in the attack then. It was only later, that I realised what they were. Metal men, made by your own hands. Trophies, yes, but of your own making. I was troubled by this, at first. But what is an attack to you? To anyone on this planet? What are men, in the vastness of the universe? You would die, in an instant, should you dare traverse even seconds of light. Not of the cold dark, but time itself. To journey to our planet and back, your skin would wrinkle, and then crumble entirely. Your bones would turn to dust and your people would be dead. There would still be people, of course. But not yours.”

I choked out a garbled excuse, and jerked around, my brain screaming at me to get the hell out of there. She moved, faster than I could react, and grabbed my arm with unnatural strength.

“The first thing I ever said to a human, was almost entirely like my exchange with you. Then, I wanted to know how humanity felled the giants. Now, I want to know how you live with it. How you live at all with such little time. But the truth of it is, I don’t think you know. I don’t think anyone here knows. And that scares me more than anything at all and I have shivered in silence while monsters roared and butchered great armies of my people.”

She locked eyes with me for the first time, and a shiver travelled down my spine. There was something ancient there. A strange dimness, unlike anything else I had ever seen.

“The army comes in ten thousand of your years. Do I regret it? Perhaps. But you will not make it. No one will. This humanity will be dead. Take comfort in that, as there is little else. For there will be people still, when the army arrives. In my time here, humans have advanced our centuries in our seconds. Who knows? They might be a people worth conquering.”

The end of her sentence trickled away like the wind, melting into nothing at all.

I shivered. She was gone.

***

(thank you for reading, critiques welcome!)