Life

Cador sat in his house at the dinner table, across from a young girl that he had rescued from a group of gang members who had had less than good intentions for her future. She was nervous, but had begged him to be allowed to spend more time with him after what they had been through. It had been some months since he had saved her. In that time, they had grown together as friends, and he had been able to teach her many things that she had never thought possible. Tonight, however, he had promised to explain something that she had never quite understood, and that was what was causing her nervousness.

This was why he didn't make many friends these days.

On the table between them was a collection of ancient scrolls and books, collected over a period of several lifetimes. Cador had kept them carefully stored away, so as to preserve the legacy that had been held within their pages. Next to each of them was a sword, stained with dirt and blood over the years, and in a variety of styles to match the literature it accompanied.

"What are these?" Sarah asked.

Cador opened the book closest to her, visibly the newest style, from some time in the Victorian era. Next to it was a cavalry leader's saber.

Sarah leaned forward to glance into the book. Her eyes quickly gave away her confusion. "This is a picture of you," she said. "But... You don't look any younger in it. You look exactly the same, other than the facial hair and haircut."

She grabbed the book and flipped through the pages, looking at the inked in images and glancing over the text beside them. It was a military records book, with an effective catalogue of units who had served under General Cador's command. "This..." she mumbled as she read, "This is definitely real. I've heard some of these names in school. But... Not yours. How did...?"

Cador pushed the next book towards her. A much older, more fragile style, with an inked in date on the front page of 1673. Sarah flipped through the pages once more. A journal with detailed drawings on some of the pages, by a child of...

"This can't be possible," she whispered. "There is no way that you have..." As she turned page after page, getting more frantic the further she went, she came across a very detailed face. There was no doubt about it.

It was Cador.

The next was a scroll. She rolled it out to see that it was a letter from the church, authorizing King Richard III's request to take one Sir Cador off of the front lines of battle and hide him away, so as to protect him from the invading powers.

Sarah looked up at Cador, more confused then ever. She groped wildly in her mind for some kind of answer, and the more she thought, the less of a reasonable conclusion she could come up with. These pictures were far too similar to Cador to be ancestors. They could be no one but him.

Cador waited patiently for the question. The same question. The same question he had answered countless times. The same question that he had been asked for his entire life.

"How long have you been alive?"

Cador sighed and lifted the sword closest to him, and visibly the oldest. Chipped and rotted away by rust, made of weak bronze, at the time it had seemed unstoppable.

"Entirely too long."