Jack Gets a Break

They say that the passage of time is nothing to an immortal- but I'm here to tell you they're wrong. Oh, perhaps time is nothing to an immortal who isn't tied to the seasons- but when you are then mister, time is pretty effin' evident. Your existence becomes broken down into two parts: the time of year when you're doing your job, and the other nine months. And maybe that sounds pretty great to non-immortals- only having to work a quarter of the time- but then I want you to remember that I don't get to quit. Ever. Literally ever. Can your brain even begin to process that concept? No retirement, no death. Just on and on forever. And I've got to tell you- there are only so many possible frost patterns to be made: the work gets damn repetitive after a couple of millennia. Every winter I more and more seriously considered shoving icicles through my eye sockets to alleviate the boredom.

But then I met Arachne.

She's an immortal, too- but she started out human. Most people might consider immortality a blessing from the gods, but just ask Arachne- she knows better. She royally pissed of some goddess or another back in the day, and in retaliation she got a (frankly pretty ugly) new form and an eternity to 'think about what [she'd] done'. Anyway I met her one summer as I was kicking around the Mediterranean (it's just prejudice to assume we winter creatures only like cold- we don't.) and we got to talking. Turns out she's an artisan, too, although she leans to weaving rather than etching. I asked if I could see some of her stuff and she showed me, and damned if I wasn't impressed (hard to do when you've been around as long as I have).

She waved off my praise, saying that honestly, she was getting a little bored with the whole thing. When you're immortal you have plenty of time to hone your craft- and she had long ago run out of new or challenging ideas. To her everything she'd created lately was static, boring.

I told her I knew exactly how she felt.

So we sat in that bar, sharing a couple pitchers of daiquiri and bemoaning our fates, and round about glass number four (or possibly five- I lost count) inspiration struck. I couldn't tell you now which of us had the great idea, but the next thing I knew we were at my summer place and I was teaching her the fundamentals of etching.

The upcoming winter was suddenly looking a lot more exciting.


(The Rare Arctic Spider)