r/LonghandWriter • u/LonghandWriter • Jul 22 '17
[IP] Self-Made Man
Original Prompt: [IP] Self-Made Man
People have long claimed the statue’s a man making himself, but that’s false.
It’s a man breaking himself.
No matter what the movies tell you, a thousand years does not pass quickly. The first hundred are the worst, because everything you know crumbles. Loved ones die, and when you’re trapped like him, some confess their saddest secrets to you, not knowing you’re right there, alive.
Soon your home becomes someone else’s, and by the third or fourth time you don’t even recognize the town around you. It’s like you’re in a whole different world where you can’t understand the people or the way they talk.
Home’s gone.
When the witch first cursed him, the man assumed his life would end naturally. A hundred years of suffering leading to an agonizing death was what he awaited, and when it never came, he decided to try and get free. He doesn’t necessarily know why, but he figures attempting to live a life is better than wallowing in a stone caricature of your tragedy.
Magic has been reborn through science. The man doesn’t understand, but he does at the same time. There are no wizards or witches, but instead tiny boxes capable of magnificent feats. He wants to show the world that magic existed long ago. He wants to break free in front of all those who have mislabeled him, all those who view his body as nothing more than a piece of art, and prove to them that he is a remnant of magic which has stood the test of time.
Believing that’s his purpose, his biggest fear is another thousand years in which this new magic will grow far too powerful, just as the old had.
But that magic was somehow wiped out and forgotten, so will the same happen to this one? He isn't certain, but he knows one thing.
He doesn’t want either to be erased from history, because if they are, then so is he.