WHAT WILL WE HAVE

I sat in the shadow of a maple tree, its crimson leaves blanketing the ground. I had seen countless lives, countless cycles of love and loss, yet I felt the weight of a thousand years only as a gnawing emptiness that no scenery or season could fill.

“Mind if I sit?” came a lifting and warm voice. Elijah looked up to see a young woman, with bright eyes and an easy smile. She held out a hand. “I’m Maya.”

“Elijah,” I replied, surprised at how rusty my voice sounded in my ears.

Maya sat beside me; her gaze on the leaves fluttering down around them.

"Beautiful, isn’t it?" she asked, her voice soft.

I nodded, though beauty, as I’d come to know it, was a fickle concept. Beauty was a thing that passed, and in my thousand years, I just grew indifferent to its passing. People, places, entire civilizations—they all turned to dust. I glanced at her, expecting her to fill the silence, but she simply sat, watching the leaves.

“You don’t ask questions,” Ejihah finally said, my tone edged with curiosity.

She shrugged. “You seemed like you needed the quiet.”

I laughed, a dry sound that came as much from shock as amusement. “In all my years, I’ve never met someone willing to just...sit.”

“Years,” she said. She looked at him curiously, a hint of playfulness in her expression.

I hesitated, as I always did. Most people dismissed my age as a joke or rambling, but something about Maya’s steady gaze invited honesty.

“I’ve lived a long time,” Elijah said. “Far longer than anyone should.”

“Sounds lonely,” she replied, her tone gentle, no trace of disbelief.

The admission struck me like a blow to my guts. I was accustomed to solitude; I even believed I had made peace with it. But hearing her name, made the weight of my isolation suddenly feel real.

“I thought I was past loneliness,” Elijah said. I spoke more to myself to her, feeling the words unravel with relief.

“Funny thing about loneliness,” she said, turning to look at me. “It’s sneaky. You think you’re fine, and then one day it just...catches up.”

We sat quietly, and I felt something shift, the tiniest opening in the thick shell I had built around myself. Maya didn’t ask why I was there, what I had seen, or where I came from—questions that usually left me feeling like a relic. She simply stayed, letting the silence between us settle and grow comfortable.

“What will you do now?” she asked after a long while, her gaze still trained on the leaves.

The question took me off guard. No one has asked me that in centuries. They always wanted to know about my past but never my future.

“Maybe…maybe I’ll try again,” I said, the words tasting both unfamiliar and surprisingly welcome. “Find a place. Talk to people. Live.”

Maya’s smile widened, and for the first time in a thousand years, I felt the unfamiliar warmth of possibility flicker inside my person.

As she stood, her hand brushed my shoulder—a small, simple touch, but it felt like a promise. “We’re all just trying, aren’t we?” she said softly, and with a nod, she turned and walked away, leaving me alone once more, though this time, I felt a little less so.

Arnaldo Borges is a passionate writer from Lebanon, a valley town in rural Pennsylvania. He is a lifelong comic enthusiast and advent book reader. He is a get-things-done type who never shies away from any kind of story, and his hard work ethic and ambition help him look beyond the commonality of traditional writing.…