Taeyeon's POV

They say that time heals all wounds. For me, there’s only too much of it yet never quite enough at the same time. I don’t know who they are, but I wish desperately to believe them. Day after day, night after night, shadows of the past crawl over my skin, causing it to prickle from its intensity. Hour after hour and minute after minute I pray... no, I wish for it to end; for there to be an end for me to go to, but there never is.

The years pass and fade together like droplets of paint running down a still wet canvas. You don’t know where one brush- starts and another finishes. That’s how life is to me. The world is full of people and always has been ever since time began. But people are born and when they die all that remains is me. It’s always me, only ever me.

People at all times strive to stay young and beautiful, looking their best. If the fountain of youth actually existed people would be pushing and shoving each other to obtain a single drop. To be young and beautiful for all of eternity, most would call this a gift. I call it my curse.

Year after year, century after century I have lived on this earth. Ever since time began I have existed. While everyone around me grew old, cursed me for my youth, and died; I lived on. At times I felt almost one with them, the mortals, only I had to remind myself to breath in order to blend in. I went through this endless charade of living until I finally couldn’t bring myself to endure it any longer. Watching people around me suffer and die for centuries, people I cared for, people I loved; it nearly killed me. Not in the literal sense of course, but you get the picture.

After so long of suffering alongside them for I don’t even know how long, I stopped. I never stopped caring about them, not completely anyway, but I stopped ‘living’ as one of them. For thousands of years I stopped ‘living’, always wishing I could stop the actual thing. For thousands of years I exiled myself from where the mortals lived their lives. I was never so far away that I couldn’t see them, just distant enough so they couldn’t see me. I was just far enough away as to keep me out of their lives but close enough to know it still existed.

One day however, that all changed. One day I began to live again. I don’t know why it was in that period of time for time is so diminutive to me. However I do know one thing, it was because of her: the radiant woman who fell from the heavens and reminded me to breathe again, if only for a minute in time. If you ask me what made her so special that I gave up my ‘life’ to live hers, I can’t tell you because I myself do not know the answer to that question. Why was she so special, you ask? She just was.

**  ***  **

The rain was coming down in blinding sheets of gray and white. Most people stayed sheltered in the privacy of their own homes and would recall the age old saying that it's raining cats and dogs, but not me. Then again I was walking this earth long before that saying ever came into being and I longed for the freedom the rain brought. It has always been one of the few times I can venture where I please and not be burdened with the seductive thrall of living.  The rain had always been my special time until the one night when everything changed. Then it became special for an entirely different reason.

I was about my usual walk, savoring how the chill of the rain made my skin prickle, sending shivers down my spine. I always loved how it made me feel as if minuscule volts of electricity were dancing over my skin. It made me feel alive and that feeling doesn't often come by. That night however the water droplets didn't hold their usual magic over me. Something wasn't quite right. A feeling inside of me buzzed causing the fine hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end. I couldn't get over