Do you understand infinity? Does anyone? Does the infinite, or a being who encapsulates the infinite - if that is possible - understand infinity? Tracing the fine line between incorporeal, false, philosophy - and being alive, touching, feeling, physical-

Some things aren’t meant to be understood. Sometimes leaving it as simple, plain truth - accepting it as it is - is the only way to truly understand.

How can infinity be alive?

Ananta ran down the stairs.

He was running, sprinting, really; he was late. For what, he didn’t know; for what- that was the question. Why he was there, where he had come from, even who his family was wasn’t important, wasn’t relevant, wasn’t known-

The sound of clattering feet on metal echoed through the small hallway as he sprinted down down down down down the stairs, feeling his feet slam on the floor.

His arm could barely reach the railing; his feet and face and tiny child’s body were smaller than he was used to, because he was used to being- well…

What he was used to wasn’t important.

Wasn’t relevant.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Wasn’t

Ananta woke in a small bed, a child’s bed, a tiny cot, really, sweating. Hair in his face, hands grasping at a railing that wasn’t there. Something- someone knocked on the door, a non- well, a non what? Ananta was confused, startled, had memories that stretched back through eternity and yet, when he asked himself, who am I, … nothing.

The bed wasn’t really a bed, really, wasn’t- it was more of, of a- 

Ananta searched for the right word. Ananta - that name, where did that name come from?

He felt a looming sense of wrong flooding his very being. He was supposed to be somewhere else; he should have been somewhere, just not here. A 9 year-old child; a 9 year-old child? Where this information came from, Ananta had no idea, and when he reached in his mind to that same place it appeared he found- nothing. Just cobwebs and emptiness and his name, Ananta, which gave him nothing and nowhere, just those letters. A N A N T A.

Something knocked again. Someone. Who? He couldn’t tell, didn’t know. The door creaked open and a girl, taller, older, but still young, young compared to his millennium- 

Millennium?

No, he had 9 years, not-

Millennium. His mind was filled with it, the feeling of being aged, knowing everything and everyone and everywhere but when he reached for it, reached for that knowledge, it was gone- taken away by some invisible force in the darkness.

The girl knocked on the open door again.

He focused his eyes through the strangely dark room and observed.

She had startling, sickly green eyes - yellow-green, not a true, actual green - and within the true-green-ring of her iris was a black vertical slit, like a snake; no, like- 

Again a gap forced its way through his knowledge, and he noticed instead her ashy gray, almost scaly skin and her forehead, loosely wrapped in faintly glowing dingy bandages.

Strange. She was strange, he thought, although in his memory he had never seen another creature; but somehow he knew that she was different and perhaps even wrong.

“Let’s go.”