First word: Imogen Mark: Time has left me alone

 It no longer runs, ticking behind me, peering over my shoulder, tickling my ear, breathing heavily, sometimes even sighing, a catch in its throat, a sob.

What has Time to cry about? How does it live its own passing? What can it use for markers, if its own seconds, minutes, hours, days, are silent or muffled in its own intestines? Can it even exist if has no-one to worry at, to make them worry? Does Time need humans, or sentient beings to make it conscious, to exist, even?

What is Time without a watch? It could measure itself in the seasons, the changing weather, the flowers and fallings from trees. Leisurely time.

How long is eternity? the king asked the wise shepherd boy. Well, the boy answered, far, far, far away, further than you can ever imagine, is a high, high mountain, higher than you can ever imagine, and harder than you can know, harder than the hardest diamond.

And once in every ten thousand years comes a tiny hummingbird and in just one movement it sharpens its bill against the hard, brilliant surface of the high mountain, and flies away. Well, when the bird has worn down the mountain to nothing with its touch, then, when there is no more mountain, the first second of eternity will have passed.

The description of eternity is my version of the story, The Shepherd Boy, from Grimm’s Fairy Tales.