Golden hair and bronze skin, Bion was the epitome of warmth. From his soft blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled to the slightly crooked hook to the corner of his mouth. His name alone meant Life. He opposed everything I stood for, everything I was. He was the warm rays of sun that chiseled away at the chill air that surrounded me, the stone of my bones that encased my heart. He weaseled his way in without even trying. From the moment he grasped my frigid hands and wrapped me in warmth that day by the Aegean Sea.

The Gods were near forgotten by this point, no longer worshiped but he knew of me when I told him my name. I was a token of the old world in his New World. Even when he discovered who I was, who I really was, he didn't run in fear. He empathized the difficulties of my job that I'd grown numb to over my excessively long life. He found ways to break through my cold exterior, read in between my words to find the truth beneath.

The day he told me he had never once feared Death was the moment the strings unraveled, extended from my heart to entwine around his. He told me a quote:

Life asked Death, "Why do people love me, but hate you?" Death responded, "Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth."

Even to this day, those words cycle through my mind. When he told me, I had thought I understood what he meant. Only now do I understand what he meant. I had never experienced that painful truth, wrapped in the warm arms in Bion under the stars. He was Life. The beautiful Lie. And I was Death. The painful truth....The inflexible. The inevitable. The End of everything beautiful.

The moment I realized my immortality was not a blessing but a curse started and ended with Bion. With abhorred shears. With the loss and grief of love.