“Drat! You saw?” Shannon raised her hand to the empty sky and slipped it into a gap in space that looked like a ripple in water. It was the sorcerous space that she had shown him earlier that day. When she pulled her hand back out, she held a fresh set of clothes; she put them on, turned around to face Kyle, and shrugged. “Thing is, I’m immortal. Forever young.”
Kyle’s brain screeched to a halt. “Excuse me?” Immortal? Forever young? “S-So that means you...”
“Yep. I can’t die. Not easily.” Shannon laughed.
To Kyle’s shock, she had come back unscathed from the belly of the beast.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Our hero has triumphed!”
“Woo-hoo! Cheers, cheers!”
“Good job, girlie!”
The youths of the village sang Shannon’s praises as they drank. Everyone had gathered in front of the mayor’s house to share the news that the dangerous dragon had been defeated without a single casualty, and now they were celebrating its demise.
“What a great celebration! It’s all thanks to you, Ms. Shannon!” Kyle said.
“I guess,” Shannon muttered. In stark contrast to the merry villagers, her expression was dark and gloomy. She sat in a chair with her shoulders hunched, and the bonfire’s light cast shadows over her face. Thanks to this immortal witch, the village was safe...but their savior herself had been despondent for a while.
“What’s wrong, Ms. Shannon?” Kyle prompted. “You look so sad. You know you’re everyone’s hero, right?”
“A hero,” Shannon echoed, withdrawn and pouting. “Not something I ever had any interest in being.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t, but look! Everyone’s super happy. You’re being humble, but what you did was amazing!”
“Well, I guess so,” she relented. “I guess they don’t really have support like me around—”
“Right ya are, girlie!”
“Oof!”
A thick, solid arm had come out of nowhere and landed on Shannon’s shoulders. It was Reginald, the man they’d met at the tavern. The force of his swing pitched Shannon forward, and for a moment, she looked like she was about to fall.
“Eat up, girlie!” Reginald urged. “You’re the gal of the hour!”
She grunted. “G-Give me more warning next time! I’ll die! Not that I actually can, but...”
Reginald had both hands full of meat dishes and was rather forcefully shoving them into Shannon’s mouth. Her cheeks were puffed out fully as she frantically chewed, and Reginald let out a hearty laugh at the sight. “You’re a good eater, girlie! No, not girlie anymore—you’re our hero!”
“Oh, shut up,” Shannon grumbled. “You’re the one making me eat all this stuff.”
“Ha ha! Well, it’s good that I am! Ya really need to be more proud of what ya did. The only gloomy face around here is yours!” He laughed heartily again, but this time, it trailed off into a short sigh. After a quiet pause, he added softly, “Honestly, girlie, I’m really grateful to ya, understand? I really thought we weren’t getting out of this one—that the dragon would burn us all to death.”
Shannon listened, somehow managing to chew the meaty food stuffed in her mouth.
“But to think that the girl Kyle brought to the village was a mage... Shannon, ya blew up that dragon for us. I thought it was a joke at first, but when I went to the forest and saw that awful beast’s corpse strewn everywhere, I was overjoyed. It ain’t time yet for this village to die out. I know the mayor says it’s our custom to handle our problems ourselves, but I’d been thinking it was about time for us to get some help from outside. Better that than let the village die.” Reginald stared intently at Shannon. “Anyway, thank ya. Ya saved me, girlie, and the other villagers too.”
He placed his hands on both knees and bowed his head. Shannon chewed and swallowed a piece of meat, then said, “No need for that. It just sort of happened. I wasn’t out there trying to defeat the dragon and save the village.”
Reginald laughed. “No need to be humble! There’s no other reason for ya to risk your life slaying a dragon. Ya even brought us the butchered parts of the dragon; it’s obvious ya knew what ya were doing.”
“I did have a different reason.”
“Oh? Then tell me,” Reginald said with a laugh, taking a swig of ale.
“I wanted the dragon to kill me.”
“Pfft!” Reginald spat out his drink. “Gah ha ha! What’re ya talking about, girlie?! Nobody would challenge a dragon hoping to die.”
Kyle nodded. I thought the same thing.
Reginald doubled over with mirth, slapping his knee. He cackled so hard there were tears in his eyes. “Oh, you’re funny. But girlie, I see how kind ya are. This was our problem, like the mayor said, but even knowing that, ya saved us anyway. Ya fought that dragon to slay it. Can ya admit that to us, or will ya not?”
“Actually, Mr. Reginald, Ms. Shannon really...” Kyle began, but when he met Shannon’s eyes, she shrugged her shoulders and snapped him a wink. He fell silent. Shannon was genuinely telling the truth; Reginald had the wrong idea. The truth was going to be a tough pill for him to swallow, though, because he hadn’t seen what had happened.
“I’m not that noble,” Shannon insisted. “I’m just a traveling mage. Here one day and gone the next.”
“Well, I’ll play along with that. Still, it doesn’t matter if ya just happened to kill the dragon or did it on a whim; we’re alive thanks to ya. Let us show our gratitude. We owe ya that much! I’ll see ya around.” With another booming laugh, Reginald returned to the feast.
Everyone in the village was just as grateful to Shannon as Reginald was. Even when Shannon insisted that she didn’t save them on purpose, their opinions didn’t change. Shannon had wanted to die. She wished for that. Kyle hadn’t believed it when he first heard her say it, but once he’d thought through all the events that had occurred since he met Shannon, he was convinced. Her fall from the cliffs had certainly not been an illusion.
“So you really want to die?” he asked.
“That’s what my journey’s all about: finding the ending to my life,” Shannon replied. She was grinning, as if talking about her own death weren’t a sorrowful thing. “Whaddaya think? Sounds pretty epic, right?”
Kyle paused, then eventually laughed a little. “Ms. Shannon, you really are interesting.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There’s no one else like you.”
“As if there could be another immortal person out there. One’s more than enough.”
They both laughed. They had only known each other for a few days, but their time together had been so incredible they would remember it for the rest of their lives.
“You know, when we first met, the mushroom I ate really was poisonous. You were right,” Shannon said. “Sorry about that. I ended up lying to you.”
“What?! I was right all along?!” Kyle exclaimed, and Shannon grinned. “But...in the end, you didn’t die in the dragon’s stomach. Your immortality sure is something.”
Shannon let out a deep, disappointed sigh and hung her head. She sounded truly crestfallen when she muttered, “I thought the dragon was a once-in-a-lifetime chance...or at least once in a few hundred years.”
“So, uh, what was the inside of its stomach like?”
“A lot like a hot bath. All splashy.”
“I bet it felt strange.”
“Want to try it together sometime?” Shannon asked, grinning impishly.
“Well, I’d just actually die, so...”
“I’m jealous.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, Shannon left the village. She gave Kyle a big wave, calling out that she would see him again someday. He waved back.
It would probably be decades—no, centuries—before she came to the village again. By then, the town would probably look really different. After all, there hadn’t even been a village in the area the last time she had passed through.
Until then, Shannon would travel the world, using her immortal body to help more people...not. She had no such noble aim. She had simply resumed her quest to find her own death.
“Now then,” Shannon said to herself. “How’ll I try to die this time?”
She began walking east.