A man lives and dies…
Gets born and gets buried…
But no one really knows what determines his fate, not even the Watcher. From the beginning of times, he has watched over mankind—the way they live, to be more specific. From the moment they are born until their last breath, the Watcher just observes them through the tiny flames their life candles make. He has no superpower; he can’t control their lives, intervene with their decisions, or talk directly to them. He’s just there in his Watcher’s realm, protecting everyone’s life candles from anything that may blow out their flames, which would only mean one thing: premature death.
When a child is born, a new candle sprouts in the Watcher’s realm. He has long believed that the height of the candle represented the length of one’s life. He would always feel sorrowful for short candles, for those candles belonged to lives that would end before adulthood. However, after many, uncountable decades—maybe centuries—of watching over human lives through the tiny flames, he grew tired and found his role very tedious. He lost feelings of sadness for loss, feelings of happiness for love, or feelings of excitement for birth. He just accepted the truth that a man lives and dies; gets born and gets buried; and everything in between, be it short or long, is all that determines whether the man lived a good life or not.
However, at one point in his indefinite time, a new candle sprouted, and it was unlike any other candle he had ever seen. He recalled that the man who lived at least a hundred years had a life candle that stood the height of his knees, but this candle was almost his height! He couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched the tiny flame aglow, and through it he could see emptiness, as the newborn child’s eyes were still closed, but he could hear her cry—a good sign of life. He wondered if she would actually live for more than 200 years although it seemed very impossible. The thought of how she would achieve living an extraordinarily long life kept the Watcher going.
He watched her grow. From a child that crawled and laughed when she’s pleased and cried when she’s upset to a young adult who learned to smile even when she’s sad and to feel how others feel. She did grow up the same way others did, but the Watcher learned a number of things. For one, his belief that the length of one’s life depended on the height of one’s life candle was false. As the girl aged, her flame also grew and aggressively consumed the candle at a speed the Watcher had never observed before. He thought she would live a long life, but she had no such fate, for she burnt herself for others.
She continued to give when she barely had anything; she listened patiently and patted others’ back when her spirit was broken; she showed love even to people who turned their backs on her; she had a pure soul, and at this, every time the Watcher witnessed this, tears would form in his eyes, and his heart would be heavy with pain—an emotion the Watcher never thought he would feel again.
Great souls are gifted with long lives…
But it is precisely the greatness of their souls that lead to their downfall…
The Watcher watched until her very last breath, and at the very last second, her fire glowed an ethereal color of white-blue.
A man lives and dies…
Gets born and gets buried…
And it is everything in between that determines the worth of one’s evanescent life.