She had wandered through uncountable generations of the human world, the cape of her old bridal dress tugging behind her. 

 

She had never stopped her endless pace of the Earth, never opened a door and said hello, never took a break. No one ever seemed to notice the lady with an old bridal dress, walking their streets and living among their lives, as if she were one of them.

 

That, though, could not be further from the truth. Perhaps they had not paid attention to her, but she had noticed them well enough. 

 

She had been alive for a time, which was so high a number that many of the people she walked alongside every day probably did not even know the word for it. 

 

She had been present for all of humanity's successes and failings; had watched kingdoms, democracies, dictatorships be built on dreams of eternity and then crumble into nothing. 

 

Ideas, religions, ethnic groups, they had all reached their peak and disappeared in front of her.

 

And she had kept on walking, kept on climbing mountains and passing oceans, waiting for the day her end would come.

 

It never did. 

 

She had thought it would have, long ago, when she lived in yet another kingdom, her father's kingdom, which thought itself to be superior, eternal. She remembered, albeit vaguely, those few months before the war, when tensions were high and faith was low. Afterward, as the men mounted their horses, the streets had been filled with the sounds of armour clashing against the ground, horses, other armour… The women had cheered, the men had boasted, their chests raised. They were soldiers of the greatest kingdom in the world, they had risen up to the challenge to defeat the enemy. 

 

The fall had been severe. Hundreds upon thousands of men slain on the battlefield. When the old sounds of crashing armour came back, no one had cheered, and no one had boasted. No one raised their chests, they looked as if they had caved in on themselves. 

 

Then, the enemy King had come, his chest raised, his soldiers laughing. He had taken not only land and money but her as well. On her final morning at her father’s castle, already dressed in her bridal gown, she had risen up the steps to her tower with great precision, knowing what she had to do. Then, with no shake to her hands, she had opened the window and let herself fall. 

The wind had rushed to her face, and she had been ready for the end. When perpetual minutes passed and she still had not died, she forced herself up from what she had believed to be her resting place and began to walk. 

 

She had not stopped since. 

 

The enemy King’s kingdom had not lasted that long either, in the end. She had, over time, seen many alike to him and her own father. But she had not intervened, simply kept walking. Humankind shifted around her, but it always kept its pride and greed. 

 

Now, as she walks, a woman rushes in front of her, wearing a wedding dress, not stopping as she kicks off her heels. 

 

“No wedding for me!” The bride-to-be yells, jumping into the car in front of her. 

 

She thinks of her own wedding dress, still on her after all these years. She had never shed it, in fear that she would have to stop to do so. Most things are not eternal, yes, but her walk is. She would never stop her walk. 

 

She is, unfortunately, hyper-aware of it now. How the cape strangles her a little as she walks, how her feet hurt in the slippers, how ridiculously big the dress is, how it gets caught and ripped during sharp turns. 

 

She wants to shed it. 

 

She has come to view her life differently during her walk. The fall of the tower was her rise to freedom. So why should she keep the last things that tie her to the prisoner she was before she jumped? Why should she keep the cape and the dress, and the slippers?

 

She moves to undo her cape, and without realising, stops. 

 

She stops and promptly falls to the ground. An injury over a thousand years old catches up to her as she begins to bleed the wounds that never properly closed. For all she had talked of humanity, she has forgotten that she too is human, that she too will never be free of her pride and her greed. 

 

Nothing was eternal, whether it be empires, people or even her walk.