Promise

I stopped here. I ceased my walking and stood here, for as long as I needed to be until they came. I wait for them. They haven't come yet.

Despite all odds, I am still alive. I have not eaten, nor drank, nor breathed the toxic air that surrounds me, yet I still live. My heart still beats, my mind still waits, and that is all that I need.

I have been waiting for a while. The sun has set millions of times, and the trees grow taller. They began just above my head, but now they have grown into the giant redwoods that they are known to be. Though, the new air that surrounds this planet is slowly destroying the trees, rotting them from the bottom up.

I can't remember the last time I spoke to someone. I can't even remember my name anymore, let alone who I used to be. My personality is lost to the trees, and the trees are beginning to forget, too. It seems as though the whole world is forgetting everything, and once there's nothing left to remember...

I can't think that. I can once they come. Once they arrive, I can think and talk and move and breathe the poisonous air that plagues this forest, the clouds of smoke drifting in from the west and the south and the north and the east. Only when they come, I can live again. But until then, I must stand still, be still, like the redwoods surrounding me. I keep my promises; if I break them, if I blink, if I so much as twitch, I will have to be a human being again with a personality, and I can't even remember who I was before all of this. I can't move, I mustn't, I will not.

I shall not break my promise.