— No, but seriously?

— You’ll get wise. Wiser than you are, I mean.

— It’s not enough.

— All right: you can have some immortality. Here it is. It’s inside this bottle. See it?

— That little heap of dust?

— Look harder.

— Oh. Yes. Does it always sparkle like that?

— Only at first.

— Are you sure this is immortality?

— Trust me. With some of this, you’ll always have a voice.

— Have a voice, or be a voice?

— One or the other.

— Well, okay, thanks a lot then.

— Don’t drop the bottle. Be careful with it. You have to watch those things, they have a habit of getting bigger. They can get as big as the sky. You can be sucked into them before you know it. It’s the vacuum effect. Now set it down, over there in the corner, dump that bulky mantle, and put your arms…

— I feel dizzy. This is getting a little intense. I ate too much at lunch. I think I should go home and lie down.

— Lie down right here! You owe me, remember? No time like the present. Slit a throat, pour a libation, empty your mind, close your eyes, clear a space for me, think about caves…

— Ouch. Let go! I need to breathe. I can’t, right now. How about next week?

— Don’t you love me?

— It’s not that. It’s just—are you really who you say you are?

— I am what I am. I’m also who you say I am. That’s the way it is with gods, and I’m a god, after all.

— So there’s nothing to you. You’re only in my head. You’re just a—you’re nothing.

— More or less.

— That’s what I thought. Wait, come back!

— I’m not stupid, I recognize no when I hear it.

— I didn’t mean to be abrupt. Let’s talk.

— You can’t talk with nothing.

— But—

IMPENETRABLE FOREST