My eyes met the skull’s eyeless sockets, the shadowed holes reminding me—almost, I could hear a voice putting it into words—that I too would die, might lie as he, my flesh eaten away, my corpse falling apart and scattered on the floor. This I knew, but it bore repeating: that man was mortal. Mortal but immortal; another paradox. His words, changing, moving from one country, one people, to another, shifting into knew tongues and cultures, might outlive him; in a way, he might outlive himself, might join the gods, might find new flesh by becoming an animating pattern.
Memento Mori
Tale Told 