It's been 1500 years since that fateful day I kept my brother. 1500 years! I have lived seventy lives in that time. Sometimes I live to a hundred, sometimes I pass on at four: just when my memory comes alive. Why do I come back? Why do I stay alive? Why am I Cain?
Were I to set reed to cuneiform in every lifetime, I could the closest tale tell the world to its history. It won't be the world's history, but it would be the history of someone who's lived it all. For I am the first writer who invented script, words, and alphabet. I am Cain. Is the world my story, or am I just its tormented witness?
Why did I kill him Lord? Vengeance against you? It was not nearly so broad. It was the same reason anybody kills: an urge, not a thought.
It was the simple anger of the simple minded my invention sought to uplift. I invented writing, Abel taught it. Abel could communicate, Abel could perform, Abel was worshipped as though he were you, because of my invention! He brought it everywhere. He was the real offense! All I had was pictures I put into orders that meant things, and while Abel inspired the world I was invisible to it. Holed up unloved in the garden of my childhood while Abel saw the world, waiting years for him to come home with new tales from old lands and new. He always said I could see the world if I so wanted. What had I to offer it Abel could not offer ten times over?
Abel didn't laugh at me. Abel's existence laughed at me, and I wanted vengeance. And then you proscribed the ultimate vengeance: I killed Abel, yet I am killed seventy times, remember them all, and worry I'll be killed another seventy-thou....
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