The longer immortals have been around, the more nectar they need to drink daily in order to sustain their life force. Although my four hundred odd years sound like an eternity to mortals, I generally only need one warm mug of nectar a day to stay sane, even with my abnormally fast metabolism. With the recent shortages, however, I've been subsisting on a shot glass's worth only when my energy starts lagging, so hearing that nectar had suddenly started pouring from fountains and spigots was a welcome relief. Within seconds I had rounded up every dented pot and pan I own, mundane and magical alike, and rushed to the nearest source of aqua vitae.

It wasn't hard to find. In fact, I didn't even have to look; sparkling nectar was leaking from the pores of bricks and the eyes of stone statues, swirling in ornate bird baths and quaint koi ponds, and cascading down from the peaks of roofs and cracks within pillars. I positioned smaller containers under the minor drips and flows, and then raised my pewter cauldron above my head to capture the nectar waterfall pouring from a rather large hole in the wall, suddenly energized by the endless stream of liquid life. When the rim began to overflow, I eased the pot down and gazed longingly into it...

...and gasped. The glimmering reflection looking back at me was a polluted representation of myself. The imposter was wearing my face, but stared with strikingly red eyes and a grinned with a mouth teeming with fangs. In a saccharine voice, it sang, "Join us! Join us! Jooooooin us!" My immediate instincts were a tangled mess, as the sparkling nectar and the devilish figure were both enticing and revolting, and my parched throat and soul cried for me to drink, drink, drink. My grip on the heavy cauldron began to waver, and then violently shake, as if my entire being was rejecting the shimmering liquid in my hands. The pot crashed to the ground, spraying a wave of nectar across the pavement, and I sprinted back to the sanctuary of my dorm.

I still don't know how I resisted. Maybe it was my relatively young age, or the mystical forces I've been acutely attuned to for years. Or maybe it was just pure luck, muscle failure from holding pounds of pewter above my head just moments before. All I know for sure it that the clear, sparkling fluid seeping from every orifice on campus is not pure nectar, but rather a corrupted imitation. I need to find its source, to understand how and why this dilution is circulating, but I'm already so weak. I only have a few glass bottles of true nectar left in storage, and my rationing will have to be far more restrictive in order to make it last. Soon, I will start wasting away, losing my mind, body, and soul in bits and pieces, and from that there is no return.

Over the years, I've collected a lot of stuff. Stuff is about as descriptive I can about my collection's entirety, because my stash varies quite a bit more than the trinkets your grandma has tucked away in shoeboxes and musty closets. Packed beside my more mundane memories - photographs, newspaper clippings, love letters, scars, and the like - are an array of supernatural artifacts, some dating back to long before even I was born. Some, I found by myself, either by pure happenstance or through projects I pursued to entertain myself: bottomless bags, instant fertilizer, temporary luck charms, and other more or less useless knick-knacks. But the true treasures, sources of real power and change, were entrusted to me for safe keeping.

Everyone has a reputation, something the world at large defines them as. For mortals, these tend to be flimsy, subjective representations of their person: Jim makes jokes instead of dealing with anything, Rebecca never minds her own business, Sam makes a fantastic grilled cheese. Immortals, however, have legacies. To some, the ones who've heard stories about me, Alessia accumulates and protects magic and its vessels. Anything that needs me, finds me.

Magic is a fickle force, and although it can easily be exploited when in the wrong hands, it has its own mysterious consciousness and goals. Few actually stop and listen to its arcane voice, deciding instead to manipulate it for their own gain. Having learned this in the most personal way possible (that witch obviously didn't pour nectar down my throat out of the goodness of her heart), I decided to dedicate myself to protecting my ever-growing collection of magical artifacts. The nectar thrumming through my veins makes listening to and being the voice of magic simple. The power I have stashed away tells me who should wield it, when, and for what purpose.

Today, I felt a fluttering beneath the skin of my ears and hands, the usual indicator that there's something I need to hear and do. The thoughts being nudged into my brain whisper fragments about energy and immortals, giving me an idea of where I need to start looking, but the rest is up to me. The bigger something is, the harder it is for the forces that be to articulate it; judging by how vague the tips I've gotten so far are, this something has massive ramifications.

I never had a good memory. Even as a little girl, I'd get distracted by bugs and trees and shadows and wind on my way down to the well. But now, after hundreds of years of life, my memories fail me in different ways. Similar faces blend together and swap bodies; scenes warp and shift like a fleeting fever dream; mismatched accents and languages combine phrases spoken decades apart. Events that should be concrete are fluid within my mind, and I can't help but wonder if the past itself changes alongside my memories. After all, if no one else is alive to recall it, could have happened any other way? Does it even matter?

Over the years I've talked to many "experts" on memory loss, and most agree that the best way to reconstruct my timeline is to keep a journal organizing my brief moments of clarity. (Of course, I doubt many of them understood I was trying to remember 438 years of personal history, not what I did last Friday night after downing seven margaritas and a Xanax.) The problem is, it's easy to lose track of random sticky notes, restaurant napkins, and paper scraps when you travel the world for a century or four, even if they bear your most precious memories. Despite how bad I am at remembering, I'm exceptional at losing things.

Although, it might be for the best that my most vivid memories are trivial things I hyper-fixated on. (This really cool leaf I found my third time in Amsterdam? Crystal clear. My mother's face? Sort of blurry.) Because mixed in with all of the adventures and laughter I've shared over the years, there's an equal amount of trauma. Black magic, pain, war, mistakes: most shattered against the waves of my tumultuous mind, but each shard still cuts deep if I try to hold onto it for too long. Maybe the pain and gaps in my memories are to protect me from dwelling on the past. The more years you have to look back on, the harder it is to look away and focus on the present.

Honestly, before @Rayla Tibbets said anything, I'd never dwelled on how haphazard and strange immortality really is. All of us drift from one place to the next to avoid suspicion and boredom, and I've tried to convince myself that this is due to my desire to see the world and underlying commitment issues. But deep-down, all immortals know their wanderings stem from a never-ending pursuit of nectar.

Nectar, a shimmering liquid that is vaguely reminiscent of honey and tastes how flowers smell, is the literal lifeblood of an immortal. It sounds like an overpriced designer drug for hippies, and in an abstract way it kind of is. It only flows from one ever-shifting source for each of us, which by design keeps us on separate corners of the Earth. While it seems cruel to keep us away from each other, the only ones who can truly understand, it's for good reason. Or so we're told (if you can hear the X-Files theme playing in your head right now, you're on the right track.)

Each of us is imbued with a certain understanding of immortality, and a lucky few of us also had mentors in our early lives (I had the witch, but I'd consider myself luckier if I'd never met her.) These help acclimate us to our new lives, as everlasting life is policed by an unsurprising abundance of guidelines. Some are obvious, like don't immortalize (haha, get it?) yourself in an elaborate portrait and wait for people to notice it's you centuries later, but two rules stand above the rest: never try to regain mortality, and never stay near another immortal for an extended period of time.

A third, unspoken commandment exists too, urging us never to question anything. Despite my issues with authority figures (probably stemming from, you know, being executed by my "protectors" for witchcraft,) I've never felt the need to rebel against this rule. Until now. Rayla's revelations have me thinking: why are our nectar sources, which usually strive to keep us apart, now drawing us together? I can already feel the energies that are gathering around Rayla, @Amenamapet Ra, and me now that we've settled in the same place.

I might just be getting old, but I have a sneaking suspicion that things are starting to change for the first time in centuries, for better or for worse.

Today is my 438th Rebirthday.

Before you say anything, I know exactly what you're thinking; I've been around too long not to. Your brain is going wild trying to rationalize this, and your erratic thought process might even follow the 5 Stages of Grief (or in this case, Mindfuck.)

Denial: "You can't be that old! This must be a typo." Sorry to burst your little reality bubble, but no. Technically, I'm 455 years old, if you count the 17 years of normal life before I was resurrected, but if that makes your head hurt too much, just ignore it. "Rebirthday" isn't a mistake either, but a play on words I thought was hilarious a couple hundred years ago.

Anger: "Why would you mess with the laws of nature like that? What's dead is meant to stay dead!" If it makes you feel any better, I didn't ask for this. I was minding my own business at the bottom of a river, lungs filled with murky water and glassy eyes staring up at the ripples, when some witch decided I could be useful. She brought me back via black magic to be her apprentice. After a few years in a secluded cabin where she taught me all she knew about the supernatural, the w(b)itch just vanished, leaving me to fend for myself.

Bargaining: "Okay fine, you're the victim here, whatever. But do you have to keep existing as something so unnatural? There's no reason stay like this." Well, actually, I've got a couple of genuine reasons. First, dying, regardless of any technicalities, goes against my innate survival instincts. At a fundamental level, I don't want to. Second, when the witch who resurrected me disappeared, she left all of her magical responsibilities to me. Neglecting any of these, which range from trivial (caring for adopted supernatural creatures) to crucial (regulating demonic and spiritual contact,) could disrupt the very balance of this dimension. So, yeah, I'd say my sticking around is pretty important.

Depression: "I can't even be mad anymore, that sounds like a really sad and lonely existence." I don't need your pity, and I'm not some delicate flower that wilts at every sign of adversity. I have an extraordinary amount of power at my fingertips and am able to change the world, two things I could only dream of when I was an little girl roaming the Scottish moors.

Acceptance: "..." This is the one thing I can't tell if you're thinking. I've heard that Psychic High School is a haven for kids who don't fit anywhere else, and I hope I can belong here too. Everywhere else I go, I can never stay for long before whispers of "freak" and "witch" and "necromancer" start following me around, but maybe here I'll be understood.