Streets of Hope

What's your favourite misconception about immortals?

"That's an easy one: a lot of people tend to assume that being deathless means you'll pack on education and personal experience to the point of turning into a polymath and the absolute picture of ladylike or gentlemanly virtues. They think undead and the Fae don't use contractions, and even after the Vienna Accords, I regularly run into mortal officers in the Council's satellite services that are surprised to see I'm not rocking Mesopotamia's long, flowing beard and curly mullet.

It's even funnier outside of my native culture, to be honest. Before I was Head of Security with a few privileges tacked onto my role, I was a regular old point of contact at Vienna and I worked with everyone between fresh Striplings to dragons just coming out of anonymity after thousands of years spent under the radar. I'm not a trained psychotherapist, but I like to establish points of commonality with the people I work with; and I was lucky enough to review Faustus Cordatus' case file. I also got to interview him.

We opened on pleasantries and got to chatting, and we did like a lot of immortals do and started working our polyglot tendencies - and he noticed I have a passing familiarity with Ancient Latin. Things instantly took a left turn towards the highlight of casual discourse for Roman gentle-folk, which obviously concerned the Coliseum. I learned he'd collected action figures of a few prominent gladiators and that he was a murmillo fan through and through. I realized he'd held onto a few of these figurines for centuries on end, recognized a few names and belted, well, the Diocletian-era equivalent of "Dude! I looked for that figurine across markets in Alexandria so hard; I'd heard there were only a dozen of them crafted!"

I freeze, realizing how I just talked to one of the Green dragons responsible for the establishment and maintenance of Avalon itself, a man who regularly seeks counsel with ghosts of absolutely Arthurian importance. I'm older than he is, but he has age on his side, whereas the Blood's kept me as the young man I used to be when I was turned. I still think as such from time to time and, well, I'm expecting this to bite me back in epic fashion.

Well? He just laughs, and invites me over to take a look at it for myself, over some ale. I just want to stress that I'm technically older than Cody Tanner, and yet if anyone's nailing the Finely-Aged Patrician Being of Well-Deserved Import act, it's him - not me! I can't tie a necktie to save my life and I still remember the day we just collectively borrowed from the Romans and tied wet rags around our necks to keep cool!"