Someday. That's what I used to always dream of, some distant, far-off someday.

Someday, Dad won't travel so much.

Someday, Jackie will stop being mean and go back to normal.

Someday, I'll be a cheerleader.

Someday, I won't be a freak.

Someday, we won't be hunted.

Only two of those somedays ever came true. I was a cheerleader, though it didn't last long. The other one that actually came true was the someday of never being hunted. That was definitely a case of be careful what you wish for. There was no acceptance, no repentance. There was just oblivion. There was just the death of anyone else who ever knew. The death of the entire human race. The destruction of the Earth. The death of the sun. Billions of billions of years, time immemorial to anything in the Universe but me.

I predate planets, suns, solar systems. I travelled to other planets, back when the human race had been exploring the still-expanding Universe. I had lived with aliens, learned their cultures. All the aliens had died out, too, some after the humans, some before. I was the only life left in the entire Universe, if what I had could be called a life.

But the Universe is shrinking fast, so fact. The borders of the Void speed closer until I can see them, ethereal and not intended for human eyes. I wondered briefly if this was the end, just long enough to let a spark of hope kindle in my chest, the first thing I had felt in the past billion years.

The Void closes in on me and I wait for the end. Then a hand closes on my arm and it's the first contact I have felt in an eternity (literally). I spin round in the close confines of space and see a round face, eyes squeezed shut behind equally round glasses. Then I'm no longer facing my end.

The first thing I feel is gravity, a now foreign feeling. Then light and sounds. I freeze, like a deer in the hunter's sights. No, more like a statue that know that it can wait forever for whoever's bothering it to go away.

"Claire!" The word sounds familiar but it takes me a few seconds to remember my name, the name I was born with, and even longer to remember my first language so I could reply.

"What is it?" Even to my ears, my voice sounds hollow. I just wanted them to get it over with. They had saved me from dying, and I was grateful to see all my friends again. Still, I knew, in the back of my head, that all that they had done was forced me to live it all again.

I would have to live another eternity, for the promise of my final someday.