stagskullanon:

woodswordsquire:

If you were of a species that divides like a cell once a year or so, and maintains memory and consciousness as it divides, how would you think about identity?

One possibility: “This is my fork brother, Steve. We had the same childhood, and then had different high school sweathearts. He married his, and I left town to go to a different college.”

You’re fifty – You’ve finally decide that it’s time to ditch the rat race, and you’ve moved to a remote Scottish island to set up a tea room and farm Zwartbles sheep. Every time you’re sat by the field gate, a man about the same age as you stops to chat – He moved up from the mainland twenty-odd years ago, bought the post office, and now everyone thinks of him as a local.

“Man, there’s just something about island life isn’t there? It slows everything down, makes it all seem like this is how it’s always going to be.”

“This place just always called to me” he says, watching the first of your new lambs getting to its feet and starting to suckle, “Ever since I worked at Jenning’s Typewriters, I’d always wanted to move here.

I had a little postcard of the lighthouse above my desk from…”

You realise that you both spoke that last sentence together.

“You married Martha?”

“You took that promotion?”

You look at each other, and but for thirty years of difference, it’s the same face looking back.