crack_van | Syni Molniya by Tarshaan (PG)

Fandom: HIGHLANDER

Author on LJ:

tarshaan
Author Website: tarsh's cave
Character: OMC; Matthew McCormick makes an appearance in the sequel.
Why this must be read: You get to see the terrifying mystery of Immortality from the perspective of a confused new Immortal.

My last rec gave us a glimpse of the young Duncan MacLeod immediately after discovering his Immortality. Eventually, his kinsman Connor MacLeod arrived to teach him how to live as an Immortal. But what about the unlucky Immortals who don't have a teacher to help them?

Syni Molniya is written from the POV of an original character who becomes Immortal in modern day America. He is guided by nothing more than a garbled old legend and his instinct to survive.

It's the oldest tale I know, that of the syni molniya. It stretches back to the beginnings of our family, our world; forward to time immemorial. The long-lived ones, who look just like any other unless you cut them, who walk the world with wary eyes and call the lightning from clear skies. Like the other tales of my childhood, I never doubted its truth.

And I never understood how real it was. Not until the day I failed to die.

There's a lot of detail, in the tale. The distance between them, the wars they must wage, each on the other. The loneliness of the years and the curse of the hours, the fire that leaps beneath their skin, the mystery of their origins. How they roam the earth searching, always searching -- though for what they search changes with the telling. Life, death, mortality, the families they lost, the children they can never have, the friendship they're doomed to always lose. It's a good tale, a great tale. The story Dedushka loved to tell best, and the tale I loved most to hear; and as a blueprint for a new life, it totally and utterly sucks.

But it's all I have to go on, now that Death has rejected me and blue lightning has taken up residence beneath my skin.

Read Syni Molniya and the sequel, At the Root of the World Tree.