Nice use of regeneration, immortality can be a curse as well as a blessing.

Lovely idea about the Trolls having a special ritual for those of them that reach that stage. The way they care for one of their own with gentleness and compassion is sad when you see what it entails.

Could have done with being broken into a few paragraphs, especially the ending, but a shiny story.

Neat idea and a wild visual. Good job.

Alas the idea is utterly ripped off from my local LARP system. A friend and I played a pair of troll sisters and for convoluted reasons this led to the ref team having to work out how the troll life cycle worked (it was a seldom played race). They decided that due to the regeneration their bodies would never wear out, but their already feeble minds probably wouldn’t last. I really liked the idea as a strange angle of immortality. So I can’t really take credit for the idea, but it’s one worth stealing.

bittersweet, the fire has to be done, thank goodness the mind is gone..

REminds me of a bit in a Warren Ellis comic (The AStonishing X-Men: The Ghost Box) in which he builds an alternate reality where Wolverine has his adamantium legs somehow bent, and he is now an useless cripple; he is put in a pyre to burn and burn and burn until his healing factor wore off and he was finally dead.

I really enjoyed this story. I’m glad it got featured. It’s melancholy without being cliche, and it uses some great imagery.

When I first read it, I didn’t realize that the sisters were trolls, too. I read “another troll” in the first line as indicating that the sisters were troll-hunting, and they caught the scent of their next victim. It wasn’t until I read your comment that I understood.

I loved the new angle of troll end of life ritual. Bringing to light a pheonix like creature that perhaps rises again? or it would not be immortal, just rejuvinating.