[Image ID: A flag with four corners resembling a rounded diamond shape. Each stripe follows the curve of the central diamond and then continues on horizontally outwards. Going inwards from the outermost stripes, the colours are the following: black, grey, white, brown, alongside a central diamond that is gold on the outside, light yellow on the inside, and containing a central golden dot in the middle. It vaguely resembles the face of a clock. End ID.]
Mortelum is a term for someone whose identity relates to a variety of concepts centring around death, the passage of time, and the intersection between those two concepts. Mortelum may also relate to the imagery of said concepts, such as vast grandfather clocks or rotting bones. The following concepts all fall under mortelum.
• Time: Eternal and always moving, never stopping or slowing for even a moment. Always ticking on. Weaved into the fabric of reality and space, a vessel for our existence.
• Impermanence: Moments experienced only once. Each and every second unique, special, and once within eternity. All that wears, crumbles, and falls as death reaps what time takes.
• Death: Finality. The end of consciousness. The last words spoken, and the last things thought within the silence. The soul. And if one’s culture relates to it, reincarnation. A new beginning. A new life.
• Rest: The acceptance of the eternal passage of time. The knowledge that each moment is singular and fleeting, occurring only once within infinity, yet still making the choice to rest. Rather than forcing oneself to labouring, making every moment count, the allowance for time to pass by without wearing down on the psyche.
• Stillness: All is still in time. When life is to end, all that once moved is still. Earthen. Returned to the soil to begin again.
• Cycles: Looping on and on, generation after generation. Repetition. Going back around again as time moves only forward.
• Chronophobia: The fear that time moves faster than any individual could keep up with. Worrying when each moment shall end, never spending a single minute in the moment. The incomparable awareness of eternity in comparison to the impermanence of life.
• Thanatophobia: To live life always worrying when it shall end. Knowing that the final completion is oncoming, yet having no way to defend against it.
• Symbology: Great grandfather clocks with grand bells chiming at the passing of the hour. The ticking of a clock telling each second apart from one another. Mushrooms grown from the ground and the trees, born from death. Decay and rot, bones and graves that mark where creatures once lived.
Mortelum may be completely separate from the idea of xenogenders, or may not even be a gender at all. It often feels inherent, encompassing, or entire, a great and eternal unknown or an unending idea that drives the fabric of reality, shattering one to their core.
Name Origin: @kenochoric who combined Mortis/Mortem (Death) + Pendulum
