Prologue
Somewhere, she’s alive again.
I can sense it, like a pull in the gut, a static shift in the air, a note in a song that catches me mid-breath. It feels like a vibration, but it is not a sound, not in the traditional sense. Not a voice either. It’s a knowing, an aching. Familiar. Restless. It forces me forward.
I am always moving. Watching, waiting, hidden in the bends where shadows hide.
Cities rise and fall, languages decay and transform, borders merge and separate. People fade away, they forget. But I remember. Every face she’s worn. Every name she’s carried. Every time her breath faded in my arms. I remember it all, because I am not allowed to forget. I am not able to forget. But if I could, I would not wish to forget.
That’s my punishment. Or maybe the price I had to pay.
Not the endless life. Not the grief.
The remembering. The vivid memories.
There was a time I thought I could make peace with it, breathe with it. Live quietly, tucked away in mountains and forests far from the places we knew. But it was naive optimism, I know that now. Even when I bury myself in obscurity, she carves her way to me. Or maybe I forge the lines in the path for her. I don’t know anymore.
In every lifetime, there’s a pause just before it begins again. A shift in the air. A flicker in her eyes. A storm in mine.
And then it all unravels.
I’ve watched her drown.
I’ve watched her burn.
I’ve pulled her from battlefields and tombs and rivers and pyres. And no matter how tightly I hold onto her, she slips right through my fingers.
We are powerless. The gods are cruel. But I think they find this funny, amusing. I think they’re watching still. I hope they are.
Some nights, I imagine what it would be like if she remembered, just by herself. If she woke up one day and saw me, not a stranger, not a man who stared too long, but me, the man I once was. The man I still am, beneath all the years of grief and blood. The man who belongs to her.
Would she forgive me?
Would she run?
I don’t know what life she’s in now. I don’t know who she is or where she is. I don’t know how she is, if she’s happy or empty. But she’s out there. Coming closer.
And when I find her -and I will- I’ll try again. And again.
To warn her.To save her.
Even if it kills me.
Especially if it kills me.
