Endless. They call us endless and envy our eternity. If they only knew the truth . . . that without time there is only dream.
Time passes no gentler for my kind. It grinds us, as it does mortals. Though we are made of harder stuff, perhaps, and our dust as it falls is more lasting. Still, it falls. When I feel that the cord of my life can stretch no farther, that I am surely a dead thing never to rise . . . I dream of Ava.
When I close my eyes, it is her dark hair covering me. When I open them, the light of her face is the first thing I see. I hear her whisper in the soft places of the world, in the flutter of wings, candlelight, and rippling water. When my body is destroyed and my spirit flees to be reborn—I feel her breath on my neck.
A thousand years. Two thousand. The hours slip like sand through my fingers. I’ll see her again, I swear to myself. I’ll find her, somehow, eventually. . . . In the quiet of space, the vaults of time, I remember Ava’s hand in mine.
