Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

“Like the sway of the sea and the tug of the tides, love is a moving, eternal thing. Let us not be afraid of the wax and the wane, the rise and the fall, the eternal undertow. Each time our souls meet, let us submerge our bodies in the bright blue cold, and let the waves make us anew.” A tear slid down the apple of her cheek. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

In a futile attempt at self-preservation, my mind rehearsed loss before death closed its fingers, as though practicing it would lessen the blow. It never did.

“You know it’s for us, right?” Mikha said grimly, staring into the ash-white coals on the bonfire. “The grave. You know who I really am.”

“What happens if you don’t kill me, and I don’t kill you, and we can be together?”

“All I know is that I’d do anything to lie in that bed with you just once without thinking about how I’m going to have to kill you soon. That’s all I want. You. Alive. With me.”

“I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you,” he whispered, hoarse, tortured. My throat ached. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

Almost everyone I had ever loved was dead, and the hurt never went away; I just learned to exist alongside it.

And so, in the absence of any abiding religious convictions, this was the one blind faith I had: that love was a physical force, and it was never wasted. Once it was called out into the universe, it would echo back to us forever.

So much power in those three simple words. I still believe.

“My love for you could fill an ocean, Evelyn.” There was an awful resignation to her tone. “But it can’t stop the tide of time.”

Because that’s the thing about humans—we leave traces of our souls everywhere, as unique and identifying as fingerprints.

“The Evelyn I know … they love over and over and over again, even though it can only ever end in tragedy. Even though they’ve lost everyone they’ve ever loved, and they miss them in the next life, and the next, and the next. Never have they developed hard edges like I have. Never have they tried to protect themselves from that pain. They love softly, and fiercely, and openly, and it’s the bravest thing I know. The most human thing I know.”

Trying to keep the people I loved alive was like trying to cup the rain in my palms, every drop so precious and fragile and important, only to watch them seep, inevitably, back into the earth.

“What’s your secret, Evelyn? How does the candle of hope in your chest never burn down to the wick?”

“I thought I was supposed to be the poet.” A sigh, long and low. “Though, without you, there would be no poetry. I would have only the harsh lens of my own worldview. I wouldn’t be able to see the beauty of life, because I only see it through your eyes. Muse is too simple a word for what you are to me.”

“You have faith in all of humanity. You have faith in love. Please, have faith in me. I do this to protect you. Do you understand that? That I would lay my body over yours, war after war after war, life after life after life?”

Arden was Dylan.

“I don’t feel, in my heart, that I’m a boy. But neither do I feel like I am inherently a girl. My soul isn’t rooted to any of them. I’m just me. No particular body feels more ‘right’ than the other, nor more wrong. They’re just vessels. And with you … it doesn’t matter to me how you look, what form you take.” I tapped the top of his cane. “You’re just you.”

“I’ve always believed our souls find each other, somehow, but that was wrong. You don’t have a soul.”

“It’s impossible to have bravery without fear. Bravery is picking up the fear and carrying it alongside you, rather than allowing it to block the path.”

Even when our families grieved and moved on, even when our ancestors lay in the dirt, even when we slipped through the cracks of time like ghosts, there would always be us. No matter how twisted and broken, we were the one true constant, our love like a river wending its way through the earth year after year, century after century, growing deeper and wider with every twist and bend. A certain peace came with knowing the water would always flow a particular way.