Our Infinite Fates

by Laura Steven

“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.”

I begged my mouth to finish the question, to stay awake long enough to hear this new answer, but I was slipping, slipping, slipping, and there, in a grave colder than Mars, next to the soul I’d loved for a hundred lives and lost in every one, we took our final breath beneath the indifferent stars.

“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.”

The everyday tenderness of “I saw this and thought of you.”

“You see me to my very core. I know that to be true. Nobody has ever known me, or will ever know me, like you do. That’s such an intimate thing.

“I think I understood a long time ago that big joy and small joy are the same.

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.”

“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.”

“Suffering is in itself a pyramid scheme. Hurt people hurt people.

You are me, and I am you. And our love is stronger than anything.”