Spring

A short story. 2015.

---

The visits are rarer now. As is my custom, I arrive at the park early, settle on our bench, and stare at the cherry blossoms that come with Spring. I stare, and try not to wonder if this time will be the last.

“Angela.”

Lost in thought, his voice startles me. He looks weak. Gaunt. So much worse than I remember.

In the beginning he visited every month. Now we meet just once a year, under the blooming cherry trees.

I stand up with tears in my eyes and kiss him deeply. Overwhelmed, I cling to him and choke back my sobs.

We are both unique in this world. He mastered time, able to flip back and forth between the centuries as if they were pages in a book. But he is dying. He is running out of time. The irony galls.

“You look just as beautiful as the day I met you,” he murmurs as he strokes my hair.

After we gave up looking for a cure, he used his dwindling strength to travel forward again and again, to meet me in our park. To persist, in a way, beyond his own death. To keep me company.

You see, I travel through time, too. Everyone does, and for the rest of us it’s in one direction and at a constant speed. But I will be doing it forever: for reasons that are a mystery to me, I cannot die. I am immortal. I see mighty trees grow from tiny saplings. I see civilizations rise and fall.

I see everyone I know wither and die.

“You’ve been gone so long.” My words feel insufficient.

We’ve been meeting this way, just a few hours at a time, for almost four hundred years. The barest dribble of water for my parched throat.

“That’s funny,” he smiles softly, “I feel like I haven’t been away at all.”

The old, comfortable joke provokes me to smile, and I nuzzle against his neck as he wipes at my tears.

For a moment it’s just like it was. For a moment I’m not alone.