Communion

Forever shall life become more dazzling with her, he thought.

He mustered all his courage and finally, three words erupted from his mouth like the seeping of a fountain amidst a jungle. The night was cold yet promising.

But this fragile, beautiful girl in her sweet smile replied to him the bitterest words he had ever heard.

“Look at the moon, her scars, her pale face,” she murmured to the winds. “Ever since, I have vowed to love its owner.”

It pained him to accept this, this fate more throbbing than the embers kissing his feet. She reassured him with her smile, her hair dancing away from his filthy cheeks. His love, hidden for a hundred and forty-three cycles of the moon, now revealed, and now over, too.

For him, nothing is most fitting but the love of a childhood friend. He crumpled the petite love letter resting from his hands, the red ribbons turned to chains. He tore it with the force of regret stemming from his clammy hands. He threw the pieces onto the raging bonfire beside him, his lifeless heart consumed in flames of his emotion.

“I’ll be waiting.” The rustle of leaves deafened his soul, the crunches of rocks and sand hardened his being, but the whispers of the old wind kept ringing in him. A promise of a lifetime.

Twenty years of never knowing and only existing… going by… gone…

Her habit concealed the once tempting hair. A blue gown wrapped her frail body. She soaked in the queue of those forever in love of serenity. She sung with the choir sung ago by the righteous. She was three people away from him.

Closer… closer… Fate was about to mend the past, to heal the wounds of sorrowful parting, and to create a moment that is theirs only to share. She parted her lips. He raised the body…

And then their eyes met and locked. His cheeks, now clean yet rough in grain carved by times of melancholy… her tranquil beauty stealing a look from behind her cloak. A love reunited by a love for the ultimate, and by a promise that defied a million seconds of lost memories.

She smiled. And so be it. “Amen.”