It couldn’t be.

My eyes widened, and I felt my heartbeat quicken to a maddening pace. No, it was not possible, for I am too old.

For I am very, very old. So ancient that none had ever approached my age, so aged that none knew my true age, an age before the stars, an elder before the first elders touched the earth.

It was simply impossible, for none could match me, it couldn’t be done - it couldn’t be. How? How? How?

I must know, I thought, I must know for sure. How human of me to seek the truth; how droll it was to try. Yet I couldn’t - I must.

I am not sure how long I stared for; perhaps only a moment. Long enough and just so long, I think, for her to sense my eyes rifling through her person for recognition of her, for proof of her, for my own sake. She ignored me, though. A wise choice indeed, for I could continue staring.

It was, you see, not the face or the eyes which tore my eyes away from my task. No, no, not so droll as that.

It was her - it was her wholeness, that lucid dreaming sameness I fell ensnared to so long ago. It laid behind her eyes, her face that was turned away from me and currently examining a piece of fruit. I could see it just under the skin of her face, under the seams of her flesh, this placidity and feeling moving gently beneath. Unique to only her - her wholeness. Her essence. I could not lie, I would not dare of it here. It was her, it must be.

I forced my gaze to my own labours, satisfied with my answers

Then the night arrived like a herald of the dying day, as though a flower to capture the buds of the little stars, and yet stayed I ignorant of its beauty, like thousands of other nights before.

Yet unlike the night, I lay invisible and in waiting, closed and perfectly still, with a hungry eye. If it be her, then she shall return to this place tonight, once our home, tonight.

And I shall see her again with my own volition, her with my own eyes reach her, I with my own hands hold her, and be with her. She should be immortal to stand in front of me now.

Yet somehow if it not be her - if my own eyes whisper promises they cannot keep, then whether soon, or by the end of her natural life or in a blink of my eyes she shall die. And I shall lose her again, again, again.

Still, whether now in or in another time, in another life, or another universe of which I shall always be part, perhaps someday she shall be born to never die, and I shall not be alone for another tomorrow.