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These are the things you come to know as unwavering truths:
1. The girl always has eyes like the morning sky, and flaxen hair.
2. The girl is a fighter.
3. Somehow, she always comes from the sky.
4. The girl never seems to remember.
5. You never really have enough time.
The first time you ever see her she’s still as a statue in the river, poised to strike the fish with her spear. You’d never seen hair that color and can’t help but wonder if she’s one of the gods come to live among mortals. It turns out she’s just part of a band of travelers who are passing through, but she gives you one of the feathers from her hair to remember her by and presses the sweetest kiss to the corner of your mouth. They all wear feathers in their hair, but hers have the best colors. You take a wooden ornament from your own to give her in exchange, and she swears she’ll remember you for the rest of her life. You know you remember her.
~*~*~
The next time you see her, twirling in a flapper dress, you cry out and rush to her side with joy. She looks frightened and it takes you longer than you’d care to admit to realize she doesn’t remember you. Not in this world. You have to start over, and more than once you wish she’d kiss the corner of your mouth again without having to learn your new name.
~*~*~
You’re not always lovers. Sometimes, you’re just best friends. You’re not sure if those times are easier or harder, but they’re definitely better than the times you never meet at all.
~*~*~
You’re never born with the memories, they either surface when she does or when you’ve lived about fifteen years; whichever comes first. At this point, you make sure to write down every life so you never forget. It’s little more than a list of initials and a word or two by each set, but it soothes you. Once, when she is curled into your side in your dorm and half asleep, she asks you about it. “Dreams,” you tell her. “They’re just things from my dreams”. It’s close enough to the truth.
~*~*~
Over time you learn that it’s not just different lives you lead, or different times, it must be in other worlds too because in this one you have magic. She comes swooping in on a dragon a few shades darker than her eyes and the sun behind her makes her hair more golden than it has ever been. The stones at your feet tremble with your anticipation and hope that she’ll remember you. You quiet them with a gesture when it becomes clear she is oblivious yet again. Her brightness is out of place in the desolate desert and she comes to your people with news of war. Too often there is war. Too often it takes one of you viciously from the other.
~*~*~
The worst thing, you decide, is when you manage to find her but she’s ripped away almost immediately. One time, you look up from your seat on the bus and meet her eyes just before that existence ends in fire and pain. Another time, your band of resistance fighters brings supplies to a hospital where you watch her cough up blood before the plague takes her like thousands of others in that world. Once, you see her pass by in a car, and you have to stand on the sidewalk taking deep breaths before you can make yourself move. Yet another time, she’s a bouncy child you play with at the park one day but never see again and you grow up knowing exactly what is missing. As you’ve learned, you never really have enough time.
~*~*~
Despite how brutal the world is, one of your favorite times is when she literally falls from the sky. She’s as feisty as she’s ever been and she breaks down your walls quicker than you ever remember her doing it before. But she doesn’t remember you, she never does. And it’s that fact that allows you to leave her, to walk away, because this time you’re a Commander and it’s more than just the two of you involved. It breaks your heart, but not more than the time you found her body mangled underneath a bridge downtown. At least this time you walk away from her while she’s breathing. But it becomes one of your favorite times because you find her again in the same world. She’s become Wanheda and you can see in her eyes that she hates that she loves you. (She gave you that same look when you told her to wed that floppy-haired boy two lifetimes ago. You knew you would lose her anyway, eventually.) But when she supports you in front of all the clan leaders, you let yourself hope again. Because you never find her twice in one world and this time you did. It doesn’t last. You should know better, you know you never really have enough time.
~*~*~
Although sometimes, you can be content for a while. In hindsight, the weird feeling you got telling you to go to an art gallery isn’t that weird. Because hung up on calm white walls are explosions of color that might as well be photographs of your memories. On one, a blue dragon stands on a blood-stained field and you can almost feel her tears on your face again as she watched you die. Another frame holds only an empty swing set, painted in jarring colors. Yet another is a still life with feathers and carved wooden beads. The biggest one of all is of the throne you had as Heda, branches looming ominously over the shadowed figure sitting upon it. When you ask her what inspired such a variation in subject matter she replies, “Dreams. They’re just things from my dreams”. Even though this time she’s a one night stand, you think of everything you saw on the walls of the gallery and you let yourself hope yet again. It doesn’t fade away.
~*~*~
The next time, you know you’ll see her before it happens. They wanted you for a part in a show and you nearly drop the script in surprise when you read it. Not for the first time, you marvel at the universe and how things line up because this fictional character they want you to play is so close to a past life. They even call her Commander. And you know who will get cast for the other role. Their made-up world is all different though, you come to find out. It doesn’t matter because at least you found her. Later, they ask you to play lovers and you hesitate because this time around the two of you are only friends. But you remember volcanoes and bombs and plague and war and think that maybe you can create a memory to carry with you, even if it’s scripted. You cry when you kiss her in front of the camera crew because it turns out that even in this made-up world, not even your characters have enough time. She kisses you back like she knows and you find the hope is still there.
~*~*~
You made a stupid move. You’ve gotten separated from your family and in this crazy world, you’re certain you’ll die before you find her this time. Except she comes running in unexpectedly swinging a metal baseball bat and saves you from the creatures that wanted to rip you apart. Your memories tell you other lifetimes called them zombies. Blood spatters across her face and clothes and you can’t help but think 'Wanheda' as she turns to you with the red of it in her hair. She smirks at you with a cocky confidence telling you to stop spacing out before helping you up. You don’t know how long the both of you are on the move, but every night she promises she’ll get you back to your family. You don’t ever doubt her. She tells you stories as you travel to keep your mind off the horror you find yourselves in, and your favorite is when she talks about her parents. Her dad was in the air force and he taught her to fly and survive. Her mom was a skilled surgeon and taught her how to heal. You don’t ask what happened to them. You remember the other times well enough. Sometimes you catch her looking at you with a puzzled expression and your heart skips a beat. You’re not sure what you are to each other this time yet, but her incessant flirting gives you a hint. You find a feather one day and when you twirl it in your fingers, you swear she gasps behind you. Hope flutters in your stomach. She sketches sometimes, and although it’s a far cry from paintings she’s done before, you still recognize her strokes on the page. It hurts to see her drawing you over and over without knowing it. “I could almost swear I know you from another life,” she says one day and you agree. The next day she’s gone, trying to distract a group of walkers and you cry thinking it’s over. When she finds you at night, you realize exactly what you are in this lifetime and kiss her without warning. The candles you found give her skin a warm glow and when you run your palm along her spine she gasps “Heda,” into your mouth and kisses the tears from your cheeks. It sends a quiver through your bones and she whispers it again and again. You try to stop the hope from taking over, but it seeps into every part of you and fills you up until you feel like you can’t breathe.
Later, she murmurs into your hair the answers to every question you ask and she remembers. She remembers falling from the sky and pulling that fateful lever and black blood. And you don’t know why it’s that life out of all of them, but you feel joy rush through you when you say “Ai hod yu in,” and she laughs and replies with, “Of course you do, I’m awesome”. And it’s different. You don’t know why, but this is the only lifetime she’s remembered anything and you can’t beat back that hope that keeps resurfacing. You don’t know why, but she teases you about the dirt on your face that looks like war paint and tells you “Shof op,” when you act like the teenager you are this time. You don’t know why it’s not a time when there aren’t things trying to kill you, but if she remembers, that’s all you need. When you find your family you think that maybe this time is different from all the rest and you have a chance.
(And you do, god, you have more than you ever thought was possible. Over time she remembers more and more and she adds words next to the list of initials you keep. Slowly, you both become everything you have ever been, and all the love you carried through every lifetime flows in your veins.)
These are things she tells you are unwavering truths:
1. You always have eyes like trees at dusk.
2. You are strong.
3. Somehow, you always ground her.
4. She remembers every life she had forgotten.
5. In this life, you have more than enough time.