FOREVER, AND THEN SOME

Every life began the same way for Elias — a brief, glowing memory, a whisper of a touch, the softest echo of a name he could barely remember, but his heart did. Every time he opened his eyes in a new body, in a new time, he knew: somewhere, out there, she was waiting for him.

Her name changed with each lifetime — Lyra, Elowen, Mayari — but the soul was always hers. The laugh that tilted toward the sky, the glint in her eye when she was about to say something reckless, the way she held the world in her hands and never realized how brightly she shone.

Elias remembered everything.
Every kiss shared under the rain.
Every promise whispered under falling stars.
Every last goodbye.

And she — she remembered nothing.


---

In this life, her name was Clara.
She was a literature student, her pockets full of crumpled poems and secondhand books, her heart untouched by memories she no longer carried.

Elias found her at a dusty bookstore tucked between two crumbling buildings in the old part of the city. He knew, the moment he saw her — that tilt of her head, that restless spirit flickering behind cautious eyes — it was her. It was always her.

But it was never easy.

He learned to be patient.
He learned to fall in love with her all over again — gently, carefully, without expectation.

He watched as Clara frowned over her coffee, as she laughed with her friends, as she sang along to songs on the radio, forgetting she was singing out loud.

Every day, Elias loved her a little more.

Every day, he hoped this time would be different.


---

They became friends. Then something more — those lingering touches, the way she sought him out in a crowd, the way her gaze softened when it landed on him.

One night, under the spill of moonlight, she kissed him — her hands trembling, her breath catching — and he kissed her back like he was breathing for the first time.

“I feel like I’ve known you forever,” she whispered against his mouth.

He smiled, something breaking and healing all at once inside him.
"You have," he said. "And then some."


---

But love, even the purest kind, doesn’t erase fate.

One evening, while walking along the riverbank, Clara paused, frowning as if struggling against something invisible.

"Sometimes I dream of... another life," she confessed. "Other versions of me. Other versions of you." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But when I wake up, it slips away."

Elias's heart ached. He wanted to tell her everything — about their centuries of love, their endless beginnings and endings, the promises made under ancient stars.
But he couldn’t.

It had to be her choice to remember. It always did.

"I believe dreams mean something," he said softly, threading his fingers through hers. "Maybe they’re pieces of something real."

"Maybe," she said, her voice uncertain. But she leaned into him, trusting him without knowing why.

Maybe that was enough.


---

Years passed. Their love grew, deeper and steadier than all the storms that battered it.

And though she never fully remembered, sometimes Clara would wake up at night and look at Elias with tears in her eyes, touching his face as if anchoring herself to something ancient.

"Don’t ever leave me," she'd whisper.

"Never," he promised, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Not in this life. Not in the next. Forever, and then some."


---

When their hair turned silver, when their hands grew frail, they sat side by side under a golden autumn sky, their hearts still young.

As Clara closed her eyes for the last time, she smiled — a deep, knowing smile.

"I remember," she breathed. "I remember it all."

Tears blurred Elias’s vision as he held her close.

"Wait for me," he whispered into her hair. "I'll find you again."

She nodded, her soul already drifting, already reaching for him across time and stars.


---

And somewhere, in the bright beginning of another life, another story —
a boy opened his eyes and smiled at the faint memory of a girl he hadn’t yet met...

but already loved.