Waited for him

In the land of Elarindor, where the skies sang at dawn and the moon whispered lullabies to the mountains, there stood a quiet village called Lirien's Hollow. It was a place brushed with magic—subtle, not loud. The trees seemed to listen. Dream voices were often carried by the wind. And in a small cottage by the river lived a girl named Alira.

Alira had eyes like morning dew—soft, clear, expectant—and a heart full of stories passed down by her grandmother. One story, more than the rest, had taken root in her soul. It was the tale of the Starbound.

Her grandmother used to say, “Every soul is stitched to another across the threads of time. Some meet in fire, some in song, some in silence. But the rarest… oh, the rarest wait lifetimes.”

One of those rare people was Alira. She knew from the time she was a child. Every spring, she’d feel it—a tug in her chest, as though someone was just beyond the veil of the wind, almost reaching back. It wasn’t loneliness, exactly. It was more like... remembering someone she hadn't yet met.

She sat still. The years passed gently in Lirien's Hollow. Alira grew into her grace. She painted, sang to the forest, and read the stars. Many admired her. Some offered their hearts. But she always smiled kindly and said, “He hasn’t arrived yet.”

The village whispered. They pitied her, even teased her quietly. But Alira’s patience never wavered.

One autumn, as the amber leaves danced like flames around the village, a storm unlike any other darkened the skies. Thunder cracked like an old curse, and the river by Alira’s cottage rose with fury. In the heart of the storm, a traveler stumbled into Lirien’s Hollow, soaked and near unconscious. His cloak was torn. His sword arm hung limp. The villagers feared him—he bore the mark of the Lost Order, a knightly band believed to have vanished in the Northern Wastes a century ago.

But Alira looked into his eyes—storm-grey, familiar, ancient—and knew.

It was him.

His name was Kael. He spoke in a voice that felt like a memory—soft, careful, and slightly astonished. “I’ve been walking through time,” he said one night as the fire cracked in her hearth. “Looking for something I only knew in dreams.”

They fit together like twilight and dawn—two parts of the same sky. He told her about dreams in which her face would shimmer just out of reach and how he would sleep with the stars singing her name. She told him how she waited, never knowing when, only trusting that he would come.

But magic is never without its price.

Kael had been cursed. To find his bonded one, he had wandered for a hundred years, not aging, not resting, caught between moments. Now that he had found her, time began to catch up. His strength waned. His heartbeat slowed.

Despite this, Alira did not cry. She took his hand, fingers entwined like old vines, and smiled.

“I have waited for you,” she whispered, “and I will wait again.”

That night, under the Everstar—a celestial bloom that only opened once a century—Alira laid beside Kael in the meadow behind her cottage. As its silver petals unfurled, Kael’s spirit rose, not into death, but into the Everlight—the realm of soulbound sleep.

And Alira? She remained.

Years passed. Decades. Her hair turned silver. Her eyes stayed soft. Every century, when the Everstar bloomed again, she would lie beneath it, whispering into the sky:

“I’m still waiting.”

One day, far in the future, when the world had changed and even the mountains had forgotten their names, the Everstar opened once more. And this time, it shimmered with two lights.

Kael stepped out—not as a ghost, not as a shadow, but whole, timeless, and free.

And there, waiting beneath the flower of stars, was Alira. Her patience finally paid off, making her radiant and young again. They embraced beneath the heavens, not as lovers bound by time, but as souls that had always been one.

And the stars, for once, stood still to watch.

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