Where are we?

Here.

While it seems what we have is special and one-of-kind, what you don’t realize is that it’s not. You see, what we have is typical.

What we have is what we were always going to have and always will have. No matter where we are or where we go, we always have this.

Fifteen lifetimes ago, I was a princess. My hair glistened like spun sugar the first night we met. I walked into the royal stables, as I had done every night for the past three years, expecting it to be empty, as it always was. But it wasn’t. Not tonight. You were standing there, petting and cooing to one of the horses. My horse. Out of all the horses in stable, why did you choose mine? My horse didn’t like other people, why did he like you? Because he knew, like you knew which horse to pick, and like I knew, when I first laid eyes on you, that this was meant to be.

Ten lifetimes ago, the first time I laid eyes on you were as the flames were licking my feet, and I felt no pain. As the flesh on my legs bubbled and burned off, I just stared. As the smell of my own flesh overpowered everything else in the square, I just stared. Even when you couldn’t take it anymore and turned away, I just stared. I knew would meet you in the next life.

In the last lifetime, I watched you, the boy next door, go out every day. I watched from my bedroom window as you carried signs that said things like, “END THE WAR BEFORE IT ENDS YOU” and “CHILDREN ARE NOT FOR BURNING”, until one day, you didn’t come home. I wrote to you, but you never wrote back. Everytime you looked at me, I forgot how to breathe yet felt like all I needed to breathe was you. And when we kissed, I felt like I was floating with my feet planted on the ground. With you, there was no war, no bombs, I was safe. But, when you came home, you brought home someone else, a girl from Vietnam. You didn’t even give me a second look. My heart was irreparable.

What we have is what we’ve always had and always will have. We are not some epic love story, we are just a chapter in the larger saga.

So when you asked, “Where are we?”

I knew, as I have always known.

“We are here,” I replied, “Always here.”

#challenge #love #fiction #reincarnation #truelove #princess #witch #protest #happy #vietnamwar