The Time-Lost Darlings
Elliot.
His presence generally felt like a reverberation of something more profound, similar to a memory that wasn’t hers. He grabbed her attention, and a recognizable pull pulled at her chest. Without a word, he strolled over, his means slow yet conscious.
“Mind in the event that I go along with you?” he asked, his voice warm however touched with the heaviness of implicit things.
She gestured, her heart hustling.
“Odd, isn’t it?” Elliot said, sitting down, his eyes examining her face like attempting to put her. “I feel like I know you, however I don’t.”
“You’re not from around here,” Mara said, her voice shaking regardless of her endeavor to sound relaxed.
Elliot’s lips bended into a grin, yet his eyes stayed disturbed. “I move a ton. Haven’t found a spot that feels like home.”
Mara’s heart curved. She knew why. She’d felt it as well — the unshakeable sense that regardless of how enthusiastically they attempted, they were dependably outsiders, continuously starting once again.
“At any point do you feel like we’ve met previously?” she asked delicately, her voice very nearly a murmur.
He solidified, his eyes augmenting marginally. “I do indeed. However, it’s incomprehensible.”
Mara’s heartbeat animated. The words she had long smothered taken steps to break free. “It’s certainly feasible, Elliot. I — ”
“I recollect that,” she said, short of breath. “We were… together once.”
Elliot’s look solidified, his temple wrinkling. “In another lifetime. In some other time. Continuously… yet, never in a similar one.”
Mara squinted, attempting to shake off the heaviness of the memory, yet it stuck to her like a shadow.
“For what reason do we continue to meet, then?” she asked, her voice thick with feeling. “For what reason does it generally feel like we should be together, but we never are?”
Elliot’s hand arrived at across the table, his fingers brushing hers. The contact sent a rush of warmth through her, yet it was transient, very much like all the other things. He pulled his hand away very quickly.
The words slice through Mara like a blade, every one a reality she had known however never completely recognized. Her psyche glimmered to different minutes they had shared: the brief look at him across a packed road in Paris, the sneaked kiss under a 12 PM sky in Prague, the manner in which he had grinned at her like they had no worries at all. However, time had never been their ally.
“Once more, will we meet?” she murmured, scarcely ready to hold the inquiry in.
Elliot’s face relaxed, the trouble in his eyes developing. “Perhaps. Yet, not in this lifetime. Not in this one.”
“I’ll recall you,” Mara said, her voice shaking. “Regardless of whether it takes another lifetime.”
Elliot grinned, a miserable, knowing grin. “What’s more, I’ll recall you. Continuously.”
He stood up, his seat scratching against the floor, and briefly, he waited, as though he needed to say more. However, he didn’t. He turned, left, and disappeared into the city.
Mara sat alone, her hand laying on the table where his had quite recently been. She shut her eyes and felt the years pass, the lives they’d shared, and the ones they’d never live. There was a profound throb in her chest, yet in addition a bizarre solace. They were bound together by time — always and never.
Also, in this lifetime, in any event, she would recall.
Until the end of time.