Short Story
A Tale of an Eternal Moment
Another silly love story
It was one of those autumn afternoons in northern Spain. When the sky was brilliantly blue and the warmth caressing her skin was of the most delightful sort.
They sat together in the open-air café, relishing each other’s company. His skin as pale as snow though filled with freckles it was. Accompanied with thick lusciously rippled auburn-ginger hair — he looked even less Spanish than her.
Two peculiar souls from different parts of the world, whom no one had ever seemed to understand, were serendipitously found in tune and harmony with one another.
To gaze into his eyes was like coming home for her. At home, she felt, for the first time in her life.
Never having felt she belonged anywhere: where they saw and accepted her for who she was in the core. Where she could be herself, without feeling the need to play into the expectations of them else.
It was too good to be true, indeed.
She didn’t even believe in “true romance”, especially not between boy and girl, man and woman. Romantic comedies and other cliché love stories were never her cup of tea.
Yet there she was.
Though also something else was going on inside, vague, turbulent feelings eddying around in the unknown realms deep down. She didn’t want them to become manifested yet; she kept pressing them down, down, down. She didn’t feel ready. Though she’d probably never feel ready.
Thoughts in her mind, was he going to tell her now?
He gazed, like only he could, into her eyes. The vague apprehension she didn’t want to acknowledge was to come true.
As the words were starting to form on his lips, the diffuse turmoil inside was getting ready to come into palpable form.
He was not going with her. The last couple of days she had remaining in the country — before setting off to another continent — would not be spent with him after all. So she was going to walk the final stretch of the pilgrimage to the ocean without him.
She knew it was right, the right thing to do. He didn’t need to explain. Even if it hurt like hell.
The tears welled up in her eyes; came to a surge and flooded out. Unstoppable they meandered their way down her cheeks.
In silence, like that, they sat. Knowing, at that moment for sure, the next day they’d no longer be together.
He didn’t relent to fearlessly gaze into her eyes. And he could tell, instantly, when the tears changed their story. For all of a sudden, the sadness had transformed into joy — she didn’t know why or how, just that it happened. He knew too, not a second later than she did.
Those were the eternal seconds of her life.
To be seen like never before.
Seen and completely exposed to him she was. Nowhere to hide, from him she could not.
He knew her beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond ideas, and vice versa. (Something even science couldn’t explain away.)
They were naked to each other, meaning something far and beyond being without clothes.
A truth more profound and certain than anything she had ever known. A glimpse into eternity, a connection beyond words. Too frightening to believe it true, but indubitably real it was.
Terrifying like nothing else, for it meant it was also something she could forfeit.
Yet too enthralling to turn away from.
Things in life she had only hazily heard about. Things she didn’t believe in, for a believer in hard science she had been. But there she was — offered hints of the unfathomable, shaking her whole worldview.
They laughed together; while she was still crying, though now they were tears of nothing but joy. No matter what, they had met, and they had shared something more real than anything she’d ever experienced before.
They would have until the next day together. To not savor every second of that time would’ve been pure insanity.
A connection out of this world, yet the great ocean in-between them they’d have — could it keep them apart?
