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August 2026,

Poziarne, Soare-Luna Kingdom

Alyanna

There are some memories in life that we remember more vividly than the rest.

I looked at the painting in front of me.

This was a face I had painted several times in the last five years. Each time I did, I realized that time had done nothing to dull my memories of him. I still remember how his blue-grey eyes turned bluer when he looked at something he loved—when he looked at me. I remember the angle of the bridge of his nose, the exact shape of his lips, and the slight indentation beside his cheeks whenever he smiled. I remember the sharp angle of his jaw so vividly that I could draw it in my sleep. And that one lock of hair that curled on his forehead whenever he didn't style his hair after a shower. Damn, that lock.

It hadn't taken me a lot of time to complete the painting. Just a few days. But they were one of those days when my chest physically ached with sadness.

There were some things in life that we felt more sharply than others.

Like the loss of a loved one.

"What are you still doing up, Ayera?" I felt a kiss on my shoulder and then one on my neck. "It's past midnight."

"I had that dream again. Couldn't fall asleep after it," I replied. I've always been someone who dreams a lot. But over the last five years, I've had a recurring dream. I see it at least a couple of times a month. The dream starts with me on my morning run. Out of nowhere, a bull appears and starts chasing me. And I'm running as fast as I can to save myself from its attack but no matter how fast I run, where I hide, or how high I climb up a tree, it always manages to catch up to me. And when it does, I jerk awake with my heart racing like I really had been running.

"Listen to your subconscious, bébé. You're running away from something," Amelie said, her French accent heavy. It always was when she was sleepy.

She's not wrong about that.

She wrapped her arms around my waist from behind and rested her chin on my shoulder. "Who is he?" she asked, only now spotting the painting that I had been working on when she walked into my in-apartment studio.

Some questions, seemingly simple, make us ponder over the more profound aspects of life. My fingers reached for my necklace and grasped the ring that hung on it. There was no singular way to answer that question. But I made an attempt anyway. "He was..." I considered not telling her. But Amelie wasn't someone I wanted to lie to. "Is my everything."

She must have heard something in my voice because she released her hold on me and came to stand in front of me.

Her eyes turned troubled as she looked deep into mine for a stretched moment. "How are you so quiet about it? Your sadness. I can see it filling up your chest, your eyes, your throat. And yet, you don't let your tears flow or your mouth speak. How do you keep it in?"

At that moment, the low hum of pain that I had constantly been feeling, had learned to live with, felt crushing.

The lump in my throat felt so thick that I couldn't even open my mouth to speak. I couldn't talk about the past without dragging the pain along with it.

Amelie offered me a small smile and pressed a lingering kiss to my cheek. "In French, when we want to say I miss you, we say 'tu me manques', which literally translates to you are missing from me." For a second, it got a little hard to breathe. "True love doesn't leave just because the person did."

"What if I was the one who left?"

She smiled omnisciently and repeated, "True love doesn't leave just because the person did."