Our Way Back (Camren)

Epilogue

And for all those reasons, she had fallen deeply in love with the younger woman. It wouldn't take much for her to fall again...though really, she never fell out of love; love was never the problem.

"Have I ever told you about the red string of fate?" Camila started, glancing at the moon above them before she turned her head to face Lauren again, looking at her expectantly.

"It's like a soul mate theory, right? A string that bonds two people together..." Lauren countered, arching her eyebrows expectantly.

"Yeah... Do you know the legend behind it?" Camila probed, inching just a little bit closer to Lauren with great subtlety.

"No..." Lauren shook her head, noticing how the proximity easily jolted her whole body awake.

"Well, there's this Chinese legend that says that there's this god, Yuè Xià Lǎo..."

"You Xao...what now? Why can't the name be simpler?" Lauren pouted in feign annoyance, enjoying how Camila furrowed her eyebrows in response.

"It's Yuè... Well, I'm not the one who came up with it, so just zip it." Camila dismissed quickly, knowing all too well that Lauren was only teasing her. "Shall I carry on?"

Lauren chuckled at how sassy Camila was trying to be, subconsciously moving her hand to interlace her fingers with Camila's. "Yes, please..." She smiled sincerely.

"So... Yeah, there's this god and he is a lunar matchmaker god who's in charge of the red thread..."

"So, he's like Cupid?"

"Yes, he's pretty much like Cupid but without the bow and arrow..." Camila confirmed, rolling her eyes because it was just so Lauren to cut her off every five seconds whenever she was telling the green eyed beauty a story.

"I'm sure Yuè is so much cooler though..." Lauren remarked offhandedly.

"How so?"

"Because he's a Chinese god and I love Chinese food..." Lauren quipped lightheartedly.

"You love all food!" Camila exclaimed, chuckling in amusement.

"Fair point... Carry on with the story." Lauren demanded in faux serious tone, holding back her growing grin.

"Anyway, where was I? Well... The story involves a young boy. Walking home one night, a young boy sees an old man standing beneath the moonlight. The man explains to the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a red thread. He shows the boy the young girl who is destined to be his wife. Being young and having no interest in having a wife, the young boy picks up a rock and throws it at the girl, running away.

Many years later, when the boy has grown into a young man, his parents arrange a wedding for him. On the night of his wedding, his wife waits for him in their bedroom, with the traditional veil covering her face. Raising it, the man is delighted to find that his wife is one of the great beauties of his village."

"However, she wears an adornment on her eyebrow. He asks her why she wears it and she responds that when she was a young girl, a boy threw a rock at her that struck her, leaving a scar on her eyebrow. She self-consciously wears the adornment to cover it up. The woman is, in fact, the same young girl connected to the man by the red thread shown to him by the old man back in his childhood, showing that they were connected by the red string of fate." Camila concluded her story, catching Lauren's eyes that gaze at her so intently.

"Everything sounds so easy in fairy tales and legends..." Lauren pointed out absentmindedly, dropping her gaze to their intertwined hands. "Sometimes I wish I could still believe in them, stories of happy endings and wishful thinking..."