He looked at the beautiful young woman lying in his arms.
Her gleaming white hair mingled with the flowing silver of his beard on his chest.

“Do you remember?” He asked her softly, looking at the silver moon shining through the window. The moon hung low over the south-western horizon, just as it had eons ago.

The same moon!

But the harbor was peaceful now, and no ship had gone out during the night.
Yet in his arms the woman shivered and pressed her slim body against his, seeking shelter from the memories stirred by the moonlight..

Another time, another land, another life…
…a dark night and a silver moon and prayers rising to the stars.

“And I did not come!” He whispered. “I never came until it was too late. I was such a fool!”

Her gaze was lost in the silver light of the moon. But her body slowly relaxed, molded against his hardened old man’s muscles.

“A fool, a bird and a devoted friend set sail to find the Straight Road, to sail across the Tides of Time and all the Sundering Seas.” She chanted, clinging to him like a child.

He held her close, afraid of ever letting go of her again.
He would never let go of her again, before the end of time.

“But we made it,” he said, and there was still a hint of pride in his voice.

“Yes,” she whispered, and pressed her lips against his hand. “We made it.”

And there was the faint memory of pride in her voice, too.

A cloud passed in front of the moon. Shadows grew in the corners of the small chamber.
A bleak breeze blew into the Gulf of Lune, carrying memories of darkness across the Sundering Seas.

White feathers danced in the wind.
Again a shiver ran across her body.

He shuddered against her.

“A sea, but no waves.
A horizon, but no land.
A ship, but no sail.” he said finally.

“And a white tower without a door,” she told him.

“White bird wheeling all alone…”

He was an old fisherman, with white hair and a long silver beard, his bright blue eyes almost lost under bushy brows. His face was tanned and lined and creased from wind, weather and sea. He was still strong, like a gnarled ancient tree, way up on the cliff, that bends to the storm and persists. He was still there, smoothed and weathered by the tides of time, but still there.

His spirit unbroken.

His love undiminished.

She looked at him.

She had eyes like a hawk, great and golden. She had hair white as the snow, flowing around her body like silken rain. She had a face untouched by second, minute, hour, day or week, a face unmoved by year, decade, century or millennium. She was slim and young and beautiful, just as she had always been. She was still there, unchanged, unchanging, unchangeable, as the seas and the moon and the stars.

She was still there; alive.
She was still there; alove.

“I am glad that I am home,” she whispered into his beard.

The silver moon waned.
They fell asleep.