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Our destinies have always been intertwined…
Lying on the sand at the waters edge, James can smell the salt in the air. There's nothing else but the scent, and the cool water, and the scratching sand that's everywhere. He feels more now than he ever has, no uniform dulling the sensations, calling his attentions elsewhere.
The sun is low in the sky, nearing nightfall. Soon the stars will be out, tiny pinpricks of light shining in a blanket of darkness. He's always admired them, and is determined to admire them always, forever. For all eternity, his teacher tells him.
He can't quite bring himself to believe the truth in her words just yet.
She steps out of the sea, and he looks away.
She laughs, no longer teasing, purely amused by his constant reaction. "Such a gentleman," she states, pulling on a slip of a dress, flimsy and wet and covered in sand. She never seems to mind the sand, or the wind drying her hair into clumps.
She looks wild and free, and she reminds him so much of Elizabeth. And so much more.
He stiffens when she lies down beside him, turning her face to watch his, her smile warm and bright like the midday sun. "I wish you wouldn't do that," he tells her again, and they're the same words he speaks each day.
Her fingers touch his cheek and he turns away again. He doesn't need to see her face to know the warmth in her smile is tinged with sadness, as though she can see through him. As though she knows the true feelings he hides. He was never good at hiding his feelings, but over the years he'd gotten better. Elizabeth had taught him that.
"It gets better, James," she whispers, and he's not sure if she's speaking to him, to herself, or the air around them.
The days and nights have slipped past since he washed ashore on the small island, uncharted and previously unknown to him. It's become a home of sorts, a haven and training ground.
That he had washed ashore the island with an inhabitant who was just like himself, immortal…
His words to Elizabeth whisper in his ear, the ghost of his last life – the ending of his last life. Destiny was always a slippery concept, an idealistic perspective on life, reminding one that they didn't truly have control over their own life. He'd never held to its ideals until Elizabeth, and now he wondered whether he'd been wrong all along. Perhaps his destiny had already chosen another path…
When he turns his head back, she's gone, halfway back to the small hut-like home she'd built for herself, her dress blowing in the afternoon breeze, and her hair trailing her, caught up in its own storm. The disappointment is all his own, because she's made it clear she is not disappointed with his appearance, or with her charge to train him, teach him the way of the Immortals.
When the sun slips down past the horizon, James feels the tug of destiny, and the passing of one more memory.
The sun will rise again, and again.
And so would he.