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It was an old and faded photograph, the edges tattered and yellowing. He'd memorized every detail of it so very long ago. They'd been happy together, laughing when it was taken. She hadn't known that it was him though. Not this him. Nor yet of the magic box and its deviltry. She'd known only that he was with her again, back from whatever damned fool thing he'd told her.
They'd sat together watching the sunset, making plans for the future and going over all of the latest family concerns and village gossip. Gods, how he cherished that day.
Old man Wissop's cow had been due to calve soon. The Taylor twins had gotten into the miller's shop again, in their cups and feeling their oats. So many things, and they none of them mattered a whit — and they all mattered so very much, every single sparkling moment of them.
How long had it been then? Nigh on a millennium since he'd last seen her, before his obsession had led him to the madman's parlor.
He'd stumbled into the fool's garden lost in wine, chasing the ghost of a rumor that could lead nowhere. Yet chase it he had.
Why?
Why ever not? Forsooth, to leave off would be sheerest folly, knowing that even the merest hope of return to her embrace was worth the world to him, and to forsake any such opportunity, no matter how slight, he could not forgive himself for.
Was it God or the Devil himself who had led him there? That he could not say. He swayed between the two even now.
Oh yes, the man's contraption had worked. Brought him home to his Reina. But to what end? He'd been away so long that he recognized nothing, while every moment was like walking in a dream, every stolen word, every glance was a sliver of paradise to be torn away as the machine's life force wound down, to draw him ever so cruelly back whence they'd come.
His second trip had gone likewise, as had his third, his fourth, his hundredth...
The fool had warned him, or sought to at any rate, but he'd gone ahead unheeding.
And to what end?
At all turns, the machine would always bring him forth to their era, and had it not, then what would it have mattered? Reina would have grown old, withered and perished, as he looked on unable to affect a single change.
Two centuries hence, those men of letters had a marvelous new discovery. They could peer through the veil of the past to see what and where they fancied.
So many hours he'd spent with one. Decades came and went, as he lost himself within their tender touch. And still they did no good.
By then, they had advanced beyond their years, bringing forth wondrous creations, immersing themselves in both false worlds of the mind within their machines, and the artifice of life itself.
None could be Reina, but even so, even her facsimile might ease his heart.
And they had, both the ephemeral spirit of Reina within their machines and the Reina made flesh again, who was not Reina. They each had sought to unburden his soul, and in truth they'd had some degrees of success. He loved them for that. But they weren't his Reina. They could never be.
More centuries passed, bringing with them staggering changes. And still he searched for that ever-elusive thread that might one day reunite him with his love. A fool's errand to be sure, but what else was there?
Humanity went out to the stars, uncovering lost ruins over so many worlds, but never once meeting another living thing.
These ruins told of hubris and folly, but never of their last gasps.
Some thought to discover in what way these others had erred by extrapolating the known limitations of such technologies and social paths to their next stages in search of a common factor.
He'd cared not to what end others did so, only as long as such might then lead to his own peace.
Time had marched on, and an ever expanding sphere of knowledge led always to the one conclusion: death itself was what drove life.
It couldn't be, yet couldn't be avoided.
In death, the fabric underlying all shook with a release of tension, what some might label the soul.
That release then cascaded to other waves of life in turn.
But if every release brought a new wave, could not then such a wave be caused as to bring about the return of one particular soul?
And such had been his undoing.
He gazed around at the lifeless world, swept clean and devoid of all.
He walked the very winds now, given over to musings of the past, forever lost within himself as the worlds marched on lifeless.
His last act having been to unfurl the threads in order to reweave them, to cast them in such a way as to bring Reina back to the living.
This had been his hubris and folly.
O ~~~ O