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i.
In the beginning there is an explosion.
They meet in a collision, before bouncing off into deep dark space that is not yet ready for the first light. Electrons have negative charges and so repel one another, but as she bumps into him, subatomic particles that they are, her being tingles like his touch carries a promise.
Ten to the power of negative thirty eight seconds later, or so estimated by a species of highly evolved apes billions years later on a tiny planet that they will both come to love dearly, the universe expands by a factor of ten to the power of fifty. Luminous matters scatter across infinite space. She spins around on her axis, and to her left is that same electron who was next to her when the whole of creation was the size of an egg.
Call it a cosmic coincidence if you’re a poet, a statistical improbability if you’re a cynic, in the end the result is all the same: they find each other when everything is in chaos.
Their story is a cycle of birth, life, and death; theirs the stardust, theirs the never-ending song. And this is where it begins.
ii.
Shy of one billion years later, when the universe isn’t so young, so eager for sudden changes, a moon comes into orbit of a star. She dances around him in a steady pace. Red waves lap against his emerald shore to the tides she causes, a nice demonstration of the rule of complementary colors, and he swears he sees her smile when she reflects the light from their solar system’s two suns.
She is his moon, and he carries her with him. They travel around their suns together, their movements mirroring one another with tender awareness.
Sometimes he wishes his gravity was stronger so he could pull her to him, but he knows of the mutual destruction that follows, and he loves his moon enough to not rob her of her existence. It suffices then, he believes, to just live by gazing upon each other.
(They are both annihilated by a supernova in the end, but in the short eight million years that they shared, they gave out brilliant light that would carry on for many years to distant galaxies)
iii.
On a planet in the Coma Supercluster, by the river that courses indigo, a bird with four wings drops two seeds, swallowed whole by the murky soil.
Years pass. They grow on the river bank, at the very edge of the forest.
Forest life is a competitive one. Every day, their roots entangle beneath the ground, competing for the indigo-tinted water and the nutrition of this strange little planet. His branch outstretched to soak in sunrays in the brief three hours of daylight they have, he delights in her brushing against his side as she too extends a branch for her share of warmth.
Forest life is indeed a competitive one.
Yet when he bears fruit, he shakes the branches near her. The round, soft fruit lands on her base and gradually dissolves into the ground, giving her ample nutrition. Everywhere in the earth and the air, he hears her gratitude, but he blames it on chance and the strong wind instead.
A few years later a family of sand-colored monkeys settle on her branches, but on his do the little monkeys learn their first swinging lessons. He gives them his fruit, and her leaves rustle like laughter every time the monkeys scratch their butts against him. He smacks her with a branch, but as he stands there with her and their monkeys overlooking the indigo river, he suddenly has a sense of the infinite.
iv.
In this life where he has a heartbeat for the first time, he is an apprentice to a renowned sculptor. He holds the clouds and the heaven in the palm of his hands. He feels the marble dust in his sandals, and he wonders if it is the ashes of stars.
His teacher, the sculptor with a gentle smile, often says, “I know your kind; I was once like you. You are a dreamer, the kind that gives his creations soul and falls in love as viciously as a conflagration burns.”
And fall in love he does – with his first and only love, a girl as cold and beautiful as marble because she is marble. A girl who lives forever in the soft contours that his skillful hands create, trickling into the clefts of his mind like water even though she is anything but.
He traces her lips like feathers, he drinks her eyes in like fine wine. He kisses her forehead every morning before he goes to work, his starlight, his muse, his beloved. His marble creation.
There are times when the coolness of her touch on his skin holds curious tenderness, times when her frozen smile widens at his giddy burst of inspiration, times when she seems to come alive. Marble, after all, is still made of elements since the beginning of the universe, and somewhere along the line, it has learned to love.
With a devotion like this, it is only fitting, then, that they perish together. Sparta forges fierce warriors just as it produces fearsome earthquakes, and he holds her cold hand in his as the world around them crumbles.
v.
It is 1941 when there are finally two beating hearts, and spring in Clydebank has always been kind.
In the infirmary of the shipyard, he tries to stifle a hiss as she bandages a slit running raggedly down his temple. It isn’t the first time his eccentric inventions malfunction.
“I don’t know how you haven’t stopped tinkering with explosives and machineries,” she chides, her nimble fingers working the crisp white cloth now soaked with his blood. “We’re not half way through this month and you’ve had at least 5 near-death experiences under your belt.”
“But I’m so close to perfecting my design now. And when I do, the offense of Allied ships will be improved by a factor of two,” he grins a boyish grin, and she thinks, for a forlorn moment, that he looks too young for this aching war and this wide-eyed hope. Still, she lets him chatter on; it is their little piece of tranquility.
Their conversation flows easily to the lulling hum of the ancient ceiling fan. His eyes adrift, he tells her about his childhood on the infinite expanses of moorland, his fascination with engineering, and his wish to use it for his country. Amidst a present in flames, he dreams of a future uncharred and undamaged.
She nods and smiles, ever the good listener. In the dim flickering fluorescent light, she watches him, and her insides flutter with something she thinks was akin to… not love, exactly, but more like inexplicable fondness. So she leans in close, and her lips brush lightly against his cheek, “maybe when this is over, we can live again, you and I.”
Spring in Clydebank has always been kind, but not this year. On that grim March day, they are buried beneath twenty tons of concrete, while Nazi bombs rain from the sky like the bitter tears that fall as God weeps.
vi.
Maybe at this point, even the poet and the cynic have to say that the stardust is ash, the song is a requiem in this story of theirs.
Don’t. A good story takes time to be told.
Be patient.
They will always find each other. And maybe next time round, if they’re very lucky, they will have each other.
vii.
In the beginning there is an explosion.
She happens to walk past the physics lab on her way to the chemistry lab when she hears something explode. “Oh gosh, are you okay?” She asks the boy whose face is half-blackened with smoke.
“I’m fine,” he says, then pauses for a second. “Have I… known you before?”
“Perhaps. It’s a small universe, after all.”