#who wants a COMPLETELY RANDOM ~700 word flash fic

[skybound2]

Interwoven Footsteps

It takes them a while to get there. 

Six thousand years, give or take.

They wade through decades, centuries, millennia together. Floating and coasting and tripping around and between and into one another. Leaving a trail of interwoven footsteps like a double helix through eternity. An ebbing pattern of miracles and temptations; leaving subtle and not so subtle markers of their existence everywhere they go.  

On a couple, scared and uncertain, left to wander a bright new world filled with endless dangers and possibilities, with nothing but a fiery sword and a little bit of knowledge to guide them on their way. 

On a collection of young souls stolen from the midst of a cataclysmic flood and deposited - for better or worse - dry and warm and safe on the lower deck of an ark of singular make. They won’t all grow to be good and they won’t all grow to be bad, but they will all grow. 

On artisans and musicians. Thespians and writers. Those they inspire, inspire in turn. Painting the world forever after with the fruits of their labors and their loves. Twisting and turning colors into shapes, notes into songs, words into story upon story upon story. 

They spin through time, history trailing in their wake. They witness the good, the bad, the ugly, and all the in between.  

There is awe and wonder. There is want and there is need. There is worry and concern. There is longing and there is hope. There is joy and fear. There is pain. And there is loss. And there is love. 

So. Much. Love. 

Together - because they are never far apart, no matter the years or the miles between them - they see and feel and learn and experience and grow. So much. 

Until a day comes, some six thousand years in (or maybe in the blink of an eternal eye, depending on your point of view) they trudge across a finish line they never knew was waiting for them. Up and over and past the moment that the world would have, could have, maybe even should have (depending on who you asked), ended - but when it ultimately did not.

They cross it, and on the other side the world keeps on spinning, and humanity keeps on existing. 

They cross it, and they ride a bus, fingers brushing but not quite interlocking. (Not yet.)

They cross it, and experience life within one another’s skin and find that it’s as familiar as it is new.

They cross it. And after (there is an eternity of after available to them now) there are lunches and walks. Dinners and drives. Picnics and nightcaps. 

There are exuberant discussions, and there is carefree laughter. There is wine and tea and the quiet moments in between. 

And with each rotation of the moon about the earth and the earth about the sun, they drift closer together. A pair of celestial bodies letting gravity do what it does best.  

They don’t so much cross the next line, as crash through it. Same for the next, and the next, and the next. Brushing fingers become clasped hands become shared breaths becomes the soft slide of mouths and the heated press of skin against skin. Whispers and sighs, gasps and moans. 

There are confessions and promises. Apologies and forgiveness. Remorse, but also joy.  

So. Much. Joy. 

And as time and gravity work their magic, city parks and restaurants become village pubs and a private garden. A minimalist flat in Mayfair becomes a lovingly cluttered cottage by the sea.

But for all that time changes, it also preserves. 

So there is a mint-condition Bentley, nestled comfortably in a garage, taken out for regular jaunts on curving country roads. And there is a bookshop in Soho, happily closed to the public while it takes a well-earned holiday. 

And in a shared cottage by the sea, there are books stacked to the ceiling in carefully curated haphazard piles, and there are trembling houseplants growing vibrant and lush and green. Wandering amongst them, there is a hedonistic angel and a virtuous demon. And there is love. 

Always, there is love.  

It takes them a while to get there. But they get there.  

~End.