other lives, dimensions, and finally a love poem.

in another life we live, perhaps my favourite one, you really are the heir to all faerie, and i am a perpetual drifter, drawn to you and kept by you. this is not the way that i would ever have written this story; me, the vagrant and you the second daughter of the faerie queen, whose name sends shivers down the spine of fae and human alike; you, the unattainable; you the strong-willed and rebellious, smelling of autumn and the world in the long, long ago.

in this life, i am centuries younger than you, more years than we could conceive of counting because time is so insignificant here. the important thing is that when your mother was pulling new life from the ether while your family looked on, you stepped forward the moment i came to be, holding me in your arms and claiming that i would be yours, forever, if i would have you, knowing all along that i would. they tried to warn you, to convince you that all that would ever fill my head would be dreams, and you replied that you hoped i would dream of you.

and i did dream of you. i wandered through all of faerie, dreaming of you, collecting stories and telling them to you while i rested. we were married at night, the event heralded for days by rainbows, the sky pouring forth and melting away our previous lives when the ceremony was complete.

now we go for long walks through english gardens, holding hands. we travel and you bend space and stop time while i pull stories from rooms as a magician pulls that never-ending handkerchief from his pocket. we listen in on court proceedings and watch jousting tournaments, leaning into one another to make a comment, or whisper our love. we laugh together almost constantly, and we rage against one another when our moods, ever mercurial, darken. in the briefest flash of moments we are lovers, snuggled close and smiling and the next, we tear at one another, shifting into something else entirely-- large cats sometimes, sometimes something far less mundane-- and we are all claw and fur and feathers and blood and fury; but the next instant, our bites turn to passionate kisses and we are lost adrift one another once more, hands brushing, touch kind, familiar, gentle.

there is no anger in our fury, no need for apologies when the storm passes and all is quiet once more; we are light creatures, our love the gift that allows us to move beyond our mere temperment. in this life, each time you touch me is a reminder that you have left a permanent mark on me, that your essence is embedded so deeply in mine that no one would dare approach me with anything but the purest intent. i love this sense of belonging, knowing that your love is this deep and so limitless that it can be seen from miles away.

in this (perhaps my favourite) life, i have offered you ever word that i may ever come to know, have sworn myself to you and begged the gods that watch over love to abandon me forever should i ever turn from you.

in this life, as in all the others, you have always been my everything.