You often find yourself wondering, whenever you have a quiet moment, how many lives the two of you still have together. It sometimes makes you panic, because in each life so far the two of you have found one another, have always found a way to be together. You wonder if there is a limit to how many lives the two of you can share. Lives in which you get to love and laugh and smile and live. Lives in which you get to cry and grieve and hurt and grow. Lives in which you simply get to be together.
You often wonder if others are as lucky as you. If they get a soulmate in each reincarnation, if they get to remember each and every moment. From the start to the finish. The good and the bad. Forever imprinted upon your would for always. Delia tells you that it isn't good to dwell, it does no good and she doesn't want to take away from the now. She thinks the two of you should make the most of your time together.
It is very much her philosophy to live each life together as though it were your last. You suppose, that after how it all started, you shouldn't be surprised. It always seems to come back to it. Even after all of the centuries that have past since then, it still lingers. An old wound that aches in the cold feeling of its memory.
Even after all of the shared moments between you, not all happy but all shining, neither of you can shake the memory of the tragedy that encompasses how the two of you began. New souls born, linked from the the very first meeting of eyes, and perhaps even before, torn apart in the most brutal of ways. You can see it every time you close your eyes, it's imprinted on the backs of your eyelids.
In the first life that you shared, you had spent most of your life searching. For meaning, for acceptance, for home, you had never been quite sure. You had searched and searched and searched and it had all been fruitless. You had been so tired, so very tired. Every day had been more and more of an effort and it was an effort that you struggled to make.
All you had wanted to do was stop searching, to find the thing, the part of yourself that you were missing. Every day, in every new destination, you had scanned the crowds searching for something, someone to make you feel whole. And so you desperately wanted your search to end, no matter what. You had almost resigned yourself to the emptiness when you came across her beating clothing down at a river.
Your eyes had met, and something in you had simply fallen into place. Her eyes, deep and blue and inviting, had captured you completely in less than a moment. From then on, it had been inevitable. Your search had ended, and you settled in the woods outside of her village, away from prying eyes and questioning tongues.
It had taken some time, but she came to seek you in the woods. The passion between the pair of you had raged like a fire, hot and dangerous and uncontrollable. There had been your downfall. It had come to an end, abruptly and painfully. Her husband had caught the two of you, and the pain that was to follow was almost enough to make you regret all that had happened. Nog because of the pain caused to you, but because of the unendurable pain caused to your love.
Her husband had murdered the pair of you, as was his right in the eyes of the ancient lore. He'd made you watch your love suffer first, and her screams as the flames had consumed her had pierced you deeper than any wound he could inflict. When he had killed you, after the fire had burnt itself out and nothing of her had remained but ash, it had been the sweetest release.
Your first life together had locked your souls in an eternal dance, but it also caused the two of you memories so painful that it was best not to think about.
Your favourite lives are the ones that the two of you share completely. The ones in which you know each other so wholly that you truly are two halves. The ones in which you grow with each other, love with each other, grow old with each other. The ones in which you can love each other openly, without fear of the consequences or judgement. In which the love the two of you share, deeper than that which most people will ever know, can be explored without repercussions. The ones in which you can raise a family, and know the boundless joy of being a mother with Delia at your side.
Over the centuries Delia's soul has grown so familiar to you that you're almost certain that you know it better than your own. In most cases all it takes for you to know her is your eyes meeting, no matter how furtive the glance. You like to think it's because her eyes are home. She is home. Her warmth and sincerity and endless kindness. Her boundless energy and breathless laugh and the quirk of her lips that always appears after the two of you kiss for the first time, no matter how her features change.
She is yours. And you are hers. And the two of you make a rather beautiful story, plenty of twists and turns, high and lows, and nearly always a happy, if slightly ambiguous, ending. You like to think though, that the best part is in the not knowing, because that way you get to find home all over again, get to know her and grow with her and love her from the beginning all over again. And that is a gift that just seems to keep on giving.