iii. rome - 50 AD
poe is staring at the stars the next time he sees her. he's standing in the forum, scribbling notes and watching the heavens when she wafts by. seeing her is like a breath of fresh air where he's drowning at the same time. he's spent the last five hundred years searching for her in every face that passed by. she burns to bright for his world, he thinks, for the gods to let her exist for more than a moment at a time. he wishes the gods would let him burn with her.
she doesn't take notice of him yet, and he is thankful for this small kindness. this way, he can lose himself in the way the starlight sprinkles off the freckles on her nose, and the way her eyes flash in the torchlight. he starts to convince himself that she is a star sent from the heavens purely there to torture him, taunt him, drive him mad.
without meaning to, he takes a step towards the colonnade where she is standing. at the noise she starts, and turns to face him.
for a moment he dares to pray that she recognize him. she doesn't and he curses the gods for their cruelty at the same time as he thanks for sending her back to him.
her eyes flash with something akin to suspicion, and he holds his hands out placatingly.
he swears that the third time is the charm, and he will be charming and dignified this time around. he opens his mouth to speak to her and finds that words fail him.
she speaks, and in a cautious tone says, "forgive me, my lord, but do we know each other?"
of course she has to ask that question, he thinks bitterly. the one question he desperately wants to answer yet could not in all his lifetimes string together the words to explain that yes, they do know each other. by some inexplicable design of fate her life is tied to his - destined to make his existence brighter for a moment and to leave it darker when she leaves.
"no," he says, "we don't know each other. forgive me, my lady." he tries to turn to leave, but his body defies him and he stays. "my name is poe." he can't meet her eyes, he doesn't think he can bear it if she doesn't smile. he looks at the stars instead, and finds them dimmer when she's there.
he can hear the smile in her voice when she replies that her name is rey and that it is a pleasure to meet him.
yes, a pleasure, he thinks, the thought acerbic in his mind. meeting you is the sweetest pleasure and the most odious curse.
he does not say that. instead he asks what she's doing by herself so late at night.
"i might ask you the same question."
his heart swells to hear her voice. "you make a fair point my lady. i am simply observing the stars."
she gasps with delight. "are you a philosopher?"
he smiles at her smile when he says, "no, just a student."
he remembers listening, stricken, to the philosopher lecturing on the notion of intertwined souls. an individual and their perfect mate, destined to find each other across the bounds of time and earth. he's been studying ever since - reading treatises and scrolls, anything. desperate for information, for a reason as to why and how this gift of a girl is given and taken away from him.
tonight, poe is outside to study the heavens when he realizes that heaven is standing in front of him. he wonders if plato would stand by his theory of ideal forms if he met rey.
rey's smile widens as she tells him of her love of reading, and it widens further when he offers to bring her a treatise on astronomy the next morning. as she thanks him, he has to stop himself from confessing that he would do anything just to see her again.
"will you meet me here tomorrow at noon?" he dares to breathe the words.
when she acquiesces, his smile soars to match her ever present one.
poe arrives an hour early the next morning, frantically trying to calm his pounding heart. what if she does not come? what if the gods have stolen her from the earth again?
in all his years, he has never been more frightened than when she is ten minutes late.
and in all his years, he has never been more relieved when he spies her face bobbing through the crowd. she floats into his vision like a river through the desert.
he thinks that if all else perished and she remained he would continue to thank the gods for each time he sees her face. but in the time between their meetings, the universe is stranger to him each day he goes without her.
rey spies the scroll he clutches in his hands. little does she know he holds it to hide the shaking of his hands. she greets him warmly, and it softens him.
she unfurls the scroll gingerly, and he finds himself wishing that she held his hand the way she holds the scroll.
he shoves that thought to the depths of his traitorous mind.
rey's eyes flit along the page, her mind rapt and her mouth parted in delight. poe watches her eyes the way he watched the stars last night and all the nights he waits for her. the stars pale in comparison.
"i can bring you another one." at this point, he'd steal the library of alexandria if it means that he will see her again.
she promises to meet him again the next day.
if she comes, it will be the first time he's seen her thrice.
he carries a scroll on geometry - a study in the extent of perfection, balance, order, and harmony. he pities the poor philosopher who wrote it without realizing that the gods have sent their own treatise on perfection to bless the earth.
he thinks he might write a treatise on cruelty and torture - on how to perfectly wound someone by letting them smell ambrosia then ripping it away. but when rey walks through the crowd for the third time and his eyes fall upon her for the sixth time in his eternal life, poe might just write about joy.
the gods give him a week, this time. for one glorious, heavenly week, rey appears to him each day at noon.
on the eighth day, it seems his brief respite is not to last.
for another week, poe waits in the forum. at night he sees the stars are weeping.
when he hears the dirges sound, he knows.
poe leaves rome.