Day Three hundred and sixty three - Nepenthe

Was there a last time? Was there ever the last and only moment when we were alone? There was, though it happened only in mind and soul, it only happened within the spheres of imagination and within the realms of dream. You held a solar knife in your hands, and as you saw me approach, as you saw me descend from the lunar seas, you held out your knife, and sliced through time and space itself : all stood still - for a millisecond that lasted for as long as we wished it would last, nothing in the universe moved. There was utter silence, utter stillness, utter order. It wouldn't be long until chaos set the norm again, but for this instant, this all too brief instant, it was just the two of us again.

Under a night sky full of stars we sit - we sat - we will sit; but for now, for now in this perfect moment, we sit, and we look at the stars above, hanging still in the heavens above, their light frozen in time. Where we're at, it's where there's time without a time, where there's no time, where there's everything without a time. Had we already been here? It feels so familiar, and yet it feels like that undiscovered country. It feels like returning to a place one had never been to before. Maybe echoes of us were here once upon a time, or maybe they are yet to be here. Here we are, at the end, at the end of everything, but there is no end, there is no goodbye. There is no last kiss. There is only one last touch - my hand on your heart, and your heartbeat melds with mine; we beat in time for a fraction of a second. Once, there had been a possibility that our hearts would beat together, once there was the thought that our steps would always rhyme, but all that's gone, all that's in the past. Our time approaches, so near that I sigh. Our time here is almost done, and we both know that. There's only time for one more thing. There's only time for one final question. 

'Is it far, this place you're going to?', she asks, already feeling that time is about to burst into its inexorable passing again. He turns and looks at her, a sad half-smile on his lips. 'Is it far? It is as close as the harvest moon in the evening sky, as distant as a dream upon wakening; Near as a rainbow, and so remote you could walk for ever and never reach it. Is it far?', he asked softly. 'No, my love. Not far.'