Fall Into The Sky

(a hundred moments, a single love)

1: beginnings

He often wondered how long he had felt this way.

Could it really have been from the first moment he saw her? If so, "love at first sight" was certainly a slow-in-coming business. Perhaps it was...at the dance at Westover Hall. She had seemed so grown-up, so beautiful then. That was a possibility. Or maybe...maybe...

He sighed, letting himself sink back into the silken sheets of his bunk.

Maybe it was something that was born...over time. Maybe it was something that had begun, small and helpless, as the basic seeds of a relationship - not even a friendship, something less. Not enemies, just...people. And then over time, slowly, as water erodes rock, something had happened. Something had changed.

He remembered hearing from his mother about a discovery some scientists had made. There was a certain kind of plant - a tree? - that never seemed to blossom. It just stood, changing with the seasons, but no buds ever progessed; no flowers ever bloomed on its branches. They were beginning to wonder how on earth a tree like that could survive...

And then, almost a hundred years after the first observation, blossoms began appearing on the tree, ethereal and beautiful. He thought about that for a moment, and wondered if maybe that was what was happening. The potential for...for this...had always been there, hiding in the leafy branches of rivalry and friendship...and now, after nurturing, after patience and care, maybe now those blossoms were finally coming out - and they were beautiful. They were so beautiful.

He closed his eyes and let the sound of the fountain in the back lull him to sleep. The ocean roared gently in the background, waves smashing and crashing against a sandy shore like the waves of time. Time...

He had enough time. Not forever...he was still mortal. But...he had a lifetime stretching ahead, a lifetime made of years in which he could carefully care for those ever-growing blossoms until they became something unlike anything before.

A new age was beginning.