Remember

Revenir Short Story | Can love remain when remembrance is lost?

Hello and welcome to the Fiction Section of Notes from the Town Hermit. Just like in my main publication, these stories centre on themes of identity and what it means to be human. Main genres are literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy written with a lyrical and poetic writing style. Subscribe for free to enjoy more stories.

You are reading a standalone story from Revenir, an anthology I co-wrote with my son who died in 2021. The stories explore the human experience and delve deep into themes of love, loss, and the search for meaning. Written in a haunting, lyrical style and set in a single fantasy world, this collection is for readers looking for character-driven stories with strong emotional resonance.

AI-generated with Midjourney

In the grey twilight I see a figure of ethereal beauty wandering beneath trees painted silver by starlight. Her steps are light, her movements imbued with the grace of a quiet ripple beneath water’s surface. Mist wraps her in a cloak woven of starlight. At her feet, a carpet of peach blossoms muffles the sound of her approach, their scent mingling with the cool air in a fragrant whisper of coming spring. It seems to me a dream, her presence here, unlooked for.

Time makes fools of us all.

It tricks the heart, makes it believe it has healed, each year another shroud to cover the break. I have walked many moons cradled in the soothing belief her memory haunts me no longer.

Yet here she is, and the sight of her lays bare the deception of time, for I am returned at once to the moment of its breaking.

She awakens memories long dimmed, paints them afresh until they are vibrant before me: days drenched in sunlight, of walks together beneath these same trees, of cream and peaches; of first love, shy and flushed with tenderness, the timidity of a first kiss under falling petals.

They say there is no such thing as love at first sight, but they do not know of what they speak. For when first she crossed my sight, I felt a thing like electricity, and cliche though it may be, I loved her from the moment my eyes met hers.

She draws ever nearer; her feet seem barely to touch the ground. We meet, and I have no words. What can be said when all has already been said and done a lifetime past?

The day she left, the night was devoid of stars, and when she said she could no longer bear to love me, the blackness seemed to stretch its fingers to wind itself around my heart.

“I will forget you, and all that we shared,” she said, “for there are walls yet in this world granting this mercy.”

“To forget is too cowardly, even for you.” My voice was as steel, that she would not perceive the rawness beneath.

She looked at me, and I found that her mind was to me a labyrinth of closed doors, and I could no longer read the riddles of her heart. “Better to be cowardly than live with the torment you have wrought upon me.”

A drunken night, a single mistake.

She answered my unspoken incredulity with coldness. “Removal of inhibitions only revealed what lay in your heart. Alas that it was not me.”

I let her go then, fists clenched as heat coursed through me. Whether from anger or shame I would not name. Never had I thought to cross her path again.

Now, she stands before me once more, and I cannot but recall that last meeting so long ago. She speaks, asks me if she is intruding, and the rhythm of her voice is as a familiar melody to my ears. I feel a stirring about my chest.

“Forgive me,” she says when I do not answer, “I saw the river from a distance, and it seemed to call to me from afar. If I have erred, then I will depart and will not trouble you.”

I shake my head. “Do you not know?” My question hides the hidden plea.

Something ripples across her features. She looks into the distance, and a sadness veils her pale eyes. “I think I do, and then I do not.”

Words thicken on my tongue and now it is I who is the coward. I fear a renewal of her condemnation, yet her eyes show no recognition of me or this space we had shared such tender moments.

When I can no longer bear the silence, I reach to take her hand as I did once long ago, but she draws back as she did then. “Sir, you forget yourself.”

And thus, the riddle unravels: that she has forgotten, while I live on, remembering.

Grief makes fools of us all.

Beneath the light of moon, I care not for the things we said before we parted, nor for the reasons we gave that we could not be together. I know only that for her, our love does not exist, while I must wear away my sorrow in a world where she knows me no longer.

Once, I knew what it was to love another; later did I know what it is to lose. Only now do I know what it is to carry the memories of two alone.

Yet memory is not what the heart desires, and how can love remain when remembrance is lost?

“Perhaps you came once to this place in a dream. Night shifts the thoughts of our hearts, and though you know it not, there is some truth in the unspoken words of our fancy,” I say at last.

She smiles, and it seems to me her smile is both relieved and sad. And I think somewhere, she knows something of what she has lost. “Yes, perhaps that is so.”

She turns to leave. I wish I could speak, but even had I the ability to grasp the words wrung from my heart, I have no power to turn back the tide.

Nevertheless, a single word tumbles from my mouth even as I bit my lip to tuck it away. “Wait.” Please. My heart wrestles that one from breaking into existence.

“Yes?”

Did I hear the smallest catch in her voice as she answered me?

“Are you happy?” Maybe, I think, if she found peace in oblivion, then it is better this way. I will bear the burden that she could not, for to me, though remembrance brings its pain, forgetting is inconceivable.

She does not turn back, but her steps falter in seeming reluctance to depart. Silence deepens. Clouds pass over the moon, veiling us in partial shadow.

“I cannot say,” she says at last.

A hand tightens its grip in my chest. I bend down to grasp a cluster of pink petals. Overstepping the bounds of propriety, I reach for her hand before she can pull away, press the petals into her palm. “For remembrance,” I murmur.

Our eyes both fix upon the small tokens of a past romance. Her hand twitches and I think she will let the petals fall, but instead she closes her fingers over them. “Thank you.”

A taste of sweetness intertwines with my lingering regret at her words. I watch her glide away across the river, leaving me under the silent vigil of the stars above.

I let her go one last time.