The Story Of Sarelle: The Immortal Years »

Chapter 35

20th May 2048

This was bliss, I thought as I inhaled softly. Edward's scent sent a warmth flooding through me. It was a heat that was more than just carnal. More than lust, or love. It was all those things, but it was also a feeling of home, of comfort, of pure happiness. We hadn't done this in so long. Just spending time together, the two of us. In a world away from everyone else, everything else, that had complicated our lives this past year.

My eyes closed as I burrowed closer into Edward's chest, hearing his voice reverberate in his chest as he spoke.

"A supernova is a thing of beauty, a cataclysmic event that changes everything," he said with wonder as we lay staring up at the stars through the roof window at the cottage. We had spent the day fitting it.

Edward had said he was going to the mountains to hunt. I had said I was going to research Cinetica. We had lied. As we always had these past few months. It was easy. Too easy. But when I said the words it was like it was another person saying it. Like a switch in me flicked and the guilt that should have been there just turned off.

As the jumps had increased, and the story of what was coming had started to unfurl, that switch had become easier and easier to turn off. I found myself worrying less about how our actions would inevitably affect everyone else and more about what made me happy. And this, this feeling I got when we lay here, Edward's arms wrapped around me, his hand trailing up and down my back as I lay across his chest, sending shivers down my spine. This was pure, unadulterated, uncomplicated happiness.

Edward continued as I smiled against his shirt, "from such violence, so many things can be reborn, and so many other thrown on the wayside."

I leant up on my elbows, watching the way his eyes sought out the sky above as he talked. The amber irises glistened as the starlight bounced off their surface.

"The simple logistics of it are enough to make the mind rethink the very workings of the universe." I ran my hand through his hair as he talked.

I loved many things about him, but just one was how he saw the world. He revelled in how complex life around us was. To him it was an endless puzzle and he had forever to figure it out. So many of our kind got stuck in time, unable to change their perspective or beliefs, but for all Edward's Victorian ways, he never let himself ignore the world around him.

"It fuels its own destruction," he continued. "Its own change of form. The energy it exudes is just a fraction of what it built within, what will eventual turn it to universal dust."

"Isn't is amazing to think somewhere above us, somewhere in the universe, something that violent could be happening and we would never know?" I whispered against the slither of skin I had slowly revealed over our time here. Minute by minute, slipping my finger around a button on his shirt, prying it free.

"What is amazing, is that you've managed to undo five buttons and yet you lie here fully dressed." He teased as he rolled us. Pushing me into the mattress, the view of the night sky just beyond him.

His nose skimmed my neck, his hand running up along my waist. My lips curled at the feeling of him on top of me. There was something about this heaviness that was more intoxicating than friction. The feel of his fingertips trailing across my skin, ever so lightly. Like they were barely even there. Like if they truly touched me it would make this real and that would go beyond anything we had ever done.

We had said I love you. We had promised forever. But we had never done more than that. Maybe our 1900s upbringing was rooted deeper than we thought. Or maybe we just didn't have the urgency that humans had. The promise of forever meant we didn't need to decide what we were yet. We didn't have to rush. We could dally a little longer in this feeling of anticipation.