𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚜 // 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚌 𝚛𝚘𝚌𝚔 [𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚐]

Train - Drops of Jupiter

I grip Junae's hand as if she's a spirit soon to slip away as we walk along the tree-lined road towards the quaint little corner-café where so many bittersweet memories reside. I still can't believe she's back. She's back from her cosmic odyssey, from the light-year expeditions spanning from a stay on the moon to the heavenly lights of the Milky Way. It's so incredibly surreal, that after all these years, after a whole separate era of her life has been and gone, that I'm the first she came to. But apparently, this freeze-dried earthly romance is a different kind of beauty to dancing along the lights of day. A more fragile one, a more human one. And she wants to share it with me.

It's dark out here, the darkness sprinkled with stars, reminding me of the heights I will never reach. Part of me is overjoyed that Junae got to go to such incredible places and see such ethereal spectacles; another resents the life-changing era of her that I missed. Yet all that matters here, now, is us.

Even though the day is in that mystical phase between midnight and dawn, the café is open; the 24-hour beauty of soy lattes available even for strange, almost old-fashioned lovers such as us, wallowing deliberately in the sad worhsip of nostalgia. I wonder if Junae will be recognised. She has that faraway, Elysian look in her cocoa eyes, a look that speaks of flash-in-the-pan love stories with shooting stars and empyrean dances with nebulae; but in there, beyond the wanderlust of a now-earthbound galaxy princess, lies the old Junae: the girl who gives children her ice cream and dances with care home residents; the girl who sings ancient folk songs and adores nature's simplicity; the girl I love, the girl who I have to hope still loves me above her Andromedan princes of the rain. I have to believe she left them behind for me.

I order two soy lattes as we find a table in the back corner; as we find our table. Do galaxy princesses still have nostalgia? Can cosmic lovers still bring themselves to care for a simple human boy?

I know my Junae is in there. I know she'll never be quite the same, but I also know that it doesn't matter. She came to me first upon her return from space to this corner of Earth, and that means a universe of things unsaid.

She lies her hand on mine as the latte is delivered to the table, and turns to the waitress with a smile. "Thank you." It's such a normal situation, but I can tell the appreciation of - of Earth, of humans, of the overwhelming normality - is swelling up inside of her. It makes me smile. Her return swamped me in so much emotion, it's been difficult to process what I think or feel. But now I know: I just appreciate her being here, the bittersweet, beautiful normality of us being here together. I love her.

"Tell me," I say, quietly, nervously, the feeling of knowing her so well and yet being a stranger to this new Junae consuming me, a crescendo of sweet and sour love. "Were you lonely looking for yourself out there?"

She swallowed, eyes darting down before looking into mine. Just Junae, the Earth girl, looking at me, not Junae, the universe's lover. "It was heartachingly incredible, and beautiful, and strange, but I don't want to be a citizen of the universe anymore. Seeing everything, seeing broken perfection, seeing stars and planetary kingdoms and supernovae, beginnings and endings and things that have persisted and will continue to just be until the end of time... I wouldn't change that for the world. But I don't need to go back out there. I don't need to see and experience everything. As incredible as it was, it reaffirmed what, in the back of my curious mind, I've always believed, always known. Earth is my home." She took a deep breath, fingers ghosting across the skin on my hand. "You're my home. If you want me back after all this time I was lost. Because I did find myself out there. I found that when you're not with me, that's when I'm lost. More than any of the times I fell for princes and maidens and alien people in the reaches of that sky," Junae's eyes wandered to the sky as she inclined her head towards the sparkling cosmic canvas through the window, "I fell for the thought of you."

Tears are prickling in my eyes at her words as I stare back into hers, and speak, not loudly, but with all the depth and conviction I can muster. "I never let go of that thought. My thought of you. I had to believe you'd come back, but I had to let you go, because even though I love you, I don't own you and I never will. You're beautiful because you take chances and try to understand yourself. Not just beautiful how I remember you in my head, despite whether you're here or not. You're objectively amazing, and I wouldn't change a thing."