The Time It Takes To Fall

Complete

Australia, 1721 A.D.

"Mr. Prince," a voice chuckled above Kai, causing him to turn from his face-down position on the stone floor. If his body still allowed for injuries, he most definitely would have gained some sort of scrape across his face. "Do you always remain in such a state within my absence?"

"If you mean eternally miserable, then yes," Kai quipped, sitting up and dusting off his prisoner's smock. He should have stunk like the dead after laying in a filthy prison cell for decades with far and few occasions to leave, but alas his invulnerability allowed for not even that to happen.

Kai studied the face of Amaris— a face he'd watched for decades as she grew from a girl into a woman, then aged slowly as Kai stood still. It was painful to watch the woman he loved so grow old without him, though it was better than watching her die young. Holding her in his arms as she died in both her first and third lives had been the two worst experiences of Kai's entire life.

"Why have you loved me so all these years?" Amaris asked, her eyes noticing his stare. "I believe the notion of love at first sight to be nothing but a load of codswallop, so grant me the truth to your affection."

"Ah, but it was love upon first meeting," Kai grinned, winking at Amaris.

"You fell in love with a nun while watching her do the wash?" Amaris questioned, raising an eyebrow. She lowered herself to the ground, tucking her black skirt beneath her legs. "Not ideal circumstances to begin a romance— unless of course, that was not our first meeting."

Kai smiled at Amaris for a moment, but then the grin slid from his face, slipping off like raindrops. He dropped his eyes to his hands, twiddling with his fingers all the while. Blue had warned him not to say a thing concerning his life— her life. She warned him that it would only end in hurt— but this was his Selene.

"Why are you here?" Kai asked, putting a hand up against the bars.

Amaris' face fell and she looked down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her left hand still retained the burn that she was cursed to bear— she would always have it so long as she lived, no matter the life she held.

"Amaris?" Kai reached through the bars and gently brushed her burned fingers. A single tear fell from her eyes. She grabbed hold of Kai's fingers, clumsily intertwining hers with his. She let out a sigh, tracing the back of his hand.

"I've taken ill," Amaris choked on the words as if they physically pained her to say. "The doctors say I have not long until death takes me home."

"What plague ails you?" Kai asked, voice tender. "Surely there must be some means of aiding you— you are not even five and fifty years in age."

"Mr. Prince I am well past my expiration date. I know of hardly any women who have lived such a long life as mine. Of course that might also be in part due to my lacking in the stress of marriage and childbirth, but nonetheless— I have lived a full life."

"But Amaris-"

"Kai I have come to tell you that I am near my death," Amaris sighed, staring down at her hands holding Kai's. "And in return I ask that you tell me of your life."

"Why my life?" Kai questioned, though he bowed his head. It wasn't like he didn't want to tell her his story— he was just scared to do so. Afraid of all that could happen if he divulged his greatest secret.

"Because I have watched you, Kai. For seven and thirty years I have watched you never age a day from the time we met. Your eyes have never lost their luster, nor has your hair turned to gray. Not one wrinkle has plagued your face through nearly four decades in prison. You have remained a youth while all around you has aged. So unless this jail holds some magical powers unimaginable to humanity, there is something within you— something wonderful."