The setting sun painted the sky in a breathtaking cascade of colors. The wine in my glass had dwindled,
and I stretched my legs out, savoring the warmth. Today, someone asked me about the greatest
milestone in my life. Without much thought, I mentioned my wedding, my career.
Cliches that spill out automatically. But the true milestone was something else entirely.
Not an article, not an interview with some dignitary, not even the exposé on the
pharmaceutical scandal that launched me among top journalists. No - she changed everything.

I couldn’t admit this to myself, let alone explain it to another. Sometimes, my mind strains to grasp
the staggering truth. For a fleeting moment, I glimpse the whole picture, but the impossible slips
back into the dense fog of my consciousness. Only then can I go on, unscathed.
Yet now, it all rushes back, vivid as if it were yesterday. I can almost smell her scent, feel her skin.
But she was gone, vanishing from my life as swiftly as she appeared.
Sometimes I wonder if she was ever truly there. For a brief second, I hear her voice:
“Didn’t you receive something wonderful?” A smile tugs at my lips.
She gave me so much, lavish in every way, generous beyond measure.
More than any heart could comprehend. More than any soul could bear.
And still, I miss her - every single moment, I miss her.

When it began, no love bound us. She appeared whenever she wished.
Weeks, even months, could pass without a trace of her.
A phantom, materializing from nowhere and fading just as fast.
She never explained her absences or why she didn’t seek me out more often.
When I asked once, she smiled and said, “But I’m here now.”
That simple truth left me speechless. She was here, and that was enough.
I knew she didn’t love me - perhaps she only tolerated me.
But I burned for her, a bright flame, consumed by longing.
You never knew where you stood with her. Her mood could shift in minutes.
Often, she was gentle, tender. Her fingers would brush my face, light as a feather,
soothing like balm. But just as suddenly, she could turn distant, cold.
Her touches grew stiff, her presence a mere shell, as if she’d vanished within herself.
I never learned what sparked these changes. At other times, she was fire,
surrendering to passion without restraint. No woman I’ve known gave herself so fully to desire.
Watching her was pure bliss. Her sighs, her soft moans.
When we made love, her eyes were usually closed tight.
But in those rare, precious moments when she looked into mine, I drowned in her gaze.
Something in her softened, revealing depths that shook me.
Lust, yes, but behind it lay boundless tenderness, ancient wisdom, love in its purest form.


Every moment of my life, every feeling, was held in that single second, in her eyes.
I was a mortal, gazing into something eternal. Her whispers sent shivers down my spine,
her voice taking on a timbre that poured all her passion into delicate murmurs.
That dark, cedarwood voice warmed me, as if her words alone could thaw the world.
Sometimes they flowed endlessly, melting the ice around my heart.
One evening, when no ice remained, she, the mistress of contradictions,
asked, “What does love feel like?” I stammered, fumbling for words.
That’s when I realized I knew nothing of love. But I felt it. God, I felt it.
I’m certain she understood the weight of that moment.
She smiled, knowingly, tapped her fingers on my chest, and said,
“Here’s the answer you’re searching for.”
Then she kissed me, and I sensed our days together were slipping away, slow but relentless.

Without her, my life turned gray, lifeless. She wasn’t a sunny glow that brightened existence.
No, she was a lens, focusing the sun’s rays a thousandfold.
That power could burn you to ashes or raise you, like a phoenix, to impossible heights.
With her, everything pulsed with life, and I’d have given anything to hold onto that feeling.
The thought of losing her tore at my heart.
A dark heaviness would grip me then. Yet I couldn’t help but cherish every second with her,
willing time to pause. I didn’t think of tomorrow; I lived only in those singular hours.
Hours that held every age of the world.

One morning, unexpectedly, she woke me early and drove us to the edge of a small forest.
She said little, and I asked no questions. I followed in silence, sensing something was different.
We reached a clearing. Morning light wrapped her perfectly, and she shimmered, radiant in the truest sense.
Golden beams seemed to pulse through her, bursting from within.
Her eyes blazed with an intensity I’d never seen. The forest lived in those eyes.
For a fleeting moment, I saw her in a white dress, a woodland nymph or some ancient deity.
It was unsettling. I blinked, but the radiance held. A great stag stepped into the clearing.
It strode majestically across the meadow, its towering antlers catching the first rays of the rising sun.

An ache stirred in my chest. Then, cautiously, does and their fawns slipped from the forest’s edge,
nibbling dew-kissed grass. They didn’t notice us. I held my breath, unwilling to disturb them.
A quiet, sacred moment, where the world faded away. But the stag saw us.
It pawed the ground, ears twitching, its soft brown eyes locked on us. Her radiance seemed to deepen.
Then, something extraordinary. The stag lowered its antlers, as if bowing to her, welcoming her to its realm.
A silent acceptance. Beside me, her delighted laugh rang out, and she bowed in return.
“A mutual recognition,” I thought.

The moment was strange, almost surreal, yet deeply moving. The ache in my chest grew sharper.
The world turned vivid. I smelled damp moss clinging to the earth in the cool shade of distant trees.
I sensed mushrooms and flowers stretching toward the morning sun.
Far off, a tiny beetle fought through a forest of grass blades. My blood roared in my ears, intrusive in the silence.
Every cell in my body hummed, aligned with it all. I stared at my hands, slender fingers,
fine hairs, veins pulsing beneath the skin, delicate bones and tendons beneath. A new kind of awareness.
As if sensing my thoughts, her fingers brushed mine, tender. That touch sent me into ecstasy.
I was alive, truly alive.

I met the stag’s wise eyes, and the ache became longing, love, gratitude.
My sense of self stretched wide, embracing the clearing, the animals, her, almost the entire world.
The moment passed. The deer vanished into the trees. Still dazed, I looked at her.
Her face was soft, the radiance gone. She was the woman I thought I knew.
“I come here sometimes,” she whispered, each word chosen with care. “It’s a special place.
My place of joy. What a beautiful creature, don’t you think?”
Her cedarwood voice grounded me, and I was grateful. My voice cracked, trembling.
“What just happened?” I asked, lost.

She frowned, then said lightly, “I hoped he’d show himself, and he did.
That greeting? Probably just sniffing the grass.” Her soft laugh pulled me back to reality.
But she knew that wasn’t what I meant. The experience shook me.
What had happened? Who was she, truly? I couldn’t ask. The moment was too fragile to dissect.
So I held her instead. She felt solid, real. A part of me, still caught in that extraordinary state, understood.
She was the key to it all. That morning, she’d shown me how she saw the world.
Then, softly, she said, “The man I love, he’s like that stag.” I stared, stunned, but she said no more.
For the first time, I saw sadness in her eyes. She’d never shared anything so personal.

I knew so little of her. Not her home, her work, her friends. Only her name: Aurora.
As a journalist, I could’ve dug deeper, and I tried. God, I tried. But every lead fizzled out.
She was a ghost, conjured from nothing. I wondered, more and more, who she was.
Real, yet not. I didn’t dare ask. There was a boundary, unspoken, I knew not to cross.
Maybe our magic would fade. Maybe I’d lose her forever.

One evening, she gazed at me for a long time. Then she spoke of the man from the forest.
Just a few details. Someone she’d loved for ages, but for reasons beyond her, they could never be together.
“We’re like the moon and sun,” she sighed. “In the same sky, but fated to meet only in fleeting moments.”
Each word stabbed me. Yet she was here, in my arms, kissing me with devotion.
That night, I loved her more desperately than ever. She gave me everything in return.
Words fail me, even now, to describe what I felt. There’s no word for it.
I’ve never felt so close to the divine, though I believed in no higher power.
At dawn, her radiance returned, softer now. I’d grown used to it since the forest.
I fell asleep. When I woke, she was gone, irrevocably. A note lay on my bedside table:
“Louvre, Paris, today in a year - afternoon, Aurora.”

That year devoured me. Her absence gnawed at my soul. Some days, I couldn’t leave my bed.
I missed her endlessly. After weeks of hope and dread, I knew she wasn’t coming back. It broke me.
I puzzled over her cryptic note, finding no answers. I swore I wouldn’t go to Paris.
But as the day neared, I craved closure. So I went, standing before the Louvre,
heart pounding, torn by fear. Would I wait? Would she come? Had she forgotten me?

A small sign caught my eye. In a trance, I followed it. A special exhibition: Aurora.
A strange feeling gripped me. Could this be chance? Everything about her had always been strange, unreal.
I reached the exhibition and saw the painting from afar. Aurora. My Aurora. My heart stopped.
It was impossible. Yet there she was. A woman, draped in white, her upper body bare.
Dark hair cascaded down her back. She held a lily with grace. I stepped closer, feverish, but the image held.
The averted face, the long hair, the gentle curve of her belly, it was her.
I stared at the plaque: “William-Adolphe Bouguereau, L’Aurore, 1881.” I was unraveling.
Tears spilled down my cheeks, unbidden. All my grief, my love, my loneliness, my longing, it overwhelmed me.
I wept, heedless of the world. A gentle touch on my arm. I looked up, dazed, into green eyes.

A woman asked if I was okay. For a moment, I hoped it was Aurora. It wasn’t. Yet she looked like her,
shorter hair, fuller lips, but the same expression. Her eyes, though, were Aurora’s, and I stared, lost.
My thoughts dissolved. She led me to a bench, brought me water. I was grateful not to be alone.
I tried to breathe, slow and steady. “1881” echoed in my mind. She spoke, her voice soothing, cedarwood-rich.
I wondered if losing Aurora had driven me mad. Then she, Celine, said something that chilled me:
“This painting shows one of my ancestors. It’s been in our family for ages.” I couldn’t process it.
Celine, oblivious to my turmoil, explained. Her ancestor, the painter’s secret lover, was painted as Aurora,
the Greek goddess of dawn. She spoke of Aurora loving the god of twilight, destined to meet only rarely.
In myths, they were the moon and sun, seen together only at dawn or dusk. “A beautiful allegory,”
Celine said, smiling. “The painter’s lover was truly named Aurora. I hope she found happiness with her twilight god.”


Nothing made sense. Yet, in a terrifying way, it all did. Later, at my hotel bar, I waited for Celine.
We’d agreed to dinner, maybe because of her kindness, maybe because she resembled Aurora,
or maybe because I couldn’t bear to be alone. A hotel employee handed me a note.
Aurora’s flowing script: “Sometimes a heart must learn to love before it’s ready to follow its destiny.
With love, Aurora.”
I swallowed hard, eyes scanning the bar. There she was, with a man. I knew instantly who he was.
Taller, his face half-hidden in the dim light, but his eyes, proud, majestic, met mine.
His arm rested on her waist. He turned, gazing into her eyes.
Only I saw the unearthly light that flared between them. It stole my breath.
The dawn and the twilight.
No doubt remained. Aurora looked at me, winked, and smiled. He nodded, a brief acknowledgment,
and kissed her forehead. They walked out, radiant in the evening’s glow, entwined.
I knew I’d never see her again.

I still can’t make sense of it. My mind recoils from the staggering truth, yet Aurora lingers in my thoughts.
Celine, now my wife, whom I love deeply, knows none of this.
Nor that I sometimes think of Aurora, missing her. She believes chance brought us together at the Louvre.

My wine glass is empty now. My wife’s voice pulls me from my reverie. She takes my hands,
placing them on her growing belly. “It’s moving,” she laughs. “Can you feel it?”
I stroke her belly, and suddenly, she shimmers, just as Aurora did years ago.
I stare, startled, but she seems unchanged, unaware of the light. It radiates from her core.
As if reading my mind, she says, “If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Aurora.”
I nod, speechless, for in my mind, a cedarwood voice speaks clearly:
“Sometimes our descendants carry special gifts. They need those who’ve been loved by the gods.”