forty-seven #3
Mira brushed one away with her thumb. “Are you all right?”
Something about her tender voice whisked Sulim away to one of those other worlds, where they had all the time in their lives to do this very thing that represented who they were to one another.
Time stopped before it slowly ebbed again.
Sulim thought back on the other loves of her life, the ones who begged her to love them back but were never meant to be her soulmate.
Yet there are forms of me who married them, out of love…
“I’m the same as always.”
“And how is that?”
Sulim gathered her voice from the worlds beyond her own. “In love with you.”
Mira only laughed. Sulim wondered if she experienced the same moment in time as her soulmate did. Are we even on the same planet right now?
“I’ve wondered,” Sulim admitted, “whether the other versions of me were frightened.”
“Frightened?”
“To love someone destined to change the fabric of the universe.”
Mira let the question linger.
“I used to think being your soulmate meant I was following greatness. That I happened to fall in love with someone extraordinary.”
She didn’t wait for Mira to say anything as they remained entwined in the chief’s bed, the very place that Sulim both desired and didn’t want to be. “I don't believe that anymore.”
“No?”
Sulim shook her head. “I think greatness chooses equals.”
Mira caressed her face, her breath heavy, but cool against Sulim’s nose.
“If there's another Sulim somewhere...” she continued, “...one born on another world, beneath another sky, who never held a gun or joined a tribe or learned your language..."
Laughter erupted between them, nearly ruining the moment.
“...then she's still stubborn enough to tell you that you’re full of shit. Also, you’re mortal just like her. She doesn’t care who your mother is. She sure as shit doesn’t care who your daddy is. All she sees is the beautiful woman before her.”
“Uh-huh…”
“She'd still tell you when you're being insufferably noble.”
“Mmhmm.”
“She’d still refuse to worship you just for being who you are.”
“Good.”
“She would never leave your side, even when everyone else ran to save themselves.”
The moment was no longer as light as it had been when they shared one breath and fought desperately to share one flesh. An impossible feat. Even Sulim knew that. In the end, soulmates or not, we are our own people.
“And when the end came… she would fight alongside you.”
The words settled over them with unfettered weight.
Sulim suddenly understood something that had eluded her ever since Mira first spoke of countless worlds that sprang like tendrils from the Void—a vision that came to her through an ancient Dreamwalker and from what the other her saw at the End of all Things.
The constants between universes were not events. Not governments. Not even history.
The constants were choices.
Again and again, somewhere beyond comprehension, some Sulim had chosen courage.
Again and again, some Mira had shouldered burdens no one should bear.
Again and again, they had found one another—not because destiny forced them together, but because, given every opportunity to become someone else, they refused.
This relationship was not one of chains.
At its worst, it was pain and grief. At its best, it was this moment, when they shared that one breath and one flesh.
Oh, I hope the other Sulims across all of the worlds can experience this.
They deserved it. All of them. Because even though Sulim knew she would never resist the bond that connected her to Mira, there was the chance that they never met.
Yet how could it be? Mira was part of the High Priestess.
She represented everything Joiya Lerenan had desired for her daughter.
Why shouldn’t their souls look across eternity and say, “There you are. I’ve been looking for you. About time you arrived.”
And why shouldn’t every incarnation look back and announce, “I'm here.”
Sulim rested her forehead against Mira's once more.
“I don't think soulmates exist so that one person can complete another. I think they exist so that when the universe asks impossible things of us...”
She intertwined their fingers. “Someone answers, ensuring that we’re not alone.
That’s what She wants for all of her children, right?"
Outside, somewhere beyond the apartment, Cerilyn continued its restless existence.
The Relics waited. The Void waited. A father prepared to unmake creation.
Tomorrow, entire civilizations might cease to exist.
Tomorrow, history itself might become unrecognizable.
Yet none of that diminished this moment.
Because if the universe could be rewritten... then this… two mortal souls choosing each other without hesitation… must have been one of the truths creation itself was trying to preserve.
Sulim no longer feared standing beside greatness. She had mistaken her place all along. She was not standing in its shadow. I stand by its side.
And somewhere, in every world that had ever been or ever would be, another Sulim reached for another Mira with the same unwavering certainty.
Whatever waited beyond tomorrow... they would meet it together. They always had.
We always would.