Air and Earth
I finally did it. I kissed him. I gave everything I had into the kiss.
I grabbed his hair, hands, and chest, and he responded just as fiercely.
I couldn't control much of my actions or how I felt.
I don't even know how he felt by now but I had to give it a try.
My thoughts overwhelm me and I look at him waiting for his reaction.
I was not expecting him to say: "Well that's a Valentine's day kiss I'll never forget!"
And then I wake up.
I had given up on finding love after losing my boyfriend John.
But since his passing, every night, I dreamt about a man I'd never met, who helped me through the healing process.
I didn't know him, yet I was drawn to him.
I longed for the kind of love he showed me in my dreams, but I couldn't have him in real life.
Now I have developed these feelings I don't want, which in real life I can't have, and yet it's like my subconscious hasn't caught up with me. I often think of him, the man from my dreams which I used to forget my pain.
Is it even possible to heal so fast the death of someone you once loved, with someone you haven't even met?
I went on about my routine for the day, worked out, school, work, and then I went into my favorite coffee shop as I did once a week, at night to study, to escape the routine of my everyday life.
And then I realize it's valentines day, the decorations, all the loving couples, and I realized, I want that.
I've been overly exhausted with everything I do every day.
It's the same routine and I'm tired of it, I want to have spontaneity in my life again, I want someone to care for me and love me.
I shut out everything from my mind and kept on reading my course material and suddenly someone sits next to me. The person starts moving my stuff and I find it irritating so I grab everything and push it toward my side of the table.
"Is this seat taken?" Well, that's a deep voice I will never forget.
I was about to talk when I look at him and he was just staring at me.
"No." I smiled politely. As I look at his face, I felt a strange familiarity, but I couldn't place it.
"Don't you recognize me?" He asked.
"Have we met before?" I ask back.
"I'm Russ." I start laughing because that's the name of the man in my dreams but he's not him. "What's so funny?" He looked confused. "Listen, every night for the past year, you see me. Us."
"I beg your pardon. I've never met you, let alone gone out at night to see you." I point out.
"That's not what I meant."
I start packing my things in my bag to leave but he stops my hands.
"In your dreams." He said it so low, like a whisper.
"I don't know what you're talking about." How could he know about the man in my dream?
"Genna, I've been looking for you all around the world." He paused looking cautious.
"I think you have me confused with someone else, Russ." How did he know my name? Then I looked at my coffee cup and realized it was in there.
"No, I don't. I am sure you're my Genna.
" And then he starts talking about things we did in my dreams, things I hadn't even told anyone.
The more he talked the more I entertained the thought he might be telling the truth.
Despite my skepticism, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to Russ than met the eye.
"But you don't even look like him!" I whisper yelled, more to myself. He was much better good looking but he had similar features.
"That's because you see a person I used to be physically in another lifetime."
I just sat there looking confused. "I have to go, I don't know you and you seem like a nut job as far as I know you're talking in riddles."
"You know I am telling the truth. I see it in your eyes. You remember our dreams together." And then he stood up, grabbed me, and tapped the table. We got transported somewhere else, a scenery that seemed otherworldly.
I felt a sense of nausea, but he held me until it passed. I still thought I was dreaming until I saw a couple in front of us, like a movie playing out before our eyes. I asked them to help me, but it was like they couldn't see us, but we could see them.
"What is going on?" I yelled a few times but he didn't reply. "Am I dreaming?"
"No this is very much real."
"I have to be dreaming." I start freaking out as the scene of the couple continues to play in front of us like we were living it with them. They looked very much in love.
"That was us, hundreds of years ago."
"That's not me."
"Just listen until the end and if you don't believe me, I will never bother you again." Seemed fair enough and I could ditch the man.
I do as he said and I hear things we told each other in my dreams. "You dream about these conversations every night. Don't you?"
I opened my mouth to talk but couldn't find words for this situation.
"Don't you?"
There was no point in denying this part so I nodded.
"So... humor me for a moment."
"Fine."
He points out to the woman "You-"
"Her-" I interrupt.
"Are the daughter of one of the sons of Zeus, made to shape and carve everything their descendant astrology sign embodies. You were named Gemini."
I tried not to laugh at the thought, this man belonged in the looney bin.
"And I am the son of princess Europa. Zeus your father tricked my mother into mating with her.
With the promise, he would give her more powers but what he wanted was a human offspring from his white bull.
Instead, he turned his bull into a man and I was conceived.
I became Taurus, the descendant of the astrology signs.
Zeus aimed to create all of us to help dictate the fate of man.
It is what we were created for. The more people actually believed in us, the more it fed us to decide the course of their lifetime. "
"What does this have to do with me?"
"It has everything to do with us."
I just hummed in response, I didn't know what to do.
"We fell in love before compatibility between signs could be written, disrupting the balance.
" He said it like it was liberating. "Something that wasn't supposed to happen.
But it did because you and I have half-human parents.
We had feelings, which Zeus underestimated.
We disrupted his plans and he cursed us with the Zodiac book. "
"Cursed us how?"
"You need to see this for yourself."
"I don't want to."
Suddenly we are in a temple, and the couple we once saw happy is tied with golden chains to the floor. There is a man in the distance talking, I can barely hear them and in an instant, Russ holds me, snaps his finger, and takes us closer.
"You two were one of my favorites. Since I created you, I asked you to do what you were meant to and nothing else.
" He stood up from his seat and looked angry.
"I will make sure you both are an uneven match, both your signs will never be together, not like they truly want to. This is how it was always meant to be!"
"And so it was written that the astrology signs will be divided by earth, water, fire, and air.
Their compatibility and skillset will be unique.
Each zodiac will be compatible with its own with exceptions.
Starting with Gemini's love compatibility is Libra and Aquarius.
Taurus will be with Scorpio, Virgo, and Capricorn.
" He went on about the new laws of compatibility which were things I don't think even humans know about.
"I demand that all of you make the unbreakable bond and embrace the true nature of your zodiac from this point forward. "
"Father -" The woman tried to interrupt.
"SILENCE!" He pressed his fist together further tightening the chains to her wrists.
The zodiac representatives came in a circle.
"What they're doing is called the unbreakable bond."
"What is it?"
"A bond that if you break it you eventually die by the hand of Zeus."
"So we died..."
"Zodiac signs cannot die, they go on, so we reincarnated in different forms. I've spent hundreds of lives seeing you with the love you were meant to be with. But every time you ended up with someone that's not meant for you, they died, in every lifetime."
"My John died because he's Saggitarian?" I ask in disbelief and he nods. "If we're not supposed to be together, and we'd die if Zeus finds us why tell me all this? Why not leave me alone?"
"Because I love you. I love you, in every world, galaxy, planet, every lifetime.
We have died many times because we try and try again.
When we're not together we die in the worst ways.
I've left you alone for as long as I could, some lifetimes I watched you be happy from afar, sometimes I gave it a try, sometimes I was just a friend, a lover, a temporary passing but I need you like the air I breathe. "
"If love was based on words alone... bejeezus."
"Look Zeus had plans for Taurus and Gemini to be compatible, he just didn't want it to be us. We were his favorite children. We did things as he didn't intend to do it."
"Do you know the story of adam and eve?"
I start laughing because who doesn't? "Yes"
"Well, what people don't know is that the apple is a metaphor for intimacy, and God punished them because they didn't do things as he intended to. But they were always going to reproduce. How was the world going to populate? Just alone out of dust?"
It sounded crazy, but the more he spoke, the more it made sense. I started to believe him, especially, when he repeated things that I had only told him in my dreams.
"Even if I believed you, which is all somewhat convincing, why would I sign up to try something out with you and then get killed."
"Because I have a way to kill Zeus's living form. And I need you."
"Need me? For what?"
"For this." He grabbed me and kissed me. With the kiss memories of every time we were together since we had a notion of what we were exploded into my mind. It was all too much, too overwhelming but I kept on kissing him. I realized what he needed as part of the plan. For me to give myself to him.
"Well, that's a Valentine's day kiss I'll never forget!" I smiled because that's what he said in my last dream.
"Do you remember now?" He looked surprised.
"Take us back," I demanded as I grabbed his hand. It was all too much to take in, but I knew that I had to see where this would lead.
"Now that's more like it." He grinned.
"I need to find my medallion to get my powers back."
He transported us back to my apartment and took out my medallion. "I saved it for when you were ready to embrace who you are."
I stopped him. "We need to do something first." He chuckled because he knew what that "first" meant.
The thought of being his again no longer scared me. The realization that this night with him had the potential to end in a catastrophe like it always did, and was what scared me. But would it? Or could it start a new sizzling chapter of romance in this lifetime and many more for us?
"I love you too, you know?" What could happen in the aftermath? Death? I didn't know what to expect, but I was willing to take a chance on him. Russ's plan promised an adventure, and that's one of Gemini's traits. This would be one that would change our lives forever. I know we'd make sure of it.