Burn With Me

 His presence triggered a memory from her childhood.
 She was five.In the garden of her house,on a late summer afternoon,Shirley was playing with her older sister.Her small,white dress was fluttering around her in the before-the-storm wind.The clouds were rilled up in the horizont,ashen and fierce looking and the smell of rain was already pungent.She was laughing,feeling exhilareted by the fun time she was having with the ones she loved so much.And then it happened.A big butterfly like she had never seen before landed on the grass in front of them,blown by the harsh wind.Her sister screamed;she was scared to death by insects.Taking a shoe,she raised it over her head and slammed it on the small creature.Shirley watched transfixed the scene unfolding before her,pain filling her innocent,unknowing heart.In a matter of seconds,she threw herself over the butterfly as her sister striked again.Her fear-driven blows didn't stop;she was too blinded by her phobia to notice she was actually hurting her precious.Shirley took the injured insect in her hands and brought it to her chest,tears of grief rolling down her cheeks,not for the pain in her back from the hits she was taking but for the poor creature in her hands.It would surely die;she didn't want that to happen,she didn't want to see anything suffer in this beautiful,beautiful world.She ran towards the fence and settled the wounded butterfly at the base of a Forget-me-not.

 Fifteen years later,there she was,sipping a cup of steaming hot chocolate in the middle of winter,watching the busy street from inside her favourite cafe when a stranger stopped by her table and simply stared at her.He was tall,lean and clad in a long,black coat.His dark bangs covered half of his pale face as he leaned over her,hands in pockets.He had a familiar aura to him,soothing even though she was sure she never met him before.His eyes had a peculiar colour,a deep orange,like the sun at dusk and he gazed at her with something akin to longing and adoration.Even though she should have felt creeped out of her senses,Shirley was oddly at peace,only if a little bit confused.Her wide,chicory eyes stared back at him,her gaze mirroring the curiosity she was feeling inside.
 For five minutes straight he didn't move,nor did his eyes falter from hers.She didn't dare break the silence as she was transfixed by the encounter.Suddenly,moving too fast for her to comprehend anything,he cupped her face with his hands,lowering his head towards her,a soft,sorrowful smile spreading across his lips.His voice was deep and full of emotion as he spoke.
 "My love,we finally meet again."
 Her breath hitched.His touch made her vision bleary and for a second,Shirley thought she saw butterfly wings on his back.And then he kissed her,softly,yet with such love and desperation that her heart wrenched tightly and tears slipped down her cheeks.He draw back and she locked her shocked eyes with his.Who was this stranger and why did her insides feel crushed by anguish?When he took her hand in his and beckoned her to come with him,she went without saying anything.The staccato beat of her heart slowed.

 The setting sun was giving the park an eerie,golden hue.The stranger kept holding her hand all the way from the cafe to where they were now,not saying anything.She didn't ask anyway.
 "Aaah,so little time.If only I could have come back to you sooner."His voice trembled and his hold tightened.Embracing her,he murmured a foreign word and everything around her went black.Memories of a forgotten,past life hit her as hard as thunder and settled in her brain.Two kids holding hands and running happily through a field of wheat;two teens weeping at a funeral;a woman and a man fighting for their lives in an apocalyptic world;the same man crying tears of blood while hugging the headless corpse of the woman.And then,the memory of her saving the butterfly from her sister's hits.
 Shirley gasped and opened her eyes wide,taking in the burnt sky and the feel of the stranger's arms around her.No,not a stranger,but someone she knew all too well.Someone she loved for a lifetime.
 "How?"she uttered as they both collapsed to the ground in a fierce embrace.He spoke in a hushed,almost defeated tone.
 "After I lost you,before our world ended,I prayed to God to meet you again.I pleaded and pleaded,until the Earth imploded and everything vanished,I pleaded until my last breath and a miracle happened.I got the chance to meet Him.The God of Time,The Creator,the one who controls and resets the worlds when their time is up.He granted my wish.I traveled and lived through six timelines to meet you,but you weren't in any of those.Man,woman,animal,I've been all those.Past and future,I've lived through both.Yet,my hope never faltered.I will chase after you until the end of time if I have to,that's what I thought when my lifes reseted and once again,you weren't there.You are such a rare and precious being,my love.And when I finally found you,I had the misfortune of being reborn as an insect.It pained me more than I thought it would to be near you but unable to touch you.That fateful day when you saved me from being crushed by your sister,I did something unforgivable.Seeing you get hurt for me made me force fate once again.I asked to be returned to my original form but I asked the wrong person.You see,The Creator is a just being;favoring a mere human would unbalance the Laws of this world.It took me years,but I managed to find a way to return to what I was once.Or so I thought.There is no light without darkness;no world free of evil exists because that would also unbalance the Laws.Without realizing it,I made a pact with the devil.He asked for a soul in return for what I wanted and I foolishly agreed,not once considering the fact that it may not be mine I sold."
 Shirley felt hot tears wet the skin of her neck as he burried his face there.
 "I will save you from the fate I brought on you myself.This will be my final act."
 She swiftly detangled herself from him and looked him and kept him at arms length with her hands on his shoulders.Staring at him with a mix of determination and dread in her cicory eyes,she spoke:
 "No!You have suffered enough.If I'm going to burn,then so be it.I love you too much to let you sacrifice yourself for me!No more!"
 "My love,how could I live without you?How could I live with myself knowing that because of me,your spirit is agonizing in the depths of Hell?I haven't lived all of those lifes to hand your pure soul to the devil."
 It happened without any form of foretelling.The wind picked up at high speed,swirlling around them,the sun blackened and the earth split open.Crimson flames flared through the cracks and scorched the grass and a huge crater formed in front of them.Nightmarish yells clawed at their ears and horrific,shapeless shadows danced in the air as they stared in fear and shock at the scene unfolding before them.Soon enough,the wind picked her up and threw her towards the flames but he didn't let go.He hold on to her hand with everything he got,even though he was also dragged into the pit.
 "No!Let me go!I don't want you to burn with me!Please,please live!"her desperate cries fell on deaf ears.With a last surge of power,he changed their places,his soul already detaching itself from the body.
 "You saved me once.It is now my turn to protect you."His smile was sad and it pierced right through her heart.Without other words,he let go of her hand.
 His adoring eyes never once left her as the flames engulfed him.Her outstretched hand tried in vain to reach him;the raging wind threw her back on solid ground and the gap closed,leaving only a patch of burnt grass as evidence to what happened.Her cries of his name didn't stop for a long time as she pounded the soil with her fists,her tears leaving traces on her ash poudered cheeks.Only when her broken throat couldn't utter a sound more,did she collapse,her face buried in her hands,silently crying.

I want to see you so much that my tears would not stop flowing.

I do everything in order to return to you. 

I will love you until the very end.