Gwenith had given Varian a flower, an orange lily, when they’d first met, in the dappled sunlight of the meadow beneath the trees. He’d carried it with him all the way back to the citadel where she and her people lived, but now, looking back, he can’t remember what happened to it after that.

He knows he didn’t have it with him when his friends joined him, and he told them that he was to be married. It wasn’t in the chamber where he prepared for their wedding, or in the bedchamber where they spent their only night together. It was the one thing she’d given him, aside from her heart and her hand, and he had no idea what had become of it.

It wasn’t even something he could have kept, because it would had died and crumbled to dust, so it was foolish to even think of it now. Perhaps he gave it back to her at some point, tucked it into her hair as decoration, not that she’d needed any, lovely as she was. Or perhaps he’d dropped it somewhere without thinking. Well, no matter. It was lost long ago, gone as completely as the woman who’d gifted it to him.

Still, it had meant something when Gwenith had given it to him, which was why, after her death, he’d plucked another lily, vibrantly orange, from where it grew in that same sunlit meadow, and had placed it beneath the tree where he’d first seen her. A token of love and of remembrance, and of regret, perhaps, for all that might have been and now would never be.

Months later, travelling ever eastwards with his friends, the sight of a lily can still tug at his heart, bringing back memories of that perfect morning when it had felt like the beginning of everything, the opening bars of a symphony of happiness and togetherness that would continue until he breathed his last breath.

The memories linger, bittersweet but precious, and no longer as painful as they once were. He can think of his wife with gladness for having been blessed with her love for the two days they had together. Most people will never be fortunate enough to know such completeness, such absolute compatibility with another person, but he’d had that, and brief though it was, he still remembers how it felt to be so in tune with someone he’d only just met. He’d felt as though he’d always known her, that they had always been a part of each other, and if that was so, then Gwenith will forever be a part of him.

Lost in thoughts of the past, and a love found, and lost too soon, Varian stoops to pluck a flower, a red carnation this time rather than an orange lily, from the riot of blooms that cover this meadow, so reminiscent of his father’s lands in the twenty-third century. Love comes and goes, and sometimes it stays, but even when it doesn’t, there is always the opportunity to love again, and clinging to the past is not healthy. What he lost will remain with him, because some moments, and some people, are simply unforgettable, but life goes on.

Smiling, he carries the carnation back to his friends and tucks it in Jonathan’s buttonhole. “There, a bit of color amid all that black, makes you look less like a gloomy dark cloud,” he teased. “Red suits you.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Jonathan doesn’t quite seem to know what to think, but that’s alright. Let him wonder a while longer. They’ve been growing closer for some time now, and Varian is reasonably certain that he isn’t misreading his friend’s interest. Where they go from here, he’ll leave Jonathan to decide.


The End