I return to the pce where time ended.

  It lies quiet now, beneath the weight of dust and wind. A town once alive with voices, now hollow, its streets softened to sand. They told me it disappeared, but they were wrong. It did not vanish. It was carried away—slowly, piece by piece, until the shape of it remained only in memory.

  I walk through it, though I am not certain my feet touch the ground. My steps make no sound. I have walked this path before, countless times, though I have long since lost count. There is a rhythm to it. One that pulls me forward, over broken stones and through the ruins of doors that no longer hold walls between them.

  My shoes are worn thin. They bear the scars of journeys I have forgotten. The leather splits at the seams, stained by old dust, scuffed by stone. I do not repair them. They remind me of something real. A weight I can still feel, though most other things have slipped from me.

  The air is cold. It smells faintly of iron and rust, sharp and dry. I breathe it in as I stop before a door half-buried in sand. Its hinges sag with age, but it holds. I rest my palm against its surface. Beneath my hand, I feel the slow, inevitable decay of seasons long past. Time has pooled here, thick and unmoving. Behind this door, I imagine the years folding in on themselves—whole seasons crumbling like ash underfoot.

  I listen. The wind presses its voice through the cracks.

  Once, you stood here with me. We pressed our ears to the iron, listening for echoes of things we could not name. You smiled then, I think. Or perhaps that is only what I choose to remember.

  I close my eyes.

  In the darkness, the world returns as it was. The streets unbroken, the walls gleaming pale beneath starlight. We walked side by side then. We spoke words that made the world turn again. When I close my eyes, I can almost believe we are still there, palms open to catch the dust of falling stars.

  But when I open them, there is only this: the ghost of a pce where time ran out.

  I press my hands together. Palm against palm, as we did on nights when the moon burned bright enough to drown out everything else. Back when the stars answered. I do not whisper your name. I dare not.

  Instead, I swallow the wish that never found its voice. It sinks into me like cold water, settling deep where I cannot reach. I carry it because I must. Because no one else remembers.

  The mist here is thick. It rolls in gray waves, hiding the edges of the world. Even so, it calls to me. Like the songs we used to hum, tangled in the wind, half-forgotten but always pulling us onward.

  I walk.

  The stones beneath my feet grow smoother as I go. We collected them once, you and I—gathering the most beautiful, polished bright by the rivers that no longer flow. I remember your hands, dust-streaked and stained, holding them out to me. They shone brighter then. Or maybe it was the light in your eyes.

  I gather them, still. My fingers are dirty, but I do not mind. I carry them in my pockets, their weight a small anchor against the drift.

  I lift my gaze. The sky above is pale, so pale it seems thinner than paper. The stars are faint pinpricks, fragile as needles through cloth. You wove them once, threading them together with pale fingers, tying consteltions where none had been. You gave them names I can no longer recall. They remain, even now, those faint patterns. Even if I have forgotten what they meant.

  You told me once that the things we hold—and the things we lose—shine the same in the end. Both bright, both fierce, just before they are gone.

  I never understood it then. I do now.

  Your voice lingers here. It stirs like wind against hollow bones. It shifts through me, gentle and cold. Sometimes I hear it clearly. Sometimes it is little more than a breath. But it is always enough to keep me walking.

  I pass others sometimes. Shadows, maybe. Echoes of people who lived here, long ago. They drift through the streets, no more substantial than smoke. They do not speak. I reach out once, fingers brushing against empty air. They slip away before I can hold them.

  I think I expected that.

  I know they are only dreams. Fading memories, wearing faces I barely remember. But still, I follow them as they drift toward nothing. Even if I know they are already gone.

  The rain falls. It isn’t water. It’s something heavier. It falls like memory, gathering on my skin, soaking into the stones. Each drop carries weight. I hold one in my hand and watch as it gathers your face there—fragile, half-formed. Your lips move as though speaking something I cannot hear.

  I blink. The image shatters.

  Yet, I cannot stop walking.

  The streets end, eventually. They always do. The town fades into broken sand and the ghost of dunes that roll endlessly toward the horizon. The wind carries away what’s left. Bits of stone, pieces of walls, fragments of names that no longer have meaning. There is nothing left to hold onto.

  Except for you.

  You stand there, in the center of it all. Silent. Still.

  The moonlight falls on you alone. It does not touch the ground. It does not catch on the ruins or the dust. It belongs only to you.

  You have not moved in all this time. The wind does not disturb you. The rain does not fall where you stand. You are apart from it, and yet you are the center of it all.

  Even now, you are beautiful.

  I watch you from a distance. I do not dare move closer. You have waited too long for me to come. And I… I have wandered too far to cross that final space.

  But I watch. I stay.

  I think this is the st time I will see you. I think it always is.

  The light fades, eventually. It always does. The moon weakens, the sky growing thin again. The world breathes shallowly.

  Still, I remain.

  I remember when the town was whole. When we stood beneath walls unbroken, hands csped. I remember the ughter that echoed through the streets, the song we hummed as we walked between houses painted in silver light. I remember how we wove the stars together and gave them names.

  But I do not live there anymore.

  The town disappeared into the wind. It left only traces. And yet, I return. Again. Again.

  I think, one day, I will follow it completely. One day I will step beyond where the st stone falls away, into the pce where you are waiting.

  But not yet.

  For now, I stay here.

  I carry the stones you once touched, warm still from your hands.

  I carry your voice in the hush between my footsteps.

  I carry your name in the spaces between heartbeats.

  I carry your light, though I do not see it.

  And when I close my eyes, I see you again. As we were.