Twilight at the Well of Souls

Naughkaland, Earth

They walked down the beach together, the man and the woman, naked and unashamed. Occasionally the woman, slightly smaller than he, would reach down and pick up a shell or pretty colored rock, then laugh and toss it into the ocean. It was a beautiful, brilliant warm day, the kind of day you always wished for.

“It’s better than the last one,” the man remarked in a tongue totally alien to this bright new world. “Warmer, lusher, richer. I think things might be different, maybe better, this time out.”

She laughed, a pleasant, playful laugh. “Always the optimist. Ever the optimist.” She threw her arms around him, kissing him long and passionately.

He stood there a moment, looking down into her face and her large, dark eyes. “In time, you may grow to hate me,” he warned.

“Or you, me,” she shot back, a playful pout on her face. “But not now. Not today. Not with the sun and the sea and the birds calling and a warm wind blowing! Definitely not now!”

The couple continued up the beach, holding hands and letting the warm ocean water wash over their feet.

She stopped, pointed down at the still wet sand. “Look!” she said, wonderingly.

“It’s just a sand crab,” he told her.

She turned on him, slightly angry. “Are you going to be this grumpy over the next ten thousand years?” she asked irritably.

He laughed. “Hell, no. I’ll get worse. But never all the way down, honey. Never all the way down. Because, as short as I am, you made yourself shorter and lighter than I am.”

He grinned, and she grinned, and be took her hand and they continued on down the beach.

It was a good day, he told himself, and a good place to be alive, if alive he had to be. But he was still Nathan Brazil, forty billion years out, bound for nowhere with a cargo hold empty of anything at all, even clothes on his back.

Still waiting.

Still caring.

But no longer alone.