I. The Girl Who Ran Through Time
Zarina never stayed in one place too long.
Not because she feared danger.
Not because she couldn’t make a home.
But because time—itched.
A century-old itch, lodged deep in her bones since she was eight and discovered her parents’ broken time dial buried in the attic. It had glowed with a light she couldn’t describe—like moonlight trapped in a snow globe. She pressed a single button. One blink later, she was in 1912, watching the Titanic set sail.
She never looked back.
Now she was twenty-eight, though by chronological count she had lived across at least four hundred years. Her short brown hair shifted through decades like a chameleon—sometimes curled, sometimes braided, sometimes blue. She wore modern clothes in medieval taverns and chainmail to jazz clubs. Always laughing. Always leaving.
Zarina was a time traveler. And she was alone.
Well… except for him.
---
II. The Man Who Wouldn’t Die
Jhoeve wasn’t born. He began.
He had no memory of his first breath. Only the weight of ages and the ache of remembering too much. He wandered deserts before they had names, sang lullabies to kings who turned to dust, and waited as empires fell like dominos.
He stopped counting years after the first thousand.
Immortality, it turned out, wasn’t a gift. It was an echo that never faded, a loop that never broke.
Then one day, in 1803, he saw her.
She appeared out of thin air, clutching a brass compass and staring at a thunderstorm like it was a friend. She wore denim in an era of corsets and spoke to horses like they were puppies. She was ridiculous. Breathtaking. Glorious.
And Jhoeve had the strangest feeling.
I’ve been waiting for you.
---
III. The Rules of Their Game
The first time he approached her, she ran.
It was 1803. Zarina thought he was a bounty hunter from the Temporal Authorities.
“I’m not here to arrest you!” he called.
She didn’t stop running.
He caught up with her in 1920s Paris. She was smoking clove cigarettes on the balcony of a cabaret.
“Still not here to arrest you,” he said, plucking a cherry from her cocktail.
“You again?” she scoffed. “What are you, a ghost?”
He smiled. “Worse. I’m patient.”
She disappeared before dawn.
By 1969, he found her in New York, dancing barefoot at Woodstock.
“You don’t age,” she said, squinting at him under the stars.
“Neither do you,” he replied.
“I do. Just... differently.”
“You're a runner.”
“You’re a stalker.”
He laughed. “A very committed one.”
And just like that, it became a game. She would travel. He would follow. She’d vanish. He’d appear. A cat-and-mouse game stretched over millennia. Through the invention of jazz. The fall of Rome. The first time humans colonized Mars. He never chased aggressively. He never forced her to stop.
But he was always there.
No matter how far.
No matter how fast.
Jhoeve always caught up.
---
IV. The Time He Almost Kissed Her
It was 2142. The city floated on solar clouds. And for once, Zarina didn’t run.
She let him sit beside her on a bench overlooking a lake of liquid light.
“You must be tired,” she murmured. “Chasing someone who doesn’t want to be caught.”
“I’m not chasing,” he said gently. “I’m walking alongside.”
Zarina tilted her head. “I never stay. You know that.”
“And yet I stay,” Jhoeve replied.
“Why?”
He hesitated. “Because you’re the only thing I haven’t outlived.”
She looked away.
He reached for her hand. For a moment, just a heartbeat, she didn’t pull away. The world slowed. The air thickened with possibility.
He leaned in.
But before their lips touched, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
And vanished.
---
V. The Years Without Her
She didn’t reappear for a hundred years.
Not in the rise of the Arctic kingdoms. Not during the Great Silence of 2201. Not when the seas turned silver and gravity danced like music.
Jhoeve waited.
And he hurt.
It was strange, after all these years, to feel anything again. But her absence felt like losing the sun. Not because he needed her to survive.
But because she made existence feel… warm.
---
VI. The Reunion in the Wrong Time
2313.
Jhoeve was sitting alone in a time-torn desert. The sky glitched with the remains of temporal storms—pockets of years looping out of sequence. He wasn’t expecting her.
But then he heard it.
That laugh.
Light and bright and so very her.
He turned, heart thudding in a way he’d forgotten it could.
Zarina stood there—older now. Eyes heavy. Skin pale. Something different in her.
“I came back,” she said softly.
He walked toward her, cautious.
“I missed you,” she added.
He stopped short.
“What changed?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Then, “I found the end of time.”
Jhoeve stiffened. “You what?”
“There’s a place,” she said. “A cliff where time collapses. The edge of everything. I went there.”
He searched her face. “And?”
“I stood there for years, Jhoeve. Years. Hoping the itch would go away. The urge to run. The curse of being scattered across history.”
“And did it?”
“No,” she said. “But I realized something.”
She stepped forward.
“It wasn’t time I was running from. It was you. Because you’re the one thing I can’t outrun. And it terrified me.”
He swallowed. “Why?”
“Because you feel like forever. And forever... hurts.”
---
VII. The Moment She Stayed
They stayed together—for a while.
Built a house in 1705, lived quietly for ten years.
Then in 3012, they opened a bookstore on a floating city. She catalogued ancient books from timelines long erased.
He read them aloud on rainy days.
For decades, they danced through time together.
Until one morning, Zarina woke up with tears in her eyes.
“I can feel it again,” she said. “The itch.”
Jhoeve didn’t speak.
“I don’t want to go,” she whispered. “But it’s part of me.”
He nodded, the ache already blooming in his chest.
“I’ll find you,” he said.
She tried to smile. “I know.”
And just like that—she was gone again.
---
VIII. The End of Time
The last time they met was at the end of the universe.
Stars flickered out like candles. The sky was black velvet stitched with memory.
Jhoeve sat on a cold stone ledge, waiting.
Zarina appeared, slower this time. Older.
She sat beside him.
No words.
They watched the last star die together.
Then she whispered, “I’m tired.”
He took her hand. “Then rest.”
“I wish I could have stayed longer. Loved deeper. Run slower.”
“You did,” he said. “In your own way.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“Do you think we’ll remember each other in the next loop?” she asked.
“If time still exists—yes.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I’ll find you in whatever comes next.”
She smiled through her tears. “I never said it, did I?”
He looked at her.
“I love you, Jhoeve. I always did.”
Then she closed her eyes.
And was gone.
---
IX. The Man Who Waited
Jhoeve remained.
Not because he could die.
But because she did.
And he had nothing else to chase.
So he sat on the edge of nothingness, waiting for time to bloom again.
Because immortality wasn’t a curse.
Loneliness was.
---
Moral Lesson:
No matter how far you run, you can’t escape the truths inside your heart. Time is infinite—but moments shared, love expressed, and lives intertwined are the only constants that matter. Don’t waste forever searching for what’s been beside you all along.
