I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

Hikari looks confused. Though I’ve never told anyone but Sam, he
wore the same expression. It’s like trying to force someone to
question gravity. Their feet are on the ground and so it’s so difficult
for them to look twice at something that feels so simple.
Hikari swallows, shaking her head. “You’re–you’re just–”
“I’m not sick,” I say. “I’m cursed in a sense, but it isn’t a curse you
can break.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve called me strange since you first saw me, remember?”
“Yeah,” Hikari says, stepping closer, nostalgia on her teeth. She runs
her thumbs over my knuckles. “You’re my familiar stranger.”
“I’m familiar because we’ve met before, my love,” I say. “We met in a
past life when you had the same yellow flares in your eyes and the
same soul to pair it.”
“Sam, what are you saying?”
Hikari’s hair was once yellow. Not golden or flaxen, yellow. Like
dandelions and lemons. The color crowded the darkness of her
roots, framing her face with big, round glasses perched on her nose.
Sam’s eyes were once yellow, bright when he was happy, even
brighter when he was sad. His voice was young and high, yet
comfortable no matter the listener. He held himself like a character, a
hero in a novel, a knight without a self-conscious bone in his body.
And together, across different planes of time, they are the reasons I
am here.
“What if I told you a part of this place came to life?” I say. “What if its
soul wanted to know why the strangers it cared for slipped through
its fingers?