………….

I’ve lived nearly a thousand years, but the first few centuries were, well, dramatic doesn’t even begin to cover it. I was young, impulsive, dripping in bad poetry, and convinced I was the greatest romantic to ever grace the earth. Subtlety wasn’t a skill I’d acquired yet, or even recognised as necessary.

So there I was, wandering through a quiet museum after hours (I know all the locks and blind spots by now), when I stopped dead in my tracks. Under a soft pool of display light sat something that made my stomach drop straight through the floorboards. Hand writing, unmistakenly mine.

Behind the glass was a love letter I wrote almost four hundred years ago to a human lover I can barely remember. It was mortifying. A breathless confession full of moon metaphors, and a vow of my eternal devotion, that clearly wasn’t as eternal as advertised. Seeing it preserved like some priceless artefact felt like being confronted by a younger, much more dramatic version of myself, one I’d hoped had been lost to time.