“We found it! We found Ivernis!” I kissed him with all the happiness of eight solid years of love and a life together, with the desire and passion of first love, with the joy of a dream made real. Three dream—Ivernis and Kilkarten and him.
He smiled his crooked smile, the sun in his eyes. “I take it you’re happy?”
I nestled my head against his chest, reveling for a moment in his warmth. “I didn’t need Ivernis to be happy. I just needed you.”
Then I broke away and grinned as I jogged backward. “But I am pretty damn excited.”
And I turned and ran across the green land, breathing in the salt and sea. Before me, the earth opened up to reveal a lost city tended by dozens of my friends, and beside me, Mike’s feet pounded against the ground, in step with my own. And in that moment, like so many moments in the last years, I could taste perfection, could feel it thrumming in my bones, resonating with the land and the people who surrounded me. When I stopped, I saw the past at my feet and my future beside me as Mike’s hand took mine. My heart ached with the wonder of it all, and I leaned my head back to the bright, cloudless sky, and I laughed.
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