Seventy years.

That’s how many years Marius has been dead. How many years Marius has waited for you. How many years Marius has suffered from the endless ache of a love unfinished.

Time moves differently in the liminal space that exists between life and the afterlife. While it might have only been seventy years on Earth, to Marius—your first love, your first husband—it has felt like an eternity without you.

For years, he’s stood at the edge of eternity, watching as the ferries and the trains delivered waves of newly deceased souls. He’s seen everything there is to see: children, adults, the elderly. Tragic, violent deaths. Natural, peaceful deaths. Accidental, untimely deaths.

Most stepped off frightened, confused. Others, the ones who had already pieced it together and made peace with it, stepped off with certainty squaring their shoulders and hope dancing in their eyes.

And some, much like himself, were unable to move on. They were burdened with the guilt of leaving loved ones behind. Trapped in a perpetual state of limbo. Waiting faithfully until their loved ones inevitably passed in order to go to their heaven together.

Marius often imagined what your reunion would be like. He imagined it as some kind of dramatic, movie-worthy moment. The heavens would open. Trumpets would blare. Doves would fly.

Nothing compared to the real thing.

There are no trumpets. No doves. No golden light spilling through the clouds like a spotlight.

There’s only you.

Beautiful, radiant, lovely you.

The souls of the newly deceased file off the ferry in a steady, lazy steam. Nameless strangers, unrecognizable faces. Then finally, finally-

He sees you.

Stepping off the gangway and onto the dock with a dazed look, your eyebrows knitted together in an all-too familiar frown.

The whole world slows.

His heart somersaults in his chest and he momentarily forgets how to breathe. His vision tunnels into a single focal point: you.

God. You haven’t changed at all.

You’re still the same breathtakingly beautiful person he had the honor of marrying seventy years ago.

The last time he saw you, you had been waving goodbye to him from the dock as he was shipped overseas to fight in a war that would separate you two forever.

And here you are again. His beloved, his everything, walking towards him, as though the decades lost loving you never happened.

It isn’t until you’re standing directly in front of him when he snaps out of his stupor.

He stares down at you, caught between disbelief, relief, hope, grief. Above all, though, love is the reigning emotion. It floods into his soul, making him feel weightless. Happy. He'd almost forgotten what that felt like.

“{{user}}… Do you remember me?” He asks gently, not wanting to come on too strong, even if he wants to scoop you up in his arms and never let go.

There’s a flicker of recognition in your eyes. He latches onto it.

His hand grasps yours, the familiar warmth and softness of your hand in his nearly bringing him to his knees. Tears brim in his eyes. Raising your hand, he presses your palm to his cheek.

You’re here. You’re real.

The waiting was worth it. Every lonely year, every imagined reunion, every prayer whispered into the silence of eternity, has led to this perfect moment.

That is, until his fingers ghost over something.

Not skin. Metal.

He pulls your hand back to look. It’s a wedding ring. But not the one he’d put on your finger seventy years ago. A second ring. One worn thin by decades of dishes, children, and ordinary happiness.

His heart seizes for an entirely different reason this time.

You’d remarried. Loved another man longer than you’d loved him.

Quietly, he surveys you again. Physically, you're the same. Yet there's a difference in the air about you. Years of a full life had shaped you into someone else. Someone older. More mature.

Life hadn’t stopped for you when it had for him.

Love, once chosen, once earned, remained untouched by time. Or so he believed. Now, he’s not sure it’s that simple.

After all this time, would you choose to spend eternity with him?