Revenir | Memory and Shadow

Some memories are worth the pain they bring

Hello and welcome to the Fiction Section of The Untangling. Just like in my main publication, these stories centre on themes of identity and what it means to be human. Main genres are literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy written with a lyrical and poetic writing style.

You are reading a standalone story from Revenir, an anthology I co-wrote with my son, who died in 2021. The stories explore the human experience and delve deep into themes of love, loss, and the search for meaning. Written in a haunting, lyrical style and set in a single fantasy world, this collection is for readers looking for character-driven stories with strong emotional resonance.

[Remembrance]

Between the stars of Reveria, memories float like silver mist, waiting to be caught and preserved. I am their Keeper, though sometimes I wonder if they keep me instead.

Does heaven sleep? No, but we are perhaps less attuned to the sounds of the cosmos. Then, shadows of oblivion emerge and whisper forgotten dreams into mortal hearts, while the lesser ones rattle between stars and strike terror into the hearts of children.

And I am the one who lights the constellations to preserve what was, for I found a strange, haunting beauty in the eternal dance of memory and loss.

Shadows only take shape within the cages of our minds, after all.

The mortals used to say the heavenly beings dwelt ever in the light of the morn and did not descend, where lesser forms lived. They watched above with such power as to intervene in the affairs of those below without having to set their pure feet upon the earth.

This is the first lie.

There is no heaven. At least there is no longer, though I suppose the race itself must have come from there. No matter. Its inception is beyond the limits of even my long memory. We who are blessed, or cursed to wander the mortal word of Reveria for eternity have our own myths: a creator of all things, who would one day bring us home. Until then, we follow the ordinances set before us for countless millennia past.

I do not know.

They also say that those of heaven do not commune with those other beings—you know the ones—those that rose from the fires of wickedness to further the reach of oblivion and forgetfulness.

That is the second lie.

But mine is not the first story, and I am not the first Memory Keeper to run afoul of a Void.

Though perhaps I am the first to love one.

At first, I took little notice of her. We are a lofty race, and the demons rarely showed their faces, preferring instead to veil themselves with the dusk.

I knew only that as I lit the memories in my charge to keep them safe, she tarried just behind me, quenching the glow of a memory here and there. Not enough to undo all my efforts, but enough to be a nuisance that the perfectionist in me groaned as I retraced my steps to touch those souls with light once more.

Once or twice every decade, my eyes caught a glimpse of My Shadow, as I came to call her: eyes of dark violet that shone against the shimmer of the trees.

Long-suffering, I thought to myself, on the eve of the second century of this odd exchange. No matter.

[Oblivion]

There are two kinds of beings that delve enough to think their goals might be met with the copious amounts of gold they wish to be showered with: those who were just hollow fanatics with a dying passion; and the others who’d found themselves thinking more and more of the essence of everything’s foundation—the ones serious enough to make it somewhere.

When I was first assigned yet another task—a miracle really, for I had thought the leaves on my tree had all shed and I had no more chances left to stay and be accepted enough to see another day—I had been frustrated. The fire I was made of had bristled for a second; I had not ruined every chance I thought I had to live on.

While a goal had been preassigned to me from the very start, I was not one to dedicate my whole being to its very purpose. I was, yes, just a pawn—a gear in the machine that kept the world working. Yet I couldn’t care less.

I had a goal of my own, and like a hollow fanatic with a dying passion, it was to see no more.

The oblivion I had brought out in the past had haunted me more than any meant to be frightened by it, its ferocity often taunting how I was bound—bound to this cycle.

Yet when the new task came, and I was to follow a counter from above and undo the light by tainting it with forgetfulness, I thought, I thought I could take no more. The marring of everything bright just by a touch of all inside me seemed a loss. A game I lost to every single time I touched a leaf of hope.

It was not as if I wished to bring the opposite of my being to the world, rather a need to not be clustered and trapped in the universe forever turning and turning as the other gears on either side of me moved me.

But as she moved before me, casting a sheen of light wherever she touched, I forsook the duties laid upon me and followed at her footsteps. She mesmerized me by the care she lent to those in her keeping, cradling their memories as precious silver. Others I’d countered in years past seemed weary of the task given, as I was. She carried her mortals’ hopes as if her own.

Centuries passed. Still we exchanged no words, though I thought at times she would turn her face almost to look upon me. We became one, and as a shadow clings to a form, so I clung to hers. I memorized the paths she took. I learned to read hesitation in her movements, exasperation under her breath. Yet it seemed she did not wholly despise my presence, and we fell into a familiar dance as the years passed like silver through paned glass.

At last, on the eve of the third century, the silence broke. She turned toward me, and I looked upon her visage for the first time.

“How long, then, will you trail after my steps in silence?”

Her voice, low but firm, surprised me. For all the stories of Star Guardians’ voices to be of tinkling silver, I did not expect it to sound of such earthy realness.

“Who said it was you I follow? Perhaps I have been tasked to counter your efforts in this same country. Your speech is as arrogant as any I might have expected of a citizen of heaven.”

“So too, it seems, of a creature of hell.” And though she spoke her words with some sharpness, I read mirth in the slight turn of her mouth. “Come then, Shadow. I am called Mira.”

The exchange cleaved the silence between us, and ever after, I walked at her side rather than at her back.

[Remembrance]

On the eve of the third century, I turned to lay my eyes on My Shadow, and in the glimmer of starlight that flashed across hers, I read in them a sorrow beyond time. In them, I captured a remnant of what I recognized as a mirror to my own heart.

Only then did I break universal law and speak to the enemy. Her answer in the form of a sarcastic quip awakened a lightness I did not yet recognize as elation. I knew, then, why mortals clung to memories as though of great riches. If I, with the long memory of an eternal, longed to hold this one of a single being tone and what it stirred in me, how much more for those doomed to live for the length of a single breath, then die?

When she followed me thereafter, I welcomed her company. When I cradled fragments of memories and sent them into the keeping of the stars, she glared at me. Often, she threw invisible nets over some and crushed them into oblivion. Our purposes, set before us by masters unknown, dictated our actions as such—that we could not be free to do as we would, even as we failed to grasp the reasons. I thought her foolish, for who would be so wicked as to destroy another’s memories?

Until the night I found her hunched over a child's memory—one of war and loss that should have been preserved as warning to future generations. The young girl had seen her sister, Savi, butchered at the door of their home, her village in flames. Her fingers were weaving shadows through its silver threads, dimming their glow.

“Stop,” I commanded, though my voice held more curiosity than authority, for the child’s thrashing and hysterical wailing had lessened as Lethe worked.

She looked up, violet eyes defiant. “Some memories deserve peace.”

“Without it, how will she learn wisdom?”

Her hands ceased for an instance before continuing. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “forgetting is needed for healing. Without healing, wisdom has nowhere to take root amidst bitterness and pain.” Wisps of shadow drifted around her edges as she completed her work. The child’s stifled sobs echoed behind us as we drifted on to other memories.

Her fingers trailed at her side, and I wondered what it would be to touch mine to hers. If speech was forbidden between us, touch was unfathomable, as out of reach as stars were for humankind. Though my hand drifted close—too close—I dared not, for such things were not meant for my kind. I knew not whether stars would fall from the sky, or the world split apart, yet I stayed my hand from reaching for hers in the night. I have known a world without her, and I will know it again.

[Oblivion]

Gradually, she spoke to me of things I dared not dream. All my long years I have spent drifting, an existence as inconsequential as the wind that passes through leaves. I floated above the material world, and did not know how to live.

But she spun stories of humanity she had seen, both the evil that fastens to hearts as an unshakeable sickness, yet also instances of purity when least expected. She is one who has walked among the people, while I have done little more than pass as a morning mist doomed to fade.

I drank of her words as one dying, though death was a gift reserved for heaven’s beloved. Longings I could not name began to linger upon my heart.

“What purpose do we serve but to carry out the commands of those greater than us?” I asked. We had stopped our laboring for a time and sat together beneath the eaves of a tree lit as though from within. She pointed to constellations above us through the leaves, naming each star and recalling the memory it held.

“We each have our place. Yet in us, I see more of the lesser beings—more human than divine.”

“If they carry in them both good and evil, then are they truly the lesser beings?”

“So say the masters we serve.” She paused. “But to my eyes, they walk more glorious than we who wander.”

I dared to brush a hand almost across her face. Almost. “What makes humans the beloved?”

Her voice was a faint whisper as she bent her face near mine. “They love.”

Mira reached her hand toward my face and threaded her fingers through the back of my hair.

And that was the end of words.

If we had looked again at the sky, we might have seen memories scatter like startled birds, the constellations she’d drawn for me moments earlier burst in the sky. I saw nothing but the light of her essence, felt her breath stumble in my mouth, mingle with hers as my hand wrapped around her wrist. I tasted silver and gold, hope and future. I now wanted the eternity I thought I could not bear, longed for it with the same desperation as that which drove me to pull her closer and wrap my essence round her.

How long, I wondered as the dawn broke upon a new day, could we continue? Heaven does not sleep, and would surely put an end to our dalliance. As the years blended one into another as the waves upon the sea, time that I had never before feared seemed an enemy newly formed, and one over which we could not prevail.

No punishment rained down upon us in those early days. We could have been forgiven for believing ourselves unshackled from the rules of Reveria—believing them what humans called “old wives’ tales,” with no roots in truth.

And Mira—Mira with her long, silver hair, who now smiled serenely at me while weaving between tree branches—she whose memory I would surrender every freedom to interweave through all my being. She whose story could nevermore be extricated from mine. I walked beside her, drinking deeply of her.

But all stories end, even those belonging to immortals.

[Remembrance]

Following our union that night, a village’s collective memory began to flicker—not preserved in stars, not dissolved to peace, but cocooned in a twilight state leaving the people wandering in confusion. Some remembered too much, others too little. Children spoke with ancient voices; elders forgot their own names but recalled insignificant moments from infancy with perfect clarity. Young and old cried out to the cosmos in bewilderment, and we—keepers and voiders of memory—had no answer.

“Lethe, what have we done?”

The deep pool of her eyes were wide with horror as we bore witness to the unravelling.

We knew already.

I cast my nets to memories that should have been forgotten, and she followed me to draw back those that need be restored. The sun rose and fell as we labored while villagers wandered wildly. Young men forgot the lessons of their mothers, neglected their work and spat in the faces of women. Memories from ages past escaped from their keeping in the stars and made a home in the mind of a girl, who babbled nonsense about winter goddesses and nightmares in the sky. Even livestock forgot their masters and kicked at them with iron hooves.

My hands threaded silver and gold through lost memories, trying to lure them back to the safety of stars, yet as wind turns leaves, so my threads disappeared as quickly as I wove them, her shadowed filaments wrapping around the silver. The night wore on, and still the sheep reared up to stand like men, while men bent down to devour grass.

“No, you cannot repair what you have now torn asunder.”

We stopped. The voice had emerged from the ether and wrapped around us. A figure materialized before us, neither fully light nor shadow, but something ancient far beyond what either of us know.

“We were trying to restore balance,” I began, but the words died on my tongue as the being raised a hand that seemed to bend reality around it.

“The balance was broken the moment you chose yourselves over your duties. This village is merely the first ripple of chaos you have unleashed. The world you love will be sacrificed to your dalliance if you do not turn aside from your path, and you destroyed with it.” The being vanished from our sight, leaving us with a last word:

“Choose.”

Together we retreated to a place belonging to us alone. We had known this day of reckoning would come, yet had staved off its approach nevertheless.

“Why? Why must I choose?” her voice shook.

I traced the contours of her face with my gaze, memorizing each detail as if I could preserve this moment among the stars. “Because the laws of the universe forbid it. Because I was born of stars and the dust of heaven. And you? You make your home here, among the ashes of the earth.” I smiled, though sorrow welled within me. “Because this world is not one where we can love as we choose, and ours would break the world.”

“So?” The defiance in her eyes reminded me why I had fallen for this creature of shadow.

“Oh, Lethe.” I rested my hand upon hers. Only then did I realize I trembled. But her touch transformed the stirring in my heart into an ache I knew would never fully heal.

I turned over her hands to trace my fingers along her palms. Stars burst overhead, but for these last moments, we cared not. “These hands are not mine to hold,” I said softly. “They were made to soothe the sorrows of the world and bind the mortal broken. They will sweep the darkness from the land, from the hearts of man.”

The truth of my words was to me as a fatal wound.

“One day,” I said, “this grief will pass for us both. You will walk beneath the light of the dawn, bringing forgetfulness wherever you set your feet, even as I set forth my efforts to preserve remembrance. One day we will not weep at the coming of the night. And we will lift our gaze to the distant hills where we whispered of a love we dared not reach for. And the world will shift as we know it will, until the seas have carved away the shores, and the land is no longer the one we once knew.”

I laid a hand upon her chest and held her palm against mine. I felt the steady beat of her immortal heart and knew that mine pounded to the same melody. “But here—here, nothing will change,” and my words were a breath upon her cheek.

She cried then.

Somewhere in the universe, stars were dying and bursting to life, the earth was quaking, and fires were erupting. Our love seemed small compared to our greater callings.

Yet there we stood, together, and I willed the moment not to pass. But time never stills for anyone, not even immortals.

The light of the tree we had dwelt under when we spoke our love into existence dimmed and faded. It was then we learned that in the mortal world, the death of love was a death of goodness and beauty.

I search for her sometimes in the spaces between stars, though she now walks a path sundered from mine. The strange being with its warnings never returned, but I feel its presence whenever I look to the blackened tree—a reminder of boundaries that must not be crossed.

Regret was thought to be an emotion belonging only to man, and it is true: I cannot regret her. And a world in which I once knew her touch is better than one in which I walked forever alone.

I made my choice. I let her go.

[Oblivion]

Mira has gone.

I woke one morning to a world still familiar to my eyes, but it was no longer the same world.

And I remembered why. Because the world I had known was now faded as surely as the tides of the sea would wash away all of time, as north would forever run parallel to the south.

I chose her.

Above all other things, though it may have torn the skies apart and damned us both to eternal shadow, I chose her, and with my choosing, I found my life renewed.

Like the shimmering glimmer of the trees she lit each night to shine a light into the dark, so she came. A touch. A word. A glance. I had a sudden vision of a stone thrown into the path of a running creek, that perhaps would not divert the flow, but would surely change it forever.

Such love could not be. We were separated by a gulf farther than distant shores, wider than death from life.

And still we loved.

Even while knowing the scars would carve themselves deeper into us than any wound heaven or hell could deal us. Some stories are spun into myths and crafted into song that the humans pass to each generation. Ours was not such a one. It would fade like the morning vapor, bury itself beneath the earth, long after we parted. Our story would be one of silence, witnessed only by the trees and stones. It has no place among the stars.

But so I forgot my sadness for a time and reached for her hand in the dark.

“If there is life beyond the borders of eternity, will you remember me? Will you carry our love in your memory when all others have forgotten?”

“I will.”

I will. For eternity is in the dance of autumn leaves floating to carpet the earth in crimson and gold, in the moments doomed to fade. And we all are but stories in the end. The only witness to our love and its breaking was the blackened tree beneath which we first dreamt of forever, its death visible only to us, though others may wonder at its presence devoid of the light it once bore.

I close my eyes and open them again to a world I must learn anew, without her. I leave behind the longings for who we were, leave behind what we might have been.

Once, I blotted out memories as my nature dictated. Now, her deep voice manifests in my hesitations before I cast my nets of shadow. She echoes throughout the timbre of my choices, still.

Perhaps that is how love persists beyond separation. Not in dramatic defiance of cosmic law, but in small mercies, in changed perspectives, in work done differently because someone once saw us truly.

I carry her with me in each memory I choose to spare.

The Story Behind the Story

This is the only story Ren and I collaborated on together in the traditional sense of the word. On all the others, we usually started our respective stories ourselves, then gave feedback to each other and reworked them together. For “Memory and Shadow,” we planned it out together and each took a character’s POV. I wrote Remembrance, and Ren wrote Oblivion.

I’ve expanded the original version we wrote. Ren also hadn’t finished his part at the time of his death, so I wrote the last Oblivion perspective.