Every Nine Lives Or So
by Tempo

Listen to the audio version of this story here: https://thevoice.dog/?episode=every-nine-lives-or-...

This story originally appeared in Heat 15 by Sofawolf Press. Support the furry publishing community by purchasing books and anthologies from authors like me.

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She and I spent every lifetime building monuments to get each other's attention. Beacons on the landscape of time.

Now we finally get to meet.

I arrive at the coffee shop she recommended. The sunshine feels good on my fur, so I nab a seat on the patio. The breeze teases my whiskers. One of the employees is scrubbing down the stand-up chalkboard to write today's specials.

I always get born a blank slate, like anybody. Unlike everybody else, my eraser's not so great. The ghosts of my past selves haunt that mental blackboard, every memory a faint and overwritten chalk scribble. Takes some reminding to piece them together. Books help. Photos help. Internet helps. I'm being reminded of things I never knew faster than ever.

My tail whips back and forth. I feel out of place, self-conscious, though nobody in the cafe gives a second glance to one more nervous cat. Letting my tail do its thing helps. I was a lynx once and never quite got the hang of a short tail. I'm pleased to be a caracal this go-round—they look good in a leather jacket. Can't get too attached to this body, but it's the immortal equivalent of waking up to a good fur day for the big date.

Builder and Teacher. Two immortals. Anonymous shapers of civilization. First time ever meeting. For coffee. No pressure. Fuck.

I check my phone again. No new messages. Just relax. No big deal. We've been corresponding for centuries. Yeah, it's been mostly posthumous until this year, but still. We've almost met a few times. A couple times a millennia, we have a near miss. It became an inside joke: every nine lives, give or take. I'm thankful the world moves faster now. We wrote down the joke a few too many times and now everybody says cats have nine lives. Fucking sick of it. They don't even know what it's a reference to.

With a quick claw flick, I snap open my e-cigarette and take a deep drag. Nicotine buzzes in my lungs. My breath billows out like a storm front. A few patrons get caught in the cloud and give me dirty looks. They should've seen me at the turn of the century—I smoked liked a locomotive. I can still smell it in this jacket, even after all the times I've had to oil it. It's so easy to care for leather goods now and nobody does.

I don't remember how it all started, my ghosting the world. Maybe I've always been around. One mind isn't equipped to remember a thousand lifetimes. All those lives I spent squatting in caves blur together, and that's  the furthest I've ever been able to recollect. I think that's why I started with the stone carvings: a visit to your previous lifetime's notes is a good way to verify you aren't just delusional.

I do remember how we started. Some jerk had broken into one of my caves between lifetimes and left a running commentary on my notes. I was pissed. This was my private sanctum, not some graffitied back alley. "Memento etiam tibi!—You remember too!" It seemed too good to be true. Had to just be someone with the delusional version of my condition. But my better half has always been good about citation, so she carved me a map to a couple of her own record sites. After a few decades wondering if I'd spent a past life setting up an elaborate prank on myself, I left a note on one.

No dislodging her after that. Every lifetime, she was back. I lived as a hermit for a couple lifetimes, hoping to catch her, but she kept showing up after I died and leaving me little "Paenitet! Et vos desiderabat.—Sorry! I missed you." notes. Frustrating.

Frustrating is a good word to sum up my existence, even more than most people's. You get born, spend a decade or two having everybody tell you it's just déjà vu, and finally find some of your old notes. Then it all comes rushing back. Of course, you still had to wander the Earth like a fucking lost soul after that, looking for answers, but at least you had an excuse for the déjà vu. Then you die and start from scratch. Gets lonely.

So I wasn't about to turn down a pen pal.

We operated in Latin. Latin sucks, but once you've learned it a few times, it comes back pretty fast. We've only switched to English this lifetime. English sucks too, but in different and interesting ways.

I check the time on my phone again. She should've been here by now. She'd better not have been hit by a fucking bus. I might never forgive the Universe for that kind of tease.

I take another drag. This time, I blow the vapor straight up through my whiskers. It rises like a column in the still air. I always liked columns, monoliths, stone needles. Shit you can see from far away. Nothing beats a good obelisk. If you make them impressive enough, most people stop fucking with them. They even start maintaining them, which is great for my purposes.

Sure, it inspires copycats. But not many people have the attention span. I spent the better part of two lifetimes carving a mural into a cliffside, and not just because I fell off and died halfway through. It's a good thing museums keep my work behind velvet ropes or I'd be tempted to touch up a millennia-old mistake. Nice to see the old handiwork, though; makes me feel sane. Life is an exercise in keeping oneself sane. I flip an old coin along my knuckles. Some habits are hard to break—this one's a keepsake. The tough part was not getting caught for tomb robbing at my own grave.

I look out across the patio. No sign of her yet. She has to be here any minute. This is her favorite café. I think it's only okay. What if we meet and she hates me? Do we spend the rest of eternity avoiding each other? That's awkward.

Then I see her. Padding through the crowd, a snow leopard—been ages since I've been one. She's in a Tibetan wrap dress, the kind with an apron striped the colors of Himalayan prayer flags. Fitting, since I feel like we climbed Everest to get here. Lots of room for her tail to move under it. Lots of tail to move, too. Her supple form weaves through the seats and servers with the grace of a thousand lifetimes. Those wise eyes lock onto my t-shirt, then my face.

Heart thundering, I stand. "Well, if it isn't my better half." I take her paw. It's warm. I look her in the eye. "You're late."

"I wasn't about to get into a crash." She waves a paw serenely. "You remember Paris."

I roll my eyes. Our last near miss, she was lost at sea and I waited two lives in Paris. "I was lucky they needed a sculptor or two."

She grabs me into her arms. Like getting a hug from a pillow. Her breasts press against me, her purr rumbling through my body.

Without even realizing, I start purring too. Every lifetime, I get told I purr with an accent: I never learn it from my mothers, like a kitten's supposed to. It's one of the first things that unlocks old memories. After a few seconds, I realize I've shot past the few seconds it's okay to hug someone in public. I blush furiously, break the embrace, and pull out a chair for her. "Been trying to arrange this little date for a while." My heartbeat starts giving the purr a run for its money. "The trick has always been to do it without founding religions."

"Oh yes. We generated so many false positives thus. My ears still go up when someone talks about reincarnation." Fussing with her prim glasses, she sits down across from me. "You can't imagine how many goddesses of knowledge I've been because I couldn't stand to watch people farm wrong."

"My solution was always to go live in the wilderness." Easy when you've already found out the hard way which plants are poisonous. "But then they get all excited 'cause you're a sagely hermit."

"Yes. Almost as if people crave knowledge." She steeples her fingers and purrs at me. "And seek out those who have it."

"I never liked the attention. Why do you think I never sign anything?" That's not strictly true. I leave little clues. Motifs. But names are fleeting. Hence why she's just Teacher and I'm just Builder. And I'm not above the occasional graffito. "I hate when I'm a god."

"Aw! Heavy's the head that wears the halo." She laughs at herself and pats my paw, giving it a little shake of conspiracy. "They still pick up on our signals, no matter how garbled. Remember when we were in our phoenix phase?"

"And now they've named an entire city after it." I roll my eyes. A long moment rolls by.

She bites her lip. "Builder, I must say: I'm sorry about Paris." Her long tail curls around her.

"I'm over it." I'm mostly over it.

Contrition flicks down her whiskers. "I had a couple quiet lives."

I nod. We both have our quiet lives, where we never make contact. "Not enough déjà vu?"

"Yes. Island in the Pacific. No monuments there to jog the memories." She shrugs. "The next one, everybody explained it as spirits and visions."

"That'll happen." Better not keep happening, with how much ancient Namibian gold I've blown bringing Internet to the developing world. "The hip new trend is everybody telling you reincarnation isn't real."

"I did get shot preventing a nuclear launch." Her thick paws spread with pride, eyes closed over a smile. "Civilian contractor. Base commander got twitchy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My blood shorted out the control panel."

"Nice!" Without permission, my paw goes up for a high-five. "You're a fucking champ, Teach."

"Quite. Easily in my top ten deaths." She slaps her palm to mine. "I have to presume my reincarnation card is canceled if the world blows up. Best to keep it intact."

"I'll drink to that." I wave to the server in that half-apologetic, half-casual way that shows you're not an asshole. Some things never change.

The server, a perky pointer, sets a cup down in front of her, then fills it with fragrant black coffee. She woofs a little greeting to my companion, like she's such a regular that she doesn't need the menu explained or anything. I've rarely stuck around someplace that long, except for her. After topping me off, she aligned on the next customer in need, freezing for only a second as she analyzed their needs, then trotted over.

I clink my claws against the plain ceramic mug. "Modern coffee is great stuff."

"Isn't it just?" Her paws lift the steaming cup to her muzzle as she inhales appreciatively. "That was a troublesome three hundred years, where everyone was ruining their coffee with chicory."

I raise the cup to my lips, blowing across the hot liquid. "If I could smuggle an espresso machine back to the middle of the Ottoman Empire, right when they were inventing coffee, they'd have started the Steam Age then and there."

"Be sure to tell them they don't have to brew it so strong." My other half swirls creamer into her coffee, then pitches the stir stick in a fine arc. It sails over the heads of oblivious patrons and sinks into a trash bin on the far side of the patio.

A grin takes me by surprise. "The old muscle memory."

Her turquoise eyes glimmer. She grabs a forgotten straw wrapper from beside the sugar dish, rolls it into rough toothpick shape, and arcs it effortlessly into the trash.

I clap politely. Reassuring to see even Teacher isn't above reveling in her superpowers.

Her shoulders roll in a modest shrug. "You should see what I can do with a spear."

The fun thing about reincarnation is you never know what you've got muscle memory for. I keep waiting to find out I'm a karate master, but I keep finding I can cross-stitch or some shit instead. I wove a bag of licorice into a basket last week without thinking about it. "You ever think about the Olympics?" I take a sip, letting the heat spread over my gums. "You and a javelin could re-write the record books."

"I tried the original games, not the reboot." Her fingers toy with the air. "I admit, it crosses my mind every few decades. Just seems a tad…unsporting."

"I'd have to sign up too." I snap my e-cig open and closed a few times, one-handed. "Give you a little competition."  

"I don't like to feel like I'm cheating." She notices the table is vibrating, then follows the motion down to my leg. "I say, are you always this fidgety?"

"It's how I stay skinny." I brandish a sugar packet at her. "You have any idea what I'd have done for this stuff most lives? And now you don't even pay for it." With a quick claw, I slice the packet open and dump the contents into my cup. "See that? Dissolves before I can even stir it. That's how you know it's the good stuff." Fuck, stop talking about sugar.

She smiles politely. One fluffy paw pushes up her librarian glasses. I hope my eyes look as ancient and wise as hers. "Regarding your choice of garb." She eyes my shirt again. "The Needle of Hermel? That's a trifle vain."

I look down at the silk-screened spire. "Got your attention, didn't it?"

"At least twice." She smiles, fangs gleaming white. Nice teeth. Modern era is great for teeth. We'd be gods of dental hygiene at most points in history. History was a series of toothaches that sometimes killed you. Did I cut that check for that toothbrush charity?

I realize I'm zoning out again. Shit. The most important moment in my many lives and I'm reminiscing.

Too late: she's already staring again. "That look you keep getting…" She tips a digit toward me. "…it must be the one my families always say I get. Fascinating to see it from the outside."

I manage a little smirk. I'm freaking out just a little. A thousand lifetimes and I can't think of shit to say.

A car rumbles by. Out the open car window, the elephant driver slaps the door, slowly denting it. Its stereo pumps out bass, rattling the lid of the creamer and every other piece of ceramic within a city block.

"Kids these days and their music." I try to suppress a smile under my best crabby old cat growl. "I remember when we just smacked rocks against bigger rocks."

She laughs. "It was terrible."

"Oh yeah. Modern instruments are way better." I absently finger some lute chords. "Some of the songs are my fault. Forgotten nursery rhymes make the best earworms: catchy and simple."

She nods. "I had wondered if that was a Builder project. Branching out into audio monuments, are we?"

Leaning back in my chair, I shrug. "A cat's gotta eat."

Rolling her eyes, she leans in with a confessional tone. "I shan't judge you too harshly. I brought back the 'na na na-na na' taunt."

"No!" I run my paws down my face, flattening my whiskers. "You shoulda left it buried."

"You'll have to forgive me. I was six." She waves away my despair. "My playmates were terribly impressed."

A dark thought crosses my mind: "Don't tell me you're the one putting Pachelbel's Canon in pop songs."

The snow leopard groans. "Why would I do that to myself? I thought we were safe from that thing until someone dug it up in 1919. Now it may well follow us forever."

I nod. Recorded music has scared me into never half-assing a song, even for money. I don't like to be reminded of my professional laziness whenever I turn on the radio. "What do you do?" I clean some imaginary dirt from my claws, then glance up at her. "Besides, you know, live off buried gold."

"You do that too?" She perks up, ears popping up. "We are the only people that has ever worked out for." She smooths her wrap over that fluffy chest.

I am struck by the sudden desire to see all her spots. After all these years, all these lovers, all these awkward puberties, I never thought I'd be this giddy and horny again. And yet, fantasies are flaring up. Grab her hand. Find a hotel. Tear off our clothes, leap on one of these springy modern beds, and—

Fuck. She said something and now she's waiting for me to respond. Better call on my millennia of witty repartee. "Huh?"

She steeples her thick paws and rests her chin atop them. "I said: I'll have you know I am a brilliant linguistics scholar."

"Easy to be a polyglot when you live forever." I scoff. "I thought you didn't like to cheat."

"It's not cheating if it helps people." She leans over the table like a conspiratorial librarian. "Besides, I only know a hundred languages or so. Most of them nobody speaks anymore."

"Ave, nem me diga…"—Pfft, tell me about it… I take another drag on my e-cig, then let it trail in thin streams from my nostrils. "I had quite the collection of puns in English. Then the Great Vowel Shift upset the whole æppelcræt."

With an amused flick of that fluffy tail, she leans back in her chair. She studies me with the motionless focus I learned as a hunter-gatherer, but with none of the hunger. She learned it then too. For a few centuries, I've daydreamed I might have already met her and fallen in love. Shit no. I'd have remembered. I'd have recognized that stare.

Rain patters down, freckling the flagstones. The chatter around us turns dismayed. Patrons gather their drinks and muffins and scamper indoors.

She watches them go. Her fluffy tail flicks back and forth, scattering raindrops.

She and I sit in the empty patio. I smile across the table at her as the rain sprinkles my pelt.

A wry smirk tilts her damp whiskers. "What's a little rain?"

I lift my cup in assent, drops dancing into the coffee. "I've seen worse."

Storm clouds roll in. Flashes strobe between them. Thunder peals across the sky. Purple ghosts linger in my eyes as I watch. "I never get tired of storms."

She nods. Her whiskers bend back as she looks up at the sky. Her snowy-white throat begs to be licked and nuzzled. Then she smiles at me. "They're reassuring, in their way. Never change."

I jerk a daring thumb at the sky. For all the gods pitched to me, thunder gods have been the most compelling. Something theatrical about vaporizing whatever displeases you with a bolt from the heavens. "After all this fuss, watch as we get struck by lightning."

"We'd best hold hands." Her paws slid to touch mine. "To ensure both of us are smitten."

My heart feels like it's trying to climb up my chest. For the first time in ages, something is changing. All through talking to her online, I had some distance. Now she's holding my hand. I clear my throat with a strained purr. "I'd have met you years ago if you'd gotten on dating sites." That's only half true. The Internet steals all our best shit: time travel, oracles, immortals, new-age past-life quackery. I had started to worry I'd never know who she was in the sea of idiots. Only found her because she maintained a blog of old dirty limericks in dead languages, one of which I idly searched. "Just sayin'."

"I tire of turning people down." Her aqua eyes skim over the other customers. "I have trouble connecting with regular people. They think I'm…morbid. Comes with dying so much, I'm afraid."

"I don't think you're morbid." Probably shouldn't start lying to my better half. "Considering."

"Yes, but you have known me forever." Her tail swishes against the back of her chair. Rain darkens the bright stripes of her outfit.

Rain runs down my leather jacket, splashes on the tabletop, forgotten. "You're just an old soul."

She smirks. Her eyes are impossibly ancient. Is that what mine look like? "I must ask: was this a good idea? Us meeting like this?"

Hearing even a tiny crack of uncertainty in her alarms me in a way I don't get many times a century. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Maybe you'd have liked me more from afar." Rain splashed down over her paws as she sat with eternal ease, studying me like she saw straight through all my ego. "It's certainly been a motivation in your work. Perhaps that was the point."

"I might be a god, but even I'm not arrogant enough to think I get a destiny. We make our destiny by doing crazy stuff. Like meeting you." My hackles prickle as the storm soaks into them, leaving me feeling defensive. "Ya know, I was scared shitless to meet you because it's one of the few things we don't get a do-over on. But I still showed up."

Teacher looks over water-speckled glasses at me, unmoving and unreadable. I'm not used to people being as alien as I am. It's bullshit that she gets to be older than me this time. We're both eternal. Uncertainty flickers over her face, like she's reviewing a hundred past lifetimes for context.

A sheet of rain sweeps up the street. It drenches us, refilling our cups. We keep drinking, not wanting our coffees to get cold.

Taking advantage of the storm being too loud for conversation, I assess the foundations we're laying down on this date. I've been acting like a weirdo. She seems unsure. Did she walk in knowing I'd hate the idea of taking things slow? Can she read that much about me off some sandblasted obelisks? Fuck. No wonder she always gets to be the god of wisdom and I get stuck with building the world. She's always been better with people. The unfamiliar dread of being outmaneuvered, even by someone as endlessly benevolent as Teacher, sinks into my chest. I've spent whole lifetimes knowing more than everybody I meet. Now I feel like a remedial student.

Fuck that, though. If there's one thing I've learned, it's how to improvise. Adapt. Nose cracks off your gigantic jackal statue? Carve a lion instead.

I dump more sugar in my coffee. The packets are getting soggy and I hate seeing such incredibly refined sugar go to waste. Those would've flattered a monarch a few hundred years ago, but now they're as disposable as skewers.

Her fingertips slips under mine, lifting paw pad to paw pad. "Conversely: we've been looking for each other as long as I can remember." Those bright blue eyes meet mine. "What if this was the point?"

"Then maybe we shouldn't get hit by lightning?" I roll my eyes. "I feel bad enough about introducing that whole One True Love™ idea to the world. Don't you start buying into it too."

"I'm being serious." She leans forward on the table, damp fingers interlaced with academic calm. "What if this is our last lifetime?"

Anxiety simmers inside me. I thought I'd be the one full of bullshit. I had this idea of her in my head all these centuries, that she'd be secure in all the ways I haven't nailed down yet myself. All those notes she left for me seemed so wise. The scriptures she inspired sure played her up as having it all together. "Then we're still better off than everybody else."

She seems at least minimally appeased, then those wise eyes sharpen on me. "My apologies. Just my insecurities talking."

Rain collects on my ear tufts to fall in massive drips. "I'm mostly insecurities on the inside." I bring the vaporizer to my lips, appeasing them with another nicotine offering. "You should hear what they say."

Her big, wet paws scrub together, trying to express a friction she feels. "What if there are others out there like us? What if we should we be dating them instead of each other?"

A laugh bursts from my muzzle. "Fuck 'em. Gotta put yourself out there if you wanna find a good relationship." I pinch the corner of my t-shirt and snap it against my collarbone. The design ripples like a flag, scattering a fine mist of rainwater. "Build some obelisks."

"Very well. I admit you're right, if Freudian." Her coffee cup conceals a grinning muzzle.

"It's only been a couple lifetimes and I'm already sick of everyone talking about Freud. People act like he invented feeling weird about sex." Fireworks shoot around inside my brain, each burst a flash of what I'd like to do with her naked. I thought I was too old for this shit. I don't remember the first time I was a teenager, but I'm pretty sure this is what a crush feels like.

"Before television, that was the world's most popular hobby." Her fangs glint in a smile. Nostalgia? Or does she like watching me squirm?

A thousand lifetimes of emotional attraction grip my heart. And my pants. I need to change the subject before I make an ass of myself. I also need to stop checking out her ass. Think she caught me that time. I clear my throat with a debonair purr. "I spent my directly previous lifetime 'discovering' our old work."

Her white-furred fingers interleave on the table. Though dripping whiskers, a coy simper glows. "I stand by my assessment of vanity."

"Guilty. Phone's full of gallery websites of my greatest hits. Nothing boosts the ego like seeing my work in museums. People talk about it having a sense of longing." I wink at her.

"You flirt. Had you been saving that line up for a few lifetimes?" Her damp hand pats mine. "Have you any plans for our second date?"

Good sign. And I'm ready for this question. Leaning forward, I grin. "Wanna take over the world?"

A full-throated laugh echoes down the street, leaving me to wonder how many of those laughs I've caused without hearing them. Everybody looks because this snow leopard librarian threw her head back with a laugh, but the awkward attention is short lived. She wipes away a mirthful tear. "No. No, thank you. I ruled a city-state. Once. My worst idea by a league."

Even though I knew the joke was coming, I can't help chuckling along, carried along by her amusement. She's right, of course. I've spent history figuring out what's worth doing. The world's monstrously complex. Like anybody else, we're best off exerting our pressure steadily, with an audacious shove at opportune moments. Now for the real plan, insofar as I have one. This date's finally turning around. My heart's still climbing up my throat, but I babble onward cooly. "I buried some silver bars in the Sahara a few lives ago. Been meaning to get back to them." My claw traces a rough map in the table's raindrops. "Should only take a few months."

Aqua eyes widen on me. "The Sahara?"

"Right. Snow leopard." I snap my fingers, then toss the plan away. "Well, I have some shit buried in a glacier a couple lives back. We could track it down before it turns into an iceberg."

She squishes the empty sugar packets into little wet balls and flicks them with her thumb into that trash bin opposite us on the patio—three outta three. "I arranged for my classes to be covered until Friday. Thought we'd spend the week together, for a start." Delicate claws adjust her glasses, which are flecked with rain. "I can't fly to the ends of the Earth for the rest of semester."

My ears rise, getting hit by drops. "You just wanna stick around town?" What the fuck? Is she going to just go back to her routine? It's not likely; she kept up the pen pal thing just as long. It's not fair, either. But it's the way I feel.

"What is your great rush?" A coy look flashed onto her muzzle, accenting its hints of grey. "I like to think I'm a passable cook by now. You should come over to my house after this. I'll cook us an early dinner. We should get to know each other."

That does sound nice, but my dander's still up. I flick a paw back and forth between us, firing raindrops between us. "We know each other better than anyone has known anyone!"

A chuckle rumbles from her chest like the receding thunder. "We've known each other in-person for ten minutes."

Irrational outrage explodes like a dropped oil lamp. I try to smother the flames. "I know a ton about you though!"

Her small ears perk up, tuned into me. "Very well, Builder, now I'm curious."

"Remember when I was carving that cliffside and fell off halfway through?" I tip a clawed finger at her.

Her wide paw slaps the wet table; she leans in with a toothy, secretive smile. "And I found your skeleton at the bottom? It was a bit awkward."

"Right! And you did that fucking classy job on my tomb." A smile spread across my muzzle. "What was it you carved on it? 'Looks great so far. Be more careful!' Even once you translated it from Sanskrit, nobody had any idea what it meant."

Her laugh is low, conspiratorial, and wonderful. "I'm glad you came back to finish it. The Etched Cliffs are some of your best work. I still see papers debating the Egyptian influences on a cliff in South America."

I never know how to feel about people interpreting my monuments. It's flattering, if a little embarrassing. My paw reels out the line of reasoning. "Just based on that, you're supportive and have a sense of humor."

"A sense of humor is vital for eternal life." Her aqua eyes twinkle with mischief. "Or, at least, eternal sanity."

"I've been investing heavily in longevity research." A bitter grin rises to my lips. "If everybody's immortal, I won't feel so tragic."

The leopard nods, whiskers bobbing. "A good theory, I admit." She snaps a lens cloth from her purse and polishes her glasses clean. She waves it at me like Exhibit A and chuckles. "Microfiber, ladies and gentlemen."

"Fucking love the stuff." I need to stop fucking saying "love." It feels cheap, saying it around her, when I won't say it to her. I don't wanna wear it out.

"New memory. Give me a moment." Slipping her glasses back on, she glanced to the sky for a moment, then counted absently on her fingers. "Twenty lives ago, perhaps? I sat in on some lectures by Ibn al-Haytham, the Father of Optics. I'd have been teacher's pet if I brought him one of these."

"I got a feeling you were anyway." My heart races at how casually she mentioned the defining feeling of my existence: remembering stuff that slipped your mind for millennia. Nice to know someone understands. "Can the Teacher be anything but a teacher's pet?"

"Najumi!"—My stars! She laughs with an adorable lack of irony. "I hadn't thought about that in ages. And I do mean ages." She bumps my thigh with a damp toe. "You know how to make a girl remember a good time."

I look around at the crowd, checking the weather on their phones. "Do you feel bad for everybody else? They don't get to have what we have."

"They get to do it all in one lifetime, rather than spending a thousand years tracking down their One True Love." She shrugs. "Some of my quiet lives were the happiest. That said, this one's just become quite interesting." With a swish of her soggy tail, she winks at me.

Sky's clearing. The pavement shines. Birds chase the clouds off. Café patrons poke their heads out into the drizzle and dare each other to reclaim the patio. A red panda totters out, dragging her long tail into a puddle and then trying to shake the water off with a chittered chirp. Sporadic droplets splash us. She looks aghast and starts to apologize, but my pen pal and I give her a wet shrug of forgiveness.  

Us syncing up, just that little gesture, means a lot to me in stupid metaphorical ways. I've always wanted somebody who gets me, who I connect with. And I carved a path through time to make sure we found each other. I want to say a hundred things. "I love you" is ninety-nine of them. But you can't just bust that out on a first date. She'd make fun of me forever. Got eternity to carve this monument. And, for once, we get to build one together, to learn from each other. So, instead, I place a tan paw on hers and chase the cynicism from my voice for a moment. "Hey, I'm happy I found you."

A high mew of delight accompanies a flick of her bushy tail. "And I am happy I don't have to get through life alone again." She chuckles at herself. "I do sound a bit morbid, I'm afraid. It's quite an experience, having someone I can be so open with. It reassures a nervous old cat."

"Yeah." I grin like a dope. "Guess I wound myself up for this more than you did." I run a paw over my wet face. "Hope I haven't been weirding you out too much."

"Far from it. If I've seemed blasé, it's only because I anticipate we have the rest of forever to remedy any mistakes we make today…" She shrugs. "…and every motivation to try. What I wasn't expecting was for my deathless soulmate to be adorable."

A blush ambushes me. Not a label I usually get. "Alright, your flattery sealed the deal." I roll my eyes. "Second date: you cook dinner and I'll sit there and try not to construct obelisks."

"Only if you need my attention." With a bounce, she leans in, dragging my wet paws toward her across the slick table.

We kiss.

It's a small thing, in the grand scheme of things. But in our scheme, it's grand. A quick little touch of lips, then we're back in our chairs, grinning and purring. Holy fuck. Maybe finding each other was just the warm-up adventure. A kitty could get used to being understood. Being understood is worth the work. Monuments take time, after all.

Our moment, this key instant in history, chisels its mark in eternity. And then everybody around us makes a big fucking deal about how the chairs are wet. Her drying ears lift at their ancient complaints. I tip back the last of my watered-down coffee. My eyes meet hers, which are back to studying me. I squirm. "Ugh, so… What do we do now?" I take a heavy drag on my e-cig.

I'm the one being unfair. In my mind, I built her up into something perfect, flawless. Typical me. She's more interesting as flesh and blood than stone, though. From the subtle confluence of emotion on her muzzle to the way she, with a purr, snaps her fingers at the vaping device. "You will quit smoking, for one."

"C'mon, Teach! I was nervous!" I throw my arms wide, a thin ribbon of vapor streaming from the sci-fi hookah's mouthpiece. "And I quit the real shit last life. This body's only done vaping and gum. Plenty of people take a lifetime to quit."

A laugh rattles from her throat. "Still! You puff like a fog machine. Lagom är bäst."—Moderation is best. A coy glance narrows those slitted eyes. She's about one bounce away from pouncing me, her dress shimmering like an uncharted sea. "I don't like the strain it puts on you. Having gone through the trouble of finding you, I intend for you to last a while."

"Yeah, good point." I put the e-cig away and start playing with my lucky coin instead. I once had a worry stone last for a few lifetimes. Wonder how many this coin will be good for. "Hey, what happens when one of us dies?"

Her eyes twinkle with mischief, looking deep into mine. She waves the server over, who tiptoes through the puddles up to us. Still dripping from the rain, Teacher orders while keeping me in the corner of her eye. "The usual."

~ ~ ~

Art: GoldenDruid (Used with permission.)

For everybody who likes to read as they listen, here is the text version of the story. This was always one of my favorite stories. And it was the only Heat story ever to have a perfect score from all reviewers while being selected for inclusion--not bad for something safe for work!

- Tempo