She woke with a gasp, her body arching off the bed as if electrocuted, her hands reaching for something—someone—who wasn't there. The dream dissolved like morning frost, but the feeling of it lingered: the desperation, the searching, the endless, hopeless pursuit of a love that always slipped through her fingers.
The ceiling above her was white and familiar. It was the ceiling of her apartment. Her modern apartment. The one with the IKEA furniture and the reliable Wi-Fi and the complete absence of blood-soaked battlefields.
Just a dream, she told herself, though the word felt inadequate. It was always just a dream. But it was also always the same dream, the same desperate search, the same cold dread, always the same.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she grabbed it like a lifeline.
Apple: G! Coffee at The Grind in an hour. Don't you dare bail! I have NEWS and it involves a certain philosophy, who shall remain nameless but whose cheekbones deserve their own Instagram account. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE ❤️❤️❤️
Giana let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Apple's chaos was exactly what she needed—something normal, something mundane, something that had nothing to do with dreams of ancient battlefields or the ghosts of lovers long dead.
She typed back: I'll be there. But if this is another "he looked at me" situation, I reserve the right to mock you mercilessly.
Apple: MOCK ALL YOU WANT. HIS CHEEKBONES. HIS EYES. HIS—actually I'll save it for in person because some things are too sacred for text. ONE HOUR. DON'T BE LATE.
Giana smiled despite herself and swung her legs out of bed. The dream was already fading, as dreams always did, leaving behind only the emotional residue—a heaviness in her chest, a sense of loss that had no object, no focus. She had learned to live with that residue centuries ago. It was as familiar as her own reflection.
She just wished, sometimes, that the dreams would let her rest.
Chapter One: The Weight of Eternity
Giana's Perspective
"Oh my God. Would you just look at that?"
Apple's sharp nudge against my arm was a punctuation mark in her ongoing, one-sided commentary on every male specimen who had the misfortune to cross her field of vision. We were perched on absurdly uncomfortable wrought-iron chairs at a café called The Grind, an establishment that took its mediocre coffee and its parade of undergraduate masculinity far too seriously for a place whose signature drink was called the "Caffeine Contradiction" and tasted exactly like you'd expect.
I pulled one earbud out, the distorted guitars and Chester Bennington's raw, anguished voice still bleeding through the remaining bud. "Lost" by Linkin Park. Apple rolled her eyes when she saw the name on my phone screen.
"Still brooding to that angsty stuff?" she asked, but there was no real judgment in it. She'd long ago accepted my " angsty music taste," as she called it.
She didn't know the half of it. She couldn't know that I'd watched music evolve over millennia—from tribal drums around fire pits to Gregorian chants echoing through stone cathedrals, from the birth of opera in Florence to the jazz clubs of Harlem, from the raw energy of rock and roll shaking the fifties to the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx. I'd heard it all, witnessed it all, and somewhere in the late nineties, when the first waves of nu-metal started crashing through the airwaves, I'd felt something I hadn't expected.
Ecstasy.
There was something about the fusion—the heavy guitars, the hip-hop beats, the raw, unpolished emotion of men screaming about pain and anger and loss. It felt familiar. Not in the way of memory, but in the way of recognition. Here were mortals, channelling something primal, something ancient, into sound. Here were artists giving voice to the very feelings I'd been carrying for centuries. The rage. The grief. The desperate, clawing hope that somehow, somewhere, things would be different.
Linkin Park had become a favourite, not just for the music but for the way Chester's voice could break your heart and set it on fire at the same time. Every time I heard him sing about being lost, about searching for something just out of reach, I thought of all the lifetimes I'd spent looking. All the faces. All the goodbyes. All the moments of arriving too late.
But it wasn't just Linkin Park. The whole nu-metal explosion had caught me off guard. I'd found myself at a Limp Bizkit concert in the late nineties, surrounded by kids in baggy jeans screaming about doing it all for the nookie, and somehow, I understood. It was ridiculous and aggressive and completely lacking in subtlety—and that was exactly the point. "My Generation" became an anthem I loved immediately—kids screaming because no one was listening, and I understood that on a level they couldn't imagine.
Korn hit differently. Jonathan Davis's voice—that strange, keening wail that could shift from a whisper to a roar—spoke to something deeper. When he sang about abandonment and pain, I heard echoes of every version of him I'd lost. I'd seen them live in 2002, standing at the back of a crowded arena while thousands screamed along, and for the first time in decades, I felt like I wasn't alone in my rage.
And then there was System of a Down—chaotic, polyphonic madness that felt almost ancient. Serj Tankian's voice could go from operatic to guttural in a single line, and the political fury behind their songs reminded me of every revolution I'd witnessed, every empire crumbled under its own corruption. It wasn't just music; it was something ancient given voice.
When I listened to them, I felt that same visceral recognition that ran through all the best music—the sense that here were mortals, channelling something primal, something ancient, into sound. Here were artists giving voice to the very feelings I'd been carrying for centuries. The rage. The grief. The desperate, clawing hope that somehow, somewhere, things would be different. Their music didn't just speak to me; it reached into the deepest parts of my immortal soul and pulled out echoes of every life, every loss, every moment of fury at a world that kept spinning while my heart kept breaking.
Apple called it my "angsty phase," which had been going on for decades now, apparently. She didn't understand, and I couldn't explain. How could I tell her that this music, this loud, aggressive, gloriously messy music, was one of the few things in this century that made me feel seen? That when Chester screamed about being lost, when Jonathan wailed about pain, when Serj's voice soared over those chaotic, twisting instrumentals, I heard my own story reflected back at me. They were mortals, living their brief, bright lives, and they'd somehow reached into the same darkness I'd been navigating for millennia and pulled out something beautiful.
Nu-metal wasn't just music to me. It was proof that even in this fractured, chaotic world, there were still people willing to scream the truth.
But it wasn't only the heavy stuff that got to me. When I wanted to breathe, to remember that the world could be soft, I turned to something else entirely.
Nelly Furtado's voice drifted through my speakers on lazy afternoons, and there was something effortlessly hopeful about it—a lightness I'd forgotten I could feel. Snoop Dogg's laid-back flow could unknot decades of tension; the groove reminded me that life didn't always have to be a battle. Nelly's "Dilemma" wrapped around me like a familiar blanket—a song about wanting someone you couldn't have, about the ache of proximity without possession. I knew that feeling. I'd lived it across centuries. But hearing it set to that beat made it feel less lonely, like the whole world understood.
Ja Rule's collaborations with Ashanti—"Always on Time," "Mesmerize"—those were the ones that really got me. The push and pull of his rough voice with her silky vocals, the aching longing in every line. I'd listen at night, staring at the ceiling, and every time I heard "All I do is think about you, baby," I thought of him. All of him. Every version, every face, every lifetime.
Apple had zero patience for any of it.
"You and your ancient music," she'd groan when she caught me humming along. We were driving upstate for a Saturday picnic by the lake—windows down, breeze tangling through our hair—and she'd commandeered the aux cord, as always. "G, this isn't even old. This is just... not new. Nelly Furtado? That's what my mom listens to during yoga."
"It's called having taste."
"It's called being a grandma trapped in a hot girl's body." She'd change the station to whatever pop atrocity was currently charting. "There. Now you're listening to music from this decade. You're welcome."
"Ja Rule is timeless."
"Ja Rule is Ja-RUINED, G. Let it go."
But sometimes, when she thought I wasn't looking, I'd catch her tapping her finger to the beat. A subtle bounce of her pink-tipped nail against the table. A quiet hum under her breath when a familiar melody drifted through the apartment, quickly silenced if she noticed me listening.
She'd never admit it. That wasn't how Apple operated. But I'd find evidence—my entire Ja Rule playlist somehow migrated onto her Spotify ("Research purposes," she claimed), or catch her singing along to "I'm Like a Bird" at full volume while making breakfast, spatula in hand during an overnight at my apartment. When spotted, she'd go crimson and claim she was "just clearing her throat."
By then, I'd stopped calling her out. It had become our unspoken ritual: she'd raid my music library, I'd pretend not to notice, and occasionally I'd get a text: "This one's not terrible, I guess. For your weird old taste."
"Well? What do you think?" Apple nudged again, her voice a cheeky whisper that probably carried to the next postal code. Her enthusiasm was a force of nature—bright, relentless, and utterly exhausting to anyone who preferred to observe the world rather than accost it.
I glanced at her, taking her in the way I always did when she wasn't looking. Apple was... a lot. In the best possible way. She had this wild mane of blonde hair that she dyed with pink streaks every few months, claiming it kept life "from getting boring." Today it was pulled into a high ponytail that swung with every animated gesture. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent, missing nothing despite the chaos she projected—a survivor's instinct wrapped in neon packaging. She dressed like a walking explosion of colour, today in a bubble gum pink cardigan over a dress covered in tiny sunflowers, accessorized with at least four bracelets that clinked every time she moved.
She reminded me, sometimes, of that girl from the Addams Family show—Enid, the werewolf girl with the colourful sweaters and the relentless optimism. But Apple had more polish. Literally. Her grandmother was Polish, and that counted for everything. Her Polish grandmother, to be exact, the one she talked about constantly, the one who taught her to cook pierogi and curse like a sailor and wear bright colours because "life is too short to be boring, kochanie." Apple had inherited her grandmother's flamboyance, her dramatic gestures, her habit of telling stories that grew more elaborate with each retelling. But most of all, she'd inherited her grandmother's philosophy: humour is armour. You put it on every morning, and you wear it all day, and no matter what life throws at you, you keep laughing.
"You know, staring isn't the same as answering," she said, catching me mid-thought. "I see you, G. Analysing me like I'm one of your dusty old texts."
"I'm not analysing. I'm appreciating."
"Uh-huh." She rolled her eyes, but I caught the small smile. "Appreciate faster. We've got prime seating and I want to know if any of these specimens are worth my time."
That was another thing about Apple. She used her "humour like armour", deflecting anything that got too close, too real. She'd told me once, over wine and terrible reality TV, that laughter was her shield. "You can either cry about the world or laugh at it," she'd said, her voice uncharacteristically serious. "I choose laughter. It's more fun and the makeup stays intact." I'd understood then, in a way she couldn't possibly know, why I loved her so fiercely. We both wore armour. Hers was just brighter.
She'd also once told me, after a particularly disastrous date she'd dragged me along for moral support, that we were basically living our own version of that show 2 Broke Girls. "I'm totally Caroline," she'd announced, flipping her pink-streaked hair. "I'm the one with the privileged background who's pretending to be poor while having a safety net the size of Texas. Also, I'm the pretty one."
"You are absolutely insufferable," I'd replied.
"You're Max," she'd continued, ignoring me completely. "All gloomy and cynical and making snappy one-liners that could kill a man. But secretly? Total softie. Would burn the world down for the people you love. Also, you make better cupcakes."
"I don't bake."
"You WOULD. If the plot demanded it. That's the energy."
The comparison wasn't entirely wrong. Apple did have that Caroline quality—the boundless optimism, the relentless cheerfulness, the ability to see the best in every situation even when things went sideways. She'd grown up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where her father, a stock broker who'd done exceptionally well in real estate, had bought them a beautiful colonial house with a porch swing and a garden. Her mother taught at the Wellesley Middle School—Apple always made sure to mention it was "the public one, not the fancy private one, because my parents believe in community"—and had the kind of calm, steady presence that explained where Apple got her core of stability beneath all the chaos.
She was an only child, which maybe explained why she'd latched onto me with such ferocious loyalty. I'd become the sister she never had, and she treated the role with deadly seriousness, even when she was making jokes about anything under the sun.
"Come on, G. Live a little. Use your words. Form an opinion that isn't 'they're fine, I guess.'"
I followed her discreet glance or what passed for discreet with Apple, which meant staring openly while pretending to adjust her sunglasses. The table she indicated was occupied by three young men, their postures carefully arranged to suggest a casual profundity they undoubtedly lacked. They were handsome, in a clean, uncomplicated way—all strong jawlines and artfully dishevelled hair and the kind of effortless confidence that came from never having been truly tested by life.
To Apple, they were potential. Possibilities. The raw material from which romance.com meet-cutes were manufactured.
To me, they were children.
They were practically infants, their souls still gleaming and new, untouched by the patina of centuries. Their lives were brief, bright flickers—candles that would burn for a few decades and then gutter out, leaving behind nothing but memories that would fade with the next generation. I had watched candles burn longer. I had watched empires rise and fall in the time it took these boys to decide on their majors.
I offered a noncommittal grunt. "They're... alright."
Apple rolled her eyes so hard I briefly feared they might achieve escape velocity and orbit her head forever. "For heaven's sake, G, we are in our prime. Would it kill you to lighten up and have a little fun? University isn't forever, you know. And one of these days," she sang, leaning closer with the conspiratorial air of someone about to impart great wisdom, "one of these very guys could be a potential husband."
A husband.
The word felt like a stone in my shoe—an ill-fitting, modern concept for a problem as ancient as the stars themselves. I had worn many labels across the centuries: daughter, lover, wife, widow, mistress, mystery. Husband was simply another word for temporary, and I had learned the hard way that temporary was the only kind of love I was allowed to keep.
"You know I'm not interested in all this, App. Besides, I have a paper on pre-Axial Age mythology due tomorrow. So please—"
My sentence was severed mid-word by an approaching presence. One of the boys from the other table, emboldened by his friends' encouragement or perhaps his own misplaced confidence, had materialized at our table like a cologne-scented ghost.
He was maybe twenty-two, with carefully tousled chestnut hair that probably took twenty minutes to achieve and blue eyes that held more confidence than depth. The kind of handsome that came from good genetics and a gym membership—broad shoulders visible beneath his fitted henley, skinny jeans artfully distressed, a lightweight jacket pushed up at the sleeves in what he clearly believed was a casually sophisticated pose.
He slid into the empty chair without invitation, draping one arm over the back in what he clearly believed was a Casanova-worthy pose. A cloud of expensive cologne followed him—the kind that came in a sleek bottle and promised to make its wearer irresistible. To someone else, maybe it would have worked.
"Yo! What's up?" He layered the words with what he clearly believed was continental charm, though the effect was undercut slightly by the fact that he'd pronounced it "yoo" like an owl with questions.
I felt the familiar cold slide of revulsion in my throat—not at him, not really, but at the performance of it all. The sheer, exhausting artifice of modern courtship, stripped of ritual and meaning, reduced to pick up lines and posturing. He wasn't a person approaching another person; he was a collection of behaviours he'd absorbed from media, deployed in the hope that one of them might work.
My silence was a wall he couldn't see but should have felt.
"Hi there," Apple interjected, her smile simultaneously saccharine and sharp enough to draw blood. "But this seat is technically taken. By, you know, real people who say, 'Hi, is this seat taken?' Not facsimiles." Her smile didn't waver, but the warning in it was crystalline. "So if you could just—" She made a shooing motion with her fingers, flicking him away like some kind of bug.
The boy's smirk dissolved into a flush of humiliation that crept up his neck and stained his cheeks an unfortunate shade of magenta. He muttered something that might have been an apology—or might have been a curse, it was hard to tell through the mortification—and retreated to the safety of his snickering friends.
"Why? Why? does this world have so many fakes?" Apple sighed dramatically, the theatricality returning to her voice now that the threat had been neutralized. "Is basic social interaction really that difficult? A simple 'excuse me'? A 'may I join you'? Is that too much to ask from the allegedly educated youth of today?"
"And here you are," I laughed—a dry, hollow sound that earned me a sharp look, "asking me to consider one of them as a future life partner. Truly, App, your standards are a mystery to me."
"Well," she squeaked, deflating slightly as she always did when logic was deployed against her romantic ambitions, "you have to admit, the odds are in your favour. It's a numbers game! You reject ninety-nine frogs, and the hundredth is a prince. That's just math."
"That's not math. That's a fairy tale with extremely optimistic statistics."
"Same thing, different font."
Before I could formulate a response to this breathtaking logical fallacy, the bell above the door chimed.