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It was long ago now, but I still remember opening my eyes to her and understanding that no one would ever be for me what she was.

We were six years old the first time it happened. One second she was standing on the opposite bank of the river, smiling and waving frantically and yelling about the log with which she had crossed, and the next she was gone.

She did not come back until late in the night, appearing next to me in bed, and she whispered to me that she had gone to a place full of magic and an old man with my name had taken her hand. She gave me a piece of paper with a number on it and told me it was a gift to keep forever.

At first, it happened rarely, sporadically. Every few months she would disappear from me for a few hours and then return to my side with a new piece of paper and a new number for me to keep track of.

1920. 1868. 1435. 2004. 1686. 1970. 1264. And the very first one 2347.

As she grew older, it got worse. She was gone more often, and for longer. Sometimes, she said, she would jump to several different places and times before she would find her way back here to me. Sometimes, she said, she worried that she never would.

I was nineteen when I stopped growing, stopped changing, stopped everything. We discovered it when she came barreling back to me while I was training the dogs in the garden and the force of her knocked me back into the sharpest rock.

I should have died that day, but my skin knitted itself closed.

In hindsight, perhaps it should have been obvious that it was me. Every man she had ever met on all of her journeys, they were all me. The French soldier who had pulled her into the trenches in a hail of thunder and fire. The English lord who had given her tea and crumpets during a long afternoon. The American Revolutionist who had hidden her from Red Coats.

We were tied so tightly together, it was no wonder I was her foothold into every time she traveled to. It was no wonder that I was what grounded her to the world.

And it was no wonder that she was what kept me alive.

She died in 2286, I held her as her shuddering, aged body finally gave up the fight. Time travel had kept her alive for longer than anyone had a right to be, but it didn’t stop her aging, and it didn’t allow her to return to me forever.

Whatever magic had kept me alive with her faded when she was gone. Finally, I began to age again.

On the day I died, I went out to the garden to turn on the sprinklers and set the shears on trimming back the roses.

hello my hand is gonna fall off