Coffee with an Ex

He has been waiting for over an hour. If he was younger, then he might have been worried. But he is an ancient man, and more importantly he is a very patient man. An hour means nothing to him, when there are so many behind him and endless more in front. Further still, his partner is the same. These are not long or great gaps, and they are not intolerable to either party. It is just so easy to loose track of time when you are blessed with so much of it. Aeons are like sand between his fingers.

The setting is a café, and an old one. He owns it, but structured behind enough layers of shell companies and other enterprises that nobody in this city knows. Its not the only small business that he owns out of sentimental value. There are other places like this all over the world, some owned by himself and others with his partner. The world does not stay the same and changes too quick for comfort, so they must claim some measure of control. Some measure of stability.

The city is ancient, one of the oldest and most beautiful in the world. It's always been one of his favorites. He missed the ground breaking by just under a week — his caravan had been delayed by a storm, and by the time it arrived, the city had already been settled. He's forgiven himself for it a hundred times, then brought the matter back up in that same, bitter fashion.

There are many sights in the city. The café doesn't have a view of any of them. There's just one building between it and a view of the Panokriton. He owns that interloper too, and it would only take a snap of his fingers to tear it down and have a clear view of the monument. It'll never happen. He's not here to improve things, only to remember. It is all he comes here for.

She enters in style, two hours after she was supposed to. He can't hold it against her. Once he was late by just under a year. They both break into massive smiles when they see each other. They didn't run into each other by circumstance since their last meeting last century, as they so often do. She orders a pair of coffees and joins him at the table, sliding down in the seat across from him. They laugh without speaking a word to each other. It feels like yesterday since the pair saw each other. It's been too long.

"What have your hobbies been?"

The most relevant question they have for one another. The big question to keep in mind is how they've been keeping themselves busy, what hobbies they've picked up in the mean time. It always varies. To say the pair has varied interests puts it mildly: they have touched upon everything in their attempts to keep themselves from boredom. Fortunately for them, the world is vast and everchanging. There will always be more. There will always be something new.

But don't forget about the older, either.

"Do you remember the Altuhiria? It was ruined back, oh, a good eight hundred years ago by one of those Neogorgian Revivalist movements. I'm rebuilding it by hand a few miles north of here, all according to the ancient traditions, with the proper techniques and all. It's going well, but the metopes are proving a challenge."

She freezes, and slams her hands down, smiling.

"Are you kidding? That was one of my favorite of our buildings! Why are the metopes giving you hell, of all things? Tepre of Ursignoir was a master but with time and practice… Anyone can be. Surely you've picked up the talent over the years."

"It's about respect. Certainly, I could outdo Tepre. But he was one of my dearest friends, and I'm not about to show him up at his own game. Those metopes were his life's work, but there's no way they could ever be mine."

"Ah yes, we don't want to disrespect his memory. What are you trying to do with it, then?"

"Oh, just a memory. I kept lamenting the fact I let it fall into ruin and the fact I wasn't there to stop it when it struck me: I had all the tools to fix it, all the know-how, all the money. All the time. So why didn't I actually get around to fixing it?"

"I've done a lot of the same. I'm the one funding that new museum next to the Panokriton. I could get us in, if you wanted a private tour. Enough of my collection is already in there, although most of the information is about the development of the city."

He laughs, all so gently.

"That's what I'm more interested in, anyway."

They spend hours in the café, ordering all of their favorites and several more rounds of coffee and tea. They lose track of the time, as they always do, and the hours slip by into night. The manager walks over to them and respectfully reminds the pair of the time, apologizing for the inconvenience. This always seems to happen to them, but the embarrassment is mitigated by the fact the grandparents of everyone working at the café this time hadn't yet been born the last time they were here.

Together, they leave the cafe and walk out onto the grand streets of the city. They're still in the old district of the city, and a rezoning a while back got the city to revert to the classical street plan, one that they had a heavy hand in. They know these streets like the back of their hands. They catch a view of the Panokriton, the glorious arena at the heart of the city. It's growing old and nearly falling apart from the glory days. One of these days, they'll be asked to consult for a restoration. Neither of them thinks it needs one.

The way to the museum is just over a massive bridge they forgot to name. They put the same amount of work into that they did with everything else, but there were just so many projects then that this one slipped by the wayside. Who would name a bridge? They still laugh about it to this day. Neither of them ever visits the city without taking a moment to cross it. Everybody loves the bridge. It's one of the most famous in the world. No name.

The museum is just on the other side of the bridge, and it is an easy walk to it from there. It stands within its own little park. She had used to own all of it, but decided that the museum was a better usage of the space after the years. She wasn't doing anything with the park, and had been hoping somebody would come to her with a better usage of the space. Only took a few hundred years before anybody made a good suggestion.

The pair slips into the museum easily. It's after hours, but the guard at the gate recognizes both of them and lets them in. She's the donor of most of the current collection, after all. Not to mention the fact that they're both mythical heroes in the city's past. It's hard to deny them entrance when their faces are carved into marble on the side of the museum.

She guides him through the museum, finding her collection. It's filled to the brim with ancient artifacts and treasures, better preserved than almost anything from that period. She's always been a collector. He asks why she decided to donate so much of the collection to the museum, and she tells him that they'll do a better job of taking care of it than she ever could. He laughs, thinking of how much he's lost himself.

They stroll the museum together for hours, going over every little thing in detail. Almost everything in the collection was sourced from their lives: thousands of gifts and objects that the two had collected over the years. There is an entire wing dedicated to carpets, back from when the two spent two hundred years getting into carpet weaving and punctuated every event in their life with a new rug. He does notice, however, that the divorce rugs are absent. All the other rugs from the marriages are here. He doesn't ask about it.

He does ask, however, about one of the paintings she has on display here. It's a relatively new one — only a hundred years old — so he's never seen it before. It shows the construction of the city, as work progressed on the entire thing. Its terribly inaccurate, with all the buildings being built at once, not like the lifetimes he remembers. But in the corner he sees two figures, holding hands.

"Is this us in the corner?"

"Of course it is. How could I not include us in it? We helped with just about everything in that painting."

"Well, you do take several artistic decisions here. You've got the Panokriton going up at the same time as the Gran Columnata! Those were divided by what, a full thousand years? Completely different time periods!"

She laughs. He's missed that laugh.

"It's meant to be an overview. Taking the most essential parts of the history of the city. The work to build something that will last. Something good. The entire theme of the painting is about building and rebuilding. Look at the little details…"

She goes on to point out minor elements of the painting. A workshop of sculptors inside one of the windows, each working on their own masterpieces. A cart overthrown in one of the roads, with a carpenter starting to fix it immediately. It is not lost on him that the two of them are present in the painting as well. If only their personal history wasn't so complex, with so many turns, that he could remember what in particular she was alluding to with the cameo.

He considers asking, but decides against it. It's not that important, he doesn't need to know. Besides, she's gotten distracted by the painting and is going into depth about how it blends twelve artistic schools that had been based in the city in the time period depicted. He'd never interrupt her with something so trivial as the past. He knows exactly what she is feeling.

They spend the rest of the evening touring the galleries, walking through the rest of the museum. Eventually, they have exhausted the collection and each other. There is only one thing to do at this point: what they have done for every reunion. Neither of them speaks to the other about it, they simply leave the museum and walk over to the Panokriton together, in lockstep. To say it would be an insult to both of them: it is a tradition that has lasted longer than empires and bloodlines.

They slip into the Panokriton quietly. Somebody has unlocked a side door for them. In the past, it used to be that they would break in or sneak around in the dead of night, but the modern age is filled with its contrivances and security. It would be no fun if they were simply let in, so they've worked out an accommodation for the past few visits. How could anybody say no to them — much less the both of them, together! The city bends for the couple.

They chase each other to the top, laughing as they go up. It's how it always goes, every time for the past ten thousand years. At the top, there's a small window that looks east. She won the race this time, and he arrives not long after. Both perch on the windowsill and look out at the horizon. The first light of morning is coming on the horizon, the sun just starting to crest in the distance.

They look at each other for a moment. There have been centuries when these get togethers have ended in nights of wild passion, followed by spending the next several decades with hardly a waking moment apart from each other. Times when flames that died down millennia ago found themselves rekindled and stoked anew.

But tonight is not one of those nights. Neither is particularly feeling it. They've moved on, at least for the moment. They might move back, but right now, neither is where they'd need to be. It's clear to them both, just at a glance at the other. An eternity of living around people have given them a good idea of what people are thinking. An eternity of falling in and out of love with each other have given them an even better perspective on each other.

They turn away from each other, and look into the sunrise. It's going to be a beautiful day today. It almost always is.


Yeah, all I really wanna do
Is spend all of eternity with you
Yeah, all I really wanna do
Is spend all of eternity with you

The world this is set in has a small smattering of immortals and little else in the way of magic. The immortals do not have to conceal their identity: everyone knows who they are. As they are generally little more than errant hobbyists, nobody cares to bother them. You can't kill them and they can simply wait anything you do to them out.

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