No. I can't sleep anymore. I can't toss and turn in bed for another second. I don't care if it's the middle of the night, I am going for a run. Now. Pulling on a jumper and cap, I exit the tiny room of my homestay.

Outside, the wind is biting. The world is silent, and cold, lit only by a waxing moon high up above the jagged peaks of the snow covered mountains. The whole scene is surreal.

I start with a brisk pace along the narrow road leading to the village square only a hundred meters away. By the time I reach the main market of this tiny village I have hardly warmed up. There is no one on the streets, not even a dog. I should return, but I can't. I feel restless, in need of adrenalin to dispel the gruesome images still lingering from my nightmare.

They started four days ago, right after I got off on the railway station fifty kilometres away to hike to this remote village on the border. Along with the beauty of my surroundings, the intensity of those dreams increased until tonight when they forced me out of my cosy bed in the dead of the night.

Jogging at a medium pace, I made my way along the narrow winding roads leading away from the village, up the hills. The air is crisper here, the tall coniferous trees casting long shadows beneath my feet in the pale moonlight. I increased my pace and very soon I found myself crossing the last house of the village and into the outer edges of a dense pine forest.

A peace suffused my mind and I slowed down. Sweat mingled with the fog and my body calmed down. Espying a large rock placed haphazardly on the side of the road, I sat down.

The cold air and the exertion had tired my body and I must have spaced out for a bit until I was suddenly jerked awake by a most unexpected sound. The sound of a human voice!

I leapt on my feet. So startled I was that for a second my mind was crowded by images of vampires and werewolves, and fairies and witches! The next second though, I laughed at myself. Darkness and the fear of unknown makes the human mind imagine all sorts of nonsense. I concentrated on focusing on the voice.

It was singing. A high pitched, crooning, strange, animalistic sound drifted towards me through the pine forest in front of me. A female voice!

Was there another hiker nearby? If it's a woman singing, she must be accompanied. Maybe there is a group of them camping nearby? Of my own volition, my feet lifted and took a step inside the forest, towards the source of the strange, lulling song, the sound flowing and ebbing like a living organism, a part of the air, mingling with the nature.

As I waded deeper and deeper into the jungle, crunching pine needles with my heavy boots, I found myself humming along the tune. I've never heard this song before in my life, but I know this tune! And I know that the lyrics was written exclusively for me!

As if in a dream, I followed the voice which called for me, full of pain and longing. A longing which traversed the pine scented cold air and speared right inside me. My heart ached, my vision went blurry as the images from my nightmare flashed before my eyes. The giant ferns, the deep ravine, a tear streaked face, a blood soaked arm.

Only this time, they didn't invoke panic, but a deep, dark, desperate yearning for my other half.

My soulmate!

My lover since time immemorial!

I walked faster till I reached a clear space between two giant trees. The moonlight shone through the leaves and cast a hallow like a spotlight. And there, in that circle of light I finally saw her.

My love!

My Aadhya!

She was sitting on the forest floor, eyes closed, swaying slightly, belting out the song she sang for me the very first time I made her mine.

My life partner, my wife, the mother of my children.

She stopped suddenly, as if alerted by my presence. The beautiful pearly eyelids opened slowly, very slowly and her gaze landed directly on me.

For the first few seconds there was no reaction as she examined me. Then came the fear and the trembling. A smile curved my lips involuntarily. Somethings never changed. She always trembled when she was anxious, and also when she was delirious with happiness.

"Who... who are you?" Her timorous voice questioned me, even while her beautiful eyes searched my face.

I let precious seconds go by before uttering my first word.

"I love you!"

I saw the shock in her doe eyes, but I know I did the right thing.

"I promised you last time that when we meet again, the first words I tell you would be a declaration of my love for you." I stopped to see the play of emotions on her mercurial features. "Remember? Right in this place? A mountain stream used to flow by here."

She took half a step forward before standing still.

"Remember, Aadhya?" My tone was earnest, even as I tried to keep the excitement from my voice.

Her lips moved, and broken words formed. "You were wounded. The bullet had gone straight through your gut. Oh, the blood! There was so much blood!" She shuddered, and I witness the pain flowing through her as the scene replays in her mind.

"Yeah, the Red Army got me that time." I smiled in remembrance. My end had been painful that last time, but I had died protecting my motherland, in my lover's embrace. It couldn't get better than that.

I didn't move, just stood there, giving her time to adjust and come to me. She will get there, I know. I am certain of it as I am certain that the sun will rise tomorrow from the east.

Her face showed the war her rational part was waging against her brain bombarding with the million images of our lives through the ages.

Since the dawn of civilization.

Seeing her pain, I knew what to do. This is how it got played every time we first find each other, in every life.

I lifted my shirt. The dark red, almost brown birth mark on my right chest is stark in the moonlight. She focused on the patch of color and swayed a little.

"You put a knife through me. The very first time."

"I-I..."

"I kidnapped you!" My voice is eager, willing her to connect the dots faster, impatient to feel her soft frame enveloped in the heat of my body once again. Impatient to look into those eyes and see the endless love she has for me. Impatient for her to see the same yearing and never ending love I have always had for her. Will always have till the end of the universe.

Impatient for her to recognize that we are two halves of the same soul.

"You had come down from the mountains with your family. We raided your tribe's food and I stole you for myself!" I felt encouraged as her eyes started sparkling. "You stabbed me, but I...

"You covered your palm in your blood and marked my forehead." She whispers. "And claimed me as yours."

I nod, the thousand years' old emotions still coursing strong through me, time had been unable to lessen the intensity one whit.

"For all eternity."

A tremulous smile plays peekaboo on her lips.

She remembered our first time!

I can't contain my joy.

"Remember that another time? What I promised you?" I urge. "You sat beside my bed as the doctor left us alone to spend my last minutes with you?"

She nods. "You said we will find each other again. That you and I are floating in the same stream, always close, always touching, never letting go." Her eyelashes flutter close. "And when the time comes, I will guide you to me as the polestar does a lost sailor."

My smile is joyous. I have finally found my anchor in this life. Now, everything is going to be alright.

It acts out the way same every time.

"My Aadhya!"

It takes her half a minute. Her face transforms, her oh-so-kissable lips forming a perfect 'O', before curling into the most beatific smile I've ever witnessed in all my lives. The smile which never fails to get me.

"Prithvi!" The words come out of her mouth in a whisper.

I take one step forward, opening my arms as she rushes into them. I embrace my one and only love. Through the ages. Forever.

The union is sweet and poignant as it is every time. There is something about finding the other half of your soul through time and cosmos. It's like coming home. It is like finally being made whole.

My life had ended before hers in every life. All through the ages. I have known the pain of leaving her alone to fend in this world. I know there wouldn't be any exception this time too. But I had got over the unfairness we have been dealt about a few hundred years ago.

For, this is our destiny. This is how it'd play for us. For ever. Life after life. Age after age.

We would meet, be deliriously in love, know heaven on earth. And I would leave her.

Then wait, till we meet again in our next life.

To do it all over again.

We have been given this precious gift of knowing our love through countless centuries, through countless lives, in countless forms, countless times.

And that was enough. More than enough.

The moon began its journey westward as we left the pine forest, arm in arm, our hearts in sync, our eye hopeful and our smiles bright.

Eager to start our new life.

And then the life after, and again and again.

To experience and be fulfilled in our unending love.

Prithvi and Aadhya.

Life after life, Age after age.

The full novella is available to read for FREE at Amazon KDP as Unending Love at https://www.amazon.in/Unending-Love-Reincarnation-Mrs-Claire-ebook/dp/B0CMLLP29P