Blank Doll oozes blood.

I feel a sudden rush of angst because I suddenly thought of something.

Picture this:

They are lovers drawn apart. Perhaps by a mere game of chance by some divine unknown, perhaps by some convenant that binds them to their fate until one or the other gives in.

Either way, they always meet. Before, they met on the battlefield. One a free soldier of Sparta, the corpse of his shieldmate strewn across the bloodied pastures and his arm numbed from the effort of war though training and inexperienced fear drives him on. The other a prince of Persia, attired in all the military splendour of the world's greatest empire though his head is shaved and his eyebrows are plucked. They fight to the harmony of some unspoken conversation, to the beat of clashing fates and they are oblivious to Death and his eager harvest across the fields of that day. Their swords meet and scatter. Their arms locked, blood unbound meet. Their souls extinguished by the raging fires of war that pay no heed to fate, nor a love that couldn't, shouldn't be.

They meet again. One the elder of one of Italy's great cities, perhaps even related to Lorenzo d'Medici. The other, a young woman just come of age, her cheeks swollen with the freshness of the vinyards, her loins nearly ripened. He cannot have her without mocking her youth. She cannot love him without earning shame. They meet in secret, the one bringing the other to his abode at midnight. They are found out. He a disgraced man, she a harlot. She is stoned to death, he dies with his heart broken. Age has nothing to do with their fate. No, their fates transcend the simple cruelties of age.

Once more they meet, once more it is the battlefield. This time, they are man and woman. It should be right, but it isn't. The Spartan soldier turned Italian noble meets her fate in a covent near the Somme. The other, the effeminate Persian warrior, the country harlot, is a German officer. They meet, he threatens to kill her, she defies him. He likes the way his lips form into a pout even though he can see her clenched fists white and trembling. She hates him for what he stands for, yet they are drawn. It happens. They make love under the eyes of God and for a moment, it seemed as if fate had relented. It hasn't. His mates see her. He can only be what he was born to be, trained to be. She dies though afterwards, he returns and buries her atop the hill behind the convent. He leaves his badge by the unnamed marker, he didn't even know her name.

This life, this life. The one comes, a graduate from a Little Ivy in her little bookstore in Greenwich Village, Manhatten. She reads Tolstoy, Montaigne and Kafka. She fills her closet with vintafe clothes and fills her two room apartment with Pottery Barn. Daylight brings her the little comforts of life, she drinks at night. Scotch. She waits. She wonders if somewhere out there is a man for her. Her life passes before her. She is content. She has friends, her family and even a beloved German shepherd and her descendants. Her hair turns grey, the world dims softly. She dies, the world closed to her. Her last breath a kiss unclaimed.

Somewhere in space, between the lives they spend living and breathing the air of our land, I fancy they meet in their metaphysical states. Their laughter echoes and touches the furthest star, they embrace and feel whole as if their souls were never parted.

Somewhere deep within the woman's heart, at the core of her soul. She must have been disappointed, waiting as she did for someone who never came. The other who always arrived though their love was always for naught. Perhaps if she had known, the games that fate play with their lives, she would have looked harder.

The one waits in space, time stands still. No more reincarnation. Laughter echoes back, retracing the infinite lives they spent apart. The other comes, finally, with a clenched fist. The fist opens and a whisper flies. The other returns the kiss and they are lovers apart no more. Even fate can be kind sometimes.

C'est tout.