She wandered idly down the park path, stopping here and there to admire a patch of wildflowers, or an exceptionally bizarre mushroom. She had felt compelled to visit the park today..she wasn't sure why. Perhaps it had been the early spring breezes blowing through her window, or the antics of the sparrows on her fire escape. Whatever the reason, she was here now, and it felt exactly right.

She was kneeling to recover a feather that had wafted down from the branches of an ancient oak, when she heard the rustling of footsteps to her right. Rising slowly, she came face to face with the most incredible man she had ever seen. She gasped unconciously, her heart pounding, as a flood of memories crashed through her brain.

The place was Egypt. He was a ruler..a pharoah, and she a handmaiden to his sister-ruler. They had been unable to keep their hands off each other, and although he could provide her with no land or wealth, he had given her the most precious gift of all..a child. Their indescretion had been discovered..she and the child had been sentenced to death. Her last image of him had been of his anguished struggles to break free of his council as she was buried alive.

No..it was France. She had been a respected dowager, a known patron of the arts, and he a young artist of no small talent. A mutual friend had introduced them, and they had been drawn to each other instantly. He had taken ill, developing a high fever and a bone-wracking cough. She had nursed him devotedly, bathing his emaciated body through her tears. He had died in her arms at the age of 25, his talent unrealized and undiscovered. She never recovered from the loss, and her own death followed shortly after.

The man in the path was not unaffected. His own memories were crowding out all other thoughts.

It was Greece. She had been so beautiful, and highborn, so unattainable. Her father was a councilman, patriarch of a highborn house. The man had been a lowly runner, a deliverer of messages for a sculptor. He had first seen her when he had delivered a materials list to her father regarding a statue he had commissioned. But she had been smitten with him also, and they had spent many a joyous night tumbling together in a moonlit meadow near her home. Her father, suspecting, had married her off to an official in a far off land, with even more rank than his own. They had never had a chance to say goodbye. The runner had never loved anyone again, and spent the rest of his bitter, lonely life trying to find his way back to her.

Or was it Colonial America? He had been a Minister, a speaker for the righteous, and she a newly arrived member of his congregation. Unholy thoughts of her had darkened his days, and set fire to his nights, until he was forced to renounce his calling, and profess his love to her. She had responded with totally unpuritan passion, and they had fled west together, determined to make a new life for themselves. Unprepared for the rigors of life alone in the wild, they had been caught in a flash flood, and died clutching each other in the roaring water.

Throughout the ages they had been drawn to each other, timeless lovers, destined to seek each other out regardless of distance, age or circumstances. And then of course..there had been that last life. Suddenly he frowned, and raised an eyebrow.

"I thought we agreed to see other people this life," he stated, in a accusatory tone.

"Yes," she sighed, with a shrug. "Sorry about that..you know how it is.."

"Of course," he agreed, "but let's take pains to make sure it doesn't happen again, shall we?"

With a polite nod, she stepped around him, and continued down the path, without a backward look.