When I think about fate, I think about soulmates, about family, about how some people just become friends the moment they meet, about how some people never grow apart, and about how some thing cannot be explained away as mere coincidence.
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Two souls lie in a bowl of sugary liquid pooled at their feet, and rising up very slowly. The bowl is suspended in space, or time, or both— it’s their home. They have no bodies, but they can feel, and touch, and they talk, like souls often can. They say, ‘I have known you forever,’ says each to the other, over and over again, somewhere below—or above. Somewhere, below or above, they go over and again, and have bodies, and talk too, but less freely. There they meet and part, in a loop, and think each time to be the first.
‘Have I known you before?’ they ask every time they meet.
And they ask—‘Will I know you again?’ every time they part but the last.
Somewhere, on earth One is born, and then the Other, or maybe it’s the other way around. Somewhere, either of them leaves first, and if they’re lucky, both at the same time. Otherwise, in a bowl suspended in space and time, one of them waits for the other with dry eyes, every time. Every time, the other comes. And then—
Two souls cry in a bowl of sweet liquid, and wonder why it doesn’t taste like salt anymore. ‘Somewhere it did,’ says one to the other, holding a shimmering drop on the tip of one finger. ‘But we’re not there now anymore,’ the other cries softly, and tries swiftly to hold some drops back in glimmering eyes—the other fails. The liquid is now upto their waists, sending ripples where a hand seeks another unknowingly. ‘It will soon flow out,’ each thinks and neither speaks.
They are born again Somewhere, different than they were last time, and come back again, to the same place and being, and cry again.
Two souls try in a bowl of rising liquid to hold on to some form of certainty.
‘We’ll meet sooner this time,’ the Other says and One agrees—last time they’d spent decades to just find each other, and before that they’d not even managed to do that. ‘We’re running out of Time.’
‘There is no Time here,’ One laughs. Time watches them from a distance and laughs too. Time didn’t need to be anywhere. The liquid kept on rising.
‘There is no time here,’ the One repeats but they both plan anyway—‘I’ll be a baker.’ ‘Find me at the sea.’ ‘Look for violet hair.’ ‘Find me in a field.’ ‘Find me.’
‘Just find me.’
They both memorise, and sure enough, there is a baker always strolling through fields of the lavender, with hair of the same colour. And Somewhere a sailor with eyes the colour of the sun searches for something that exists only in past memory. They both memorise, and become what they memorised, but neither remembers.
They become what the other wanted. They become each other.
When they come back, they weep and they smile.
Two souls die in this bowl of sweet liquid. They drown there, then disappear, and left behind is a bowl full to the brim, a liquid red as blood.
Someone comes, dips a finger, tastes it and calls it love.
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When I think about fate, about love, I think about order, and the lack thereof, and how sometimes, things are just meant to be. Because we will it. Besides, I’ve always been obsessed with the concept of us becoming exactly like someone we loved in our past life.
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