Eternal

As she lay in the tall grass of the field, dying of from her wounds, she looked up at the clear blue skies above and remembered all of her past lives, and deaths.

How many times had she died? Too numerous to count, always the same, they blurred into one another.

She had been a simple famer, a primitive Neanderthal, feudal lord, a beggar, and even a famous general of a vast army in her lifetimes; and in a great battle against her enemy's forces she had met her end, as she had always done, at the hands of her one and true foe; and he at her hands.

They had fought one another throughout the ages; many of their conflicts were written of in the history texts that told of civilization's journey through the millennia, though no one would suspect that they were all just a continuation of the same war.

The eternal war between darkness and the light; renewed each time as she and her enemy were reborn into the world.

From epic battles between military generals, to lone ruffian fights in the back streets of some ancient market city, they always found one another, no matter who they were each time.

Their lives were not their own, but were confined to the unending struggle to keep the balance between what is good and what is evil.

Now, laying a few short paces from her fallen enemy, she held her hand to her stomach where their blade had made its fatal strike. Her other hand however, was held tightly by the hand of her love, kneeling by her side.

Just as each time they died, her enemy was left alone and abandoned by their followers, her love stayed with her until the end.

Looking into her lover's tear-filled eyes she could see the sadness at their departing yet again. If only she could spare them the pain of losing the one they loved over and over; but they too were enslaved to their fate.

A soft breeze blew through the grassy field where the two adversaries had met; samurai warriors this lifetime; ronin that had wandered the lands until finding each other yet again.

The familiar calmness washed over her and she smiled up at her lover for the last time in this life, and they smiled bravely back.

Most deaths blurred into one another, but this one she would remember.

Birds swooped passed, gliding gracefully on the wind as with her last breathes, she spoke soft and sweetly to her love.

"This was my favourite death." She whispered as she closed her eyes for the last time; until the next life time.