Vivianite
Theo found pride in growing old. He would scream to the world on how the action of growing up made him feel wise, like the trees. The young man, born in 1928, was walking home from his birthday dinner at a quarter past eight. He was celebrating his twenty-sixth year around the sun. A block away from his destination, this young man Theo bumped into an older, grumpier man… Before Theo could speak a brief apology, his thumping veins became an old vampire’s wildest dreams. Drained from his beating heart on the cold, damp streets of 1954.
For the first couple of decades, Theo could still find ways to celebrate his birthday. The tradition made his heart skip a beat, something it technically couldn’t, and shouldn’t do. He started to grow bored of the celebration, when nothing upon him changed. Of which you would think he could learn to appreciate… Although when you watch your childhood friends age without you, what are you truly supposed to feel, if not exasperation?
Vivian, no older than 25, born on Halloween night of 2004. She was known to go on a walk every night at 7:28. Never a minute past. Her hair would be tied back with a dark green ribbon. Somehow always smelling mysteriously sweet. As if she was an angel in the room when God created vanilla, and the scent stained her skin like the ink from a tattoo needle.
In the year of 2029, Vivian went on her usual walk at 7:28… She needed an extra long one that day. She never could remember why, just that her head needed clearing and her only true friend was the night sky. It had been about forty-three minutes since Vivian’s walk initially began. With her head drowning in thoughts, she collided with a man of myth. Morphing into one ginormous pile of self-doubt, and hopeless thoughts. Theo steadied Viv, as he did, she noticed a gleam in his eyes… As if they have shined a-hundred-and-one times. In that brief moment: Theo stole Vivian’s heart… While Vivian became Theo’s only crumble of humanity.
Vivian never transformed into what he feared, yet banefully hoped she someday would. Theo never left her side. Not when the wrinkles showed. Especially not when her health ran a stop sign at the bottom of a bumpy one lane road. On April third, 2094, at 2:22 A.M. After living life to the fullest…Vivian drew in a breath that Theo knew would be her last. He gave her the funeral of her dreams. Filled with thousands of memories. Theo buried Viv under a willow tree, near the back end of their property. Now every night at 7:28, Theo would walk out back to her grave. Taking the shortcut of her every day walk…Remembering the sounds her heart would pace out, never forgetting the sound of it fading out.
On what should have been Vivian’s birthday, nearly 40 years after her death, Theo arrived at her grave, with a shovel in hand at about 7:38. The night before, he decided to move into an old house his family built. Located in the middle of nowhere, within a country Theo never wanted to claim. Long before her death, Theo made a promise to bring Vivian wherever he went. Above or below the soil, no matter how much remained. He took his time, being gentle with his wife… One reason is for love, the second being that she requested to be buried with no coffin. She wanted to give back to the environment which nourished her. After a breakdown or two, Theo found jagged crystals… Dark green, and growing around the light of which used to shine upon his everlasting life. His love gave him one last gift, a beautiful one, as per usual. Carefully picking her up, he placed her in a temporary coffin. Theo decided to name the crystal Vivianite. Of course he knows the chances of him being the first to discover the crystal of death are slim to none… That didn’t stop him from naming it in his heart, for the eternal love of a cursed man.
He wore his love around his neck, on an extra long chain… The crystal mimicking the weight of Vivian’s head resting upon his chest.