Entwined Path: Part A

I looked up at the stars, and he didn’t cross my mind.

Jenna M. Shaffer

Oct 21, 2025

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The Alchemist.

A dream. A dimension. A departure.

I looked up at the stars, and he didn’t cross my mind.

Even when I followed the dusty band of the galaxy from one horizon point to the other I was searching for comets, not for him.

The waves lapped against the rocky shore, and the cars sped along the highway, but the silence of my thoughts devoured me so completely I had no choice but to listen.

They say new moons are for beginnings, so why does this feel like goodbye?

Not to him, but to the girl inside of me who reached for love endlessly, exhaustively, as if pouring more into the cup would fix the leak.

I saw it all so clearly in the dark: the way a soul clings to something the heart fears it cannot hold without breaking.

Only I am not made of glass, and my heart does not shatter; it expands.

The memories blinked into existence one by one, and I retraced the myth of us.

It would have been as easy as breathing to let go if we were a tale of unrequited love, but what ensnared me was that we are a legend of almost, of fate unfinished, and it caged me in this torturous labyrinth–passing by, brushing fingertips, but never moving in the same direction.

That’s when I felt the shadows. Not across the ocean or in the sky, but caressing my hands and ankles like the tides, inviting me in.

Tears tumbled down my cheeks and slipped onto my tongue, tasting the first signs of purification.

Night after night, I’ve returned to this place, searching like a madwoman for answers buried like treasure with no map.

The key had been with me all along.

Tucked between heartbeats and the horizon where the sky met the earth and sea. Just before the break of dawn, the realization struck me at the end of an exhale.

Maybe this was always how the daughter of alchemy and the son of dreams were meant to collide: to fall apart into sovereignty’s embrace.

I have lived with his phantom like a scythe over my heart, begging for release, but I have been stubborn. I have held on to the knife of his betrayal and refused to twist it into anything but regret.

The shadows rippled along my skin as if responding to my acceptance of the truth.

In every version of our story, my loyalty and devotion were both his greatest desire and his deepest fear. He danced around them in every conversation like a fire that would burn him if he got too close.

Maybe it would have. Maybe, in all his indecision, there was also wisdom, because my love was conditional–not in the boundaries I’d set, but in the ones I hadn’t.

I don’t need him here to tell me what we had was real. I was there. He and I have played a million different roles for one another: lover, teacher, muse. He had garnered my attention, my affection, abandoned me on the cliff side of this love, yet across galaxies, lifetimes, and dimensions, he was never capable of holding my fire.

It’s not his to hold.

It’s mine.

The admission dislodges something in my chest. The air had grown still, as if holding its breath for what came next.

I don’t know this new version of myself who looks up at the stars and doesn’t hope he chooses to stay, but she feels solid.

Somewhere in the cosmos, fate has written the story of us. Maybe there’s a world where we let it begin instead of end, but I no longer need that beginning.

I will not thank him for the pain, but I will thank the heavens for the lessons.

Time stopped at his arrival. The waves hung in their swell before the crash. Standing on the dock some distance away, he watched, his form cloaked in the final moments of night before daybreak. I didn’t have to see his face to know it was him. I would recognize the slope of his shoulders and the angle of his stance anywhere, a man burdened by the weight of invisible things.

It had happened with more frequency lately, him finding his way to me in dreams. Never within reach, but always a witness.

The sound of his footsteps on the wooden dock seized me. He had never made a sound before. I’d always assumed I had conjured him, a specter cast from my own will, but his skin wasn’t translucent, and he was looking at me as if he truly saw me.

Perhaps it was curiosity that gave me pause. I knew better than to hope, but old habits die fighting, so I waited, wanting to see what this apparition would do.

The shadows gathered in my hands like storm clouds, weighted and charged.

My heart clenched. He looked so real. I knew that speaking was probably futile, but I said the only truth that mattered anyway:

“I release you.”

Tiny sparks skittered along the dark edges of the gathered shadows, and I smiled. Steadying myself with a breath, I thought of the book of us I had spent lifetimes pouring my heart over and into, and I let it go. The shadows tumbled from my hand with a thunderous crack, and I whispered the words I had been too afraid to say for fear of losing something real. But you can’t lose what wants to stay, so I surrendered to the truth:

“It doesn’t matter if you stay or go, or if the day comes when we choose one another; the fact remains that I’ll always love you.”

I thought the admission would hollow me out, but I felt whole. The shadows glowed like embers in ash.

Relief flooded my veins as a blazing ball of fire burst to life in the palm of my hand. Warm, but not burning. Bright, but not blinding. I felt giddy as the fire swirled around my fingers. At the command of ‌my clenched fist, it disappeared.

I had nearly forgotten he was standing there, but his movement caught my attention. His eyes brimmed with an emotion I couldn’t place, and he reached for me. I blinked, and he was gone.

Something shifted.

The sky faded into dawn, and the portal door appeared behind me, beckoning me into a new day. I might not be back here for some time, and the grief of leaving this place ached in my chest. It was time, though. I had found what I’d been searching for, so I had no reason to stay.

Wherever he was, I would not call for him again. Not in this lifetime or the next. I don’t need to. I know how to live, and live well, without him. If there ever comes a time when he stands in front of me asking for union, I will have a choice to make.

Perhaps fate brought us together, but it does not write the ending. That was always one we had to make for ourselves.

Regardless of time or oceans that divide, there is love. Not just for him, but for all the things that reside in my heart. It is a love untarnished and unmarred by experience. It burns brightly, like the sun around which everything else orbits, and I carry it in the sacred center of my being.

I called the fire to my hand with an open palm, and it sparked to life. Its gentle glow lit my path as I stepped through the portal without looking back.

-j.m. shaffer

Jenna's Journal

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