Kiss Goodbye

He flinched at the pain in her eyes, and knew that she would never forgive him for this.

“I’m sorry, Holly. I cannot defy the laws of my father’s people.” He heard the dull ring in his normally teasing and slightly sarcastic voice, and knew that she couldn’t hear his anguish.

“You don’t have to go back. I know how you feel about your father.” He looked in her grass green eyes, full of tears she refused to shed and the tiredness of the day.

He shook his head. “How I feel about my father has nothing to do with this. I have to go back.”

She didn’t understand what the choice was.

Return to his father’s people for the allotted time, or death.

But not his death.

She shook her head, then pushed a lock of black hair behind her ear.

“This can’t be the only option.”

“It is the only one that doesn’t force me to fight my nature. If I don’t leave now, then it will overwhelm me.”

Her shoulders shook, but no tears fell.

From the first floor came an infant’s cry that tore his heart to pieces. And roused a primal instinct.

The woman looked over the railing and down the open space in the center of the atrium’s spiral staircase. Then she looked back into his eyes, a small spark going out in her own.

“Please...”

He closed his eyes, forcing the beast within down. It fought, but was finally repelled.

For a few moments, at least.

Opening his eyes, he took three steps and covered the distance between them. He wrapped his arms tenderly around the woman, who had been his wife for two and a half years, and leaned in to kiss her.

The spark seemed to rekindle in her eyes for a moment. Then their lips met, and her eyes closed.

He put all of his love for her into the kiss, and all of his anguish.

Then he forced his body to dissolve into the air, slowly at first.

She didn’t notice when all that was left were his arms and face.

She didn’t notice his arms disappear.

He broke the kiss as his head dissolved into the air, and allowed himself a whisper.

“Goodbye, my love.”