(6 hours before the universe dies)

It had taken me more effort – both physically and emotionally – than I’d like to admit to get back on my feet. The break had refreshed me, and I don’t know whether that was because of the fact my legs really needed to calm down after walking for about half an hour, or because of the warm feeling I got from the bus stop that refueled my dedication for her. Maybe even a healthy combination of both, who knows?

There was no stopping; no giving up. Not now. Not ever. And calmly – well, as calm as I could keep myself after having my tears freeze on my face – reorganizing my mind had given me a good idea of where she could’ve gone.

A handful of places outside town popped up in my mind, though some maybe more relevant than others, but I didn’t have time enough to visit all of them.

Hell, I probably didn’t even have time enough to visit even two of them. Although I don’t like to admit it; age had definitely gotten the better of me, so running was definitely out of the question. And today was exponentially more painful to be confronted with that than any day before.

I had to pick and make a good estimation of where she’d be most likely to flee to.

Lily’s old house? Viable, but unlikely.

The launch pad of the so-called “shooting stars” that ascended back into the sky? Surely she’d know of herself she wouldn’t ever make that.

The woods behind our house? Maybe…

Or maybe…

Yes. It had to be. It made the most sense for her to be spending the last hours of the universe there.

I’d made my choice, and I be damned if I somehow had made the wrong assumption, if I had somehow made a leap in logic the likes of which humanity hadn’t ever seen before.

If she wasn’t over there, she wouldn’t be the woman I’d known and loved for 57 years anymore; there’d be something royally wrong with her.

That hill was a second home to her, and it always had been ever since I first met her.

The hill was quite far from town, a couple miles at least. But surely that distance wouldn’t stop her, even if she had difficulty walking. She was persistent like that, in just about everything she did. Whether it was getting a job, or chasing her dreams (quite literally, you wouldn’t believe how often she had to chase after her dream diary when the wind blew out loose pages in her notebook… How I enjoyed seeing her running down that hill…), or even raising our daughter.

Once she had a goal in mind, there was nothing stopping her, which was a trait of hers I very much admired.

The biting frost was making it increasingly more difficult to walk forward. It got bad to such an extent, that I just closed my eyes and asked dwarfy to push through for just a little longer, to get that extra warmth out to ease the journey there.

I had to get to her before he went out.

I was not going to freeze to death on my own in the middle of nowhere, and I was definitely not going to let my wife freeze all alone on a hill.

It wasn’t death itself I feared. No, if death came around I’d embrace him as if he was an old friend.

It was the idea of dying alone that terrified me. Whether it was me or her.

Nobody deserves to die alone. And then especially not my wife. Not on my watch.

It definitely felt like our white dwarf was hearing my prayers, because his blue light seemed to get just slightly brighter when I opened my eyes again, and the freezing cold felt just a little less biting. I don’t care whether or not it was some sort of psychological placebo effect; it worked for me, and that’s all that mattered to me then.

I was walking on a piece of road, just leaving the town, that had a fair amount of cherry blossom trees on the side, with their branches hanging halfway across the road.

I distinctly remember walking here with them. Lily was six and filled with energy (and also in that “why?”-phase of her life, surely you know what I’m talking about), my wife calm as always.

The blossoms were be blooming, covering most of the sky with a nice pink that had a soft blue light cast upon them from our star lurking at the horizon.

And I can still see Lily running through the petals that covered the ground, and I can still hear her giggle echo through the trees, and I can still feel my wife’s warm hand holding mine, every time I close my eyes.

But today was bleak. (Of course it was bleak. Can’t have the last day of the universe be a happy one. No, that’d subvert too many expectations…)

Spring wasn’t given a fair shot at bringing back the life that had perished since autumn. The winter cold started to kick in again, and persisted all throughout the summer, making sure the pink cherry blossoms wouldn’t get a chance to bloom again.

What remained were dark trees ominously hanging their branches over the pathway. Not so much unsettling as just frankly disappointing.

The pathway lead to an old stone bridge running over what used to be a narrow river, but was now just completely frozen, rendering that bridge, in essence, useless.

That being said, I wouldn’t take my chances and cross the ice. I could slip and break my hip or my finger or something… No need to get all adventurous now.

We used to cross this bridge constantly when we were younger (and I mean much younger… as in “more than 55 years” younger). During the week, right after school; in the weekends, as soon as possible.

We used to take a small break here sometimes. Hanging out by the bridge to catch our breath or just sit and relax. More often than not that ended in us leaning over the railing and trying to see if we could count any fish, but the water was always too turbid for that. (I still don’t know if there actually were any fish in the river, now there definitely weren’t anymore.)

We’d call it our “bridge over troubled water” back in the day. It was a quick joke we both found pretty clever, but it stuck around for years on end.

We stopped using that name roughly 30 years ago, though;

when that double meaning of “trouble” really went to show…

It’s odd how life can turn out to be very ironic like that…