Eirene drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day. Soon, she coughed more than she breathed. Her parents and Melissa took turns staying by her side, unaware that I was always there. When she opened her eyes for the last time, I swear she studied my circular path in the air. It didn't last for more than a long breath. Her last.

Eirene's soul lingered near her body, uncertain of what had happened. After all, this was the first time she had died. Memories of a time before she had a body came back in fragments.

Her parents mourned her, but their tears brought her nothing but sadness. She tried to comfort them by telling them she'd be alright, but she couldn't form any words outside of her mind.

As if pulled by a magnet, she drifted through the streets of Athens, past the bathhouse, and through the door of the little bakery. Basil was grasping the edge of the working bench, his breath shallow and eyes locked straight ahead. Somehow, he knew. Eirene flew towards him and went right through. Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped onto the bread.

"What happened?" Thales asked.

Basil wiped his tears. "I think Eirene... Something's wrong. I'm gonna go... Tell mother I'll be back soon." He patted Thales' black locks and left.

Basil's walk turned into a run and ended in a sprint. The opposite could be said about his life in general. He thought Eirene was gone from his life, but she rarely left his side, like me. We supported him through the grief left by Eirene and a few years later by his father, and eventually his mother. He inherited the bakery and his animal-shaped bread increased in popularity now that there wasn't anyone making him doubt his ideas. Even though he longed to share his life with someone, he never married out of fear he'd put someone through what Eirene had experienced with Cleon. He had few friends except his siblings, who eventually accepted his will to live alone.

Three decades after Eirene's death, Basil took a night stroll to watch the stars and tripped on a set of stairs, cracking his head against the marble. Eirene comforted him during the first confusing moments of death and together we rose through the atmosphere.

With both their souls separated from their bodies, I noticed a gleam of colour amongst the otherwise bright white. The beauty of change would never cease to impress me.

Would I ever change? Maybe I already had. How would I know? The change seemed to be the only constant for Earth. Even though I was excluded from that, I hoped I'd learn to adapt. Could I consciously choose to change? It's honestly an impossible question when you don't know what there is to change. Would having what I lack count as change?

My musings went on in an endless chain of unanswerable questions and unreachable answers as I spent my time with the only souls who noticed me. Decades flew past us. By the time some of the stars had shifted, the souls had become restless and they sank towards Earth's surface again.

I couldn't blame them for wanting to be reborn. I can imagine they longed for change, just as I did. Not even death, which seems so permanent to the living, can hold a soul in its embrace for long. That too will change.

The souls twirled around each other as they reached the waves of a sea, eager to spend a lifetime together. But despite their magnetic connection, they were split. Basil's soul drifted north, drawn towards the coast of a peninsula. Eirene's soul flew east, to the edge of a sea and then miles across land.