One day in a world full of innocuous things there lived two shadows. These two shadows were the best of lovers, but, being shadows, they were only able to communicate through meaningless things.
They would meet every morning and communicate differently: for a month the girl shadow couldn't talk, and for a while the boy shadow was just communicated in hand signals. Despite these problems they developed quite a nice relationship, where each seemed to understand the signals of the other.
The problem began one day when the girl took to the habit of speaking to him in pleasantries. "good morning Mr. smith, it sure is a nice day today," he whistled back at her, as it was his only means of communication for the day. THey went through the day doing their household chores, with her occasionally saying things like "you're looking awfully nice today Mr. Smith," or "the Greenberg kids are growing up fine." While he whistled back at her like a friendly bird.
He didn't notice anything wrong with this, until she passed him in the living room and whispered into his ear. "I'm so glad you could come to my party." This triggered a memory in him, these words languorously whispered into his ear brought up images of a time long past, but he wasn't sure when, after all, he wasn't sure he had a past. This was the first he remembered it, as shadows live a day today, or streetlight to streetlight existence, think of the past as a fairy tale, if that.
So he was suspicious of these memories, but since this was his first experience of things of the type, it was enough to arouse his curiosity. From that point forward he began paying much more attention to what she said or did and would take notes on what he felt was important, and he could then study by candlelight (a candle he lit in the daytime to give him more time to work).
She asked him about this new found interest in her slightest actions, but on that day he could only answer by breathing on her face, and the next day when he tried again he was only able to run his figers through her hair. She seemed to vaguely understand and took his new hobby in stride. As he studied over the weeks and months and years (a shadow's life is very slow) he began to notice patterns and sometimes these patterns would trigger memories.
The memories didn't seem to be his though, they were those of a man, not a shadow but a real man, and a girl he met somewhere. They communicated normally, and one day they decided they were in love. He could only remember bits and pieces at a time, and as he did he'd write them down, then he would try to write stories to connect the memories together. Sometimes he write wrong, which he'd discover when a contradicting memory came up, but increasingly he wrote right.
He had noticed that her communication only slowly changes from day to day, she never changed from yelling to pleasurable talking in one day, but would slowly lover her voice over the course of two weeks, then piecing together these two weeks he'd have a vague story of an argument that would refer back to a memory immediately, but the sequences were disconnected, so they at one time had a lovers spat, and then after that sequence met for the first time.
He knew how these two met, he had seen them make love, have arguements, have children, die of old age, he slowly recreated pieces of this couple's life together, but he couldn't find out their relationship to him and his lover.
He eventually worked out a theory. Over the course of several nights he drew a portrait of the tman in the memories, then when complete he showed it to his woman. She was emotional when she saw it, and he immediately understood. She kept on repeating "you are my man," which was the only thing she could say that day, but she also grabbed him and kissed him in that all enveloping way that shadows kiss. She had recognized him, or at least who he really ways, his doppleganger, his person. Her lover for all the years of her life.
They as shadows after their owners death had to live the moments of their lives in minute details. This they had to do forever. He wanted to communicate to her all the things he found, he wanted to tell her the story of their love, but ever day she cried and screamed louder at him, and threatened to leave him, even though she made it quite clear that as a shadow she didn't mean that, they couldn't find the space to sign about their new discovery.
It wasn't long until she was gone. She was actually still there, but they couldn't see each other because at that time the people shadows weren't in each others presence. He did the work and remembered the time she left him for a long time, a lonely period in his life, that now he'd have to repeat in every day to day minute detail. But he had seen them die together and he knew she was coming back to him. It would be a long, long time, but when she got back he'd explain it to her somehow, with sign language, whispers, or tears of joy.
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