Bride of the Comet

When the tail swept the moon sea, Lin Luo's pearl tears ring melted into liquid starlight.

Gabriel stood on the cliff at the end of the storm, the ash of roses curling in the wind into the ring of her wedding ring, which wrapped her ring finger around the eternal vine. Madeleine's sea of wine billowed beneath her feet, every drop an undrunk vow.

"It's time."

Emerald buds sprout from her white hair, and the valve bears the words of a friar seven centuries ago:

"A wedding is a funeral, and a first encounter is a farewell."

The midnight tide was suddenly silent.

The moon birthmark of a Martian baby ripped off the collarbone of the Lino and sent a circular wave as it fell into a sea of wine - at the center of each ripple emerged an unfinished wedding: a pine cone token in the ruins of a mill in 1927, a plaster fragment in a thunderstorm in 1953, the ashes of a clone's self-immolation in 2023.

Gabriel bites the tip of his finger and drips blood into the surge. The moment the blood hits the sea, it quantizes and reassembles into Madeleine's amber coffin. When the coffin lid was opened, seventh-century silver vine vines rushed out, entwining their limbs and synchronizing their heartbeats to the frequency of comet flashes.

"The truth of a contract is choice."

Madeline's voice oozes from the vine, "to be the fuel of the comet, or to burn samsara with love."

The birthmark of Lin Luo cracked, and the vine pierced the line forever. She sees Earth in 2097 encased in emerald roots, humans sleeping in vine buds, and their clones repeating weddings and funerals on the ruins of Mars.

Gabriel scattered the ashes of the rose into the waves, and out of the ashes emerged the fragments of Emily's astrolabe

"I take the third way."

He pressed the fragment into his heart, and the blood turned into a wine-colored aurora, "making us, all centuries, free at the same time."

Madeleine's wine sea suddenly dried up, revealing the eternal mirror of the sea floor. In the mirror, Linlo and Gabriel look up at the comet at the same time.

The moment the comet grazed the surface of the moon, the pearl ring and rose ash collided in the aurora. The strong light engulfed time and space, and Lin Luo touched countless selves in the nothingness:

Emily in 1927 was burying a pine cone, the bride in 1953 was smiling in a thunderstorm, and the clone in 2097 was entrusting the baby to the stars.

Seven roses bloom in Gabriel's palm, each petal a Louis from a different century. The moment they embraced, the eternal vine burst into bloom, and the roots that had swallowed the earth gently receded, weaving the new soil of the vineyard beneath their feet.

"This is not the end."

As the tears drop into the soil, Madeleine's gravestone grows, with the inscription changing as the vine grows:

"Treat every return as your first encounter."

Before dawn, the last drops of wine seep into the ground. When Linlo woke up in the Provence morning light, Gabriel's rose birthmark had faded into a faint hickey.

On the cliff at the end of the storm, seven olive trees stand up again, resin tears sealed with comet fragments.

The tide sent a faded bottle with a new message:

"When you find me in the moonlight for the seventh time, please renew all pain and beauty with a kiss."

They smiled at each other, and suddenly the vineyards behind them grew wildly. Clinging to the remnants of the comet tail, the vines bear new emerald fruit in the clouds - and inside lie the torrential rain of 1927, the vows of 2023, and a wedding that never lands.

When the emerald fruit cracked, the torrential rain of 1927 soaked the morning fog of this world.

As Lin caught the falling wedding ring, blood was oozing from the new nicks on the inside of the ring -- the vows Emily had broken with her last bite in the delivery room:

"Let my child be the first to be free."

Gabriel's hickey birthmark burns, and the rose roots break out of the ground, weaving a space-time cocoon in the middle of the vineyard.

From the cocoon came the sound of wine making seven centuries ago, Madeleine's shadow was writing a letter by the barrel, and the ink bottle was soaked with the moonlit birthmark of a Martian baby.

"Come in." Her voice suspended the raindrops into stairs.

"It's time to end this sweet drudgery."

Time inside the cocoon is thick as honey. Linlo's white hair and vines intertwine into a star map, and Gabriel's hickey ooze 1953 painkillers.

Madeleine folded the unmailed letter into a paper boat and placed it in a river of wine and tears:

"Every century I rewrite the ending, but love always riots at the same end."

When the paper boat touched the palm of Lin Luo, it suddenly burned into the ash of the comet tail.

From the ashes emerged all the exits of the cycle: the mill's escape tunnel in 1927, the storm side door of the church in 1953, the panic button of the clone pod in 2023.

"Choose a less painful exit?"

Gabriel smiled wryly, while the rose roots pierced all the exit doors.

Photosynthesis begins in the cocoon before dawn. The emerald bud of the Linlotine blooms in the breath, revealing the eternal cradle at its heart - the Mars baby of 2097 is sleeping, cradling the pine cone of 1927 and the pearl of 2023.

Madeleine's shadow suddenly materializes, pressing the moon birthmark into the baby's forehead:

"When freedom is a legacy, reincarnation is the deepest love letter."

The veins of the vineyard vibrate with the effect of the birthmark, the pernicious vines are reduced to vines, and through the roots flow not the poison of destruction, but the wine of seven centuries.

Lin Luo woke up in Gabriel's arms, and the morning dew was rusting the wedding ring into primitive soil.

On the cliff at the end of the storm, seven olive trees bore new fruit, each wrapped in bloodstained amber - sealed with Madeleine's unfinished blessing and the smile of the clone's self-immolation in 2097.

The tide sent a new bottle, engraved with the tooth marks they had made the night before:

"Find us for the seventh time, when moonlight becomes a wedding dress."

When the comet's glow completely dissipated, the nascent grapevine tangled around their ring fingers. In the unwitnessed dawn, the bells of all centuries strike at the same time, and they choose to kiss in the bell rather than flee.

Love is not to break the code of reincarnation, but to be willing to be trapped in the cocoon of time thousands of times.