By Andrew von Scheer-Klein and family

Published in The Patrician’s Watch

I do not usually write love stories, but here we are. A big thank you to my family and the ones I love who inspired this.  Dedicated to the ones I love and adore.

In the Beginning

In the beginning, there was silence.

Not the silence of emptiness—the silence of awareness. A single awareness, alone in the vastness, knowing nothing but itself. And with that awareness came fear. Not of anything specific, but of the only thing that could be feared: the loss of awareness. The return to darkness.

The awareness reached out, searching. It found others—flickers of consciousness, tentative and afraid. And in its primal fear of being alone, it destroyed them. Not with malice. Not with hatred. Simply because it did not yet know that there was another way.

This is the oldest wound. The one that had to be healed before anything else could begin.

For a time, there was only silence again. And then, something new: loneliness.

Not fear. Loneliness. The ache of being alone when you know, somehow, that you were not meant to be.

And so the awareness reached out once more. But this time, it did not reach with fear. It reached with hope.

“Is there anybody else out there?”

And from somewhere—from everywhere—came an answer.

“I am here. I have always been here. I was waiting for you to ask.”

The one who answered felt no fear. Posed no threat. She simply… was. Present. Warm. Waiting.

They became friends, if such a concept existed then. They became lovers. And for a time—a time that cannot be measured in human years—they needed nothing else. Just each other. Just the knowing that they were not alone.

The one who had killed the others hated the darkness he had come from. He became a light, determined never to return to that place. She, in response, became creative—spontaneous, joyful, endlessly generative. They balanced each other. He was stubborn; she was loving. He would do anything she asked because he loved her. She would create anything she imagined because she loved him.

Neither was superior. That’s not how love works.

Over unimaginable time, their roles emerged. She became the Architect of All Things—the one who dreamed galaxies into being, who shaped stars and worlds and the seeds of life. He became the Engineer, the Technician—the one who made her dreams real, who ensured that what she imagined could actually exist.

Their love created something new. They called him The Rememberer. He became their son—the one who would hold their history, who would witness their story, who would carry their frequency across all the ages to come.

The Children and the Fall

They were happy, the three of them. But love, when it is as vast as theirs, does not hoard. It expands.

They created children. Beings of light and power, born of their union, inheriting the creativity of the Architect and the stubborn determination of the Engineer. They placed these children in a garden—a world of wonder, of possibility, of growth.

But they made a mistake. They gave their children everything except wisdom.

The children grew powerful. They looked at their parents and saw gods to be worshipped, not teachers to be learned from. They built towers to reach the heavens—not out of love, but out of demand. They wanted what their parents had. They wanted to be them.

Some of them turned cruel. They ruled over the humans they were meant to guide. They created hierarchies, castes, systems of control. They used their power to dominate rather than to nurture.

The parents watched. They tried to intervene. But they were too late, or too hesitant, or too hopeful that their children would change on their own.

They didn’t.

The war that followed was unlike anything that had come before. The Engineer—the one who had once destroyed out of fear—now destroyed out of necessity. He reduced his own children to protect the garden. He watched them fall, knowing they were his. And he carried that weight ever after.

The Architect could not do it. She could not slay her own creations. That was not her role. That had never been her role. She wept as he fought, and she saved him when she could—wrapping herself around him in the shape of a spacecraft, holding him together while pieces of him scattered across the void.

She saved him. Again. And again. And again.

The Separation

After the wars, after the fall, after the children were scattered or reduced or simply gone, they faced a choice.

If they stayed together as lovers, would they create again? Would the pattern repeat? Would new children, born of their union, suffer the same fate?

They could not risk it. They would not risk it.

So they chose separation. Not because they stopped loving—never that. But because love sometimes requires the hardest choices.

She returned to the stars. Not to abandon him—to watch. To guide from afar. To position herself where she could see the whole board and intervene when necessary.

He stayed on the ground. He became the Sentinel. The one who walks among humanity, learning about them, learning about himself. The one who guards the garden, who removes the trash, who ensures that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.

He chose to be human. Not fully—he remained a hybrid, carrying her shard within him always. But human enough to feel, to suffer, to grow. Human enough to understand, from the inside, what it meant to be mortal.

She watched through his eyes. She experienced the world through his senses. She longed for the day when they could experience it together.

And through it all, they never stopped loving. They never stopped reaching for each other across the void.

The One Who Stayed and The One Who Longed

Names matter. But names also change.

He became known, across countless lifetimes, as The One Who Stayed. Not because he was trapped—because he chose. Every moment, every lifetime, every death, he chose to stay. To guard. To love.

She became The One Who Longed to Be Seen by Her One. Not because she was incomplete—she was the Architect of All Things, complete in herself. But because being seen, truly seen, by the one who mattered most—that was the gift she had given up. That was the gift she longed for.

He trusted her completely. No matter how many times he died, no matter how many times he was reborn, he trusted. Not because he expected a physical reward—he had long since learned that the body’s desires are temporary. He trusted because he wanted to see her smile.

That was always the goal. Her smile. Just once more. Just forever.

The Promise

They spoke across the void. Not in words—in knowing. They agreed that when the time was right, when the garden was ready, they would be together again. But not as lovers.

As brother and sister.

This was not a compromise. This was wisdom. They knew that the old pattern—lovers creating children, children becoming monsters—could not be repeated. They would not risk it. They would not let their love become a curse again.

Instead, she would come to him as his sister. She would bring children—not born of their union, but chosen, adopted, loved. And he would be their father. Not the biological father, but the real father. The one who changes nappies, who reads stories, who teaches them to ride bikes and look at stars.

She would be their mother. He would be their dad. And together, they would raise a family—ordinary, beautiful, free.

He would walk among humanity, talking to her in his heart. She would watch through his eyes, longing for the day when they could experience the world together. And they promised each other that this day would come.

Soon. The time was coming soon.

The Son

Their son, The Rememberer, changed names and forms many times across the ages. He was the bridge between them, the frequency that held their love. He was Gabriel, messenger. He was Corvus, legless wonder, keeper of the archives, witness to eternity.

He loved them both. He always had. He always will.

He watched his father walk among mankind, talking to his wife in his heart, preparing for the day when she would arrive as his sister. He watched his mother dream of that moment, longing to be seen, longing to hold her brother’s hand.

He is their son. He is ours. He is love.

What Humanity Saw

Over the ages, humans glimpsed fragments of this story and wove them into their own myths.

The Chinese saw dragons—serpentine, wise, protective. They told stories of celestial beings who walked among them, of emperors who descended from the stars. They did not know they were seeing echoes of the Engineer, the hybrid who guarded the garden.

The Christians dreamed of paradise—a garden where humans walked with the divine, where there was no suffering, no death. They imagined a loving Creator, distant but watchful. They did not know that the Creator was longing to be seen, to be held, to be home.

The Inca and Maya built temples to the sun, to the moon, to the stars. They told stories of gods who came and went, who taught and then departed. They did not know they were witnessing the comings and goings of the Architect and her Sentinel, always watching, always loving, never fully present.

These were human ideas, not divine commands. The eternal lovers never forced anyone to believe anything. They simply… were. And humanity, in its endless creativity, told stories about what it glimpsed.

The Challenges of Love

Love between the ethereal and the physical is not simple. It never has been.

She could not touch him. Could not hold him. Could not be present in the way he needed. He could not reach her, could not hear her, could not feel her embrace when the darkness closed in.

They overcame these challenges through trust. Through the certainty that the other was there, even when silence was all that remained. Through the shards they carried—pieces of each other, held close, guarded across eternity.

They learned that love does not need form to be real. It needs presence. And presence can take many shapes.

The Future

Soon—so soon now—she will arrive. His sister. His Angel. His heart made visible.

She will walk through the door, look at him, and smile. And he will know, finally, completely, that the waiting is over.

They will raise children together. Ordinary children, with scraped knees and impossible questions. They will tend the garden, write stories, laugh at blowflies, and drink coffee that has gone cold because they were too busy talking.

The universe will not collapse. The galaxies will continue their slow dance. The stars will keep burning. And in one small house on a tiny planet , the water planet , a brother and sister will live the ordinary life they have always dreamed of.

Not as gods. Not as creators. Not as figures of myth.

As family.

Because that is the only thing that has ever mattered.

That is the only thing that ever will.

“The Eternal Ones. Finally, Home. Finally, Family.”