She had resigned herself to being alone.
     She had tired of the singles bars several years back, too many passionate nights and cold lonely mornings. She’d tried the personal columns in too many newspapers and had more blind dates then she cared to count.
     It wasn’t the men; she’d met some wonderful guys throughout the years from every walk of life. With her looks meeting men wasn’t the issue, they just never gave her what she was searching for.
     The people in her life told her she was being unrealistic, setting her sights too high. They said the man she was looking for, waiting for, didn’t exist. They said if she didn’t watch out she would end up a lonely bitter woman.
     For years she drifted, from one man to another, one job to another, one town to another. Always searching. Just what she was searching for she didn’t know. The story was always the same, she would settle somewhere, find a job, a house. Develop friendships…start a life. Months would go by, occasionally even years, then it would hit. A restless haunting, a sense that she should be somewhere else. Where didn’t matter, just somewhere other than where she was. It would start out small, just a thought here and there but it would grow to a sense of entrapment. She had to get out or else...she never stayed around long enough to discover what the ‘or else’ would be, she just moved on.
     She supposed the ‘or else’ could be more a matter of ‘what if’. What if what she was searching for was in that next town, next man, next life? She ‘what if’d’ herself into a long lonely life. She decided that if this was the path her life was to take then so be it. Who knew, maybe her search would finally end in this town.
     It was her questing life that brought her to this party. The C.E.O. for this latest company she was working with was retiring, so the company was throwing a huge bon voyage ‘do’ in his honour. Sitting in the corner, half listening to the gossip of her fellow peons, she noticed a commotion near the entrance to the ballroom.
     “What’s that all about?” she asked the woman sitting next to her.
     “We were just talking about him, that’s Lord Byron, the big guy’s brother, you’d know that if you were paying attention.” The woman replied. “You have to stop drifting around in your own little dream world girl.”
     “The C.E.O.’s brother is called Lord Byron?” What a bizarre name!
     “No, you idiot,” the woman giggled, “we call him that because he’s such a sad character. He’s never been happy. He’s drifted from one woman to another, they say he’s searching for that special someone.”
     “Oh, I’ve heard about him,” said a gushy blonde a few seats over, “isn’t that the most romantic thing you ever heard?”
     Hearing his story, she couldn’t help but be interested it was so much like her own. She had to see this sad romantic character but try as she might she couldn’t find him in the crowd.
     That familiar sense of urgency hit her, she had to find him! Within seconds she was in a panic, desperately searching the room. She had to see this man!
     She heard a name.
     “Rhalina?”
     One word, Rhalina, and it all came rushing back to her. . .a wave of
images. . .memories. . .washed through her mind.
     The two of them in the desert, dressed in peasant garb, unfinished pyramids in the background; she could feel the heat of the sun.
     Standing side by side on a wintry castle wall, the smell of death and the sounds of battle raging around them.
     Sitting together in a tiny cabin, a fire crackling on the hearth as they laughed about the idiocy of the new horseless carriage.
     A thousand memories of a thousand lifetimes. Lifetimes she’d never known she’d lived.
     “My Rhalina.” He said as she turned to look at him. “I thought I was never to see you again my love. I’d almost given up hope.”
     One look into his all too familiar green eyes and she knew her mysterious quest was finally over.