Millicent

Maria watched her four-year-old daughter, Millicent, as she played at the beach's shore. Carefully she shoved sand into her pink bucket, packed it tightly, then make a sandcastle about her seated bottom. "That's a beautiful castle, Millie," came as Maria settled beside her and placed seashells and seaweed about the towers for decoration. "Does a princess live in it?" "It's the castle I'm going to live in when I grow up " Dragging her shovel through the sand to the shore, Millicent instructed her mother, "I need to have a place for the ship to come in, Momma." Maria watched as the child lined the inlet with rocks, "that way, when daddy's ship arrives, he will be able to pick us up." Faltering to the words, Maria asked, "why do you think your father would be coming on a ship to pick us up?" The words were slightly distressing as Maria never shared any details about the appearance or disappearance of Millicent's father with her. The fantastical stories nearly forgotten as Enguerrand had shared them when Millicent was only months old, or so Maria thought. Fondly Maria remembered how he would hold her hour after hour, whispering words of his life and family, of his love and hope to be with her always. Always, Maria thought bitterly, always isn't forever. So how could an infant remember his stories, his love? In love with a man four hundred years in her past, Millicent Shephard travels between time at the whim of an unknown force. Lost, alone and abandoned can she learn to trust one person, the one person who beckons to her in her dreams, a man whose ancients destined her to be with for an eternity? Nico Illevante' has dreamt of one woman for as long as he can remember. A figure always lost to him in the shadows yet beckons to his heart and soul. His true other half. Not until he finally happens upon her in his mother's gardens does he believe that she could be anything more than a wondrous dream that has been nothing more than a haunting. But how does he draw her back to him, how does he bind her to him in his world or join her in hers.