This is the second half. You should start with March 22, 2004 by bewilderbeast.
I sit on the edge, listening to the symphony of raindrops landing on my red coat. I am soaked through; I've been here for at least an hour. It's always worth the wait.
"I haven't seen you here, before."
"I haven't been here before," I reply in my imagination. In reality I don't speak; I just look over my shoulder and nod at the woman standing there. She looks like she wants to say something but won't, and I smile at her shyness.
That's why I'm surprised when she asks for my name. The personal question is unexpected. I don't mind, though. It is a small, ordinary name, just right for a girl sitting in the rain on a lonely afternoon.
"Julia." Julia, of Latin vintage. Soft-haired.
I don't ask her name. I want her to continue to be an unknown, a stranger. Random encounter with long blonde hair and large boots. It happens, then, quickly, while I am busy not asking. The rain stops, and a band of colour appears across the sky. Rainbow with stranger.
"Sandy." Not a stranger any more. It seems right for her, though, so I nod. Sandy blonde. Sandy, from Alexander. Alexander, head in the clouds. Alexander, explaining everything. Explaining the rainbow.
"You know, it doesn't really have seven colours." He said that, once. Long ago. The day I discovered it.
The nylon of her coat rustles, and I spiral back into the present. She has joined me on the edge of the cliff. Alexander didn't like to leave people hanging, so I explain.
"The human eye can't tell indigo from blue. It's just the extension of a fairy tale, the corruption of truth to suit an ideal." His words in my mouth bring him back to me across time.
"Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there," she responds. Her tone is comforting, and I realise that I am crying. It sounds like something I would say. I look at her, trying to see a piece of myself reflected in her eyes. It isn't there.
"Julia, everyone's sitting on a precipice. It's just that not everyone looks down. It isn't about the cliff. This is about you, your inflection, your salvation."
"Then why not make it yours?" Alexander, protector of mankind. Will she fulfill her destiny?
"You can't save everyone."
No. Perhaps she has forsaken the meaning of her name along with its maleness; or perhaps she has outgrown it, tried to save the world, failed, and moved on. He could never manage that. Moving on. He is still there somewhere behind me, trying to protect mankind.
It's good to know that she won't be another failed saviour, fallen into depths of chemical and mental disappointment. That she won't leave moving on to the ones she hasn't saved.
At the same time, it's disappointing. I once thought that his sense of purpose was a product of his name. That it was ingrained by Alexander the Great long ago, was dripping down through history to conquer the present and patch its threadbare spots until it becomes too pleased to care that someone else is in charge, now.
"Thank you." As I leave, I wonder if she feels the hole where her meaning has been ripped out.