Something to do with the return of Saturn, I'm sure...

It’s very strange, isn’t it, the way you can suddenly cease to know someone, right in the middle of a conversation, and yet, pick up the unbroken threads of that conversation over a decade later and find that, much like a fine wine, it improved beyond measure or expectation with the passing of time. Your attention may have been distracted when talking; you wandered away to find what it was that was glittering in the distance, fully intending to return, sometime, sometime soon…

But you never did.

Until now.

The glittering thing itself was never found. Perhaps it was never really there; a mere spectre on the horizon of a hope-laden imagination, something to take you away, for you never would have walked willingly. What reason would you have found for doing so, for cutting neatly those threads and turning your back on all you knew? None that you could have fathomed, not then. A speck of dust, momentarily illuminated by the sun, caught your eye. You followed it, and that was that. It led you away, on paths you never knew existed, and now, now it has led you back again.

And here you are.

Your eyes flutter and adjust as you gaze out over the sea of faces, a veritable ocean which was once a mere lake, calm and colourless. Now there are waves, there is deepest, impenetrable blue, there is beautiful turquoise, there is the grey reflection of passing clouds, there are flashes of white, proud and terrible as they become the water’s peak; prancing with all of the magic of unicorns, basking in the rays of their brief spell in the sun until the all powerful ocean levels them once more. The eyes of the ocean look back at you. Some accusingly, some bewildered, some delighted, some floating on the satisfaction of seeing you again.

And, before you realise it, you find yourself already identifying certain pairs of eyes and matching them with names you thought were forgotten but now chime like Christmas bells in the forefront of your mind. But it is strange. Some of the eyes do not appear the way you recall them to have once appeared. There were warm eyes which are now icy and slitted. There were laughing eyes which are now downcast and damp. There were shy eyes, which are now brilliant and filled with quiet luminosity. There are eyes which catch yours. Eyes which you thought never would. Some eyes even speak to you. They use words which you cannot remember them knowing, much less addressing to your own eyes, mystified and enchanted all at once.

Some tell you they are sorry, though you do not remember them as having any reason to be so. Some tell you that they loved you, though you find it incomprehensible and your own lashes flutter with embarrassment and disbelief. Some speak of admiration and veneration, though they have never once spoken to you before. Some - and these are the eyes which hypnotise you the most - reflect your own life, your heart, you soul and, after brief communications with other eyes in this vast sea, these are the eyes upon which you linger.

These are the eyes that have led you back, twice as dazzling and powerful as the glittering object which initially led you away. You open your own eyes wide, find that you have a mouth too, out of which words are spilling and, in what seems like a mere instant, the conversation is resumed, the words clearer and more meaningful than they ever were before.