The Clairvoyant's Desire: A Love That Echoes in Time

Evangeline Ashworth pressed her fingertips against her temples, trying to ease the familiar throb that accompanied her visions. The old Victorian mansion creaked around her as rain pelted the tall windows of her study, each droplet seeming to echo the fragments of the future that danced behind her closed eyelids. She had inherited both the house and her gift from her grandmother, though some days she wondered if either was truly a blessing.

The vision that had been haunting her for weeks came again, unbidden and vivid. A man with dark hair and storm-gray eyes, standing in a field of wildflowers that shifted and changed with each glimpse. Sometimes the field was bathed in golden sunlight, other times shrouded in mist. But always, always, he was reaching toward her with an expression of such longing that it made her heart ache with a pain she couldn't understand.

She had never seen this man before in her waking life, yet something about him felt as familiar as her own reflection. In the visions, she could feel his emotions as clearly as her own - a deep sadness mixed with hope, and underneath it all, a love so profound it seemed to transcend time itself.

Evangeline opened her eyes and stared at the rain-streaked window. At twenty-eight, she had grown accustomed to her solitary life. Her gift, as her grandmother had called it, made normal relationships difficult. How could she explain to someone that she could see fragments of their future, feel their emotions as if they were her own? Most people found her abilities unsettling at best, frightening at worst.