Upon a time... it might have been once, but then there is one thing to learn from fables and myths, is that the time they are in might have been, might never, or might yet.

Upon this time there was a section of this planet, and it should go without saying that there should be trees and grasses and flowers in this section. And people, there were people too.

There was a cow, ordinary, not sacred here, chewing grass softly and constantly, looking out at the world with large black eyes. The eyes of dogs and birds always look sad and wary, and the eyes of cats always look studies, so the eyes of cows always look blank. Yet in a group of cows, there is always one looking out at the passer-by, and so did this cow stare at a man upon that morning.

He looked at the cow and it quietness and solidity, and he was reminded of his dead lover, who stood firmly on the earth, but moved abruptly and smoothly like the trees in wind.

He knew then that inside the cow was the soul of his lover, and he lit a cigarette and stared at it. He knew that cows are not particularly intelligent, and that no memory of him before or now could last in that skull.

He memorized the cow, letting the smoke drift and spread away from him like the spray from waves. 'Don't worry,' he told his lover inside the cow in his thoughts, 'I'll remember for the both of us.'

The completely unimportant part was that he was wrong. The soul of his lover had transmigrated into a small fly that followed him everywhere without his notice. The fly saw this, and its heart within it's memory broke, and it died without knowing why.

And when the cow died, its soul was transmigrated into a young girl who grew up looking much like the dead lover, and slept with and tended the man, despite a difference in age. Both lived and died happy.

The fly transmigrated further, and was happy without its memory, and eventually regained human form, passing the man and the girl without knowing.

Such is the path of fate. The reality was unimportant.

The importance was in the smoke in the field, and the observation, and the promise.

Memory is the only important thing, and it doesn't matter if what is remembered is wrong.