First Love

The motif lives from comparison. By now, the character knows what love usually looks like and measures the past against it. Sometimes the memory holds up, sometimes it turns out they've been guarding an image, not a person.

Closely related is the second chance, but it's not the same thing. A second chance presupposes a shared past; first love can also have been unrequited — and that's often what carries it further.

At Everglow, all characters are adults. For us, first love is a memory that breaks into the present, not the setting of a story.