-Timelessness-

The leaves weren’t back on the trees yet, Sara noticed as she walked her way to class one spring morning. They were still bare, apart from the evergreens, something she didn’t think was all that odd. There were also lots of puddles all over the bricks in the main square of campus, puddles that reflected the trees and that ever-cloudy sky that spoke of no rain to come, but they distorted the images so that the reflections didn’t seem, well, normal. They didn’t feel like trees, or even sky, it felt like another world, a world that comforted Sara in all its strangeness. And not for the first time, she found herself wishing she could go there, even if only to visit somewhere different, somewhere entirely unlike this place with its never-ending sameness and boringness.

She wanted to go somewhere her mother didn’t ask her to come visit her every weekend like her daughter lived a million miles away instead of a half an hour, where her brother wasn’t half way across the world fighting some pointless war for the military, where things were…different, better.

She shook the thought out of her mind, buttoned up the top button of her black, wool, trenchcoat-like jacket, and quickened her pace to class. It wasn’t a trenchcoat, exactly, especially seeing as it stopped mid-thigh, but she could never remember the exact name of those damn things. Sometimes she wished it was one, but she had never gotten up the nerve to ever get one. It seemed to her that a person needed a lot more confidence to wear one of those than she actually possessed, though the idea of owning one, of carrying that sort of quiet self-confidence, attracted her to no end.

She reached the doors to her building a minute or two later, noticing to her horror that she was going to be late again. She always hated being late, it was one of her pet peeves, but it couldn’t be helped today, what with the batteries on her alarm clock having died sometime that night while she had been asleep.

She tried one of the doors, but it was locked, a thing which surprised her to no end. Why would the doors be locked at eleven in the middle of the week? It made no sense, so she tried another, and another, only to find them all locked.

She shook her head and made her way to a side entrance. Maybe school had been canceled and no one had said anything? But the weather wasn’t any more or less unusual than any other day…no severe storms, no snow, no wind or power outages. It was just your normal cloudy day.

She peered into one of the windows, there was no one there, nor in any of the offices when she peeked into their windows. Not even one turned on light.

She walked back to the main square topped with red brick, stopped and looked around. She stood there, waiting, watching, the minutes on her watch ticking by, but no one came or went, not even a grounds worker or janitorial staff, no one.

She sighed, trying to think of what could possibly have happened. Why would there be no one on campus? She checked her watch again. 11:18 am, Thursday March 1st, 2007. The time and date were right…and there wasn’t any holidays to speak of that could account for this…

She looked around the square again, then looked down at the puddles in the square when that failed to get any results, finally noticing the oddness of the reflections. There were legs and feet in those reflections walking around like usual, going to and from class…

She got down on her hands and knees, making sure that what she saw was correct, and it was. There were people in that other world, that world she so desperately wanted to go to, and then she realized…she realized that either they had all crossed over to another world, or she had unknowingly crossed over, alone.

She stood up, hands and legs now wet from kneeling in the puddle, and looked around once more, only now there was another figure a few feet away. He looked to be about her age and was only a few inches taller than her 5’6” frame, and who had long black hair instead of her brown that went down his back, as well as almost too pale skin.

“Do you know where you are?” He asked, voice eerily calm as he walked up to her, stopping a normal speaking distance from her.

She stared at him, noticing only then the black trenchcoat that covered most of his body. “Um, no?”

He just stared at her, almost condescendingly, pale blue eyes boring into her green ones, almost finding her soul, and once he went over it thoroughly he spoke up once more. “Then you’re lying. You know exactly where you are.”

“On campus?”

He just continued to stare.

“In…another realm?”

“Bravo.” He said without passion, without emotion, though he still seemed very condescending. “You’re in the world between worlds. You’re in the world very few ever get to see. Time has no meaning here, but everything else depends upon this place.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been pulled here because of your potential effect on your world. You have a choice, a choice that has only amplified by your coming here. You can either awaken or not, stay or not, open yourself or not, become something or stay as you are. Those are your options.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not supposed to, not now.”

“Then why am I here?”

“To see what you are truly made of.” And with that, he disappeared, blink of an eye.

She didn’t do anything, just stood there for what felt like an eternity, then turned and went back to her dorm room, not knowing what else to do.

She thought over her day, realizing that she hadn’t seen anyone since getting up. That wasn’t entirely unusual for her, though, for her roommate was almost always gone before she got up, and the people on her hall were generally scarce half the time, anyway.

She continued to watch for people as she continued down the ever familiar concrete path and over to her decades old building with its five stories and large windows, and almost as one would in a dream, found herself standing in her room, staring around at the familiar objects and furniture.

“What was it you were hoping to find here?” The trenchcoat figure was back, though he sounded almost sympathetic as she turned and looked at him, noticing his expression had gotten softer than before.

“I don’t know.” She admitted, looking around at the half made beds, the random art and movie posters that lined the walls, viewing them all as if through a half daze, half dream. “Something, some sign of…something.”

“You won’t find anything here.”

“I know, but I had to start somewhere, but now that I’m here I know that I won’t find anything in this room.”

“You’re learning.”

“Are there others here, besides us?”

He inclined his head slightly. “You’ll see them when and if you need to. Where do you want to go now?”

“You my guide or something?”

“Or something. Just think of me as your gateway.”

She nodded, almost grasping what he was saying, but not quite. “I don’t know where to go; I just need to go somewhere else, far far away.”

“Follow me.” He said, holding his hand to her, which she took, and the two walked into her closet.

They immerged in the middle of a courtyard, but not like the one at school. This courtyard was in the middle of a castle, well, not a castle so much as a walled fortress. The building and the fence were made of wood, like in that early mediaeval period before they realized they could build with stone. There was hard dirt surrounding the building, though, which grew bits of grass, and…it even had a vegetable garden.

“Where are we?”

“Does it matter?”

“Guess not.”

He continued to lead her into the building, their hands still entwined like their lives, or at least hers, depended upon it. He stopped once they were on the wall of the fortress, once more having appeared there like in a dream. That was when she realized the wall was made of small stones on the outside and wood on the inside.

They looked over across the land outside, and Sara was surprised to find that the land outside looked to be burnt to a crisp as far as she could see. It was a weird and stark contrast to the inside.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

“Where are we?”

“Elsewhere. Don’t you know what this is?”

She stared at him.

“We aren’t here by random chance. Nothing here is just random.”

She continued to stare.

“Oh come on, I know you’re not that stupid.”

“We’re…” She thought it over, looking from the barren wasteland outside to the weird greenery inside. “…Inside me, aren’t we?”

“Finally.” He muttered.

“But…it’s backwards.”

He looked at her with an amused expression. “Is it?”

“Well yeah, I mean…my life is great, really. I’ve got friends, family, all that, but inside I’m just…”

“Empty?” He supplied.

“Burnt out and fed up, and probably entirely ungrateful of what I’ve got.”

“But what if it’s not reversed?”

“Then…my life really is a disaster, and…” She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, think!”

She sighed and shook her head. “Then, well, I guess…life is hard; it’s the nature of life…but I’ve been walling myself off from it, trying to create my own paradise that can’t be sustained forever. The wall won’t survive forever. Before long it’ll be…I’ll have to face that reality and…and live, trying to make life that paradise, cause that’s the part that can be sustained.”

He smiled. “I told you you knew what you were doing.”

The scene changed again. This time the two found themselves in front of a weird white marble statue. It seemed entirely out of place in this wooden room with its large windows that were made up of small ones a few inches in diameter. The statue seemed entirely figurative; an abstract shape that seemed to shift whenever you looked at it and seemed to alter itself completely when you moved to take a closer look. It always had that weird flow about it that told you that you were still looking at the same object, though.

“Are you going to explain everything?” She asked.

“When you let me, if you do.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m your gateway, you are the one choosing where we go and what I say, not me.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Only because you choose to make no sense, or is it that I already make sense and you just don’t want to understand?”

“I don’t want to understand? Why? Because then I’ll have to face reality?”

He just grinned at her.

She sighed. “So what is this world between worlds?”

“I told you, the place where we find out what you’re made of.”

“Why does anyone care about that?”

“I told you, everything depends upon it.”

“That’s not very specific.”

“Only because you don’t want to hear the specifics.”

“And what is that?!”

“That you have the power to bend this world and your own.”

“What?! What power?”

He gave her a partial smile, one that conveyed a sort of power and intellectual superiority. Once more his whole body conveyed that condescendence towards her that she thought he had lost along the way. “That should be obvious.”

“Well forgive me for being obtuse, then.”

He laughed. “You’re only obtuse because you want to be.”

“I gathered that already! Just stop running around my questions!”

“I’m not, you’re telling me to. Would you even believe me if I just out and told you?”

“I would.”

“Would you? Would you really? Did you ever listen when people told you what to believe before?”

She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Guess not.”

“It’s like I said, you know what you’re doing.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

“You tell me.”

She sighed, staring at the statue for a while. Neither of them moved for quite some time, her staring at the statue and him at her.

“I really hate reality, but I don’t want to live in fantasy, either.”

“Which makes you oddly practical, really.”

She laughed. “No it doesn’t, it makes me ordinary. I can’t accept the odd happening or the normal. Even now I’m rejecting that this is at all real. I’ve been trying to find a way out because I don’t even want to deal with this. I want to go somewhere else all the time, but I don’t actually want to be there. I’ve wanted to come here for so long only to find that I liked the dream better. I hate every reality I’ve ever been in.”

“So what do you think?” He asked, voice getting softer.

“That maybe it’s time to face reality.”

“But what reality do you want to face?”

She turned and stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time. “I mean my life back…home.”

“But how much of that is reality and how much of that is what you want to see?”

“What?”

“Think about it.”

She just stared at him, then looked back at the statue. “I’m not as normal as I wanted to believe, am I?”

He just smiled.

She looked at him again. “Am I even human?”

“Are you?”

“I dunno. There’s something different about me, isn’t there?”

“Course, you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Then what is it?”

His smile got bigger. “Magic.” He finally said.

“It’s real?”

“Course it is. Well, something that you like to call magic, in any case. That word just happens to be the one you’re most comfortable with.”

“So I’m here to discover my…magic?”

“No, you’re here because you’re not where you need to be in life. Sometimes that means finding it, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“There’s something about my past that I need to dive into, isn’t there?”

“Ahhh, you’re really getting it now. Most need to go to at least three more places before they figure that out.”

“Am I ever going back?”

“If you need to, otherwise you won’t. From what you’ve said yourself I think we’d both be surprised if you stayed forever.”

“Right…so how did I get here?”

“Nature of this place…different people get here different ways; some through dreams, some through waking. It doesn’t matter though, you’re here and that says a rather lot in itself. Even of those with the ability to come here, not all of them allow themselves to.”

“Allow themselves?”

“You were able to realize there was a problem; if you were in total denial you wouldn’t be here yet. This world doesn’t work like yours; the rules are entirely different, but you already knew that.”

“Yeah, I guess some part of me did, but I guess I sorta needed to hear you actually say that.”

“Which is why I did.”

“So, of my magic…what kind…?”

“You’re thinking specifics when you shouldn’t be. Remember, magic is just a lose term to give it definition in your mind. If you had a religious background instead of having read so many fantasy books as a kid they might be called miracles, or what have you. This thing you’ve got is just power to do things others can’t, stuff that’s subtle but powerful.”

“What, flashy magic doesn’t work?”

“Course not, it’s all used for attention’s sake, and even if there are underlying reasons that are noble it won’t work as well because of that craving for attention. Your objective won’t be clear and things will get confused, but if it lies relatively unseen, that is the most powerful thing of all. Unless, of course, you’re afraid of the consequences of seen magic.”

“So it’s really about a balance, isn’t it? Too much of anything will make it not work right.”

“Almost anything.” He corrected.

“So if it’s all about mindset, then if you had the right mindset you could actually do flashy magic, couldn’t you?”

He just smiled.

“Same with entirely invisible magic.” She tilted her head at him. “So if I’m creating everything, did I create you?”

He laughed a real, genuine laugh. “Oh no, I’m real. I’m just here cause I’m comforting.”

“Comforting? And…wait…you’re real? So you exist on earth.”

“Everyone gets a comforting figure to help them.”

“But I’ve never met you.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not comforting. Maybe that’s the whole thing about me that is comforting. It’s easier to bear your soul to a stranger, now isn’t it? They’re someone you’ll never see again, and even if you do, you at least don’t have to worry about them being biased about your life and relationships when you first meet them. They only get to meet the people you talk about and see your life as it really is after the fact, if they ever do at all, and therefore you don’t have to worry about what they’ll think of you, at least not now.

“And yes, I do exist on earth.”

“Will we meet?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

“Guess not.”

“And don’t bother asking my name. You’ll find that out when and if you meet me.”

“But we’ve met here, right?”

“Yes and no. You’ll understand later, so don’t worry about it.”

She stared at him. “Right.” She looked at the statue again. “Okay, so going back to before, everything means something here, even you, right?”

“Right.”

“And it all means something because I want it to? No, it means something because of who I am, so that means I can take us where I want to go.”

“Or where you need to be.”

“Right.” She stared at him for a moment. “Okay, then that means…”

The scene changed again, one dimming and the other brightening on top of each other, revealing the inside of her mother’s house.

“You’ve got it, or most of it, anyway.”

She nodded. “Time to face reality.”

She looked around the cramped three bedroom house. It looked exactly as she had left it, with all sorts of random things cluttered all over the TV, mantel, ancient coffee table, side table, and even a few things on the couch and lazy chair. There were pictures, both of the photographed kind, family pictures from times long past, and the drawn kind on the wall. These were drawings from both her and Jeff’s childhood days, and even a couple of random landscapes their mother had picked up somewhere years ago.

They went into the kitchen then, following the clutter around like a pathway as Sara kept looking around, almost waiting for something.

“I never realized how much I’d miss her.”

He didn’t say anything as they continued their tour, the two of them exiting the kitchen and going upstairs. They went along, peering into the different rooms. They first gazed into Jeff’s room which was as cluttered as everywhere else, though his was a more organized a mess, mostly comprising of stacks of books and papers.

They then peered into Sara’s room which was mostly empty now that she was living on campus.

“She must feel so lonely living here without us.”

Again, he said nothing. They peered into Sara’s mom’s room then, a room that was cluttered only on one side.

“She hasn’t changed it since dad died, even after three years.” Sara muttered, actually walking into this room. “I mean, I knew she hadn’t at first, but I thought that she’d have changed it by now.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

He just gave her that same condescending look, though this one was more of a knowing look than the others had been.

“I guess not. I keep waiting for him to come home like nothing happened, just like her. I shouldn’t begrudge her the past that I haven’t left behind myself, either with him or with us, but I think it might be time that we all let go.”

“Check under the bed.”

She walked forward and knelt on his side of the bed, the side that was also the clean side of the room. She reached down and under, grasping something and pulling out a sword, a silver-looking two handed sword with gold inlay of birds in flight over the hilt and at the base of the blade.

“Don’t tell me this is functional. Silver isn’t a practical material to make swords out of, and no one in their right mind would actually use a sword with this kind of decorations on it.” She said, not at all surprised by having pulled a sword out of nowhere, which was the most surprising thing to her.

“It’s magical. It’s your inheritance from your father.”

She stared at him for a while. “He wasn’t human, was he?”

He just smiled.

“So that must mean I’m not human either, am I?”

He just kept smiling.

“This is the thing that will allow me to access my magic, isn’t it? But why a sword?”

“It’s comforting in its shape. The object itself is an actual thing, it just chose that form because that was the one that would allow you to find it.”

“So instead of pulling Excalibur from the stone, I pull a silver sword out from beneath my father’s bed and become…what? Queen of Earth or something?”

He laughed. “Not quite, though there is some parallel between both your and Arthur’s stories. Both of you have great power and responsibility.”

She sighed, shook her head and sheathed the sword in a weirdly shaped leather harness that suddenly appeared on her back. “This suddenly got really cheesy. I wasn’t trying to be…”

“Maybe, maybe not, but the object will change when you’re ready for it to change. And hey, don’t worry. Most people need some sort of framework like that to get where and what they need. You should just be glad that you didn’t need the actual stone to pull the sword out of.”

“Yeah, and I guess I have the rest of my life to get myself out of the myth, huh?”

“Or just make it your own.”

She nodded as the scene changed again, and the two found themselves back in her dorm room.

“Ah, coming full circle I see.” He smiled.

“Half the point of coming here was to realize that I shouldn’t live in the clouds, so it only makes sense to come back to where I started.”

“If you say so it must be true.”

“Are you trying to be condescending?”

“Only if that’s what you need. Let me guess, reverse psychology works on you?”

“Doesn’t it on everyone?”

“I’ve not met everyone.”

They turn and look at the room, neither looking at the same thing at the same time, mostly by accident. Sara’s gaze stops at the bed, suddenly a sleeping form is laying there, a form she instinctually knows is her own.

It has the same shoulder length brown hair, same height, same average frame, even the same rainbow striped shirt and jeans. And even though she can’t see that through the blankets she instinctually knows.

“How can I be in two places at once?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He said, staring at the sleeping her along with her now. “I’m just the gateway, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” She reached out to touch herself, hesitates for a moment, then looks at him. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem.”

She touched herself then, and with a flash she found herself staring at her ceiling, alarm clock going off.

She turned it off, realizing that it was 10:00 am, stoodds up, looked around, and realized this isn’t right. She already got up once today.

She woke up feeling stiff, sore, and a sharp pain in her left arm. Now this is reality. She thought as she opened her eyes and found herself staring back into those pale blue eyes she had only momentarily left behind.

“Are you okay?” He asked, no condescending tone, just worry. He’s still wearing that trenchcoat, still seems the same as before, only he seems less like a figure waiting for her to move and more like a person with his own life. That, and she noticed he is wearing a black hat, scarf and gloves now.

“I-I think so, what happened?”

“You just collapsed.”

She nodded, memories returning to her as a headache makes itself known. She had been going to class that morning when she saw the world start to spin, then…then she had ended up in that other realm without that particular set of memories, waking up and doing her morning over…or had she? Maybe she had just appeared back in that spot, the same one she had fainted at…

She sat up somehow, noticing that any movement of her left arm sent huge waves of pain through it. No one but this guy seemed to be paying her much of a mind, though.

“Do you need help?” He asked.

She nodded, holding her right arm to him, and between the two of them they managed to get her upright. “I think I need to see someone about this arm.” She muttered.

“Yeah, I’d think so. Looks like it would hurt, especially since it looked like you landed on it kinda hard. I’m Jake Abram, by the way.”

“Sara Fletcher. Thanks for helping me, by the way.” She said as they started to make their way onward.

“No problem, figured you could use it. I like your sword by the way. Where’d you find it?”

She blinked, surprised at his words, and felt over her shoulder only to feel that sword still in its weird sheath across her back. “It was a gift.”

“Right, well, looks expensive.”

“Probably was.”

“Then why are you wearing it?”

“Seemed like the thing to do.”

“But won’t Campus Safety want to confiscate it?”

“Maybe, but they won’t.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“They just…”

“I’d find a better excuse in the future if I were you.”

“What?”

“You just came from…” He cleared his throat.

“Oh, yeah, um…”

“Let me guess, I was your guide?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“It’s one of those things. Rules of the land, etc.”

“Right.”

“We never touched in that realm, did we?”

“Um…no…why would we?”

He didn’t say anything, just walked behind a deserted portion of one of the buildings, took off one of his gloves and held that hand out to her.

She skeptically took his hand, and in that touch she felt a sort of power shoot through her and engulf her in what felt like flames, though she wasn’t burning on the outside nor did she look anything different than she should have, that is, until it started to diminish.

She slowly started to glow then in a soft white light that filled her with an unexplainable power and calm that once it fled from her, leaving her with just a trace of that fire that had once filled her so completely, took a lot of the pain of her arm with it.

Jake smiled. “Don’t expect anything that flashy to happen again.”

“Right.” She muttered.

“Arm still hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“Figured. It’s not supposed to be a cure-all.”

She nodded as she felt the residue of that fire inside her start to build up again, build up and explode out her back in a flurry of power, making Jake’s eyes go wide in shock.

“Never seen that happen before.” He muttered.

“What?” She asked, looking behind her only to see a pair of silvery-white and gold feathered wings extending out of her back. She stared at it as shocked and wide-eyed as he.

“That must have been some revelation you had.”

“You were the one who said I wasn’t human.” She muttered.

“I did?”

“Well, not in so many words, but that’s what you were getting at.”

“Huh, go figure.”

“So what now?”

“No idea.”

She nodded, slowly. “I think I’ve got an idea.” And with that she felt her sword morph into something a bit more practical.