"True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice"- Samuel Johnston

From This Moment

It was a sunny day that found three friends hiding from the sun inside a tiny, Maira preferred to think of it as cozy, cottage by the New Jersey shore. Not that it wasn’t comfortable, it was, but she, Vance, and Leopold were only inside to escape the oppressive heat while they weren’t in the ocean. At least that had been the original plan when she had suggested it.

Now Maira had something else on her mind, and she was quite sure how to bring it up. It wasn’t that she thought her two friends wouldn’t believe her, they’d seen enough in their relatively short lives to believe pretty much just about anything involving the mystical, but it seemed somewhat inappropriate to broach the subject during their summer break. Still, she was going to have to bring it up eventually, she reasoned, so now was as good a time as any.

“This is going to be a bit difficult,” her half mumble broke the comfortable silence as she stared resolutely at the mesh door in front of her.

“Perhaps. I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?” Van turned to face his friend.

Leo rolled his eyes, “You have no idea what she’s talking about.”

“Eh... no?” asked Van, as he shrugged his shoulders.

His older brother merely stared at him in disgust, “Never mind.”

“Anyway,” Maira cleared her throat, a bit exasperated at the brothers byplay, in an attempt to get their attention again, “you know I’ve been-” She broke off suddenly, unsure of how to continue, “My hobby... there are various research projects, I have, right? Among other... stuff?” She glanced up, feeling that she was never this inarticulate and that her two friends would realize something important was going on. She wasn’t disappointed.

「はい...」Vance had narrowed his eyes slightly, in an expression Maira knew only too well. Her would remember every word spoken from this point on; even, she sighed inwardly, if he acted like he hadn’t. “What about it?”

Maira tilted her head, carefully considering how to continue, “I came across... there was an old text from the way back in the, ah... from the beginning of recorded Egyptian history. I took a little while to translate it because so many of the languages from the ancient world are dead but I think I have it...”

She paused, to see whether her friends would speak or not, before heading to her backpack on the far side of the room and continuing her tale, “It mentions a city, or a hall, a place of gathering, which didn’t exist in the mortal world. The Hall of the Gods, it was called.”

“Sekhet-Hetepet?”

Maira shook her head at Leo’s response as she continued to riffle through the contents of her bag, “This is different, or maybe it’s the same but I can’t be...”

“Certain?” Vance supplied helpfully.

Maira considered giving him a dirty look but as she had found what she was looking for she decided against it and instead thrust the contents of her find in the hands of her friend.

Vance looked confused, “And this is...?”

“Not a copy, obviously. The machine would do too much damage and I don’t know this particular language well enough to... you know...”

Leopold nodded his understanding, while Van didn’t say anything.

“So, uh, I wrote a rough translation at the bottom but- Oh, just read it.”

Vance and Leopold ran their eyes over the parchment in front of them.

「舞、これは...」Van was at a lose for words, although his eyes flitted across the paper, soaking up what was written there.

Leo seemed a bit more composed, “Where did you find this? And are you sure of it’s authenticity?”

Maira moved to open the refrigerator door as she considered her friends words. Where had she found it? “When?” would be a good question as well. It had been a while but-

“Back in the 1900’s, before the Unified World Government was formed at the Millenium Conference in 2000, there was a rather, supposedly, senile old man who, in his heyday, had been a famous scholar but it seems that something happened at the height of his prestige. He was reported to have been overheard by assistants, late at night, muttering about a hallway of endless candle-lit darkness and supposedly that was what he spent the rest of his career searching for, with no success I might add.

“Then, some considerable time later, as he was reaching the end of the finds provided by the grants he had been acquired, an avalanche crushed the monastery in Tibet he had been visiting but, uh,” her hand now held an apple as she gestured to the frail packet of paper in Van’s hand, “sometime last year the monastery was unearthed and as his papers were deemed trivial musing of a rather presumptuous scholar looking for another major discovery I took the chance to see if there might be any among them that would be of interest to myself, thus, erm... I noticed the Egyptian manuscript and as I was feeling generous at the time, I took it upon myself to relieve the former owners of the pointless burden.”

“You stole it?” Leo gave his friend an incredulous look.

“I wouldn’t use the term stole, precisely. Besides, how would I have been in-”

Vance snorted, obviously amused, “No one said you had to be there, but that doesn’t automatically exclude your having been the one to steal it, does it?”

Maira paused to consider her friends words for a moment before proceeding to ignore them and returning to her original point she had been attempting to make, as well as remove various leftovers from the fridge, “I’ve been able to translate some of it, as I already mentioned and the place doesn’t seem to be in any known mythos and yet is in all of them.”

“Interesting. At least the story behind your acquisition of the subject answers the authenticity question. So, does it exist?” Leo accepted a jug of apple cider as he peered closely at the parchment.

“Yes,” Maira felt a small rush of satisfaction at being able to make that assertion, “of that much I am certain.”

Vance nodded, “I won’t ask how you’re certain, it’s enough for you to be for me to accept that, but one thing, you don’t know how to get there, do you?”

“No,” she waved off her friends protest, “I’m not certain yet. I’ll figure it out.”

「知っています。」 Van smiled slightly.

Leo also gave a small laugh, “You always do.”

He sent a questioning look at Maira who rolled her eyes: he was always hungry.

Shaking her head, she walked over to hand him her apple, “The problem is that it’s written in a dead language, so...”

“Even if it was told somewhere how to get there, chances are we’d need the written words.”

“Right.”

“And this is a problem?”

Maira and Leopold turned to stare at Vance, disbelief on their respective faces.

Leo shook his head, “It’s called a dead language because no one speaks it anymore, mostly because they can’t.”

「ああ... そうか...」

The trio lapsed into silence as they began to eat a rather eclectic mix of leftovers for lunch.

“If we had met in High School...”

Out of the corner of her eye Maira saw Vance pause for a moment in the process of eating his carrot, as if wondering whether or not to continue his thought.

“Hm...?” Intrigued, she glanced up from her cup of yogurt and cereal she had been industriously stirring.

Leo merely rolled his eyes and continued to slice the green apple on the cutting board. He had, Maira thought, like herself, probably already figured out where his younger brother was headed.

“In high school, if we had met each other then... the three of us, I mean, would we still be friends?”

The question didn’t surprise Maira but she knitted her eyebrows in slight confusion anyway. “We didn’t though.”

“But if we had,” Van persisted. “Would we have been friends?”

Maira opened her mouth to reply, before closing it again as she considered the question more carefully, as well as to finish chewing. “Like we are now, or as a general rule?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, you’re in luck, the answer’s the same. No.”

“No!?” Leopold promptly proceeded to choke on the apple slice he had just put in his mouth as he heard his friends’ response. “You call that lucky?”

Van shot his elder brother a nasty look, “You know what she meant.”

“Yeah, yeah...” Leo thumped his chest lightly as he replied, “I do. So?”

This time it was Van with whom Maira exchanged a resigned glance, “Nothing. Look, we’ve been together for too long for it to matter, so why worry?”

“Because it’s what he does.”

“Because,” Van paused to shoot Leo another dirty look, “I can’t help it. You’re one of the few people I know right now in my life who... that I can picture myself still being friends with when we’re all old and gray. So I wonder, if things had been different, would I still feel this way?”

Maira shrugged, touched by his sentiments as she felt the same way he did but still unconcerned with that line of thought. “We’re different now. We hang out with different groups of people. Not that it matters, but we do.”

“Then why are we still friends? How can I feel this way about our friendship? If we’re so different from one another?” Van didn’t seem genuinely confused, just a bit worried like one who spent too much of his time thinking over what he was asking.

“Maybe it’s because... ” Maira placed her cup, now finished, on the counter as she moved to the fridge to search for something to drink. “We’ve already tested those and we’ve still maintained our bonds, so even if we’re different now, which can’t be helped, we’ve still grown up and shared experiences together.”

“Yeah, through our parents-” Leopold pulled out a few more cups for his friend to pour the juice into.

“That didn’t matter though.”

“-not that is matters,” he looked reproachfully at Mai for interrupting him.

She grinned cheekily back at him, before she turned back to his younger brother, “But the point is our friendship was tested already and we know, after everything we’ve been through that no matter how different we all are, now or in the future, that we’ll remain friends.”

“Cheers to that,” Leo raised his glass of cider.

Van stared at his cup for a moment, “it needs cinnamon,” but raised his as well.

The glasses clinked and once more it was silent in the beach house. Only for a moment though, as in the same instant the gentle chime of the glasses had dissolved into the air, so did Maira’s surroundings. Or to be more precise, she thought, it was she who dissolved, and not her surroundings. As if her body were a sandy drawing on the beach, blown away by the wind, and then reassembled in the same fashion.

“Oh, goody.” The words were out of her mouth before she could think about them.

「舞は『グヂー』と言います。」Van muttered as he too looked around at the lush greenery that surrounded the three friends.

“Mai, where the hell are we?”

Leo sounded annoyed, more-so than scared or confused Maira thought, while Van’s expression was one studied indifference. Probably due to everything they’d seen together but still... a little fear for the unknown was a healthy thing.

“I know about as much as you do right now. Where do you think we are?”

“A rose garden on top of a very high tower? Surrounded by more towers and turrets?”

Maira groaned, suspecting he had added to second part of the answer simply to compound the idiocy of the first, “Are you trying to piss me off?”

“Should he be?” asked Leo.

“You too?” Maira’s normally sharp retort was dulled slightly by the tension she was feeling.

“No...”

“Good,” Maira ran a hand through her hair. “Now answer the god damn question!”

Leo and Vance both just stared. Mai almost asked why they seemed so shocked before realizing that she had just swore. “Oops?”

「舞は『ウプス』と言います。」

“Yes, oops,” Maira made no move to apologize. “I’m a bit stressed out at the moment. I don’t know where we are, and I have not the slightest idea how we got here. Not to mention this entire place gives me the weirdest feeling. Forgive me.”

“Your sarcasm is duly noted,” Leopold held out a hand to stop his younger brother’s retort. “Now, to answer your question, no, not exactly. But I have a feeling, just like I know you do as well.”

“What gave it away?”

“What gave away your suspicions... Hmmm... remember our conversation right before we found ourselves here?”

“Yes.”

“There’s your answer.”

“Fine, for the latter part, but take a closer look at where we are, and then answer the first part and be honest about it this time. Honest, as in completely. And yeah, I know you’re not being completely truthful right now for the same reason you know I know you know.”

“Well, that was complicated,” Van muttered as he leaned over to smell the roses.

Leopold stared at his friend for a split second before his eyes slid past her and onto the ornate surroundings. For a minute he said nothing to her but as Leo walked to edge of the small garden and looked out to better see their surroundings his demeanor changed instantly, from uncertain to awed certainty.

He let out a startled oath, “I had thought... but to know is something different. This place is... This is the City of Forever.”

Maira nodded, his words confirming her own suspicions based on her initial impression and a quick mental comparison with her translations on the parchment, “Now, have you been here before?”

Van responded in his brother’s place, “Indeed... Which is to say, I may have...? I’ve been having this weird dream lately. I’m not entirely certain.”

“About an endless hallway, where no light exists but ever detail is clearly lit...”

“And we have no idea by what.”

Maira raised an eyebrow, “In nineteen years, that is the first time I have ever heard the two of you speak in the singular plural. It’s not exactly like you two are twins.”

“Might as well be, though, yeah?”

“Not that it matters,” Leo turned to his friend. “Where did you say we were again? This isn’t the Hall we dreamt of, although it does have the same feel to it.”

“Well,” Maira scratched her head slightly, a perplexed look on her face. “You just told me where we are, and if I’m right then we aren’t anywhere exactly... It’s hard to explain.”

“Because that helped so much,” Van’s hand traced a delicately sculpted statue to his left.

“Now who’s being sarcastic? I haven’t exactly been here before. Not like you guys, not in my dreams.”

“Then how do you know?”

“She feels it: like me, like you” Leo wrapped his arms around himself, in an uncharacteristic display of unease. “This entire place feels... almost as if it is, and is not, at the same instant.”

“Yes,” Maira nodded at her friends’ assessment. “It does seem to both exist now and in the past, and yet again in the still distant future.”

“That’s wonderful speculation, really, it is, but I kind of want to find that hallway,” Van headed towards the staircase leading down from the tiny garden, “so I’m off to look around.”

Maira followed her friend, unsure that it was a good idea to be split up in this weird place. “I’m curious, have you two been up there before?”

“In our dreams, you mean?” Van shook his head, “No, never. It’s only ever the hallway that we visit.”

Maira felt a flash of confusion, “Then how-“

“Did I recognize it?” Leo brought up the rear. “Like I said, it feels the same as the dream, but in the dream... I know it’s a dream and to be here now, it feels the same.”

“But this isn’t a dream.”

“No,” her friend nodded his head, the green contacts in his eyes glinting palely in the candle-lit stairwell. “It isn’t, is it.”

It wasn’t a question so Maira didn’t respond.

The three friends descended the stairway in a silence lit only by their breath in a dark spiral lit only by occasional torches. Maira reached the bottom first and opened the door for her two friends.

As they passed through, she heard their sharp intakes of breath and Van’s startled oath.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as she followed her friends.

“This is it.”

Maira didn’t bother to ask what Leo had meant because it was obvious. They were standing in a brightly lit stone hallway. The only problem was there was no discernable source of light.

“How did we get here?” Van voiced the question Maira felt certain was on Leo’s mind, as it was certainly on hers.

“You haven’t figured it out yet?”

The trio whirled to see a what, Maira thought, might not have been a human but he certainly wasn’t alive, not if the slightly transparent look it had was anything to judge by.

“I... We were on the top of a tower, where there was a garden. I looked down, but there wasn’t a bottom, so how did we end up in this hallway, when we can’t have been walking down the stairs that long?”

“Ah,” the specter nodded. “I had assumed you meant this hallway, but as you are coming from the ‘infinite tower’ I suppose your confusion is also warranted.”

Maira simply nodded, too confused to respond. It wasn’t a state she was entirely used to, at all.

“In response to the newer question, not being entirely sure is something I will admit to. No one is. That’s why it’s called, well... That is to say, ‘infinite tower’ has no real name. Nothing here does, but if you look, you can find anything you can name. ‘Anywhere’ too.”

“Wait-“ Maira had latched on to what he had said before, “what did you say about not figuring something out? It obviously wasn’t referring to our entering the hall itself, but rather, a query as to whether we had figured out how we came to stand in the place, as a whole.”

“Yes,” the specter nodded.

“Please,” Van gave a grandeous wave of his hand, “enlighten us, er... wise o-umph! Hey!”

“Be nice,” Maira gave her friend a severe look and he quieted down.

The ghostly being smiled, “It’s quite all right. I’ve endured worse, from many worlds and times. He is not the first to cover his uncertainy with bravado.”

This time Maira shared a smirk with Leo. It wasn’t often people were able to penetrate Vans exterior and here, he had been dissected in a matter of moments, with but a few words.

“I could do the same to each of you, but I won’t.”

Van raised his hand, “So, I have a question.”

“Ask, please.”

“Where are we?”

“You know where we are.”

“I meant physically, in the Universe.”

“Then you aren’t.”

“I don’t-“

“Van,” Maira cut her friend off, “I have a more important question. So I will ask again: how did we get here?”

“Persistant aren’t you?” The specter smiled, “That one is a bit easier to answer. You’re here because your hearts, mind, bodies and souls are in complete syncronization. That is how one gets here.”

“Everytime?”

“Yes. If you can manage to make it back here, and I suspect that the three of you will... If you can accomplish that feat then you will discover worlds beyond imagination and perhaps, even confirm some of your suspicions.” Leo opened his mouth to speak but the ghost cut him off. “Yes, I am aware of your thoughts and I would indulge your curiosities however- however it would seem that, perhaps, it is not in our best interest to do so.”

“Why not?”

The being hesisted before speaking this time. “No one can learn everything at once.”

Van chucked a thumb in Maira’s direction. “She can.”

Maira felt her cheeks heat up at her friends simple and staunch response.

“Haha,” the being laughed, all the while looking, Maira thought, almost as though it had forgotten how to enjoy itself properly. “Perhaps she can at that. So then, I suppose it would be best if you had a seat then.”

“Where?” Maira looked around. As far as she was able to tell, their electic little group was still in the middle of the hallway, there was no place to sit, aside from the floor.

“Anywhere you’d like. We can have our talk in ancient ruins, or perhaps if you prefer, on the outer edges of the known universe.”

The being motioned for the friends to follow and lacking any other options other than stay stranded in an endless hallway, the friends followed it.

“Is that... possible?” Leo was the first to break the ensuing silence as the trio digested the specters words, although he still seemed to be having difficulty finding his voice.

“In a place, as you may or may not have already surmised, that exists outside space and time, in a dream like state, all things are possible. Or rather, to be more precise, there is little that is not.”

“A dream like state-“ Maira’s mind was already at work, “In a dream time is meaningless, you can live a lifetime or a few seconds in the same amount of time. It doesn’t make a difference.”

“Precisely. This place exists outside of the Universe and as such, the rules of time are a bit less, shall we say, stringent.

“There is only one City of Forever, in all times. When you come here, you step outside of time and therefore you can meet men and women of the past and the future in the same place. The chances of that are rather slim though, given the enormity of this place, many who come here have a place they haunt and feel no need to leave it, other than to find the door home.”

Maira tilted her head, not in confusion, but rather curiousity, “A door home?”

“Yes,” the ghost, as Maira had now accepted that that was most likely what is was in a place where time meant nothing, nodded. “This is, after all, a hallway without end, as far as any know, and each door leads to another place, another time: sometimes both and other times neither.”

“So, there’s a way home through one of these doors?” Van, who Maira noted has been uncommonly silent, spoke quietly.

“Yes,” the being stopped it’s forward motion and pointed towards a door, which as far as Maira was concerned looked just like every other door and yet, felt as though she should know it’s importance. “And as we speak we have arrived at the door which will take you home. As I said before, I believe you wll come again, and eventually you will learn to decern where a particular door leads, either by trial or by knowledge.”

“Ok, I believe you.”

Leopold and Maira both looked at Vance sharply as he spoke those words. There was something in his tone that warranted special attention.

“Now, I have one more question...” here, to Maira’s eyes, Van seemed uncomfortable; as though he were waring with himself inside and it was a painful question he wanted to ask but felt the need to. “I have one more question... when did you die?”

“...” the specter was silent in the face of Vance’s statement. However, it now seemed, unlike before, extremely uncomfortable.

Van took an unsteady breath but pressed on, “I said I had one more question. Please answer it, Tobias.”

The name meant little to Maira, aside from the knowledge that it sounded like one of the brother’s friends from camp, but she could tell from Leo’s sharp intake of breath that the name was not good news.

Mai turned to her friend, “When-“ but she found herself unable to ask when her friend had deduced the spirits identity. The look on Leo’s face stopped her.

“Leopold?” Tobias turned to his friend. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say anything, but I knew I would be here to greet you so... I had to come.”

“It’s ok.” Leo forced a smile. “Do me a favor, hm?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t answer Van’s question. I know it’s your nature to answer any question put to you with complete honesty but this once, lie to me or don’t answer.”

“Then I won’t answer- for the first time in my existence because by this point, when Vance asks me a question, I have to answer, truthfully... this once I’ll forgo it.”

“It’s fine.” Van waved away his friends answer, “I don’t really want to know either. I think we have to go.”

“I understand,” Tobias opened the door. “I won’t see you again, until it happens. That much I promise you.”

With a somber nod the brothers exited the hallway, leaving Maira alone with Tobias.

“Well...” Mai stuffed her hands in her pockets, not sure what to say next.

“Don’t worry about Leopold,” Tobias smiled slightly. “He’ll be fine. I just... I knew they would find out, I just- uh. Yeah. I know you have no idea who I am but... the seven of us, summoned by you from across the country, will become very close in the next 20 years or so.”

“20 years or so? Is that a timeline?”

Tobias tilted his head, as if to consider the question, “Yes.” He closed the door Van and Leo had stepped through. “I suppose it is, at that.”

“Isn’t it a bit dangerous to give away such knowledge so freely?” asked Maira.

This was getting complicated. She hadn’t been expecting to come here today, if there was such a thing as day in this place. All she had wanted to do was show her friends the documents relating to this place, but to find herself here, now- that had not been a part of the plan.

Then again, neither had meeting up with a person who was dead here but not in their time and who apparently knew her extremely well but as she was aware, she only knew of him by way of mention in conversation.

Tobias gave a small bark of humorless laughter, “Not really. You won’t know this yet, but time really isn’t that fluid. If you believe in destiny, then that would be the word to describe it, but nothing can be changed. It is all written down already.”

The words bothered Maira, “Nothing can change it?”

“One can always consult the Oracle of Delphi, if one truly wishes to challenge their future.”

“Ah,” a dry laugh escaped Mai’s lips. “I understand.”

“Not quite yet you don’t, but you’ve started on the right path. Listen, Mai, I’m sorry I can’t say more but of all the things yet to be discovered by you, I’m not- Even now, with all the time in creation to study this place, I will never know as much as you will in a few years time because I can not open the Book of Ages. I don’t know if that is its true name or not, but that is what you refer to it as. It holds within it, the past, present and future, already inscribed.”

“Inside a single book?” Maira wasn’t quite sure she was ready to believe that, even after everything else she had witnessed.

“I only know what you told me. Look, it’s time for you to leave. The brother’s probably want to talk to you by now.”

“By now... they just left thou- oh...” realization sunk into Maira consciousness. “That door took them back to that specific place and moment in time that we left. Or perhaps a few seconds afterwards. I’m going to go through a different door?”

“Yes.” Tobias pointed to a door a few feet away.

“How will I get back? There aren’t any doors on the other side.” Maira asked the question, although she already had an idea what the answer would be.

“Find the balance between your heart, body, mind, and soul. That is the key which unlockes the door.”

“I won’t bother asking how to do that, as I suspect you won’t tell me.”

Tobias merely smiled in response, confirming Maira’s suspicions.

“Well then, I guess I should go. So what? See you around some time?” she smiled slightly at her own joke. Van would call it bad form, to laugh at your own joke, but he wasn’t around at the moment so too bad for him.

“You know what... I’m not sure. I think, probably yes though.”

With that said, Maira turned and opened the door behind her which Tobias had pointed to before. Before her she saw a scene frozen in time. Van and Leopold were sitting silent on the steps of the cottage.

Leo showed signs of having cried quite a bit, as well as slightly bruised knuckles, but Vance, he merely sat composed. His eyes unfocused and staring off into the distant sky, where the sun was burning neon pink and passionate orange.

Before her, the day was ending and soon a new dawn would be upon them.

Maira stepped through the door.

Immediately Van’s eyes focused in on her,　｢お久しぶりですね｣

“Relatively speaking of course,” she acknowledged his wry tone of voice. “How long was I gone?”

“A while. Long enough for us to get around the small shock we received earlier.” Leo’s voice told Maira that there was not to be any discussion of who they had met earlier, ever.

She nodded her understanding, and for a long time, as sundown faded into night and then to first early rays of morning the trio said nothing. They simply sat in slience, enjoying the company of those they had known the longest.

“So where does this leave us now?” Leo broke the silence in the cool summer morning.

“Older, perhaps wiser, but still young enough to think we can change the world.” There was a slight smile in Van’s voice as he spoke.

Change the world? The thought hadn’t occurred to Maira before but now it was as if anything seemed possible if they wanted it enough. Their second year of college was upon them in a few days and it was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

---

Story Notes:

Sekhet-Hetepet- “Fields of Peace” where the Egyptian gods dwelt. A form of afterlife.

Van tends to insert random Japanese into his speech. He's not terribly good at it though:

「はい...」- "Hai..." - Yes...

「舞、これは...」- "Mai, kore wa..." - Mai, this is...

「知っています。」"Shiteimasu." - We know

「ああ... そうか...」"Aa... Sou ka" - Ah, I see

「舞は『グヂー』と言います。」- "Mai wa, 'GUDEE' to iimasu" - "goodie", she says

「舞は『ウプス』と言います。」- "Mai wa, "UPUSU" to iimasu" - "whoops", she says

｢お久しぶりですね｣ - "ohisashiburi desu ne" - it's been a while, yeah?