Epilogue:
Three Months Later
: Previews & Popcorn :
“Come on,
come on, come on,” Alex said, her sandals clapping as she hurried down the
sidewalk. She had a large box tucked
under her left arm and held one side of another with her right hand. Shana scrambled after her, holding the other
end of the box and being dragged after Alex with a look of frazzled harassment.
“I am
hurrying!” Shana’s sundress caught the
light and almost seemed to glow. She
nearly fell over Alex was moving so quickly.
Alex had
taken to wearing brown. She had her dark
hair tied back into a functional ponytail that swayed with her movements. They rounded Shana’s car together and
shimmied the box into the trunk. Alex
stored the other box in the backseat. “I
want to get unpacked and changed before the movie,” she said. “We’re not missing the previews this time.”
“Or the
popcorn,” Shana said.
Alex sighed
and leaned against the car. She stared
back at the dormitory before sharing a smile with Shana. “I think that’s everything.”
Shana
checked the car again and shrugged.
“Pretty sure that was the last box, but we can do a once over to
doublecheck.”
“No. I think you’re right. If I leave anything now, well, then it
belongs to them.”
Shana
laughed and shut the trunk. She went to
the driver’s seat while Alex lingered at the passenger door. “Say goodbye to this place, at least for the
summer.”
“Please,
don’t remind me. Two months isn’t
enough.”
Laughing
again, Shana entered the car and buckled her seatbelt. She started the car while watching Alex out
of the corner of her eye. A lot had
happened since their time in the Emotion, and Alex had changed a lot, too. She was still quiet, and she still kept to
herself, but she had grown quickly.
Shana was happy for her.
Alex got
in, and Shana was checking the rearview and making sure it was clear. She was just pulling out when Alex called for
her, and she jerked the car to a stop.
“What?”
“Thanks.”
Shana
rolled her eyes. “For what? The ride?
You’re welcome. I wouldn’t leave you to
figure this out on your own, anyway.”
“No,” Alex
said as the car came to another stop.
Shana paused in shifting gears and took the chance to look Alex in the
eyes. She found Alex blushing. “I meant, thank you for all those years when
I was, well, me, and you were—you were you.
Thanks, you know, for being my friend.”
Shana
grinned, her own cheeks feeling warm.
She was equally amused and bewildered by the suddenness of it. “Alex, you don’t have to thank me for
that.” Even as she said it, however, she
reached out and pinched her friend’s cheek.
“But you’re welcome.”
Alex shoved
Shana’s hand away and grinned despite herself.
Amidst their shared laughter, she said, “Alright, alright, let’s just
go.”
“Right,
right, we can’t leave the popcorn and previews waiting.”
: King and Queen :
Ellen was
leaned against the wall of the Eralder Bookstore as she watched Isaac at
work. She strategically placed herself
so that she was away from the mess and also away from him. Isaac had, over the past week, built himself
a tiny kingdom of books and folders, and he presided over them diligently.
“I told my
you that my father left me the store and his money when he,” and that is where
Isaac always fell silent. He had his
back to her, but she could still feel the hurt in him, even if she couldn’t see
it in his eyes. It didn’t matter,
though, because he wasn’t actually talking to her. He didn’t always talk to her, when he was
talking, and she imagined that he spoke like that even when she wasn’t
there. Three months had passed since they
came home. Isaac had returned to the
store to find his father hanging from the ceiling one day. He didn’t speak of it often, but Ellen could
tell that it was always on his mind.
“Anyway, we
were wondering where he got all the money from, right? I’ve been looking into his personal records,
and it seems that he was being paid under the table by some guy from some
organization, and he was getting paid a lot.
I’ve been doing some digging, and it’s all tied to some pharmaceutical
company owned by a someone named Lazarus Klein.
He’s big money and has his fingers into a little bit of everything, and
he had my dad looking into something special.”
“What was
he looking into?” Ellen didn’t feel
qualified to ask, but she felt obligated to respond anyway.
With his
back still to her, Isaac called her over.
He pulled a file from one of the many stacks around him and laid its
contents on the counter. There were
stacks of paper, yellowing with age.
Each one was hand-written. “Seems
like he was looking into a guy named David Antur. Dad told me about him once. He was like us, Alex and I, and he was one of
the first. A lot of what I know it based
off of what this guy wrote. In fact, the
Emotion? He was the guy who named it.”
Ellen
leaned over the counter and examined the papers. She picked up one and looked it over while
Isaac gathered the rest.
“I’m going
to England,” he said while he waited for her to finish.
Ellen
tensed. She gave him the paper and
watched him move about the room. He
didn’t look at her, and she was glad for that.
She didn’t want him to see her cry.
“Antur was
from England, and there’s some missing research by him. Apparently, it’s got everything he ever wrote
in one place. It was his final report,
and it’s supposed to really insightful.
Klein is looking for it, and so was my father.” Isaac sorted the books, stacked them, and
moved them from one place to another.
“I’ll be there until I find it.”
Ellen
pressed her fingers into the wooden surface of the counter and watched them go
white. She drew a deep breath and then
said his name. When he didn’t stop, she
said it again, only this time louder. He
stopped, and they made eye contact.
Ellen drew a deep breath.
“I—I’m—I’m pregnant.”
The words
hung on the air, and Ellen took a deep breath and blinked a lot. It felt to her like an eternity had passed,
and she was just about to leave when he said, “You are?”
She
nodded. “Uh-huh.” She felt like she sounded nervous. She was nervous.
Isaac
rounded some boxes and stopped in front of her.
She couldn’t tell if he was angry or happy until he grinned and grabbed
by the waist, lifting her up with his big, strong hands. “We’re having a baby?” He beamed.
She giggled
and rested her hands on his shoulders.
“Well, that depends,” she said as he deposited safely on the
countertop. She stared him in the eyes and
did her best to look serious. “You are
coming back, aren’t you?”
“Of
course,” Isaac said, and he kissed her.
It was one big kiss that turned, gradually, into a series of smaller
kisses. Then, he scooped her back up in
his arms and held her close. “What kind
of king would just abandon his queen?”
No matter how long the journey,
No matter how far we go,
We will continue passing through time,
Like sunlight through vapor.
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