It must have frazzled more than just the computer system’s circuit boards.
It’d frazzled his brain too.
I searched his expression for a sign he was joking, that he wasn’t being serious.
But he was being serious.
It was clear in his eyes.
I was ready to listen, to discuss whatever it was he had to tell me…
Anything but this.
I took a step back and wrung my hands.
“I, uh, think that’s an interesting theory.”
His eyes hardened.
“You don’t believe me.”
Of course I believe you.
That was what I wanted to say but the words lodged in my throat.
My mouth floundered for the right thing to say.
“It’s just… come as a bit of a shock, that’s all.”
A hardness came to his eyes and the tendons grew taught in his jaw.
He placed a hand to his chest and seemed to take comfort in the motion.
I’d seen him do that several times over the past day and I wondered what it meant.
“Reach into my pocket,” he said.
“I don’t want to.”
“My front jacket pocket.”
His tone brokered no argument.
I reached into it and felt something press against my fingertips.
It was thin and fragile and came out of his pocket one section at a time.
It had frilly ruffles like one of those funny collars people wore in Shakespearean times, only it was flat and two dimensional.
It was bulbous around the head and narrowed down into a thin green stem.
Stem.
It was only then I recognized it for what it was.
“It’s a rose.”
Kayal eyed me with curiosity, watching as my mind gradually unpacked what the flower meant.
What significance did a rose have?
It’d been pressed and flattened the way some people kept them pressed inside a book.
The same way someone would keep something because it was important to them.
I peered closer at it and frowned.
No, it wasn’t a real rose.
It was made of paper…
I sucked in a breath that felt cold.
I stumbled back and dropped the flower as if it were made of uranium.
My hand covered my mouth in shock.
My eyes darted to Kayal’s, who bent down to pick up the rose and hold it gently in his hand.
So gentle, so delicate for such a large beast.
“It can’t be…” I said.
But I already knew the truth.
“It is,” he said. “It’s the same rose you gave me twenty years ago. The same rose you gave me the day before my fifth birthday party.”
His eyes flicked up to mine.
“The same rose you gave me today.”
My heart raced a thousand beats a minute and it could hardly stay in my chest.
No.
This wasn’t possible.
This was a figment of my imagination.
This didn’t happen in real life.
This was…
This was…
Real.
It was real.
My stomach clenched and I felt the puke rise in my throat.
I darted for the bathroom and spewed in the toilet.
I fell to my knees and automatically pinned my hair back with a fist.
I’d done the same thing for my friends over the years when they hurled.
It’d rarely been me though.
I dry heaved a couple more times before I was done.
I was too confused to fully appreciate what’d happened.
Isabella…
My life back on Earth…
My family…
My job…
All of it was gone and none of it existed yet.
Still, I didn’t get to my feet.
“How is this possible?”
I didn’t know if he was standing at the door or not but I sensed he would be.
“The laws of the universe are alien to everyone,” he said. “Sometimes they conform to the natural order of things and sometimes they upend the entire board and send you on a course out of your control.”
“But how?”
“The solar storm. When I hit the warp speed button, we got struck by lightning. I can’t explain the science because I honestly don’t think anyone in the universe could. But something happened and the fabric of spacetime warped and we got caught in a wrinkle, and it sent us back to this time.”
“Why this time? Why not any other time in history?”
I heard his jacket rustle as he shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe there’s some logic to this we’re not seeing. Maybe there’s no logic to anything. I think the fact we came back to this time and place was lucky. We could have ended up in a prehistoric time or before Qyah’an’ka was even formed.”
He calls this lucky?
Kayal pulled down a towel from the cupboard and handed it to me.
I wiped my face and got to my feet.
I hit the flush and ambled over to the sink.
I rinsed out my mouth and stared at myself in the mirror, then peered at Kayal.
“Is there a way back?”
“I think so. But it means passing through the storm again.”
There was a note of uncertainty in his voice.
I could see the possibilities now: it might fail entirely or it might work, only we could get sent to another time and place, one even worse than this.
But it was the only option we had.
“That’s why you asked Yoath—your dad—about how long the storm has been raging,” I said.
“Yes.”
“We’ve got three days to fix this ship of yours? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m telling you.”
I splashed water on my face and dried it with the towel.
“Then we’d better get to work.”
Kayal
She surprised me with her strength.
A new seed of respect for her planted itself in my psyche.
I expected her to take longer to come to terms with our current situation.
Time we didn’t have.
Although my father’s asking for help bringing in the harvest was directed at me, she pitched in too.
It was hard, grueling work, but it was the only way for us to work on my ship.
Ava was much smaller than us and couldn’t tear the gloon plants from the parched ground the way we could, so she shouldered the wheelbarrow and carted it back to the barn where Mom prepared and stored it.
My younger self helped out too.
He (I?) ran back and forth from the farmhouse bringing cups of water, fruit, and meals Mom had prepared the day before.
Sometimes I found Ava staring at the little man, losing herself to idle thoughts.
I wondered where her mind drifted off to during those moments and considered asking her about them.
I always chickened
