Aura In LaLaLand

by Skye Grace

  Rowan nods and Wes continues, “I can’t imagine not being able to remember falling in love with Chris. Waking up and not knowing how I wound up in bed with this stranger, with a ring on my finger. Will you tell me what it was like?”

  “Well, eventually I did remember falling for Ethan,” Rowan starts. “It helped that I knew him in high school too, he was actually just as perfect then as he is now. The more I remembered, the more I could have smacked myself in the head for it! I’d been in love with him forever and hadn’t figured it out! Stupid… But yeah, my memories came back for the most part, once I accepted myself. Understood how much I loved my life, myself, and then my memories came back. Like what happened with you and Aura, too, right?”

  Wes smiles and gives her a nod, pausing to tuck a strand of hair back behind Rowan’s ear. Rowan sees actual stars and her knees give out, Wes making a startled little noise and holding her up before she crumples like paper onto the sand below. He has a thought that Rowan and Aura are more alike than he realized, and Rowan huffs.

  “Could you not do things like that, Wes? I know I’m married and all, but you are still the wallpaper on my computer at home. I don’t think my little fangirl heart can take much more,” Rowan begs.

  “Okay, I promise,” Wes laughs. “As long as you don’t talk anymore about your home PC. These tourists are already giving us some side eye.”

  Oh, tattooed interracial couple dancing together on an early 60’s beach. Okay, got it, toning it down starting now, she thinks to him with a smirk.

  Jacksen gives Aura a twirl and she lands back into his chest with an almost audible thud. She apologizes in her head and he just laughs, reaching up to touch the delicate, amethyst colored orchid petals around her neck.

  “How corny would it be if I told you that you look more beautiful tonight than I have ever seen you before?”

  “On a scale of 1-10? I’d say corn on the cob corny, like the fair kind with lots of extra butter and salt,” Aura grins. “Besides, you haven’t known me that long so you probably shouldn’t say that, like I could be more beautiful tomorrow, ya never know.”

  Jacksen licks his pink lips as he stares at her, holding back a smile while his hips still sway in time with hers, “Well, you may be right fair maiden. However, I wouldn’t call knowing you for a strong half a century ‘not that long.’”

  When we go home, we’ll have traveled over 50 years together, she comprehends. Or 100, if you count the years here and back. God, you’re right. I hate it when you’re right.

  “Really?” He cocks a sarcastic eyebrow.

  “No, not really.” She kisses him across his stubble lined jaw until she meets his soft lips and he sighs contently, his fingers trailing through the curls cascading down her back. When she pulls back, she finds him looking at her inquisitively.

  How’s it going? he thinks to her curiously. You used to being able to hear everyone’s thoughts yet?

  No! she shouts at him in her head, filtering through the different thoughts swirling around her. That guy over there is thinking about his secretary, naked, lying on his desk! While he’s on vacation dancing with his wife!

  Jacksen shakes his head, I hear that too. And trust me, I’ve heard a lot worse. Something for you to look forward to with this delightful gift.

  How do you stand it? she asks him, rather hopelessly, through her thoughts. He thinks for a moment and she tries to think about something else, puppies, cupcakes, unicorns, anything so as not to ruin his answer when he finally says it aloud.

  “Find someone who has thoughts so bright that they drown out the darkness coming from everyone else,” he says, the cheesiest grin spreading across his unnaturally handsome face. “How was that for corny?”

  “You mean it, though, don’t you?” her eyes sparkle.

  You know it, he winks at her. He whisks her up in his arms, spinning her around in a full circle, letting her down just in time to hear that dinner is being served.

  Jacksen, Aura, and Wes thank Rowan for not eating her share of roast pig as they devour what she refuses to eat. It turns out, time travel can leave you rather famished, and the vegan is no exception, stealing veggies off the others’ plates as she hopes they’re cooked in coconut oil rather than butter. Doubtful.

  A cool breeze rolls off the ocean and hits Aura on the bare shoulders right as the tinkling of a beautiful, and eerily, down to her bones familiar, voice rings in her ears. The voice she’s heard from behind her simply couldn’t be. It sends an icy shiver up and back down the length of her spine. Jacksen sees her, frozen in her chair, and goes to put a warm hand on her shoulder. He wants to ask her if she’s alright, but can hear that something is already off. He glances back to Rowan and Wes, their eyes now wide as unidentified flying saucers, the familiar voices behind them making all the little hairs on their necks stand up. The group of voices at the table behind them grow louder, rowdier, and they laugh together in a symphony of pure impossibility. The word echoes in the brains of the four travelers, impossible.

  That voice, Rowan’s head spins.

  Wes follows suit, saying in his head, stupefied, It can’t be. It can’t.

  Jacksen turns back to Aura, That laugh, I swear…

  Aura attempts to thaw the icy, impenetrable fear of the unknown, the truly impossible, and slowly turns her head to look at the table behind them. The people sitting there must have come in late to the party, because they wouldn’t, couldn’t have missed them if they’d been there before during dancing and cocktails. Jacksen, Rowan, and Wes follow Aura’s lead, turning their heads and gasping audibly, their chests tight with shock. Before them now sit four blissfully unaware strangers, clinking glasses and laughing, all smiles.

  Those aren’t strangers, are they? The thought flies from Wes’ head to the rest of their group, but none of them can breathe, let alone think. The strangers aren’t strangers at all, and it’s something the four of them can’t comprehend. The faces of the four people sitting at the table are not entirely, but practically, replicas of the group now staring at them in complete shock and awe. As they each stare at their inexplicable doppelgangers, the beautiful, young people seated at the table slow their conversation, realizing they’re being watched rather closely. They slowly set down their glasses and raise their eyes, gasping in stunned surprise at their likenesses standing before them.

  “Nana,” Aura whispers, incredulous, recognizing the face in this form only from old photographs. She would know this face anywhere, it had to be her. But how?

  The beautiful brunette sitting before her erupts in a fit of giggles, “Do I really look old enough to be someone’s Nana? Time to start with the cold cream before bed!”

  “Don’t… don’t you know who we are? I mean, I suppose you wouldn’t…” Wes tries and fails to communicate the absurd somehow-reality of what is going on here. He looks at the man that he knows to be a younger version of the grandfather he so dearly loved until he passed away when Wes was a teen. A striking version of himself, only with darker hair, shorter and slicked back.

  “I’m sorry, do we know you? I apologize, we’ve traveled quite a bit already,” the tinkling tones of the lovely, jet black haired woman’s slight Japanese accent, with English immaculate, are like music to Rowan’s ears. How can she not know I’m her granddaughter? Rowan worries to herself.

  “We…” Jacksen starts, unable to take his eyes off the strong figure in front of him, clearly his grandfather, down to the twinkling blue eyes and southern drawl. Much younger than Jacksen ever knew him, but clearly him all the same. “We assume you see the resemblance in us, as we do with you. You really don’t know that we’re your grandkids?”

  The table erupts in laughter at the mere thought of what they’ve suggested, cackling and chuckling until the intensity in the eyes of the group before them makes something click. They assess them further. The tattoos, the hair, it was not of this time, they have to admit. And the resemblance, striking. The table grows quiet.

  I can’t re
ad them, Jacksen thinks to the rest of his crew. They nod in response. I can’t hear anything, from any of them, Wes agrees in his head.

  Aura decides to introduce herself first and the rest follow. Aura Liddell. Jacksen Andrews. Rowan Wolff. Wesley Armand.

  The names the women hear are unfamiliar to them, yet, the men hear their own last names being echoed back to them and they swallow hard.

  “How could we never have thought to go that far into the future?” Wes’ grandfather admits in a whisper.

  Maybe you were afraid of losing each other? Wes asks them boldly in his head, with no response from any of them, making it clear to them that they do not share this mind reading gift.

  “Elizabethan England last week, Salem witch trials the next. That was depressing,” Aura’s grandmother informs.

  “Why didn’t we think we could jump forward? See what was ahead, what becomes of us? The families we create?” Rowan’s grandmother asks.

  “I guess we didn’t know we could,” adds Jacksen’s grandad.

  A magic light bulb pops into Aura’s brain and she prompts her group to try something in her mind. They all follow her lead, moving closer to their seated relatives, each placing a hand on their shoulder. Their free hands reach out to embrace each other, and the moment is beyond electric.

  Stardust swirls around them and the music, the people, everything begins to fade away. The sand trickles down, falling into nothingness and the eight of them are left standing alone, but together, in the ether. The four relatives, once seated, now stand as the air rushes from their lungs in synchronicity with the others. A hush of quiet that only a vacuum in space could create moves harmoniously in time with the swirling nebulae and twinkling stars.

  Eight sets of eyes are wide in wonder as the universe really does seem to revolve around them. In their years of travel, this is something the grandparents have never seen. Not like this.

  Aura’s grandmother attempts to speak, “I suppose we, or your parents, never told you what we were?”

  Aura looks to her friends and nods, knowing now that they were all told the same thing. In a whisper, they answer, “Scientists.”

  A muted laugh falls from Wes’ grandfather’s lips. “That’s what we do, sure, but I doubt the future holds any explanation for this. We search for answers hidden among our day jobs. But the magic we hold cannot be explained by science, I’m afraid.”

  “We go by the name SoulTravelers. We have met a few more of us along the way, but not many. None of us were able to travel in time until we met each other, in college. Is it the same for you four?” asks Jacksen’s grandfather.

  “They’ve all traveled before, but I wasn’t able to until all of us were together,” Jacksen explains.

  “But none of it makes sense, none of this makes any sense! Three of us traveled in time and our looks, our ages changed. But now, with the four of us, we traveled and look exactly the same. Everything’s the same except for the date on the money in our pockets. How is that? How is any of this?” Rowan laments into space, into the faces of their grandparents.

  “That was your personal journey, dear, only sped up because of your gifts. You needed to travel, you three, to find this one,” Rowan’s grandmother gestures to Jacksen. “Now your souls are complete, together. Our name, SoulTravelers, it explains that you can only travel independent of linear time if you have met like-minded souls. With each other, you cannot alter time or change your life paths.”

  Aura’s relative continues, where Rowan’s left off. “Traveling through time, without a care, it’s a gift so immense we’ve been afraid to part. To start families of our own, make a life with someone that wouldn’t understand or be able to travel as we do.”

  “Though clearly we do,” Jacksen’s grandfather adds, voice bittersweet. “Perhaps this is our last trip for a while.”

  Jacksen can’t hold back anymore. Any macho shoved aside, he breaks the space between them and wraps his strong arms around the past version of his grandfather. He hugs back, and the others follow, hugging their family with dire finality allowing them to squeeze tighter, until the body in their grasp seems to fade. The grandparents smile, and twinkle as the stardust does before they fade away into the black.

  The grandchildren are left alone, wiping eyes until they’re dry.

  “Wow,” Rowan whispers.

  “What the hell do we do know?” Aura asks in a hush.

  “Smile,” Wes replies. “Because, unlike them, nothing will keep us from each other, from this. Not your husband, Rowan, not mine. Not families, whatever. We’ll always be able to come back to this, to us.”

  “Where to next, then?” Jacksen asks with a smile, reaching out his hands to the others. But it’s too late to choose, and the four of them are falling. Falling. Swept away to somewhere with perhaps more answers, more adventures. More obstacles to face and perhaps, lessons to learn on how to actually choose their own damn destination.

  About the author

  Skye Grace resides with her rockstar/high school counselor husband and their cat in the Seattle area. After receiving her Master’s degree from Seattle University, Skye began teaching special education at the elementary level. She’s taken a hiatus from her other passion, community theater, to write Aura in LaLaLand. This is her first book, but definitely not her last!