by Dan Glover
Rising to the surface he saw that his pursuers on horseback had given up doubtlessly thinking their arrows had done their jobs but the dogs were still trailing him, black and bloody-eyed brutes.
He realized he couldn’t make it to shore anyhow... the current was too swift. He felt the roar about the same time he caught sight of Danielle's terrified face going over the falls directly in front of him.
Chapter 80—Together Again
It was good to have everyone home again.
Ginger had always loved to cook though her meals usually far outweighed the appetites at the table. Today, though, the food was gobbled up faster than she could supply it.
The whole group was sitting around an enormous table Nate had salvaged from an old decrepit office building restoring it to like-new condition before moving it into the newest addition to Toulon castle... a combination kitchen and dining room that made the old one seem like a pantry in comparison.
"If you don’t stop eating like that, sweet Kirk, you're going to be bigger than our precious Chester."
She had grown to love the boy even though the memory of him pushing her down those horrid dungeon steps still lingered on the horizon of her memory. But this boy was so different than the old Kirk... it was hard to believe he had ever done anything to harm her in any way.
"You're an idiot, my darling Ginger."
He grinned at her, shook his head, and went back to eating. If anyone else had called her that, she would have been incensed, but she knew it was Kirk's way of telling others that he loved them... maybe it was one of the few residual habits left over from his former life, or perhaps he was simply uncomfortable sharing his love with others, but that was his way.
Lily had returned a fortnight ago, sad that her beloved concuba couldn’t be brought along, but delighted to be home again with her loved ones. Though she thought she had been away for billions of years, even trillions, everyone at Toulon thought she had only just left. When Ginger asked Nate why that was, he admitted he didn’t know only in a roundabout way much like Kirk with his idiot response.
"It's one of the anomalies about teleporting into other time dimensions that we need to further explore, darling Ginger... in essence, it appears Lily lived far longer on Miranda than what it appeared to us here on Earth.
"At first we thought it might have something to do with the place she was at but now we're fairly certain the timeline is the real key to solving the problem. It appears our consciousness perceives time in ways we do no yet fully understand."
"Look at it this way, sweet Ginger... time is relative to the perception of it. It may be that soon we will have the ability to enter dimensions where a second here lasts a billion years there... in fact, I think our Lady Lily and her friends were trapped in just such a place.
"Without the accident Lady Lily suffered when she inadvertently came into contact with the singularity of Nate's anti-gravity device we would have never known of such possibilities."
"But what good will that do us, darling Kirk?"
"Like it or not, my sweet Ginger, our universe will wind down just as the one where Lady Lily was at. When that happens, we can either wind down with it or migrate to another time line where time runs so much more slowly that it seems to stop from our perspective."
"Wouldn’t it also be possible to teleport to another universe?"
"Well, that’s what we would essentially be doing, Micah... the universe doesn’t exist as an objective entity standing separate and apart from us. It exists in conjunction with our perception of it."
"So what you're saying, Kirk, is that if there was no one here to observe this universe, it would not exist?"
"How would anyone know one way or the other, Micah?"
"Excuse me for interrupting your discussion, but who is that standing on the beach?"
The others got up from the table to look out the window with Ginger. A man was standing on the sand watching the sun rise over the eastern hills, or so it seemed.
"That's Alpin."
"How do you know, darling Nate?"
"I'd know that stance anywhere, sweet Ginger."
"Do you think Ena is with him, darling Nate?"
"Ena is here now, precious Ginger."
"What do you mean by that, my darling Lily? I haven’t seen her."
Everyone looked at each other in ways which made Ginger wonder if she was in the dark on something all the others seemed to know already.
"Oh, good... I thought I smelled something cooking. Have you saved any for me?"
Alpin's voice startled Ginger so that she jumped slightly as an arm gently found its way over her shoulders and Nate drew her close to him. Ginger was suddenly angry though she couldn’t quite understand why... maybe it was the smarmy look in Alpin's eyes when he took a seat at the table, as if he expected her to wait on him.
"Tell us where you have been, Alpin, and I'll cook you some bacon and eggs."
She said it half in jest but still, she thought the least he could do was pay her back for more cooking would be with a story. Alpin laughed the way she remembered him doing as he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table.
"I had a hankering to see the Grampians again... but they've lost their luster. No one is left in old Scotland so I sort of figured everyone would be here. I'm glad to see I'm not mistaken."
"Where is Ena? Did she come along with you, darling Alpin?"
"Why don’t you ask our Lady Lily, my precious Ginger... she can tell you all about Ena."
Books by Dan Glover
Liza McNairy Mysteries
Peppermint Soul
Baja Blues
Deadhead
Philosophy
Lila’s Child: An Inquiry Into Quality
The Art of Caring: Zen Stories
The Mystery: Zen Stories
Apache Nation
The Lazy Way to 100,000 Twitter Followers
The Gathering of Lovers series
Billy Austin
Lisa
Allison Johns
Tom Three Deer
Justine
Yelena
The Mermaid series
Winter's Mermaid
Mermaid Spring
Summer's Mermaid
Mermaid Autumn
Short Stories
There Come a Bad Cloud: Tangled up Matter and Ghosts
Mi Vida Dinámica
About the Author:
Dan Glover weaves a world of fantasy while abiding with a tribe of mystic cats somewhere in the great state of Illinois.