Whence We Wander

The sleeper

Twas the sound of the morning birds that woke me. I'd never heard such melodolic chaos, but for some reason it struck a curious note within me. I hadn't expected to awaken though, the experiment wasn't supposed to end like this.

But let us step back a few decades.

I was only twenty years old when I discovered that I could shift between the layers of the living world. The normal witches call it astral travel but it's more than that. Let me explain.

Astral traveling, you basically leave behind your body and are limited by distance and time. But the shift I can do? I can go backwards in time, no distance limitation and it's not my soul that travels, it's my physical and astral self. I found out how I could do this before I got up for breakfast with my family. I was still living at home with my mother and I swore I could smell and taste something in the air before I even got up that morning.

Strawberries, whipped cream and fresh made pancakes. It was not something that I had expected but I "woke" a second time, in my own bed, wrapped in the velvet dreaming warmth of my blankets, blinking in the dark of the early morning hours in puzzlement. I could still smell and taste it but my stomach growled alerting me that I had not in fact eaten yet. It couldn't have been a dream, could it?

As I stirred and dressed myself to face the day, I could hear my mother puttering about in the kitchen, muffled several rooms away. "Liza, are you up?" My mother, gods love her so, she has this lovely voice that cuts right through the house walls like a felt needle thru mesh fabric, a piercing contra alto that sounds so full of warmth. I took my time responding, it's not the first time I delayed but I was still processing my confusion of waking twice in the same morning. But I caught a whiff as I stepped out of my bedroom, bready sweetness, and strawberry with that milky cream whipped to a fluffy cloud. My mouth watered as I called out in reply. "Yes mum, just getting myself sorted out."

"Could you bring down the redwood box in the hall closet? I need to get some tools out and I forgot to grab it." My mother can be a bit forgetful at times, she usually gets up about an hour before myself. "Yes mum, be there in a minute." I headed to the bathroom, to wash up and brush my hair. As I enter the bathroom the lights flickered on, causing me to jump a bit. I kept forgetting she had installed motion sensors in them. In the mirror behind the sink, I saw myself sleepy eyed staring right back. Fair skinned with a smattering of brown freckles across the bridge of my nose, an aquiline nose that feels too big to me, and large blue and green eyes, I hated my lips, they felt too thick to me but I'd been called a Brooke Shields look alike, with the arch of my brown brows and the expressiveness of my face. I shook my head, sweeping back the tussle of shoulder length brown waves and stroked the brush through the thick mass of hair.

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By the time I got to the kitchen with my mother's tool box, she had a plate full of pancakes waiting for me with a generous helping of strawberries and cream. My stomach snarled again at me, a reminder of the tease I woke to earlier still and as I sat down with the box sliding in the table toward my mother I remember mentioning to her what happened. "Mum, did you wake up twice this morning?" I'm curious if she'd ever heard of such a thing, insomnia aside I generally sleep a full six to eight hours but this morning started out especially strange. Mum looked to me, she had a steak of platinum in her brown curls, a witches lock as some call it but we shared the same heterochromic eyes and fair freckled skin. "What do you mean?"

I hesitated with a forkful of pancakes close to my mouth. "Well I woke up earlier and could smell and taste these pancakes. I woke up a second time, not sure if it was a dream or real. But the memory was quite fresh." Mum stared at me in puzzlement, twice woken? I could see her processing that bit of information as I dove into the fantastic smelling pancakes like I was a starved woman. "That is odd.. can you describe what else you felt when you woke the first time?" Mum had a cup of tea in her hand, settling into her chair at the table as she stared at me in intrigue. "Mph it's... It was like waking normally but I could smell and taste these, even felt them in my mouth. I went back to sleep I think cause I woke up the second time feeling confused and hungry as hell."

Mum sipped on her tea, listening to me mumble around the delicious pancakes and spoke softly after I finished my description. "Not deja vu... That's something else entirely. Have you checked the library yet? I'm sure there has to be something recorded in the family library on this." She sat back in confusion, what else could it be besides a witches gift? I ended up finishing breakfast and slipping away to the library in the second floor of our home. We lived in this place for the last decade or so, a lovely Victorian home with two stories and walk in closets. It had needed some work when we had bought the place but between mum and myself, we managed to restore it to some of it's former Victorian styled glory.

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Authors note: Hello I'm new to writing and I hope that you enjoy this teaser drop for "Whence  we wander." If you like my work so far, please feel free to follow me and leave a comment or feedback. I am especially nervous about sharing my writing on platforms like this but I'd like to see some of it come to publish one day. Anyhow, stopping here until I find my muse fairy again.