Rift

Chapter 8

When I woke up, I was in my room; Luca was sitting on the edge of the bed near my feet, staring at me intently as if to make sure I wasn't going to pass out again. I pulled my blanket up around my face, not wanting to look at him completely, though everything inside me just wanted him to curl up under this blanket with me and tell me everything would be ok, even if I didn't know that myself. Hot tears began falling on my arm and soaking my blanket, and a second later, I felt Luca lie down beside me, pull the blanket away from my face and kiss my forehead.

"Was all of it a lie?" I cried.

"No, none of it was. They told me after we started dating, Sawyer. I've loved you since the first time I saw you," he said, "Everything is going to be ok. David and Molly love you as if they were your real parents; you've got family and friends who love you here. Don't worry about the past, ok?" Luca said.

"Easy for you to say, you didn't have to deal with this, did you?"

"Actually, I did. I was just lucky enough that my mom came through the rift with me."

"What, really?"

"Yeah. I was born in Florence in 1560, and when I was 5, my mom and I were on our way to the market to buy bread because we didn't have anywhere to make it in our house and we just accidentally walked through one of the rifts into downtown Toronto," Luca chuckled a bit at the thought, but I could tell he was hurting a bit.

"How long have I been here for?" I asked.

"You were 16 when you came through the rift so you've been here almost 2 years," he said, nuzzling his face into my hair. I could feel his warm breath on my scalp and while it felt a bit weird, it was oddly comforting.

"What about Artie and Sophie?"

"You sure are full of questions, aren't you? It's only natural, I guess," he laughed, "Dr. McKinnon fell in love with a mortal and they got married and, well, you know the rest."

"Are they like me?"

"Kind of; I mean, they will have unnaturally long life, but they won't live forever."

"Oh." After that we just lay there for a while, neither of us saying a word. Immortality was a weird thing to contemplate; everyone I knew right now, my parents, Luca, and eventually Sophie and Artie, everyone would be gone. Through time, all I would have would be Mr. Soloman and Dr. McKinnon, if those were their real names at all or just ones they'd adopted for the current time period. I lay there and imagined what it was going to be like, having to move around and change my name, start a new life every few decades or so because there is no way people would believe I was getting older if I didn't look it.

"This is weird, right? I can't...I swear I'm having a dream right now and that I'll wake up if someone just, you know, gently punches me in the face or something," I said, moving closer to Luca so I was almost completely in his arms.

"The world is a strange and mysterious place where anything can happen," Luca said.

"Tell me about it," I laughed awkwardly. Luca moved so he could kind of envelop me in his arms and we just lay there for a while, processing everything that had just happened, or rather, what he had been talking about. There was still so much I wanted and needed to know, but it could wait, at least for a little while longer, "I want to see her. My mom, I mean."

"Sawyer, she's been dead for almost 200 years..." Luca said.

"I don't care, I want to see her," I practically threw myself out of the bed and straightened my clothes before pulling on my shoes, "Are you coming or not?"