Center of Attention

Don't Act Like It Won't Work

      I screamed at Smallik as his body was pinned against the tree. I could feel myself fading away as his breath had tightened and his eyes had lost their light. For once in my life, I was relieved at the sight of a faery hoard coming after the metallic pegasus. A pegasus. Brokilna wasn't messing around with us. Well, with them. Either way, I was terrified for them, and I usually was the one instigating fights like that. I shuddered as Dad had almost fallen into the darkness of the faery realm, and I saw the pain in his eyes as he was watching a friend of his fall apart in front of him. I hated that. As much as I said so many times that I hated his guts, I had hated seeing my dad miserable. I imagined not Smallik, but my mother being pinned there. In pain. I wondered if Firstien had acted the same way when Mom died. Uncontrolled. Angry.
     That's all I saw in his stare as he clasped onto the air for Smallik to grasp him.

     Tick. Tick. Tick. Continuously, I heard the sound of a clock going off, pricking against the edge of my ears like it was purposely loud. I clutched the grass. No. There was no grass. It was a smooth surface with nothing to grab onto, and I opened my eyes as if I was staring into the eyes of a lone beast. Instead, it was a white floor, and along the walls had been lamps. Wooden lamps lit with candles and just candles were strewn across haphazard tables made of oak wood. I... didn't die. I shouldn't have died.
     I picked myself up too fast, and everything in my eyes started to fade around me. I clutched a table one of the lamps closest to me was sitting on. The lamp had stained glass surrounding its inner candle. Where was Giartt? This was his domain. I breathed heavily as I tried desperately to fix myself. How could this have happened? What could spark me to be here in the first place?
Nothing. There's no reason unless I died from some heart attack when I passed out.
     "Hello again."
     I turned my head and thought I saw Smallik there. No. His face was much thinner, and his eyes were much wider. Giartt.
     "Why am I back?" I spat, gripping the edges of the table. "I should be with Viobin and Smallik in the real world. In 4025."
     Giartt had a sympathetic grin, like everything was hiding behind that fake smile. "I summoned you. That's why you went unconscious."
     "Summoned?" He could just take me out of reality to this land of tacky lamps? "Why did you summon me?"
     "Smallik doesn't have much time left in that era. He's failed to mention this to you, but Sobollum's potion is a limited thing. He will be set back to the same day we all started from."
     The beginning of the day... I shuttered at going back.
     "You don't, either. In fact, I'm sending you back to 9127 when he goes. In half of a day's time," he continued. His eyes were full of so many faded thoughts. The words he spoke stung the air like a hot Summer day.
     I blinked. "I don't want to go back. Nothing's changed. I've felt it."
     "Nothing changed because nothing will change. Not unless you go against all boundaries and become a murderer."
     "I'm willing to do that." I wanted to change the future, live with my wife and son even though that was a future that seemed impossible to grasp. "You told me the first time that I needed to fix everything that was broken. What's broken? What do I need to fix it?"
     He clapped his hands, and the sound reverberated in the hall. The lamps started to shatter into pieces, the candles melting as the sound reached them. Giartt grabbed me by the collar of the one shirt I still had on, holding me so close to stare into the depths of the black eyes he had. They shined. They reflected the glass and melted candles in them. I breathed heavily in to his face, trying to keep my eyes sullen as I watched every second of the reflection.
     "You wouldn't have wanted to go along with my idea since you're an Enforcer," he said, dropping me back down to my feet. "Start here."
     Behind us was the blood again. It twisted and contorted into many shapes until it was showing inside that there was a hospital room. I knew that room better than the doctors that worked in it.
     "What are you saying?" I questioned, turning my head back to Giartt. "That was my wife's hospital room."
     He nodded. "Half a day. You have half a day to make a difference."
     "I have half a day to save her life in the future?"
     He nodded. "Her's. Viobin's. Smallik's. This is your job."
     The only job that would get me to where I needed to go. The world around me started to fade into blackness. A void. It was like I was travelling backwards into the darkness of my own mind. As desperately as I tried to scream for reality, it didn't come. I just sat there, wishing for something to happen even though I knew that it would never work that way.
     It was dark for a long time until I felt grass underneath my hands and light hitting my eyes. I clutched onto the grass for a while until the light was too much to bear, and I gasped for the fresh air. Fresh. It was an air my body definitely wasn't used to, but I was attempting to get there step by step. Faeries fluttered to and fro, whispering and conniving with each other as a few glances landed on me. I whipped my head around a few times, but I didn't see Smallik. However, I saw a blue figure approaching, blackish eyes staring upon my fallen body.
     "Hey," Viobin greeted with an uncertainty in her tone. "I was worried that you'd never wake."
     I stared towards the sunlight. I slept through the entirety of night. "You can't get rid of me that easily," I joked. Even if you could, Giartt wouldn't dare let me die to the hands of a pegasus or Brokilna Sobe. "Where's-"
     "Smallik is... not doing well. He's breathing just fine and every physical wound is gone, but he's... failing. Some organ or another is failing."
     Why would that just happen? His heart, maybe? I wondered if that pegasus crushed something important enough to make him fall apart so quickly, and every feeling in my body sunk to the lowest degree. Smallik was the last person in the entirety of the world that I wanted to die right now. He almost did last night.
     I stood up, staring into her eyes to find myself in the reflection. "Don't be discouraged. Smallik is strong."
     He was weak as a foam board.
     "I know he is," she agreed, though also lying through her teeth. "I'm just so full of worry for the both of you. He kept... saying something about being immortal or something, whispering it like it was the only thing he could say to me."
      A lasting wish. I wondered if faeries could actually grant immortality since the shock on Viobin's face was like more of disbelief than anything else. Immortality was impossible.
     "He's been telling me you guys can grant it," I said to her with less hopeful eyes. "I doubt that's the case, but one can hope, I'm sure."
     "Well..." she trailed off. "I... think it is... possible. Maybe."
     Possible? Everything in my mind was suddenly loose, like a fire blazing on the inside of an old building. If immortality was possible, then what else in the world could not be? I saw a pegasus covered in metal. There were tree people with bows and arrows pointed right for my skull. Death was so very real in all of those moments, and yet Viobin was telling me of something that negates the ability to die all together. I gave her this look of disdain as she seemed hesitant to talk about the possibilities of what she could and could not tell me.
     "That's not important. Come with me," she had avoided the answer to her own folly.
     I passed by many blue-skinned faeries, watching as they fluttered through gaps in the hordes of flowers and leaves. All of them had stared at me like I was a stranger never known before. Their black eyes were just like a bug's, and then it wasn't too long after that they had gotten back to what they were doing before.
     Viobin led me to the same place she had before. It was a large clearing, and in the center was the unconscious body of Smallik. His face was contorted in pain, and a few faeries had kept watch over the condition of his body. One turned to Viobin, fluttering up to her ear and whispering something. Viobin sighed loudly as the words had disappeared. Her eyes were full of something heavy, and she turned to me so she could say what she wanted.
     "He's not getting better," she cried out to me. "They say it's his lungs. From being crushed by the metal." She touched her own chest as if to emphasize. "We faeries can heal the best we can, but our job isn't to heal organs in the way that his are falling apart."
     He has half of a day left. There had to be something we could do. "What about the immortality thing?" I asked. "You said it was possible."
     "That won't make his organs better."
     "But it will save his ass." I crossed my arms. "I need Smallik. This isn't like someone that can just be there and then not a few minutes later. He and I have a mission to save the future, and in reality he only has half of a day to fix it all. I only have half a day. We're forced to go back, and I'm not going unless he goes back with me. Alive."
     She had held her hands together, lowering her gaze to the grasses below. "Fine, Firstien. I will try the 'immortality thing', and I'll see if he gets any better."
     Good. I thought about what Smallik said about it all being a petty dream. It wasn't. No. In fact, it was probably the greatest idea he's ever had, and he's the one who led us here in the first place.