HUMAN SPIRIT

HUMAN SPIRIT; Ch. 10

Julius was silently looking over the words of the third chapter, his eyebrows furrowing as he tried to comprehend it. Everything was well and understandable, but this “half of an Abstract” business was something that irked him. To be considered only part of something and not exactly whole, it made him feel less… real. As if he had to share his soul with some unwanted intruder. For a moment in time he contemplated denial, because in reality, all of what he'd read could've been absolute bullshit. Even so, he couldn't help feeling some sort of electricity rise out of the goosebumps of his skin. Something that completely smoothed out the ripples in his doubts. He tried to maintain a sense of justified distance on the matter.

He put the book down. Leonard and him were sitting across from each other on stools at the kitchen island. Julius had, at first, protested against letting Leonard into his home. He wanted to hide  inside the house alone, without anyone to bother him. But with danger slicing through Julius' veil of safety, all notions of suspicion had to be forgotten. Dropped. The fact that Julius had once known Leonard in the past, though, helped his case a bit, even if he was supposed to be dead. Which brought on a whole level of confusion that Julius was still dealing with.

Leonard had thrown together a sandwich, and in a less-than-mannerly fashion, had inhaled the thing. Julius simply sat there and watched him, analyzing his movements and eating habits as if Leonard were an animal in a zoo.

“This is... stupid. Leonard, are there any other, um, Tokens?” Julius asked. He was already fairly certain there were (despite the fact that the whole concept could've been a blatant lie). The nautilus shell being one, and the growing suspicion of Leonard’s carved stick as well. The question was more-or-less an indirect way to receive confirmation of such.

Leonard nodded and swallowed a bite of his BLT, reaching around to his back pocket. Pulling it out, he showed it to Julius.

“Yeah. This one’s mine.” So Julius was right-- and the Token, he suspected, was probably the reason Leonard faked his own death. The details? They were still unknown. But Julius wasn't thinking about that. Before him was a mahogany piece of wood, most-similar to the shape of a bookmark, except much thicker. Tiny little Xs seemed to mark the top. “It’s a stubborn little thing.”

“Welll... what does it do?” Julius asked. He wanted full details.

“Well, you should already know. You’ve dealt with it before,” Leonard shrugged. Julius leaned forward and put his elbows on the island, showing his interest. Leonard sighed. “It can alter the past, but not any past. I call it stubborn because it doesn’t allow me to do whatever I want. The parameters of my altercations, I’ve yet to figure out the extremities to.” Julius nodded haltingly, indicating he understood, but only on a certain level. 

“The book says a Token can have a personality,” Julius stated for confirmation, looking up from the book to carefully eye Leonard. “Even though it isn't sentient?”

“Right.”

“Well, then my Token's a jerk...”

Leonard smirked for a second, but remembered the stick in his hand and shook it a bit.

“Anyways, if I mess with time, it’s called Intervention. When you found that note in the urn, that was me who put it in there. I knew the extenuating circumstances and took action as followed.” Julius, who had a glass of water, seemed to emulate his difficulty understanding the subject in the fact that he had trouble swallowing the water as well. He set down the glass after recovering.

“So everything rewinds after you break that stick? And once time reverses, the Token's fine, because it's like it never broke at all?" Julius asked. It was easy enough in theory to comprehend, but applying it to real life was easier said than done.