Otherworldly Sights: A Short Story Collection

Time

"It all started with Plantation Road. My childhood home, where I grew up. From the ages of four to nineteen, I lived there. It was my friends, my neighbours, my school, my happiness, my torture. It was my own small world.

My father was a scientist. I never knew my mother, but I was told she was one as well - the greatest he had ever known. I would sit on his lap, and he would tell me stories, like we're doing now, about her. I was named after her, too.

So, after I turned seventeen, I became more and more curious about the floor below - part of a garage space that he'd rented for work. I had been allowed in before, but never permitted to look at the machines in detail. I felt my own connection to science every day, not only because of my heritage, but also the strange, beeping bracelet he had given me that I always wore.

So, at seventeen, he told me about the delicate build of spacetime. You know that story. And after that, I could detach myself from it - spacetime, I mean - using the bracelet and explore a bit in a different time.

Anyway. I moved away, my father stayed, I explored the world, I traveled, I backpacked. I traveled to the past, too - never the future, you know that - in short periods at first and then longer. It was amazing. I saw everything I could. But my heart was still at home on Plantation Road.

So I went back. Back, after years of travel, to dear old Plantation Road. The neighbours I had known welcomed me. I wanted to meet the new ones, too, and that was how I first came to know the man across the road (and others, too, of course).

You see, I had explored the past almost everywhere, but never in my own home. So I did. I went to Plantation Road's past. I saw different architecture, different city landscapes, different transportation methods, different people.

And that was the thing, though - not exactly always different people. The man across the road always seemed there. I noticed him in the 1950s, the 1900s, the 1850s, the 1800s, the 1700s, the 1600s, all the way back to a grainy - because you know visibility and sensations get less clear the farther back you travel - picture of a boy mysteriously arriving one day with no parents to a small farming village that would one day become my own Plantation Road.

So one day I decided to meet with him for coffee - either his lookalikes had owned the same plot of land for centuries, or he, too, was a time traveler - and we rubbed each other's good sides immediately. Oh, don't laugh, Freddie. It's a perfectly good expression.

And one meeting turned into one more, and one more, and then we were going to the movies together and meeting mutual friends and travelling and moving in together, into a beautiful house on Plantation Road. And then one day, I took him to the first farming village where Plantation Road now stands and he got down on one knee.

And we got married in ancient Greece, and honeymooned all across the world in all different times, but of course we ended up settling right back here in his apartment on Plantation Road. And then we had you."

"And now, here we are!" I finish, my curiosity sated. Fourteen years of asking, and now I finally know how my parents fell in love.

"Yep. Here we are." My father stands up. "But now, we have to go. Because Angie's father - " my mother smiles at her name on his lips - "has invited us to a coronation in 1360. It'll be very nostalgic to visit my teen years."

Angie laughs. So do I. This is really a weird family - and I'm no exception. After all, I am my mother's daughter, and my own beeping bracelet will someday - when I'm old enough - be able to take me anywhere.

But of course, I'll always come back to Plantation Road.

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A/N:

I'd make excuses for the hiatus, but to be honest I'm nothing more than lazy. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this part, because I certainly did. And vote! Voting is good. 🌟

I'll be off now. Enjoy the few months before I publish my next part, my amazing readers!

-Tori ⌚