Words - 735
It looked different now, her Wonder. The Well. Different than the last few times she'd been here -- her trips with Titan, or with Alois, and the visits peppered in between, just to drop things off. Now she saw it not just as it was -- or, on occasion, in memories of how it had once been, a thousand years ago -- but in new, out-of-order memories of how it would someday be. The Well stood bare, today; but she could remember visits that she might make someday as an older woman, where it was crowded by appliances she'd gathered over the years. A washer, a dryer, a mini-fridge -- even a dishwasher she'd lugged up there on one memorable occasion. A laptop. Her iPod. A boom box that was old, and certainly well out of range of radio signals from Earth -- but that still played CDs with dogged reliability. A hot plate. An electric toothbrush. Anything her whims had once compelled her to bring up with her.
It was odd, picturing the place this way. She stood by the Well for a while, staring down at her reflection wreathed by the overhead starscape. She was twenty-one years old. The year was two thousand fourteen. Her face was unmarked by scars and unpalled by sorrow, compared to the vision of herself she now held in her head.
"The future is not knowable," she said aloud -- as much to reassure herself as to serve as a reminder that, indeed, she could still say things aloud. The words didn't die in a garbled mush in the back of her throat. "There are an infinite number of outcomes -- and just imagining this one makes it changeable. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm not chained to a future version of myself."
But then, those were things to say. Just things to say -- dim platitudes that meant nothing, really, except that she didn't like the road she was on and didn't want to be on it.
What did it matter, if she kept just following her feet anyway? What had she really been gaining, just trudging on ahead in this hideous war, trying to react positively to the things it brought her way?
She had rejected the path -- but what had she done to step off it?
Hvergelmir made war on no one. But she'd sat around, all the same, wanting to change the world while still knowing all it was ever going to do was bring war to her even if she didn't meet it in kind.
There had to be other ways. There had to be more. More she could do, more she could be. There had to be things she'd never dreamed of, answers she'd failed to reach for hard enough. If Labyrinthite was going to come for her eventually, one way or another -- if she couldn't stop her sun -- then she'd make him run. If her time was limited, she'd do more with it than the future said she could. She'd find some new path. Some way to be better at what she was trying to do. Some way not to fail all the people she loved, the people she cared about. Something better to offer them than whatever cheap gains her death had ultimately purchased.
Her thread was impossibly light in her arms -- it always was. She carried it with her away from the Well -- and eventually crossed into the heart of the temple where she'd once lived. Past the kitchen, up the stairs, away from the old feather bed in the big bedroom, and on and on until she reached a room with wide windows, open on one side and up above to the glory of the sky.
There, waiting -- with the same Gothic aspirations to height as the columns around the well -- stood a single, gilded loom.
She'd been bringing thread to string it with, practicing what she remembered and what she'd researched about how to use it. She thought she had enough thread, now -- and she certainly had enough time. She'd packed food for a long stay.
Setting down the rest of her thread, she took a seat at the bench and put in her earbuds. Then -- stretching her fingers reverently out to find all the careful pieces of the old machine, lining everything up into place -- like a pianist tickling her fingers across the keys of a beloved instrument -- she began to weave.
It looked different now, her Wonder. The Well. Different than the last few times she'd been here -- her trips with Titan, or with Alois, and the visits peppered in between, just to drop things off. Now she saw it not just as it was -- or, on occasion, in memories of how it had once been, a thousand years ago -- but in new, out-of-order memories of how it would someday be. The Well stood bare, today; but she could remember visits that she might make someday as an older woman, where it was crowded by appliances she'd gathered over the years. A washer, a dryer, a mini-fridge -- even a dishwasher she'd lugged up there on one memorable occasion. A laptop. Her iPod. A boom box that was old, and certainly well out of range of radio signals from Earth -- but that still played CDs with dogged reliability. A hot plate. An electric toothbrush. Anything her whims had once compelled her to bring up with her.
It was odd, picturing the place this way. She stood by the Well for a while, staring down at her reflection wreathed by the overhead starscape. She was twenty-one years old. The year was two thousand fourteen. Her face was unmarked by scars and unpalled by sorrow, compared to the vision of herself she now held in her head.
"The future is not knowable," she said aloud -- as much to reassure herself as to serve as a reminder that, indeed, she could still say things aloud. The words didn't die in a garbled mush in the back of her throat. "There are an infinite number of outcomes -- and just imagining this one makes it changeable. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm not chained to a future version of myself."
But then, those were things to say. Just things to say -- dim platitudes that meant nothing, really, except that she didn't like the road she was on and didn't want to be on it.
What did it matter, if she kept just following her feet anyway? What had she really been gaining, just trudging on ahead in this hideous war, trying to react positively to the things it brought her way?
She had rejected the path -- but what had she done to step off it?
Hvergelmir made war on no one. But she'd sat around, all the same, wanting to change the world while still knowing all it was ever going to do was bring war to her even if she didn't meet it in kind.
There had to be other ways. There had to be more. More she could do, more she could be. There had to be things she'd never dreamed of, answers she'd failed to reach for hard enough. If Labyrinthite was going to come for her eventually, one way or another -- if she couldn't stop her sun -- then she'd make him run. If her time was limited, she'd do more with it than the future said she could. She'd find some new path. Some way to be better at what she was trying to do. Some way not to fail all the people she loved, the people she cared about. Something better to offer them than whatever cheap gains her death had ultimately purchased.
Her thread was impossibly light in her arms -- it always was. She carried it with her away from the Well -- and eventually crossed into the heart of the temple where she'd once lived. Past the kitchen, up the stairs, away from the old feather bed in the big bedroom, and on and on until she reached a room with wide windows, open on one side and up above to the glory of the sky.
There, waiting -- with the same Gothic aspirations to height as the columns around the well -- stood a single, gilded loom.
She'd been bringing thread to string it with, practicing what she remembered and what she'd researched about how to use it. She thought she had enough thread, now -- and she certainly had enough time. She'd packed food for a long stay.
Setting down the rest of her thread, she took a seat at the bench and put in her earbuds. Then -- stretching her fingers reverently out to find all the careful pieces of the old machine, lining everything up into place -- like a pianist tickling her fingers across the keys of a beloved instrument -- she began to weave.
