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 Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:45 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:47 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:54 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:56 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:58 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:04 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:07 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:08 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:10 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:14 pm
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Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 6:54 pm
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Daniel found himself gazing out over an expansive desert of dirt and rock. An enormous roiling sun just touching the distant horizon seemed to be impossibly close. He was looking down from a mountain side, and saw that even the mountains themselves were dry and barren. He knew suddenly what he was there for, if not where it was he was looking at. And he did not have long to wait.
“Look familiar? No? Well, again you come, and again I ask. Have you remembered? At this point I’d be willing to accept anything really.”
Daniel turned slowly to face the human form that Mahvatshi had begun using. The body was human, a chiseled jaw and blonde hair cut high and tight in military fashion. Steely blue eyes that held no emotion stared back over a sneering smile that seemed so emotionless as to have been pasted on.
“I have remembered more than I want at this point. Anything in particular that you’re after?”
Mahvatshi’s false smile deepened.
“Must I spell it out? Do I have to give you the one thing that you held most close? Alright then. Fyhonn. Burimi. I have even heard it called Allik. The best word I found on this pitiful planet to translate to is Source.”
Daniel’s face slackened as his eyes widened slightly. Not entirely at what Mahvatshi said he was after, but at where he claimed to be.
“You’re already here.”
“Catch that did you? At least you haven’t lost your attention to details. Yes, I’m here. Technically I’ve been in orbit for quite some time. Problem is the place is so littered with temporal events that it’s difficult to pin down just when and where you are. I could almost think you had done it on purpose. Almost.”
Daniel took a step back, careful to not go over the side of the edge he stood near. Though the thought of what might happen if did so in a place that wasn’t even real did skitter momentarily across his mind. He reached to his thigh where Batakos should have been, but there was nothing there.
“Tsk. Not there? I have been practicing. Looks like it’s been good for me.”
Daniel looked Mahvatshi in his stolen eyes.
“If nothing else, I swear I will find a way to keep you out of my mind. See how much good your practice does you then.”
Mahvatshi looked almost stunned for a moment, and then threw back his head and laughed a dry and dead laugh. A laugh that held neither mirth nor wrath. Suddenly the laugh simply stopped and Mahvatshi stared back at Daniel with a sneering glare.
“Is that what you think? That I’ve been hounding you in your dreams? Assuming you even have them. You stupid thing! You’ve been hounding me. Reaching out unconsciously, plaguing my thoughts. Faw, you aren’t even worth the effort anymore. Know this then. I will find you soon enough. And when I do, I will rip the knowledge from under whatever rock you’ve stuffed it. The fact that you’ve impaired yourself to the point of not being able to fight back just makes it all the easier. Now go, and count your final days.”
<<<<>>>>
Daniel awoke with Mahvatshi’s final bellowing laugh still echoing through his head. As he sat up in the frigid air of night, he almost forgot where he was. A quick look around revealed a roof top, complete with air conditioning units and even forgotten strings of laundry. Rolling to his knees and crawling over to the edge of the roof, Daniel looked to the horizon to find the lit silhouette of the Eiffel Tower far in the distance. Right. I managed to make it here, then I must’ve dozed off. Wait a minute, I don’t doze off. Coming to his feet carefully, Daniel realized he was still wearing his Aqua Springs uniform. He was going to have to find some new clothes before continuing on. Problem was he had no idea why had come here.
The last Daniel could actively recall was barely containing his rage at…everything, then throwing himself away before anything could go wrong. He dimly remembered a few stops on the way, stumbling through streets, bumping into people, but nothing concrete as to where he had been. Or when. Scanning down one side of the building he was on, Daniel spotted a fire escape, and proceeded to hop, shimmy, and clamber down to the street level below. Once there and out front of the building, he was glad to find cars and trucks of all sorts lining the silent road. At least he was in the same time period, or at least close.
An hour later and Daniel had confirmed that he was indeed in the same time period, the same night in fact. He had found a small pocket calendar in a clothing store he had appropriated garments from. He doubted he’d be winning any fashion shows anytime soon, but he stuck out less than with his uniform. He’d left some US dollars in the register, though he had no clue what they were worth here. And now that he knew where he was, and had clothes that didn’t stand out as much, it was time to figure out what had brought him here. Daniel knew that it wasn’t completely random, as several of the sketches he had done had turned out to be the Eiffel Tower, or the French flag. Why he had sketched those things was still a mystery.
Several hours of wandering the streets of Paris later, and Daniel was no closer to uncovering any of that mystery. He had walked beneath the Eiffel Tower itself, but aside from a feeling of familiarity he had found nothing. He had walked the malls and gardens trying to stir some sort of recollection, but nothing came. As the sun began to rise of the next day, Daniel was left with only the clues he had arrived with. The Eiffel Tower, in Paris, France, and carved stone. There was one other, the name he had shouted before everything went fuzzy. He could try looking up the name Nadya, but he doubted that there would be only one in the entire city. Worse, he had no idea this was even the right time to look. His visions in Vienna had shown him a car that was not of the current time, though it couldn’t have been too far removed judging by the design. The fact remained though, that with only that to go on he was left with a window of almost one hundred years.
Obviously not really knowing where to look, Daniel began wandering even more aimlessly, hoping more that chance might be on his side. And at first it seemed as if nothing was going to help. One street looked like the next, shops and businesses blended together, and people everywhere gave him the same look. One that showed uncertainty, but also with a hint of pity. Daniel could only imagine what he must look like to elicit such reactions. It was after one such encounter with a group of young ladies that Daniel found himself on a tiny residential street. It was a house in the middle that stopped him, with its overgrown gardens and barely tended walk. The small house was barely a cottage, but was in good repair. But what truly stopped him was the image that he saw strolling up its walk. His vision didn’t completely fade, but rather he saw a ghostly image of the red haired woman, walking up to and into the house. Before he realized what he was doing, he found himself at the door, ringing the small bell there.
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Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 9:10 pm
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{{ Okay, don't know what happened near the end here, maybe it was because it's just late, but damn if I didn't almost make myself tear up. crying Just warning ya. }}
Daniel didn’t know what he was expecting to happen after he rang the bell. All he knew was that something had led him here, and he was going through with whatever it was that he had started. It took a minute, and a second ring, but then the curtains in the door’s window moved slightly. The sound of a lock sliding aside and then the door opened a crack. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for Daniel to see that the middle aged woman with short black hair was not the woman that had been haunting his memories. He tried to smile, and it must’ve achieved something close because the woman open the door slightly more, though she still seemed apprehensive.
“Oui?”
“Je suis désolé madame, je suis à la recherche d'un vieil ami. Connaisse-vous un Nadya? Long cheveux roux? Près de ce grand?”
Only after he had spoken did Daniel realize that without so much as thought he had begun speaking in the local language. He tried to think of when he may have ever spoken the language before that moment, and came up with the moment before he fled Aqua Springs. But other than that he had no memory of anything else. But of course, with him, that meant very little. The woman just shook head and backed into her house.
“Non, monsieur. Il n’y a pas ici avec ce nom. Je suis désolé."
Daniel stayed a few moments after the door closed and the lock had been slid back into place. He should have known it wouldn’t have been that easy. Turning to go he found a hunched old woman standing by the gate with an unusually large black bag. She watched him leave and as he passed Daniel felt something different about her, and then it hit him. The look on her face wasn’t pity or caution. It was curiosity. Then he heard her speak up.
“You know Nadya?”
Daniel froze. The voice was strained, but strong. And the accent was familiar to the Russian he had heard from Nadya, but muted by years of blending with French. He slowly turned around and walked back towards the old woman.
“Nadya. Yes, with long red hair. Did she live here?”
The old woman nodded her head still looking up at him curiously.
“Yes. Nadya Olvesky. Many years past she did. But not for long time. How do you, so young, know Nadya?”
That question helped Daniel to confirm that Nadya was of a recent time period. Perhaps even the one he was in now. It did raise the issue of him knowing of her. A consideration that only now made sense to need an answer.
“Uh, she was a, um, a friend. Of the family. I’m doing , uh, some research. Yes, on the family history. On my father’s side. Yes.”
The older woman nodded again, but this time the look on her face dimmed. She pulled a small scrap of paper from her large bag and scribbled an address and an additional number in a hand that was barely legible. But Daniel’s hope leapt. Over the fact that not only did someone else know of the mysterious woman that he’d been hallucinating over, but where to find her. Daniel barely got a thank you out before he turned and started running back down the street to a fuel station he had seen there. Pushing his way through its door, much to the apparent disapproval of the owner, Daniel quickly found a rack of maps. Pulling one out and unfolding over the microwave, now to the vocal disapproval of the owner, Daniel found his current location and then began looking for the street and number that the old woman had given him. Tracing a road with his finger, he pointed to what should be the intersection he was looking for. Locking the route to get there into his mind, he dropped the map and rushed out with the station owner shouting curses as he ran.
And he didn’t stop running for what seemed an eternity. He kept up his pace and slowed only when the flow of traffic would have made things difficult to explain away. The looks he attracted now were mostly concerned and much less pity. A time or two, Daniel managed to catch a glimpse of the top of the Eiffel Tower through the gaps in taller buildings, or over the tops of shorter ones. Time began to blur for him as he kept running, dodging people and vehicles as he went. Finally he realized he was coming closer and began watching the street numbers. As he finally came skidding to a halt in front of a wrought iron gate, his emotions sank. The name mounted in the wrought iron was Cimetière de Bagneux. As he looked through the gate the surrounding fence line he saw nothing but headstones, statuary, and tombs.
Daniel looked at the scrap of paper, and suddenly the meaning of the second number after the address made sense. Walking slowly into the cemetery, Daniel made his way through the burial sites. Each step was heavier, and Daniel did not know why. But he was beginning to understand. At last he found the plot number he sought, and there he found the stone he had seen in his mind. Instead of a regular headstone, there was a plain marble cube, with side embedded in the ground. There was some sort of impressions on either side of the stone, with wording on the front. Coming to stand in front of the cube, Daniel look down at the inscription chiseled into the stone’s face.
“Nadya Olevsky, 12 March 1903 – 14 June 1940, Beloved wife and sister, taken too soon in a moment of hate“
As Daniel read, something splashed on the words. He put a hand to his face and it came away moist with his own tears. He felt such loss and agony, and yet still no clear memory. Pictures flashed in his mind, but so jumbled as to be incomprehensible. He knelt down before the stone, and from this new angle, could see that the impressions on the side were hand prints. But not chiseled or carved, instead seeming to have always held the image that they did. Cautiously Daniel reached his hands out and placed them in the impressions. They did not fit, exactly. The impressions were slightly longer in the fingers and narrow in the hand, but even so, it pained him even more. At last he gave in. It no longer mattered as to specific details. He knew what the feeling must mean, and acknowledged what it was. He immediately knew he could go back and find her, but instead he laid his face on the stone and mourned her. And as his tears washed over her memorial, he remembered. He remembered Nadya Ovelsky. He remembered his first and only love. He remembered why he never had loved again, and he wept.
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Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 4:50 am
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Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 7:20 am
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