1 The Day She Died

The sky is shrouded in dark blue. It seems to glow despite the late hour, stained by decades old street lamps. The bulbs emit a cheery yellow despite the LED installations a few blocks down. They light the sidewalk of a two-way street. The street is bracketed on either side by tall old buildings.

A young woman walks down the sidewalk, her lips pursed as she taps away at her tablet. She occasionally pauses to impatiently push up her glasses. Her clothes are no-nonsensical: well-kept jeans and a green blouse. Her stride is heavy and slow, a sharp contrast with the speed of her thumbs. The sound of the tablet is off, but her nails make a steady thacking sound against the glass.

Passersby duck in and out of the shops, weaving around her like ants. They steer clear of her, casting second and sometimes third glances as they scurry away to dinner or home. It is as though she is a bubble traveling through water.

It may be her lack of concern for those in her path that brings her such attention. She strolls steadily onward in a straight line, her eyes trained on the screen in her hands. Even teenagers with their cells instinctively weave around traffic, but others move around her instead. Her only saving grace is that she stays to the right.

It may be the way her brown hair glows a deep copper under the streetlights. Her hair is in a messy bun held together by a solitary rubber band, but the fine texture makes the ends of her hair stand out from her neck like a fan. This fan shimmers as it passes through shadow, ranging from rich chocolate to dark gold.

It may be the old and oddly regal appearance of the tablet, which is noticeably smaller than the models from the past decade. It bears a well-worn royal blue case. A single rhinestone sticker wraps around the lens. A nob rests between her index and third fingers, worn thinner through repeated use.

She walks for hours more. Whether they are because of action or appearance or anachronistic flavor, the glances eventually die off. Less people are around to give them. The hour is too late for the rest to care. Traffic dwindles, with only the solitary late worker or traveler passing by. Her stride becomes lighter, more relaxed, as though a burden has lessened.

The young woman stops at a crosswalk. She looks to the left, then to the right. Her pale blue eyes are attentive to her surroundings for once. Her long pale thumbs pause, resting delicately on either side of the keyboard. Her frown deepens momentarily when a car rolls through, but she does not move until it is safe to cross.

A young man crosses in the opposite direction. He, unlike her, is walking quickly. He does not look away from his destination across the street. As he passes her, his shoulder bumps into hers.

She falls backward and catches herself on her elbows. She falters, then falls the rest of the way because of the awkward angle. The back of her head meeting the street makes a dull sound. The air forced from her lungs is louder.

Her tablet leaves her hands in the fall.

Her elbows scuffed and her gaze dazed, her eyes meet his wide red ones. His white hair flashes in the light as he ducks down to help her. His hands are a few shades lighter than the leather band adorning the wrist he takes. He apologizes.

She waves his hands off with one of her own. She carelessly swings it to the ground on the opposite side to bring herself back up. Her fingers touch broken plastic and are sliced by broken glass. Her already pale skin becomes ashen gray. Her head turns to the casualty of the fall.

Tears drop to the pavement. Her hands clutch at the remains of her tablet, as though she can pull it back from the brink. She desperately scrapes at the pieces scattered on the pavement. Held-back words drip with held-back tears, her lips moving without sound.

The writing of a lifetime and spare change.

A pickup truck rockets down the road, bearing a beard of caked mud. Wood is strapped down tightly in the back. This truck is a tool to help the driver make an honest living, unlike many others in the city. The lights are a bright yellow. The tires are a shrill screech as they skid against the asphalt. It does not stop in time.

With a thud, she sees stars in a moonlit sky. Branches crown the moon in a tangled mess of autumn brown. The air is fresh with not even a hint of gasoline or cooking, only bearing the scent of abundant flowers.

Her tongue burns with the metallic tang of blood that is not there. Her fingers sting with cuts that do not exist. She feels bruising from falling on a ground that is now covered in strangely soft grass.

Her hands are small, and they clutch at grass in ham-fisted clumps. She rolls over and looks around, peeking over the tall grass. The young man is not there, and neither is the dirty truck. The ground is covered with grass, not asphalt.

The meadow, surrounded by trees, is dotted with numerous poppies.

The flowers are beautiful. Round white petals that fade into orange at the tips, a fuzzy black eye in the center, and red stripes extending from the center to the outer edges like a tongue, they are reminiscent of tigers.

She notices that her tablet is also gone.

Instead, there is a notebook. It has a beautiful royal blue leather cover with a small silver crescent moon in the top right corner. The tip of a yellow ribbon hangs out of the top. The edge is frayed, as though someone chewed on it while reading.

She fumbles open the notebook, and the ribbon neatly lies along the front. A beautiful wooden fountain pen lies in the gap created by the width of the cover relative to the parchment. There is no ink to go with it.

In beautiful calligraphy, an unknown hand had written a message on the first page. The ink is a beautiful dark blue varying in shade by a hair with each stroke. As a result, the font seems to shimmer in the moonlight. Her eyes squint as she struggles to read the phrase. Her words carry a heavy lisp.

"Once upon a time, the end was just the beginning."

She hears twigs snap, and she looks up.

A young man with the trappings of a knight edges cautiously into the meadow then gasps. The sword in his hand falls to the ground, the blade making a faint whooshing sound before sinking a couple inches into the dirt. He picks one poppy, then another, until he holds a bouquet of flowers. Worries pressed into the corners of his eyes fade as he beams brighter than the moon.

A soft sound escapes from her throat, and he looks around. His brown eyes go wide when they alight on her. She suddenly notices that he is significantly taller-no, bigger than her, and wonders why she did not notice this before.

"What is a small child doing out here?"