Dara, Page, and the Secrets of the Multiverse

▷ 13.3

Page's nights were spent in the studio, filling his phone with hour-long songs of Dara's world. Her creations piled in the dark corner, each one telling a tale from the other world. He was never a fantasy junkie, but from the way Dara explained it, she was from this realm called Wyrona where magic was as common as grass. It could have been an adjacent dimension or a parallel universe, but Dara's face crumpled at the notion when Page brought it up. So, yeah. It'd stay as a mystical realm. Right.

Dara's storytelling was methodical. She went from explaining the basics of her world in her songs, weaving them into the first five blankets. Next, she moved to talking about what was wrong and how it contributed to her world's destruction. Something about personal greed, thirst for power, and limited resources that came straight out of a novel. Finally, she sang about what happened after the apocalypse, and how she ended up in Page's world.

It was through the fifteenth spread of cloth that might have been a picnic blanket that Page got to know how her life had been like since she ended up in the broom closet and before he discovered her hideout. In her confusion, she turned to the only thing she understood—singing. So, that was when the voice started haunting the studio and what set this entire thing up.

Now, Page was a known smuggler of wool threads from his first part-time job. They started disappearing from the delivery pile, and the sheep could only be sheared as many times in a year. Even Page's boss in the farm began side-eyeing him whenever he volunteered to handle the home deliveries. He cut a deal with the home's manager, and she agreed to Page taking a bigger portion of the deliveries since she felt the patients needed time for other activities and some of them have grown bored of knitting.

Today, after everyone had gone home and he had bolted the studio from the inside, he snuck back to the broom closet and found Dara waiting by the pile of dusty boxes. Most of the stuff has been cleared, pushed to a single corner, but she picked through them in the rare moments she wasn't weaving. There was one time when she picked up a random item and asked Page about it. He couldn't tell her it was a...something that would raise a ton of questions on a topic he absolutely didn't want to talk to her about.

She smiled up at him when she held up a pack of balloons and he dropped next to her. "Greetings, Page," she said. "What is this?"

Page stared at the transparent plastic packet, torn at the edge to get the first ones out. "Those are balloons. We take them like...this," he explained, drawing a piece to further demonstrate his point. "And blow air into it to inflate it."

The lip was dusty, but he worked at a children's play pen before and has seen and experienced worse. Within seconds, a bright orange balloon dangled from his fingers as he tied it off. "Children love these, so we keep them around," Page said, passing it to Dara.

He never realized her fingertips were tapered to a point, and that the points were as solid and sharp as knives until she touched the balloon's edges. One small poke, and the brittle plastic exploded with a bang. Dara screamed and threw her arms over her head, scrambling back. A strong curse ripped from her lips, and Page heard it once or twice from her.

"Children love weapons?" she asked, lowering her arms.

Page opened his mouth to explain then decided against it. With how devilish the new generation of kids were, he might as well have the same conclusion. Instead, he kicked the useless piece of plastic away. "That's only because the material is old," he reasoned. "It doesn't burst like that when they play with it, unless you puncture it with sharp things."

Her eyes landed on her fingers. "Oh."

"Anyway, enough about things in my world," Page said with a shake of his head. "What about your world? You mentioned needing to save it. How do you plan on doing that?"

Dara turned her attention towards the pile of blankets thickening by the closet's center. "I...will attempt to bring magic from this realm to Wyrona," she said. "I will have to sew the magical threads back into the fabric of reality."

"I hate to say this...but this world doesn't have magic," Page replied with a sigh. "You've come to the wrong place."

To that, Dara shook her head. "This realm is teeming with powerful threads," she said. "I feel it. Wyrona thrives with stories, and your realm not only experiences them, they make stories. They make their own threads."

So, if that logic applied, then people in Wyrona could never fabricate stories and just tell things according to their first-hand experiences? "Wait, so if you aim to bring back magic using Earth's...well, power," he pondered. "What would happen to you?"

"Whether I give my life back to the realm who gave it to me or not, I have no qualms," Dara answered, her tone dipping down into fateful acceptance. "What matters is that I save what was dear to me."

"No," Page said, drawing closer to the box of wool threads he gave her. "There must be another way around this. You can't just die for an entire world who won't even remember you or know it's you."

Dara gestured to the blankets. "That is why I have told you my story," she said. "I sang my soul into these threads so no one will forget me."

Page opened his mouth to argue, but she beat him to it. "I will not be selfish and think of no one but myself. What was one life against millions? Billions?" she asked. "If I fail, another would simply fill my place. And if I don't try, I will be damning my people by stealing the future they could have had."

"I shouldn't have given you threads," Page said. "I don't want to be the one abetting your suicide."

"You will have contributed to saving my realm," Dara reasoned back. "People will owe their lives to you."

Page crossed his arms. "I don't need an entire world when you are the price I need to pay," he said. "You can be selfish. Don't throw your life away like this."

"It is my duty," Dara answered. "My mind is clear, and if you will not give me the threads, I will unravel everything I have with me, including my stories."

"No need to do that." Page sighed, rubbing his face. He had just gotten to know Dara better, and now she was going away? How cruel could fate be to both of them? "When will you do it?"

Dara clenched her jaw. "Tomorrow."

And just like that, Page dreaded the word and what it entailed.