Day Four ∞ Monday evening
THEY HAD DINNER on the porch again. They didn't talk much this time. Mickmi spent most of the time gazing at the view before her, of the front yard. She seemed relaxed, serene, with Zorro lying by her feet. Sometimes she would meet Danny's gaze with a smile in her eyes, then return to her meal. She didn't seem shy as he'd expect many girls might be after what transpired between them. There was no sense of awkwardness between them at all, and he marveled at that.
He scraped the plate of its last morsel, put it aside and leaned back, letting his thoughts wander. He had a lot on his mind, a lot of things that came up today that he hadn't had the chance to process yet.
He'd learned that no one was looking for Mickmi. No one except "the guide" Selina Aave. That disturbed him greatly. He was sure it had something to do with the traumatic event that caused her nightmare the day after he found her. But he couldn't tell her that—at least, not until she started remembering it herself. According to the guide, she must find the answers herself.
So I shouldn't even mention the guide to her. No matter how much he wanted to let her know that there was someone else looking out for her.
He believed now that she'd arrived on that plane, or craft or whatever it was that was at the bottom of the lake; and that it had become a part of a cover-up.
She believed she came from Earth – but her ideas about Earth didn't match up with his reality. And since that was something she somehow remembered, it was something that could be pursued.
That's a plan. He nodded to himself.
∞
The dog was fed and the dishes done. Danny took the last dried dish from Mickmi and put it away. Then he turned back to her.
"You've made a bit of a breakthrough today... You know that, right?"
She nodded once and waited.
He stepped close to her. "Are you up for exploring some more?"
She looked at him with a quizzical expression.
He smiled and stroked her hair back behind the ear, then put his mouth next to her and said, "I mean, exploring your elusive memory."
She leaned her head against his and smiled, nodding once. "How?"
He met her gaze. "Can you draw?"
She tilted her head with a slight movement.
"You don't know. Well, let's find out. Wait here." He jogged to the study and returned with a pack of typing paper and some pens and pencils. He put them on the dining table and pulled out a chair.
"Come sit down." He went on the opposite side of the table and sat with his back to the window.
He pulled a few sheets out of the pack and pushed them together with the writing implements toward her. "This is what we're going to do. I'm going to say something, or ask you a question. But you're not going to try to think or remember anything. You're just going to write or draw the first thing that comes to your mind. Okay?"
She nodded once.
"Okay." He clasped his hands in front of him on the table, holding her gaze. "This is a hard one... You saw the globe, but it doesn't match what you know as Earth. So show me what your earth looks like. Draw a map."
YOU ARE READING
Shadow Of The Past Trilogy ∞ THE DISPLACED
Science FictionThree Fates, Two Earths, One Chosen... After a cataclysmic event hurls three women to another Earth, they find themselves separated, stranded thousands of years in the past... in 1979. The same night an unknown object plunges into a lake, something...