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❛ ᴡᴀsᴛᴇʟᴀɴᴅs ᴏғ ᴛɪᴍᴇ. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚ ▎❛ 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 ❜ ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴏʙsᴛᴀᴄʟᴇ ꒱
❝ TIME IS A VERY POTENT THING ❞
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As October rolled into November and the whistling winds brought a greater chill than before, Five decided it was time to test the theory of two-person spacial jumping in preparation for the time traveling they would be doing soon. Lola sat by the fire that evening and warmed her hands with the orange glow after the coolness of their day's walk. The boy sat next to her, though the space he left between them could have been described as excessive.
"I'm thinking we'll try spacial jumping tomorrow," he announced.
The brunette glanced over at him. "Are you sure? We haven't eaten in a few days so you won't have much fuel."
"We've been stocking up for this reason," he reminded her, "might as well try it before it's too late. I'm not one to put things off."
"Well I am," she admitted, "at least when it comes to school projects and such. I suppose that's why I don't want to practice— I feel like I do better when I wing it."
"Yeah, well, that's not an option this time," the boy said firmly, "you don't want to be lost in the unknown space of time travel so this is our best bet."
"What'll happen if I am?" she asked.
The girl received a shrug in response. "I've never thought about it since it doesn't affect me. Every time I blink it only lasts for exactly that— a blink in time. It's never long enough for me to think about what would happen if I got stuck. Time travel's the same way, really, so I don't know what would happen if you got lost."
"I might end up in another time," she suggested, "and I could be the one to escape the apocalypse."
"If that was the case it probably would've already happened to me."
"Not necessarily. You've only tried to go backwards," she pointed out, "and like you said, getting lost isn't going to happen to you, just potentially to any passengers. So it might be entirely plausible that I could end up in the 1960s or something if you get the math wrong."
"I'm not going to get the math wrong," the boy responded grumpily.
"Isn't that what you said the first time?"
"Would you just let that go?" he snapped back.
"Nope, since it's the only thing I can currently hold over your head," Lola said brightly, "if you mess up again though I'll be sure to give you a hard time about that as well."
Five gave a long-suffering, drawn-out sigh that usually came with her obstinance to let his mistake go. Lola rolled her eyes, used to his terrible attitude and lack of humor by now. She even knew that he didn't really mean it and that he was also probably more amused than anything else but that he would never admit to something like that.
Instead, he ignored the statement and said, "get some rest. We have a lot of practicing to do tomorrow."
✧✧✧
The next day dawned grey and chilly as every other one had before it. The sky's cloudy cover had not changed in the entire six months they'd been stuck in the apocalypse and there had been no true weather except for blowing wind and raining ash, both of which persisted. Neither teen took notice of their now-familiar surroundings as they stood next to each other.
"The best way to start this is to do a small jump I think," the boy decided, "it won't take much energy and the probability of you getting lost will be less."
He made to reach out and grasp her arm to secure her passage. Lola pulled away before he could touch her. It wasn't that she was afraid of him, it was that she had no idea what to expect from moving so quickly through a given space. Like a normal person, she'd only ever walked anywhere. Her only experience with teleportation of any sort was that which she read in books and none of the variations had been described as a pleasant experience, as most passengers wound up feeling sick or some other nasty symptom. The one thing she definitely didn't want to do was throw up in front of him.
"Wait," she said hesitantly instead. "Maybe— maybe we should, uh," she looked away from his gaze, piercing even from behind his goggles. Why was this so hard? "Maybe you should hold on to somewhere else? I don't want to, uh, get lost if you're grip isn't good."
He would know what she meant, right? That she would rather hold is hand while they jumped than him just holding some part of her arm? It wouldn't assuage her true anxiety but it would— probably— at least help.
"I'm not going to let go," Five answered with impatience clear in his voice, "stop stalling, idiot. We're doing this whether you want to or not. Unless, of course, you'd rather spend the whole winter by yourself."
The girl flushed slightly. "No, no I don't. I just—" she paused again as she felt embarrassment creep in. "Uh— can I hold your hand instead?" she blurted out, looking towards her feet as she waited for his response. (She could almost picture his smug look even if she'd never actually seen his whole face.)
"Are you flirting with me?" came his amused—and predictably smug— question. Her face reddened and the brunette was very glad it was covered.
"What? No!" she exclaimed, "I just don't want to get lost and I think that would be the best way to prevent it." Good save. Wait— she didn't have to come up with a 'save'— that was the truth. He was just the one who misinterpreted it to get under her skin like he usually did. She definitely didn't want to hold his hand. Yeah, definitely not.
"Right," he at least seemed mostly convinced, "because that would be an entirely ridiculous thing to do, not that I would be surprised since it came from you." He sighed rather dramatically, "but if it would make you stop stalling I suppose we can do it your way."
The boy held out his gloved hand with his palm up. Tentatively, she placed her own gloved hand on top of his and was pretty sure her face was more red than it had ever been in her entire life. Even before the apocalypse, Lola hadn't had much experience with boys since usually none would look her way twice (or even once.) The only hand she'd held had been her uncle's or father's and she didn't think either counted. This probably didn't count either since they were wearing gloves but it was most likely the closest she'd ever get.
For Five, this was the first time anyone had held his hand. Even on missions, his siblings had only grabbed his arm or wrist to get him out of danger— not that they usually needed to because of his spacial jumps. The feeling of fingers interlocking with his was strange, admittedly, but not entirely unpleasant. Briefly, he wondered what the feeling of their joined hands (without their gloves) would feel like, especially with their lack of skin-on-skin contact for the entire time they'd been in the apocalypse— and even before that for him at least.
After so many months of solitude (even with the boy right next to her, Five always made sure to keep his distance) being able to touch someone even through clothes was an almost otherworldly experience. He must have felt similarly since he didn't jump as soon as their hands were clasped together. In fact, both teens were staring wide-eyed at their joined hands and neither realized that the other was doing so.
They most likely would have stood there like that much longer had Five not jerked out of his stupor to remember their mission. He cleared his throat. "Right, then. You probably won't feel great until you get used to jumping— you should've seen me the first few times. Lucky for you, though, I'm much more understanding than my father and won't make you continue until you're ready. Just know that we're going to be doing this for as long as I can keep it up once you recover, got it?"
Lola's mouth was dry which had nothing to do with their lack of water (or their joined hands) and all she could do was nod and hope that was acceptable. The boy readied himself by folding his free hand into a clenched fist while his fingers tightened around the brunette's. Behind his goggles, his eyes closed and Lola was sure he was mentally preparing himself for if this didn't work.
She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting— maybe the feeling of being shoved down a tube, some sort of motion sickness feeling or the up-and-down stomach turning of rollercoasters but it was none of these.
One moment, she was standing with the remains of their campfire on one side and Five on her other, and the next she was several feet away with her hand still clutched in the boy's. He'd been right: she hadn't even blinked and yet they were feet away from where they'd started. And— oh, god, she was going to be sick. Lola immediately released the boy's hand and wrapped her arms around her stomach as she felt the sudden urge to vomit.
The girl dropped to her knees and placed her hands on the ground, praying that she wouldn't embarrass herself too much, even if Five had reassured her that this reaction was normal. Next to her, the boy's eyes had opened and he spun around, pleased with his own success that he really hadn't thought was going to work. "We did it!" he exclaimed, almost amazed, "I mean, I knew I could, but I didn't think—"
His words trailed off when he realized the girl wasn't sharing his enthusiasm. One glance downwards at the sound of slightly choked coughs made him drop to his knees. The brunette had already pulled down her mask in order to avoid that disgustingness and was now cough-hacking up what would've been very messy had there been enough food in her stomach. In a surprising gesture of concern, the boy wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"Hey, hey— it's okay," he started in an unusually reassuring, surprisingly worried tone, "just breathe, okay? It'll pass. It's not going to last long."
The girl took several large breaths in an effort to follow his suggestion and felt the nausea subside slightly. She slumped against him with relief. "God, that's horrible," she muttered, closing her eyes to fight off the last of the feeling.
"I know," Five said in strangely sympathetic tone, "it was a bit of a nasty shock for me when I found out. I was only three when it first happened too. I don't really remember the details but something that surprising is hard to forget entirely. You're gonna be okay, though. Clearly, since I can do it just fine now. It just takes some time to get used to which is why we're practicing."
"Can we be done for today?" Lola asked in a slightly whiney voice, "I don't think I can take another thing like that."
"We have to do at least one more," the boy chided her, "we don't have a lot of time to practice if we want to be prepared for this winter."
With a groan, the girl pushed herself away from the boy and stood shakily. Five joined her a moment later as she regained her balance. "Well, we might as well get it over with."
"Are you sure? We can take more time if you need—"
"I'm fine," Lola cut him off, slightly perturbed by the concern he was showing. "Let's go."
✧✧✧
Over the past few days, the brunette girl had been mulling over Five's father's riddle of acorns and ice. The practice with spacial jumping had encouraged her to think about it even more as the riddle of time itself was even more intriguing now that she knew someone so closely connected to the timeline. She'd discarded several dozens of theories already of what the answer could be— anything from literal to metaphorical— and had tried to look at the question from all sides as she usually did.
Lola even recalled the conversations she'd had with her uncle in his workshop that had revolved around time and its cyclical patterns. Most of these were obviously seen through the reproduction of plants as they never really died but were just 'reborn' into a different generation.
'A spacial jump is trivial compared to the unknowns of time travel. One is like sliding along the ice, the other is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn.'
The girl remembered what spacial jumping had felt like: nauseating at first but as Five had said, she'd gotten used to it. On several of the tries, she'd done her best to keep her eyes open in hopes of seeing what the world looked like as they blinked through it. From what she could gather it was like throwing a stone in the water— as it hit the surface, the ripples would condense around the epicenter before they spiraled out. As it sank, the world would right itself in a different place. Of course they couldn't sink but they did reappear in a different space than where they began and the jumps had felt like she'd been submerged under water, too.
Lola supposed that Reginald had meant 'sliding along the ice' in two ways: one, that it was very easy to do (Five made the spacial jumps look easy with practice) and two, sliding allowed you to get from point A to point B faster than average walking which was also the point of Five's powers and subpoint two-a, she guessed that with both sliding and jumping, a person would be able to see their starting point and finishing point, unlike with time travel.
'Akin to descending blindly into the depths of freezing water and reappearing as an acorn.' That part had given her the most trouble. She'd heard stories of people who'd gone underwater and gotten trapped under the ice but none of them had reappeared as an acorn— just with some form of hypothermia so she supposed he hadn't meant that line literally. Metaphorically, she supposed he meant that time travel changed a person drastically and to move around in the timeline one had to have a flexible way of thinking and not so rigid as to be stuck in the future. (Maybe Five was wrong and math wasn't the way to get back to his time period.)
Lola's mind kept returning to the 'acorn' part of the riddle though, as if it something was telling her that solving that would allow her to understand what Reginald was trying to say. An acorn does not become an oak overnight was one of her uncle's favorite sayings when he was working on his clocks. He always seemed to become a different person in that shop and had gently chastised Lola's impatience with that familiar line.
The girl frowned thoughtfully as she stared up into the dark expanse of sky. Five was too arrogant for his own good most of the time. Maybe his own impatience had something to do with his time travel not working. Maybe he had bitten off more than he could chew and had overestimated his abilities as he was usually wont to do? He'd tried to become an oak without becoming a sapling or even a sprout first, thus getting stuck in the future without a way back. Perhaps the trick was to start small in an effort to understand the limits and extent of his own power before jumping seasons or decades into the future.
If he'd only gone seconds and then tried to go back, perhaps Five would have been able to figure out how to get home from an even greater gap in time, thus acorn-ing into a proper time traveler.
"Five?"
"Hmm?"
"You know that acorn riddle that your dad told you before you left?"
"What about it?"
"I think I figured it out," Lola announced.
"Give it a try, then."
"Well, what if you overestimated your ability to time travel? I mean, it's a pretty powerful thing— maybe it's got even more limits than your spacial jumping does and therefore you can only do seconds accurately, not decades," she explained.
A few feet away from her, the boy scoffed, "what would seconds do for me? I need more than that."
"Not necessarily," the girl said lightly, "my uncle used to say that an acorn does not become an oak overnight, meaning that I needed to have patience. Even the day-to-day changes as a seed grows into a sapling has an infinite amount of difference, same as what travelling only seconds can do. Perhaps if you'd tried to start small and then increase your ability you wouldn't be stuck here."
"Yeah? And what can I do with seconds?" he asked.
"Quite a lot, actually," the brunette answered, "think about the Butterfly Effect: one slight change can set a whole different course in motion. I mean, if in one second my father decided to not tell my mother he loved her, I'd be a whole different person. If in one second I'd decided to go upstairs on April first I probably wouldn't be here right now. If in one second you'd moved on from my house and made a decision to ignore my tapping I'd still be trapped in the basement. You could probably even rewind time by less than a minute and save the course of a person's life. Time is a very potent thing, Five. You don't need much to affect an outcome."
"Even if you're right it has nothing to do with helping me to get back," the boy said finally, "I can't go back seconds and suddenly return to 2004. The most I could do is have this conversation again."
"You could have this conversation again, change your response and see the different outcomes," Lola suggested, "besides, maybe if you started practicing seconds now, in a few years you'd be able to return properly," the girl tried to ignore the heavy, stone-like feeling that suddenly settled in her stomach as she was reminded that Five wasn't trying to stay in the apocalypse with her.
"No thanks, I think I'll stick to the math," the boy said scornfully, "I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough."
"If you say so," she answered easily, and both of them fell back into silence in an effort to get some sleep.
✧✧✧
The next day, the two of them prepared to do their time jump past winter. After much discussion, they'd come to an agreement that their belongings should be left behind and they could reclaim them in the new spring. Because of this, Five and Lola worked together to build a mini fortress out of lift-able rubble to entomb their wagon and protect it from any snows or storms that might happen between the present and the future. Standing back, they studied the rubble mound.
"Do you think it'll work?"
"If it doesn't we'll have to start from scratch."
"We barely have that much anyway," the girl pointed out. The only things she was truly worried about were her books. Five was taking the eyeball with them in his pocket but they'd both decided everything else was staying behind— even the white violin.
"Well, now's a good a time as any," the boy said bracingly, "might as well see if this works out."
The brunette tried to swallow her apprehension. "Are you gonna be okay?"
"You're concerned?" Five asked, almost teasingly.
"No, but I don't have much I can do to help if this goes sideways," she tried for an unaffected tone.
"It won't," the boy answered confidently, "the future is far less predictable than the past and much easier to manipulate," he held out his hand, ready for her to take it. Lola grabbed the boy's hand and felt the now-familiar heat creep up her face as they secured their grip on the other.
"It'll probably feel as bad as your first spacial jump," the boy warned, "although I did feel fine minus the apocalypse shock."
"Right. Let's go then."
Five closed his eyes and, like the spacial jumps, Lola figured he was planning their route through time or however is power truly worked— she only knew the base of it, after all. Then, he took a step forward and she followed suit until they were lightly jogging. A rift opened before them, brilliant blue and mirror-like as it appeared out of nowhere.
Then they were there, going through it. The brunette felt a tug somewhere behind her navel, the feeling of the world being turned a full three-sixty, and then warmth that had previously been absent hit her face which caused her eyes to open. She hadn't even realized she'd closed them. Lola took in their surroundings and her blue eyes widened as she realized it worked.
"We did it!" she exclaimed, as awed as Five had been with his first successful spacial jump. "I can't believe it worked! I mean, of course I knew it would, but—" unable to hold herself back and not really thinking about her actions, the girl threw her arms around the boy next to her.
"You're amazing," she said happily as she wrapped her arms around his neck. It was only when he stiffened in surprise at the action did Lola realize what she'd done and froze. "How the heck did I get here?" she asked, startled. The brunette abruptly pulled away. "Sorry. Let's not talk about that. Uh, looks like our stuff made it."
She changed the subject awkwardly and gestured to the pile of rubble. The boy, seemingly fully recovered both from their brief travel and the unexpected contact, nodded. "It seems so. We'll have to take it apart to be sure."
Together, they uncovered the mound that they had made only minutes ago. Lola let out a relieved breath when she saw that her books and the white violin were in nearly the same condition as they'd left them. As Five inspected the rest of the items, the girl's attention turned towards their surroundings to take in the changes that had happened over the course of the four months they'd skipped. The fires had been long out by now as the last of them had been smothered by whatever snowfall had happened. None of the piles of rubble had seemed to change much, though Lola could've sworn that the stench had lessened (that was probably just wishful thinking, though.) Then, she realized something was different and her gaze was drawn upwards.
"Five," she said breathlessly.
The boy looked at her, confused, and the girl pointed upwards. While there was still no sun (they weren't that lucky) and heavy gray clouds covered the sky, nothing was falling from above— no rain, no snow and. . . no ash.
"The winter storms must've cleared up the atmosphere a bit," Five remarked, "we'll still have to be careful since it could return at any time."
"I thought the smell was better," the girl admitted, pleased with their bit of good fortune. "But I thought it was just me. Maybe we'll get actual sun soon— or even rain."
"Unlikely," the boy answered briskly, not wanting to get his hopes up, "there's still a lot of recovery for the world to do and we've only moved forward four months. It makes sense that the ash would only fall for a year but anything else will probably take two or more except snow. Come on, help me check the stuff."