Is that a good enough reason?

It’s morning. You can’t actually tell it’s morning, and you can’t actually tell which morning it is. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but time works differently here. The first time, weeks and weeks had passed when it only felt like a few hours. Sometimes months and months pass and it’s only a few days in “real time”. I’ve had to learn how to distinguish.

After a while, it all feels the same. And I’m scared I’m repeating the same day over and over again. There is no change, there is no variety. There is just responsibility.

The plate is taken away, as are the outside set of cutlery. I didn’t even realise they had put it in front of me. Too late now; not that I wanted it—I could tell you exactly what it was and how to make it. It’s the same every day.

I thought this would be magical, like a fantasy. I am trying really hard not to make puns; there is no other way to explain it in English. It’s supposed to be every girl’s dream. I wanted it, so badly. I have a year’s worth of blog posts to prove it. I wanted him, and to have him meant this, and this was appealing anyway. Magic, royalty, hidden lands; how could I refuse?

Two years in, I should have refused. If I could write a letter to myself three years ago, the first line would be “Go stay with Matt for the summer. Do not go home.”

I want to blame Jane. I should blame Jane. I can remember the conversation we had when she suggested I go back to Boundary. She was sitting at the bar, waiting to walk home after my long shift. Dawn was coming, the light was creeping in, and she was hyped up on coffee. She was almost an animated character. “I’m going to Europe!” It rushed out of her mouth so quickly that if I wasn’t as hyped on coffee, I might have missed it.

Over the next week, we made plans. And that included me going back to Boundary, where no one was expecting me.

If only I’d stayed in the city.

But I live here now, repeating day after day, because I love him.

Is that a good enough reason?

Fire Hair and Red Lingerie

From the very beginning, she was always the one.  People ask, "how do you know?"  There is no knowing.  It just is. There was no before, there is no after, there is just her.  The girl with the fire hair.

I wish I could explain.  Tell the story how it's should be told, how it deserves to be told.  But I didn't live it like she did. I was bombard with two sets of images, all the time, never sleeping, never dreaming, just living the life here in the Shadow Earth and there, with me, in what Earth should have been.

So when I woke up in a strange bed that was mine, in a strange room that held hints of eight-year-old me but was prominently seventeen-year-old me, I looked out the window--and I recognised the view.  This was my house from nine years ago.  This was my house before it all started.

Honestly, I couldn't believe my luck. Had a just dreamt the past nine years?  If so, how come I couldn't remember the real, these, past nine years?

Then the red lingerie caught my eye.  That was definitely not mine.

I went downstairs, and there she was, making pancakes in this kimino style dress, with Natalia sitting on the barstool at the bench.  Natalia had her head down, colouring in something furiously, when Jaime turned to me and put a finger on her lips.

It all seems so dreamy and silly now, but what you have to understand is that I didn't trust her.  How could I trust her.  What I knew of Jaime is that she left five years ago, and we occasionally caught up with each other on the ground.  We couldn't even live together anymore.  I think I yelled at her one day and that's what made her leave.

After she removed her finger, she flipped a pancake in the air, making Natalia clap.

It felt like I had been missing something.  A hole in my gut suddenly closed up when I saw her making pancakes.  It wasn't that that made me love her--I couldn't care less if she made pancakes or made Natalia laugh--it was that I suddenly felt whole; she was what I had missed out on.  She knew that too.