June Tale 2021

Hello! If you're new here, here's how this works: in the beginning of the month, I ask a question. I get answers from people, hopefully. I take one of those answers and write a short story based on it, then put it out on the last day of the month. Sometimes they're actually pretty good, and sometimes they're a real mess. But at least every time I put some words on paper. Screen. Whatever.

Here you can find that story.

I also read it into an audio format, if audiobooks are more your thing than actual written words.

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If you got a superpower for one month in June, what superpower would you want?

Time hopping (answer from Maria)

Like everyone, I had my first Test at ten. I remember how I stood there, butterflies fluttering in my stomach, waiting for the results. It’s a weird thing, the first Test. Everything is new and exciting and you don’t quite know what’s happening, and that makes you nervous. And while you’re nervous about the results, you know the likely result well before you get to the Test. Very few people Match at ten, but some do, and they want to start training the powers as young as possible. The light on the monitor flashed red, and it was confirmed I was not one of those people.

I also wasn’t one of the people who Matched at eleven, or twelve, or thirteen. I was jealous of those who had already found their Match, but I wasn’t worried. A lot of people had Matched, but most still hadn’t. The next two years would be the big ones.

But when those two came and went, the gnawing feeling at the bottom of my stomach became heavier. The feeling that a part of me was missing. Every teenager who hasn’t been Matched worries about being one of the few who never do. They’re almost all wrong, but they almost all also Match at fifteen, latest. Half the people still left at sixteen go through another five Tests until it’s determined they simply don’t have a Match.

“What do you think your Match is?” Mette asked me one time, a little before my sixteenth birthday. The ever-present weight in my stomach rolled over and made itself noticeable. I had been doing a good job in the last few weeks keeping myself busy enough I didn’t have time to think about it.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

“It could be anything. What would you want it to be, if you could choose?”

“I can’t,” I said. She rolled her eyes.

“But if you could,” she said. When I was younger, I had been dreaming of certain Matches, like all of us. But now I had avoided thinking about any of it for a while, so it took me a moment before I answered.

“Organics?”

Mette raised an eyebrow, but then nodded.

“That does sound like you.”

We fell into a comfortable silence.

“This is going to be your year. I can feel it,” she broke it after a while.

It wasn’t. And neither was the one after that, or the one after that. At twenty I already knew what the result would be before I saw the apologetic look on the face of my final Tester.

***

I yawned. I’d been tired all week. I wasn’t really sure how. I was going to bed early, and spending the whole night deeply asleep. According to all rationality, I was sleeping fine. Except I kept waking up tired most mornings.

I yawned again. I’d been studying for the last exam of the year for a while now, but it was hard to focus. The perfect summer weather outside didn't help either. I tried to keep my eyes and thoughts on the page, but my gaze wandered out the window and to the squirrels playing in the tree just outside.

The bell starting to strike the hour outside helped me pull myself back into the task at hand.

Dong

If I focused, I could get through a few more pages before I needed to go.

Dong

I wasn’t sure if any of this information was actually sticking in my mind.

Dong

But I needed to try.

Dong

This was both interesting and important enough that it would be embarrassing not to know it.

Dong

I read a few lines before I realised that there had been one dong more than I had expected. I grasped for a watch and, the time confirmed, scrambled to get up, grab my things and rush out the door as fast as I could. I was sweaty by the time I was knocking on Mette’s door.

“It’s not like you to be late,” she said as I caught my breath.

“I know, I’m sorry, I thought I had more time,” I took a deep breath. “I could have sworn it was quarter to four, and the next thing I knew the bell was striking five.”

“Well,” she said, “You’re a glass behind on the wine.”

She turned and I followed her inside. 

It was good to see her. We had both been busy, and it had been a while. We cooked together, and ate together, and just generally had a great time. I stayed later than I had planned to, considering I had classes the next day, but I couldn’t make myself leave, no matter how tired I already was. It was her who eventually guided me out the door. Apparently it was obvious I needed to sleep.

“I’m free over the weekend for once,” she told me as I was leaving. “Let’s go do something?”

I shook my head.

“I have to study, I’m sorry.”

She frowned, the way she always does when she’s thinking.

“So I’ll take a book and come keep you company while you do that,” she said after a moment. “We really need to start seeing each other more again, or soon it will be once a year.”

“Okay, fine. But I really do need to study.”

Mette nodded solemnly, a promise.

***

I was sitting in class, too tired to focus on what the professor was saying but not quite managing to regret not dragging myself home earlier the night before. At least I wasn’t hungover. That said, it felt like I had slept even less than the time I knew I had.

“From there the Tempac, not yet an empire, started to quickly expand west. In a few years they had taken more than half of what used to be governed by the Echu,” the professor was telling us from the front of the class, and I wondered, for not the first time, why I had thought this class was a good idea. On paper it had sounded interesting to study ancient civilisations, but I should have known that this specific professor would make it less about culture and more about wars. I wanted to drop out, but couldn’t. I needed the credits if I was going to graduate this year.

My eyes drifted out the window and spotted a fox digging something out of the ground in the tiny patch of forest behind the building. For a while I simply followed it as it dug and dug. Eventually it got its paws on whatever it was trying to get to and disappeared behind the corner of the building next door, with something brown and surprisingly big in its mouth.

I shook my head very slightly and tried to go back to focusing on whatever the professor was saying.

“...half of what used to be governed by the Echu. They tried to fight back, but at the time the Tempac had some of the best military strategists the ancient world had ever known, not to mention war technology the rest of the world had not yet gotten their hands on.”

I groaned internally. How could the professor be still talking about the exact same thing? How long was there left of this class anyway? I looked out the window, trying to see the Great Clock I knew should be visible to where I was sitting, if only I could get the angle right. I caught a glimpse of it and had to stare at it for a moment. There was way more left of the class than I had thought. I guess time really did move slower when you were bored.

Movement closer to the window caught my eye. The fox was back, digging in the same place it had been earlier. Maybe it had found a nest, and came back for more? As I watched it dig again, I was hit with déjà-vu. Which I guess makes sense, since I had just seen the fox dig in the same spot. It found what it was looking for and disappeared behind the corner again, carrying another prize away with it.

For the rest of the class I kept an eye on whether it came back, but it didn’t. Maybe two of whatever it was digging were enough for a good meal, or it knew there weren’t more. I also managed to listen to the professor after he moved from the military conquering to what social changes the Tempac brought with them to their newly conquered Echu areas.

***

As agreed, Mette came over during the weekend to read a book while I studied. I was expecting to be constantly distracted by her, but she kept to her word. Occasionally she would comment on something for a bit, but those times were mostly a nice short break from the military history of the ancient world I was trying to plough through. After almost half a day I was plenty distracted on my own, my mind getting tired of trying to absorb information I wasn’t overly interested in in the first place.

“Did you know there’s a plant in the far West that will give you nightmares for a week if you touch it?” Mette asked me, looking at me over her book.

“I didn’t,” I admitted.

“No other symptoms. You might not even realise you’ve been anywhere close to one, but if you brush against one on your walk through the forest or something, you’ll have nightmares every night until it wears off after about a week.”

“Creepy. The book tells you about it?” 

“Oh, no. But there’s this character here that’s enchanting her husband’s tea to give him nightmares, and it reminded me that there’s something in the real world that can do that.”

She turned back to her book, and I turned back to mine. After a moment I found myself staring at the page, reading the same sentence over and over again, not having any idea what it said. I sighed and moved to stare at the wall for a moment instead, simply to give my eyes a moment to rest.

“Did you know there’s a plant in the far West that will give you nightmares for a week if you touch it?” Mette’s voice came from behind me. I turned to look at her.

“I… what?” Hadn’t we literally just had this conversation fifteen minutes ago? All I could do was stare at her.

“No other symptoms. You might not even realise you’ve been anywhere close to one, but if you brush against one on your walk through the forest or something, you’ll have nightmares every night until it wears off after about a week.”

“Mette,” I said. “You already told me that.”

She frowned.

“No, I didn’t. What are you talking about?”

“You already told me that. There’s some character in the book that enchants her husband’s tea, or something, and that reminded you of the real plant.”

It was her turn to stare.

“How did you know that?”

“Because you just told me fifteen minutes ago.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. I just got to the part about the enchanted tea a minute ago.”

We stared at each other for a long moment, both completely unsure what to think.

And then I got scared. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe she wasn’t really here. Maybe I was only imagining having conversations with her. Or maybe the first time happened, and this second conversation was all in my head. 

“You can time hop,” Mette broke the silence, her voice filled with disbelief. Her explanation was so unexpected, so different from mine it stopped my racing thoughts in their tracks.

“That’s impossible,” was what finally came out of my mouth after I found my words again. “People can’t hop around in time.”

“Some can,” Mette said, her eyes wide in wonder and excitement. “It’s super rare. A few thousand known cases reported in the history of history. Of course, in the history of history most of them have probably not been recorded anywhere, but still. It’s so rare I don’t think the standard Tests catch it, or even the fancier ones they use with the older people, just in case they have something rarer and that’s why they haven’t Matched yet. But you slipped through the cracks. You haven’t used it, ever, so it’s starting to come out unintended on its own.”

I was quiet for a few breaths, trying to understand what she was saying.

“No,” I said. Then, again, “No. There is nothing special about me. I don’t have a rare Match. I don’t have a Match at all.”

Mette thought about it.

“Is there anything else weird that’s been going on with you?”

“No,” I said, then paused. “I was late the other day coming to see you because I swear I had another hour before I was supposed to be there.”

Mette was nodding now.

“No, this is ridiculous,” I said. “That’s just me losing track of time.”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“The fox,” I started, then stopped again, and ran through the last couple of weeks in my mind. “Yeah, there have been some weird things. But… there must be another explanation, right? It’s all just odd coincidences? Because this can’t...” I trailed off and looked at Mette, my eyes wide now too. A flicker of hope came to life in my chest while the sensible part of me screamed at me to stop being a fool, that this hope would only hurt me once I found out it had all been my imagination.

“You can time hop,” Mette said, with a huge smile on her face.

***

Unlike anyone, I had my last Test at twenty-five. I stood there, butterflies fluttering in my stomach, waiting for the results. It was a weird thing, that last Test, and not only because it was never supposed to happen. The familiarity of the setting was oddly comforting, but there was a tension there that had never been there before. I was nervous about the results, terrified that it had all been my imagination, or that it had all somehow disappeared, even though rationally, I knew the result before I got to the Test. The light on the monitor flashed white, and my Tester smiled at me as a grin spread across my face, so wide it hurt.