Slipped Through Time by Amai Youkaiko
Prelude
The time is upon the setting horizon. The woman, who looks no older than sixteen, smiles wistfully as she stares at the sun.
“My love, what is troubling you?” Her husband says as he wraps his long, sturdy arms around her softly as if fearing she’ll break.
“I’m worried about her” she replies. “What if we’ve messed up this time?”
He shakes his head, “she’ll be fine”.
“I know that!” She snaps, “Sorry, I’m just worried he’ll hurt her”.
“Do you have that little trust in the one person you trust more than me?”
She turns out of her hug and throws her hands up in the air dramatically, “he tried to kill her!”
He grabs her right hand, soft as cashmere, and looks into her warm hazel brown eyes; the eyes their daughter will share once she was born. “And I not only kidnapped you, I also tried to kill you” he reminds her, “love works in strange and peculiar ways”.
“That was different” the woman insists, desperately.
The man rolls his eyes at the denseness of her words, “It was not. I was not a very good person when we met and everyone knows it.”
She laughs, “You were being manipulated, and you couldn’t help it”.
“I killed a lot of people, love”.
She smirks, “and did he manage to get you to kill me?”
“No, he didn’t and thank god for that” he kisses her tenderly, “but the same can be said for her, you know”.
The sky takes on a bluish hue, a signal that the sun is setting in this era. She looks to the sky and sighs, “I must leave you”.
His eyes show distant memories, memories of a time that had both been and just started. “Why is it you are always the one who gets to see her?” He laughs, joking. “Look after all my girls for me, love.”
The child-like woman looks at her stomach, “all three of us will be safe, I promise”.
He embraces her in a firm hug and holds her as he watches her fade in a sky blue light. “I love you” he says just before she disappears. Her now transparent face nods, “you know I love you too”.
When he feels nothing left in his arms he heads towards the red-bricked cottage behind the old-fashioned Japanese manor, showing no expression on his face except happiness for a time forgotten. A time remembered only by those who were there.
He makes himself a cup of tea as another woman came out of the manor and entered the cottage, she looks around. “Is she gone?”
He nods his head a yes. “She’ll be back soon enough” the woman wearing a long, blue, summer dress says as she sits upon the table stealing a cup of tea. “She is a marvellous persuader”.
The man thinks about his wife and the job she has ahead and scoffs, “She would want to be, that man isn’t easy to win over”.
She sips at her tea, ignoring the rules of no slurping. “I wish I knew what they were talking about. Almost makes me want to go”.
The man’s eyes widen, making his youthful eyes grow older than they seem, “he’d kill you”.
She hits the man who looks no older than his soul-mate, “I said almost”.
He shakes his head at the enigma in front of him. She finishes her drink and then throws the mug into the sink. She kisses the man on the cheek and laughs “see you later”. She laughs “tell me when she comes home, won’t you?”
“You know I could never keep that information to myself, you love her just as much as I do”.
He smiles as she chuckles once again, “well, I was her mother for quite a few years there . . . .”
“The irony”
She nods, “the irony”. She looks up; her face resembling that on his wife’s and smiles at the rising moon. “I wonder what she’ll say to him, maybe I’ll ask”.
He rolls his eyes and moves in front of his bed, “I’m headed to bed, do what you want”.
“Night” she whispers as she walks out the door.