Lilac Skies

When Livy discovers she has a knack for a special talent, she invites her best friend George to accompany her on an adventure to find out where she came from. Yet, Livy learns much more than expected.

This was the third time.  The third time she had woken up screaming, sweating, and most of all, feeling different somehow, as if instead of dreaming, she was staring at a lilac sky, feeling the burning sunbeams on her fair skin, and talking to that foreign boy with the strange accent and unforgettable black and storm grey eyes .  But how could she have done those things; she was just dreaming.  Just dreaming a very realistic vision and having an uncanny memory of it, like she had visited that mysterious place a thousand times.  But she knew she hadn’t visited this place ever in her life.  It was just her imagination and restless mind at work.  Nothing more than that.  Somehow though, that thought didn’t quite seem to put her at ease"it just made her more agitated, making her more curious about the imaginings.

            “They are just dreams Lavender,” she breathed, taking in long inhales of clean air.  “You’re absolutely fine.”

            She rubbed her eyes hard, trying to wipe away the craziness, but no luck.  This would be a lot harder than she expected.

            Regaining her balance and state of mind, she hopped out of bed and walked out of her small room and into a much bigger mess.  The smell of burnt wheat toast and herbal tea filled the room, irritating her nose.  There were clothes strung everywhere with no open space on the wicker sofa for lounging.  Her many brothers and sisters of all ages busing around the open space.  A rush of air cooled her warm skin and made her shiver.  Of course all the windows were open because it gave the space a certain “warmth that didn’t want heat” or something.  She thought of it as a certain “craziness only her parents would have.” 

            The thing that struck her though were her arms.  When she grabbed her forearms to warm them up, she felt a surge of pain.  She looked down to find her ivory skin bright red as if she had spent the day out in the sun, which was impossible.  Her family lived in Seattle and it was barely ever sunny here.  Anyways, she didn’t have sunburn yesterday, so how did she get so scorched?  People don’t get a sun tan while their asleep and dreaming, but that place was hot, dry, and fiery…she had to be imagining this all.  The village, the boy, the red-hot sun, the burn on her body were all just figments of her imagination.  The only chilling thought was that she knew she wasn’t crazy, so what was happening to her?

            “C’mon, Lavender!”

            She looked up from her arms and stared at her brother in contempt.

“My name is Livy.  Livy.  How many times do I have to say that?”

“As long as you want to!” her brother smirked.  She hated that grin that came along with the teasing.  It made it that much worse.

She just rolled her eyes in contempt and headed off in a quick pace.  Today was their harvesting day for her farm…well her adoptive parents’ farm.  They got together their whole family including the foster children and truly forced them to do child labor.  Well, maybe not child labor, more like involuntary work that had to get done.  It was alright though, even with all the insane people, the hippie attitudes, and all the organic foods.  But somehow she didn’t feel right here, like as if they were trying to make her be someone she was not, especially if that meant being a weirdo who eats tofu tacos and practices fung-shui the whole day.  She was determined not to become that person; she would stick to who she really was…whatever that may be.

As she was walking through the apples groves, someone called her name.  Livy turned around hoping it wasn’t Alex again, but no, it was Vivian.  She was jogging toward her, waving her long arms to get her attention.  Livy quickened her pace, not wanting to speak to her.

“Heya, sis!”  Vivian said out of breath, grabbing onto Livy’s bicep.  She smiled awkwardly at Livy, with her crooked teeth and thin lips.  She could truly see that Vivian wanted a relationship with her ever since they met two months ago, but Livy wasn’t like that"friendly.  Vivian just…tried too hard.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing!”

Livy signed, wishing she wasn’t here.  She smiled the best she could, trying to somewhat covey pleasantness.

“I’ve been fine,” she said as they walked together under the trees.  She really wished she wasn’t here.

“I didn’t know the family did this!  It’s really fun!”

Yeah, what could be more fun than picking apples off of trees and then wheeling them a mile up hill, Livy thought to herself.

“I mean it’s a good way for all of us to bond, especially for you and me!”

Livy laughed a little so she tried to cover her mouth.  Vivian definitely wasn’t for her.  She picked a yellow apple off a tree, attempting to quiet her giggles.  The first bite filled her mouth, making her quiet.

“I’m sorry.  I had something stuck in my throat.”

“Oh!  Of course not!  Don’t want you to choke!”

She was desperate to just leave now"just stop and walk the other way, but she resisted the urge to flee.  A vision popped in her mind"that place.  She was desperate enough to want to go there, a dream.  She started to imagine the heat on her skin, and the wind blowing on her face while Vivian went on about her feet or something.

And then blackness.  Pure darkness with no light to be seen.

Then instantaneously, a bright light appeared and a person.  But not Vivian or Alex or anyone she knew.  Her apple dropped out of her hand only half eaten.  Livy looked up at a striking young man, the young man from her dreams.  She knew this person from her dreams.  Not reality, but her dreams.  A made up being from her imagination standing in front of her.

“It’s you!” he said, gripping her shoulders.  They both just stared at each other, one in amazement and excitement, and the other in plain terror.

“It can’t be you,” she said putting her hands to her temples, rubbing them softly.  “It truly shouldn’t be you.”

 

“We need to talk, now,” Livy announced as she closed the door quietly behind her and George.

            “About what?” he answered in between each bite of an Oreo cookie.

            “I can time travel,” Livy said plainly.  How else could she say it though?  Not many people get the chance to announce it.

            “Um.  Yeah.  Okay. Freak,” George said as he sat on the end of the bed still gnawing on the Oreo cookie.  He didn’t even bother to look up and give her a weird face, acknowledging he got the information.  Nothing.

            “I’m seriously not kidding, George!”  She slapped his wrist, making the Oreo fall out of his hand and onto the floor.  “Listen to me!  Today while harvesting, I was walking with Vivian and I traveled to someplace, somehow!  Just one minute here and the next minute I’m with this guy and I"“

            “Hm.  So in your dream you were with a guy?” he asked.

            “No, George! Just listen to me! In my dreams, or what I thought were dreams, the guy metioned 3000 and I think that he was talking about the year three thousand, as in the future. Ive been traveling to the future George. In my sleep!”

            “Okay, wait,” he said.  “So you’ve been there, which implies the furture, more than once?”  He was using air quote as if she was the crazy one.

            She signed and breathed, “Yes, three times.  Those dreams I’ve told you about are actually real and I have proof.”

            Livy held out her arm revealing the sunburn from the hot sun.  He stared at it with no emotion showing in his face.  He touched where the burn was and Livy clenched her teeth, trying not to just burst out crying.  He finally stepped back, and blinked, looking as if he couldn’t believe it either.  Hopefully, he did.

            “I believe you,” George verbalized.  “that you’re not crazy, but if you can do this, take me there.”

“Let’s get packing then,” she said as she clapped her hands together.

            She quickly went to her bed and looked under, searching for her small backpack she got for her birthday two years ago.  Then went to search for another backpack for George.  She tossed it to him, making him lunge forward to catch it.  Livy thought of things to bring; running a list through her mind.

She immediately grabbed for her jar of peanut butter in her dresser.  If this was going to be the last thing she did, she was going to enjoy some peanut butter.  The next thing was sunscreen.

“You’ll need a lot of this,” she said to George, raising the bottle to show him.

“Why?” he asked putting the second bottle in his backpack.

“You’ll see once we get there,” she said.  Then finally, she grabbed a change of clothes and two water bottles.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“I have been for seventeen years,”

Livy looked around her at the vast environment.  Her skin warmed instantly from the burning sun in the sky.  She spotted a few trees here and there and she tilted her head up to, again, to see the lilac sky.  She wondered why it was that color instead of a sky blue.  She couldn’t quite come up with an answer.

“You were right,” George breathed.  His jaw was hanging off his face in amazement.  He blinked several times, trying to probably reimagine something else.

“I told you George,” Livy chided.

He just kept staring around him, trying to most likely explain what was happening to him. Livy started to walk ahead of him, aiming for the familiar village.

 “I don’t want to, “he said quietly.

 “Well we don’t have the whole day!”  Livy shouted behind her as George ran to catch up.

When they arrived at the village, the people were all busying around.  They almost all carried small wicker baskets full of some kind of vegetable, fruit, or grain.  There was chatter all around her; fortunately it was in English.  .  Livy looked farther ahead a saw relatively contemporary looking structures.  They reminded her of her home with the dilapidated look.  There were a couple wells throughout what she could see.  Livy attempted to stop one of the busy workers

“Ma’am, could you help us with something?” she asked a woman carrying what seemed to be potatoes.  Very, very large potatoes.

She stopped in her tracks and looked toward Livy and George.  She had the look of fear in her eyes and she dropped the basket to the ground.  The woman yelled something out and everyone scattered, dropping their produce in the meantime.  Livy didn’t know what was happening.  All she wanted to know was where she could find help.

In a mere thirty seconds, everyone was in their houses, with their doors and windows shut nice and tight.

“What did you do?”  George asked harshly.

“I don’t know!” she replied back.  “I need to find that boy!”

“Of course you need to find"“

“Not the time George!”

Livy walked swiftly down the dirt street with George lagging behind her, trying to peek into the windows through the shutters.

She turned a corner and bumped in into something.  And that something was the young man.  Again.  She quickly backed up with her cheeks turning an ugly shade of red.  Her eyes met with his eyes and she couldn’t help but wonder why they were like that.  They were pure black with little sliver looking speckles around the iris.  They were beautiful looking, but unsettling at the same time.

“Did you cause this?” he asked as he looked around.  He didn’t even greet her first.

“Um, yeah, my friend and I,” she said as she pointed back to George who was, of course, trying to look down the well, almost falling in. “we walked in and a woman yelled something and everyone scattered.”

“We don’t like visitors much,” he said as he pushed her forward.

“Where are we going?”

“To my father,” he said.  “You might want to get your friend…”

She looked behind her and spotted George trying to get into one of the buildings.

“George!”

He looked toward her in surprise and quickly scrambled toward them.

“Who’s this guy?”  George asked.

“This guy has a name,” he said.  “It’s Niles”

Livy blushed even more due to the fact she never mentioned to ask what his name was; she didn’t expect a boy from the future to have the name Niles.

They all walked briskly down the dirt road, receiving dirty looks from the people in their homes.  Livy didn’t know why they were walking fast and in this heat, she already felt like she had run a marathon and hadn’t drunk water in days.  She knew she must have looked disheveled from the humidity in the air causing her curly hair to frizz out, but Niles didn’t look winded at all"not even a drop of sweat running down his forehead.  They have lived here all their lives, she thought to herself.

Then Niles stopped abruptly and turned to go into a small apartment building.  It looked just like all the other buildings: Tall, slender, brick, and worn out.  She was sure even in her time there were better buildings than these, but maybe in the future, they went back in time.

The door opened to a small living space with tall ceilings which made the room feel bigger than it was.  There was wooden furniture surrounding a fireplace that situated in the far right corner.  A staircase filled half the living space and seemed old by the looks of it.  The smell of grass and dirt filled the room, overriding her senses.  She sneezed in compliance to it.

“Father,” Niles yelled as he entered the home.  “We have more visitors.”

What did he mean by “more” visitors?  How many unwelcomed people did they get?  These thoughts running through her mind made her spin.  Livy felt insecure, scared, confused, anxious, and just plain doubtful of all this.  But, again, that intuition stuck to her and she breathed deeply, trying to bring the new, fresh oxygen in and the bad, congesting waste out in to the air.

 She grabbed George’s hand which was clammy.  It made her feel better knowing he was nervous too of what the outcome would be.  George turned his head in surprise and expressed sympathy, letting his facial muscles relax.  He squeezed it one time, reassuring her it would be fine.  Livy felt better instantly.

“Bring them here please,” an older sounding voice commanded, coming from the back room.  Niles directed the both of them through the living room and into a small kitchen with a wooden table and chairs and old-brick oven, like the kind her parents cooked vegan pizza in.

The old man got up from his chair and walked toward her and George.  He studied them as if they were test subjects in an experiments"just lab rats.  The one thing she noticed was that his eyes weren’t like Niles or the woman in the street.  They were normal, actually, a light brown color.  This was the only thing that made her feel like this place had humanity for some reason.  The black eyes felt cold and heartless; something that had no feeling behind it.

“Do you think they’re from them?” he asked Niles, redirecting his interest.

“No.  I know they’re not.  Well, at least not the girl, but the boy could be anything,” Niles explained looking up and down disapprovingly at George.  “I have met the girl two other times out in the grove"“

“What happened?” the old man interrupted.

“It’s a long story,” Livy and Niles said at the same.  He looked over at her and smiled.  She blushed once again and looked down smiling.

“Well, the other woman told us, supposesivly, how she got here.  She said she came by time travel,” Niles explained.

She and George turned their heads, telepathically sending a message between them: There were more like her.  She blurted out, “That’s how we came here too!”

“Time travel?”

“Yes!  That’s how I’ve been visiting you here.”

“Don’t believe them Niles.  They’re just from them.  They’re trying to trick us again!” the man protested.

“I trust this girl and her friend.  Just trust me father.  Just this time,”

There was a pause with an eerie silence that filled the room.  She could see the old man thinking of what to do with them.  The wrinkled by his forehead and eyes displayed his intelligence and experience he had, even though he was trapped in this place.  There was something about him that made him special, Livy thought to herself.

“Alright,” he determined.  “But if your wrong"“

“I swear on our harvest,” Niles quickly said.  The man gave a silent nod and excused himself out of the kitchen.

“Please sit down,” he said.  “I’m going to get someone.”

He smiled one more time at Livy and left the room.  Immediately George sat down and put his head down on the table.

“What the hell is happening?”  She guessed it finally caught up to him on what was happening.

“We time traveled George!” she went on to say harshly.  “Somehow we did!  And now were in an old man’s house and you’re sitting on a future wooden chair!  Is that enough for you!  Oh, yeah!  It’s really hot here too so you might want to use the sunscreen!”

He got up from the chair quickly and stood up straight, trying to look put together.  It wasn’t working well.

“Okay.  Yeah.  I can do this.  We’re just who knows how many years in the future.  I’m fine.  We’re fine.  You’re fine.”

“Okay then, “she said giving him a strange look. “  We’ll just wait here"“

“Or we could leave or something,”

“No!  We wait!  That’d be rude!”

“They’re the future human race!  Who cares?”

“I do"“

Before she could finish her rant, she heard footsteps, and she closed her mouth and turned on her heels, looking to see who is was.

“This is…”  Niles started to say, gesturing to the woman next to him.

“Amelia,” she finished.  She looked up from her small bag she was fidgeting with and gasped.  Livy didn’t know why she gasped; well, maybe the fact that they time traveled put her off guard.  The woman kept staring at her and she tried to look away, but it didn’t work.  Amelia’s face looked aged, but it didn’t fit with her body which was fit and toned from the exposing skin she could see.  Her hair was a mess"curly and frizzy"and she was tall and thin, only looking like she was in her late thirties.

“Yes, I-I’m Amelia,” she stumbled as she tried to free her hand from the backpack to shake hands.  Livy and George shook her hands and then there was silence.

“So do you know each other?”  Niles asked.  She’s never met this person in her life, but somehow she thought she could answer that question with a yes.

“No, we don’t,” Amelia said, smiling warmly at Livy.  “She just looks like someone I know.  That’s all.”

George nudged her and she turned toward him.  They conveyed: what was happening here?

“So, um, can you tell us what’s been going on?”

Niles gestured for all of them to sit down.  Still, Amelia stared at her.  She couldn’t help but stare back.  She felt rude and intruding, but she couldn’t help it.

“So you guys are in the year 3000,” Amelia directed toward Livy and George.  “And the government has the people,” gesturing toward Niles.”  In a control as you can see.  They can control their every movement and thought if they want.  Anyways, the U.S. government is now set up as a higher set of people, which by the lower set of people, are referred to as them.  The lower sets of people are referred as citizens and the citizens each have a specific job that all go into one big pile of things that they need, like food.”

Her and George just sat there while she explain how it gotten to this point and how there are some people who can resist the drug that is put into them.

“How do you know all this stuff?”  Niles asked, looking just as shocked as they were.

“I just know things.”

“But I don’t even know some of that and how did you"“

“It’s just easier not to ask.  Even too complicated for me to understand.”

George raised his hand, trying to catch their attention.

“So, do the eyes change their color with the drugs?”

“Yes, that’s why my eyes are distorted,” Niles explained, pointing to his peculiar eyes.  “My father is one of the exceptions.  But instead they put a tracker in his head so he can never leave the home.”

“That’s cruel,” Livy said.  She got the feeling that she was dealing with something that was much, much bigger than her.

“It is,” Amelia cut in. “That why I landed here.”

“Landed?”

“Yeah, I somewhat wander around.  Yeah you could say wander.  And time travel.”

“I just time travel,” Livy said.  “Just randomly time travel.”

“Hm. Interesting.”

There was silence in the room.  Livy noticed that Amelia was awkward, well; she didn’t know how to put it.  Like, as if, it hurt her to talk to people or she’d much rather want to be reading a book and drinking tea on a rainy day.  She felt right at home though.

“So what do we do now?”  George asked everyone.

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, she heard glass break and many poundings of heavy boots coming through the yard in the back.  They all stood up and Amelia yelled, “Move!”

All of them ran through the living room, racing out to the front.  Livy saw people in grey coming down the staircase and she ran even faster, trying to catch up to the others.  Orders were being yelled by the attackers, but she couldn’t comprehend them.  They were now outside the home, turning right, just following Amelia where she went.  They were pacing through gardens with rose bushes.  Livy yelled in agony as a thorn cut her leg on the thigh.  She fell, trying to get up as fast as she could.

“Lavender!”  George cried.  He helped her up fast, trying not to cut himself also.  There was blood gushing down her leg, also covering her hands as she tried to attempt to stop the bleeding.

“Come on!  Don’t worry about it!”  Amelia yelled back to her and George.  Livy got up and started to run as fast as a person could run with a slash in their leg.  She heard more and more yelling and it was coming closer and closer.  She didn’t dare look behind her to see if they were right on their heels.  Instead they stopped them in the front by turning a corner.  All of the stopped in their tracks, out of breathe and cut up .Livy could see George had blood running down his left torso, almost making his white shirt red.

The grey suited people came running at them and they were surrounded; no escaping this.  They had needles that almost resembled guns, but she knew they were something else.  Hopefully not as bad.  One of the people grabbed her arms, restraining her movement while the other shot something into her neck.  Instantly she felt woozy and sluggish.  Before Livy blacked out, she looked around at the chaos.  There was Niles who was fighting to get free by kicking and punching, Amelia who was trying to help her by attacking the guards, but it was too late, and then George who was lying on the ground with a pool of blood under his frail looking body.  Tears came rushing out of her eyes.  How could she have done this?

 

She awoke suddenly with an awful headache.  For just a mere few seconds, she thought she was dreaming, but after those few seconds, she realized she wasn’t.  She realized she was actually in a lab kind of place with a cut up leg, and praying George was alright.  Okay, she did want Amelia and Niles to okay also, but George was her responsibility and her friend.  Friends don’t let friends get captured by futuristic people in grey Hamas suits and get dissected.

As her mind was still reeling from what happened, a woman came up to her and began to type on holographic keys, like on a laptop.  When she noticed this, Livy started to come out of the daze and began analyzing the space around her.  It was all white and silver with many beds around the large room.  She looked at the doorway and noticed a man coming in.  He arrived at her bed and whispered in to the nurse’s ear.  She stepped aside and let the man come closer.

“Where did you come from?” he asked softly.  She really didn’t want to explain it again.

“Where are they?” she said groggily, straining to put the words out.

“They are being interviewed also.”  She laid her head back and closed her eyes to regain her concentration.  “You will be reunited with the in a moment.  Just don’t say anything for now.”

She was obedient and sat still.  The woman let her out and helped her get dressed because the drugs were still in effect.  Once she was dressed, the nurse directed her to another room, right outside the one she was in.  Livy immediately spotted George and rushed toward him, still a little wobbly.

“George!  Are you alright?  Your side!  I’m so sorry for brining you here!”

He turned his head and furrowed his eyebrows.  He actually looked healthy, even healthier than before.

“My side?” he asked as he touched his rib cage.  “I didn’t get hurt Livy, but how about your leg?”

She completely forgot about her leg.  Livy reached down to her thigh, expecting a pain to come, but nothing.  She pulled her pant leg up frantically and touched a faint scar about four inches long.

“How did they do that?”

But before he could answer, Niles entered the room and rushed over to them.

“Are you alright?”  They both answered yes and turned their heads one more time to find Amelia coming through the doorway.  She rushed to Livy and gave her a tight hug.  She just stood there in shock.  She really had no idea who this woman was, but she was hugging her.  She became quite uncomfortable, just waiting for it to end.  When she receded, her eyes were teary and she began to speak, but before she could finish, the man came and push them all forward out he doorway.

“Where are we going?”  George asked.

“Escaping,” the man said.  He directed them toward the door and in to a hallway.  They got onto an elevator and pushed the ground level button.  Once they got there, he whispered into Amelia’s ear and she nodded in compliance.  She turned around and walked swiftly out the elevator.

“Let’s go people!”

They were now traveling in car that had no wheels.  If she had time, Livy would think it through, trying to come up with answer, but today, logic was out of the question.

“We need to get as far away as we can,” Amelia said as she was driving.

“How did you know what to do?  Do you work for them?”  Niles asked harshly.

“I don’t work for them.  He’s saving our asses!” she said defensively.  “We talked before, that’s all.”

Niles just sat back and crossed his arms in disapproval.  Amelia turned her head and looked at Livy.

“I really need to tell you something,” she said seriously.  What possibly could this stranger tell her?  She’s never met this woman in her life and now she “needs to tell her something important.”  All Livy could say was, “What?”

“This is going to be probably impossible to believe,” she said.  “But the reason why you can time travel is because you come from a line of very special people.  These special people can create and control their own wormholes and travel wherever they want.  I’m one of those special people.  When I turned a certain age, I got the potential to receive the whole gig.  But instead, I got an eye for an eye.  There can only be one at a time.  So I now know it’s time for me to pass it on to you, as did my mother to myself and onto you, my daughter.”

The whole car when silent except for the humming of engine.  She just kept looking forward, not making any eye contact with anyone of the three people.

“No I’m not,” she finally spoke.  This woman wasn’t her mother.  It’s impossible.  Completely insane!  She doesn’t even look like her.  Livy finally looked Amelia’s way and studied her carefully.

“But you are Lavender,” She replied, looking back her.  But this time, when Livy looked at her, she saw it.  All of it.  Her eyes were the same deep blue Livy had.  Her hair the big, frizzy mess as Livy had.  The same chubby cheeks.  The same long and graceful neck.  The same demeanor.  The same everything.  She finally found who she was.  A daughter.  Tears started to come to her eyes and she tried to wipe them away, but they just rolled down her cheeks landing on her hand.  Amelia smiled warmly and then the car suddenly stopped. The smile dissipated.

“They know where we are,” Amelia said.  “Everyone, out!”

They all got out quickly and followed her away from the car. She gestured for them to run.  They were getting into some rocky territory and Livy kept tripping and scraping her knees till they were raw.  As they were coming up a hill, Livy viewed a raging battle going on beneath them.  She stopped in her tracks and gazed out, trying to see what was happening.  There were average looking people, like the people in the village, and the grey-suited people from that place.  But she also saw Grey-suited people fighting their own kind and it struck her"the man let them escape because he must be part of a rebel group of some sort against the controlling government. She also thought maybe that the average looking people were the ones who weren’t affected by the drugs.  As she was processing what she was thinking, Livy heard her name being called.  It was George and he sounded distressed.  She turned her head and looked down, revealing that Amelia was lying on the ground.  The ground was already soaked with her blood.  There was just too much of it.

Livy rushed toward Niles and George as they huddle around her.  She got to her knees and grabbed her hand, rubbing it hard.  She surveyed her body and located where the blood was: in the upper abdominal area.  Niles took off his shirt and tore it to make a bandage.  He directed Livy to press the wound.  The wound felt warm and liquidly as the blood pumped out of her body.  It took all her strength not vomit from the sensory overload, but she restrained herself.  Niles wrapped the bandage around her torso and Livy let her hand fall from the wound and onto the ground.  She needed to get the blood off her hands as quickly as she could, so wiped them on her t-shirt and capris, but it didn’t quite help her.

“Lavender,” Amelia voiced barely.  “It’s your time now.  I need to pass it on.  It will happen once I die and"“

“You’re not going to die!”  Livy cried.  Tears were just rolling down her face now and she couldn’t catch her breath.

“I am sweetheart.  It’s okay though.  I have lived a long life.  I’ll finally get to be with your father hopefully.  I know you’ll be strong enough to do this.  ”

She started to close her eyes softly and her breathing was getting slower and slower.

“You’re not going to die!  You’re not going to die!  I promise you are not going to die today.”

Amelia held her hand one last time as her final breath came to an end.

“You are not going to die, “Livy whispered.  She dug her head into George’s chest and let the tears flow out, making his shirt wet.  He wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back, trying to soothe her, but it didn’t work.  She just met her mother and she just watched her mother die with her blood all over her body. Livy didn’t have the strength to look back again so she stayed there in his arms.

Then suddenly, it felt like a surge of electricity passed through her arms to her neck and then her head.  Her eyes opened and she gasped.  All these new memories flew around her mind, but they weren’t her own memories. Memories of places she had never seen before.  Information she had never even heard of.  Equations to mathematical problems were solved instantly and unknown theories were discovered all in milliseconds.  Then after a few seconds, she let the air out and blinked, looking at a world she'd never seen before, at least not this way.

Livy kissed her mothers forehead and she knew what was going to happen: her mother would dissolve as her essence went into Livy.  She wasn’t sure how she could know what would happen, but she saw so many possibilities now.  They were endless.

            “We need an explosion,” she said as she got up.  “Does anyone have a bomb of some sort?”

            “Livy, your mother just dissolved!”  George said.

            “I know that George,” Livy said as she became serious for a second.” but right now I’m trying to save people, so again does anybody have a bomb handy?”

            She looked around, hoping to find someone nearby with a gun.  Livy spotted one of the good people: the rebels.  She ran toward him and discovered it was the man from the compound.

            “Sir.  We need to explode that tower,” she said pointing to it, talking quickly with confidence in her voice.  “If we explode that tower, which is the huge, big main tower for the whole system that the ridiculous government is doing to control the people, then of a span of about a thousand miles ofcontrolled people will be lucid.  Then which in turn will let another span of a thousand miles of controlled people to be free”.

            “The woman told me you’d say that” he said as he called soldiers to him. “I’ll do it.  Just run as far away as you can.”

            “No, I can stay here"“

            “That woman said you’d also say that and to not let you stay here.  She said you’d be needed for more things in the future.”

            She thought about it and it made sense.  After all she did have her mother’s essence residing in her.  Livy ran toward Niles and George, gesturing for them to run.  They looked startled, but followed her anyways.  She knew that the explosion was still going to be big and she didn’t want them to get hurt.  Now that she knew how to time travel freely, Livy grabbed their wrists and thought of her home and of present time. Then there was pure blackness and then blinding light and then familiar surroundings.

            They landed in downtown Seattle, in the middle of the street with people looking their way and giving rude looks as if they just ruined their day.  Livy knew she was home.  Rain pattered off her head and she looked up and closed her eyes, letting the rain soaked her through.

            “Where am I?”  Niles asked as he looked around frantically,

            “Approximately May 8, 2015, at 1:37 in downtown Seattle, Washington,” Livy said fast with a smile on her face.  She turned her head toward George and flung her arms around him. “I told you it would be okay.”

            “You never said that,” he said flatly as he hugged her back.

            “Sure I did!”  She kissed him while cars honked at them, telling them to get out of the way.  “Just say yes, George.”

            All he could do was smile.

            “So is anyone else hungry?” she said as she ran off the road and onto the sidewalk with all the rude people.  “I hear 19^th century France has great food”.

Reviews

[charlie]

Just a few spelling mistakes, like "supposively"...

This was the third time. The third time she had woken up screaming, sweating, and most of all, feeling different somehow, as if instead of dreaming, she was staring at a lilac sky, feeling the burning sunbeams on her fair skin, and talking to that foreign boy with the strange accent and unforgettable black and storm grey eyes . But how could she have done those things; she was just dreaming. Just dreaming a very realistic vision and having an uncanny memory of it, like she had visited that mysterious place a thousand times. But she knew she hadn’t visited this place ever in her life. It was just her imagination and restless mind at work. Nothing more than that. Somehow though, that thought didn’t quite seem to put her at ease"it just made her more agitated, making her more curious about the imaginings.

“They are just dreams Lavender,” she breathed, taking in long inhales of clean air. “You’re absolutely fine.”

She rubbed her eyes hard, trying to wipe away the craziness, but no luck. This would be a lot harder than she expected.

Regaining her balance and state of mind, she hopped out of bed and walked out of her small room and into a much bigger mess. The smell of burnt wheat toast and herbal tea filled the room, irritating her nose. There were clothes strung everywhere with no open space on the wicker sofa for lounging. Her many brothers and sisters of all ages busing around the open space. A rush of air cooled her warm skin and made her shiver. Of course all the windows were open because it gave the space a certain “warmth that didn’t want heat” or something. She thought of it as a certain “craziness only her parents would have.”

The thing that struck her though were her arms. When she grabbed her forearms to warm them up, she felt a surge of pain. She looked down to find her ivory skin bright red as if she had spent the day out in the sun, which was impossible. Her family lived in Seattle and it was barely ever sunny here. Anyways, she didn’t have sunburn yesterday, so how did she get so scorched? People don’t get a sun tan while their asleep and dreaming, but that place was hot, dry, and fiery…she had to be imagining this all. The village, the boy, the red-hot sun, the burn on her body were all just figments of her imagination. The only chilling thought was that she knew she wasn’t crazy, so what was happening to her?

“C’mon, Lavender!”

She looked up from her arms and stared at her brother in contempt.

“My name is Livy. Livy. How many times do I have to say that?”

“As long as you want to!” her brother smirked. She hated that grin that came along with the teasing. It made it that much worse.

She just rolled her eyes in contempt and headed off in a quick pace. Today was their harvesting day for her farm…well her adoptive parents’ farm. They got together their whole family including the foster children and truly forced them to do child labor. Well, maybe not child labor, more like involuntary work that had to get done. It was alright though, even with all the insane people, the hippie attitudes, and all the organic foods. But somehow she didn’t feel right here, like as if they were trying to make her be someone she was not, especially if that meant being a weirdo who eats tofu tacos and practices fung-shui the whole day. She was determined not to become that person; she would stick to who she really was…whatever that may be.

As she was walking through the apples groves, someone called her name. Livy turned around hoping it wasn’t Alex again, but no, it was Vivian. She was jogging toward her, waving her long arms to get her attention. Livy quickened her pace, not wanting to speak to her.

“Heya, sis!” Vivian said out of breath, grabbing onto Livy’s bicep. She smiled awkwardly at Livy, with her crooked teeth and thin lips. She could truly see that Vivian wanted a relationship with her ever since they met two months ago, but Livy wasn’t like that"friendly. Vivian just…tried too hard.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing!”

Livy signed, wishing she wasn’t here. She smiled the best she could, trying to somewhat covey pleasantness.

“I’ve been fine,” she said as they walked together under the trees. She really wished she wasn’t here.

“I didn’t know the family did this! It’s really fun!”

Yeah, what could be more fun than picking apples off of trees and then wheeling them a mile up hill, Livy thought to herself.

“I mean it’s a good way for all of us to bond, especially for you and me!”

Livy laughed a little so she tried to cover her mouth. Vivian definitely wasn’t for her. She picked a yellow apple off a tree, attempting to quiet her giggles. The first bite filled her mouth, making her quiet.

“I’m sorry. I had something stuck in my throat.”

“Oh! Of course not! Don’t want you to choke!”

She was desperate to just leave now"just stop and walk the other way, but she resisted the urge to flee. A vision popped in her mind"that place. She was desperate enough to want to go there, a dream. She started to imagine the heat on her skin, and the wind blowing on her face while Vivian went on about her feet or something.

And then blackness. Pure darkness with no light to be seen.

Then instantaneously, a bright light appeared and a person. But not Vivian or Alex or anyone she knew. Her apple dropped out of her hand only half eaten. Livy looked up at a striking young man, the young man from her dreams. She knew this person from her dreams. Not reality, but her dreams. A made up being from her imagination standing in front of her.

“It’s you!” he said, gripping her shoulders. They both just stared at each other, one in amazement and excitement, and the other in plain terror.

“It can’t be you,” she said putting her hands to her temples, rubbing them softly. “It truly shouldn’t be you.”



“We need to talk, now,” Livy announced as she closed the door quietly behind her and George.

“About what?” he answered in between each bite of an Oreo cookie.

“I can time travel,” Livy said plainly. How else could she say it though? Not many people get the chance to announce it.

“Um. Yeah. Okay. Freak,” George said as he sat on the end of the bed still gnawing on the Oreo cookie. He didn’t even bother to look up and give her a weird face, acknowledging he got the information. Nothing.

“I’m seriously not kidding, George!” She slapped his wrist, making the Oreo fall out of his hand and onto the floor. “Listen to me! Today while harvesting, I was walking with Vivian and I traveled to someplace, somehow! Just one minute here and the next minute I’m with this guy and I"“

“Hm. So in your dream you were with a guy?” he asked.

“No, George! Just listen to me! In my dreams, or what I thought were dreams, the guy metioned 3000 and I think that he was talking about the year three thousand, as in the future. Ive been traveling to the future George. In my sleep!”

“Okay, wait,” he said. “So you’ve been there, which implies the furture, more than once?” He was using air quote as if she was the crazy one.

She signed and breathed, “Yes, three times. Those dreams I’ve told you about are actually real and I have proof.”

Livy held out her arm revealing the sunburn from the hot sun. He stared at it with no emotion showing in his face. He touched where the burn was and Livy clenched her teeth, trying not to just burst out crying. He finally stepped back, and blinked, looking as if he couldn’t believe it either. Hopefully, he did.

“I believe you,” George verbalized. “that you’re not crazy, but if you can do this, take me there.”

“Let’s get packing then,” she said as she clapped her hands together.

She quickly went to her bed and looked under, searching for her small backpack she got for her birthday two years ago. Then went to search for another backpack for George. She tossed it to him, making him lunge forward to catch it. Livy thought of things to bring; running a list through her mind.

She immediately grabbed for her jar of peanut butter in her dresser. If this was going to be the last thing she did, she was going to enjoy some peanut butter. The next thing was sunscreen.

“You’ll need a lot of this,” she said to George, raising the bottle to show him.

“Why?” he asked putting the second bottle in his backpack.

“You’ll see once we get there,” she said. Then finally, she grabbed a change of clothes and two water bottles.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“I have been for seventeen years,”

Livy looked around her at the vast environment. Her skin warmed instantly from the burning sun in the sky. She spotted a few trees here and there and she tilted her head up to, again, to see the lilac sky. She wondered why it was that color instead of a sky blue. She couldn’t quite come up with an answer.

“You were right,” George breathed. His jaw was hanging off his face in amazement. He blinked several times, trying to probably reimagine something else.

“I told you George,” Livy chided.

He just kept staring around him, trying to most likely explain what was happening to him. Livy started to walk ahead of him, aiming for the familiar village.

“I don’t want to, “he said quietly.

“Well we don’t have the whole day!” Livy shouted behind her as George ran to catch up.

When they arrived at the village, the people were all busying around. They almost all carried small wicker baskets full of some kind of vegetable, fruit, or grain. There was chatter all around her; fortunately it was in English. . Livy looked farther ahead a saw relatively contemporary looking structures. They reminded her of her home with the dilapidated look. There were a couple wells throughout what she could see. Livy attempted to stop one of the busy workers

“Ma’am, could you help us with something?” she asked a woman carrying what seemed to be potatoes. Very, very large potatoes.

She stopped in her tracks and looked toward Livy and George. She had the look of fear in her eyes and she dropped the basket to the ground. The woman yelled something out and everyone scattered, dropping their produce in the meantime. Livy didn’t know what was happening. All she wanted to know was where she could find help.

In a mere thirty seconds, everyone was in their houses, with their doors and windows shut nice and tight.

“What did you do?” George asked harshly.

“I don’t know!” she replied back. “I need to find that boy!”

“Of course you need to find"“

“Not the time George!”

Livy walked swiftly down the dirt street with George lagging behind her, trying to peek into the windows through the shutters.

She turned a corner and bumped in into something. And that something was the young man. Again. She quickly backed up with her cheeks turning an ugly shade of red. Her eyes met with his eyes and she couldn’t help but wonder why they were like that. They were pure black with little sliver looking speckles around the iris. They were beautiful looking, but unsettling at the same time.

“Did you cause this?” he asked as he looked around. He didn’t even greet her first.

“Um, yeah, my friend and I,” she said as she pointed back to George who was, of course, trying to look down the well, almost falling in. “we walked in and a woman yelled something and everyone scattered.”

“We don’t like visitors much,” he said as he pushed her forward.

“Where are we going?”

“To my father,” he said. “You might want to get your friend…”

She looked behind her and spotted George trying to get into one of the buildings.

“George!”

He looked toward her in surprise and quickly scrambled toward them.

“Who’s this guy?” George asked.

“This guy has a name,” he said. “It’s Niles”

Livy blushed even more due to the fact she never mentioned to ask what his name was; she didn’t expect a boy from the future to have the name Niles.

They all walked briskly down the dirt road, receiving dirty looks from the people in their homes. Livy didn’t know why they were walking fast and in this heat, she already felt like she had run a marathon and hadn’t drunk water in days. She knew she must have looked disheveled from the humidity in the air causing her curly hair to frizz out, but Niles didn’t look winded at all"not even a drop of sweat running down his forehead. They have lived here all their lives, she thought to herself.

Then Niles stopped abruptly and turned to go into a small apartment building. It looked just like all the other buildings: Tall, slender, brick, and worn out. She was sure even in her time there were better buildings than these, but maybe in the future, they went back in time.

The door opened to a small living space with tall ceilings which made the room feel bigger than it was. There was wooden furniture surrounding a fireplace that situated in the far right corner. A staircase filled half the living space and seemed old by the looks of it. The smell of grass and dirt filled the room, overriding her senses. She sneezed in compliance to it.

“Father,” Niles yelled as he entered the home. “We have more visitors.”

What did he mean by “more” visitors? How many unwelcomed people did they get? These thoughts running through her mind made her spin. Livy felt insecure, scared, confused, anxious, and just plain doubtful of all this. But, again, that intuition stuck to her and she breathed deeply, trying to bring the new, fresh oxygen in and the bad, congesting waste out in to the air.

She grabbed George’s hand which was clammy. It made her feel better knowing he was nervous too of what the outcome would be. George turned his head in surprise and expressed sympathy, letting his facial muscles relax. He squeezed it one time, reassuring her it would be fine. Livy felt better instantly.

“Bring them here please,” an older sounding voice commanded, coming from the back room. Niles directed the both of them through the living room and into a small kitchen with a wooden table and chairs and old-brick oven, like the kind her parents cooked vegan pizza in.

The old man got up from his chair and walked toward her and George. He studied them as if they were test subjects in an experiments"just lab rats. The one thing she noticed was that his eyes weren’t like Niles or the woman in the street. They were normal, actually, a light brown color. This was the only thing that made her feel like this place had humanity for some reason. The black eyes felt cold and heartless; something that had no feeling behind it.

“Do you think they’re from them?” he asked Niles, redirecting his interest.

“No. I know they’re not. Well, at least not the girl, but the boy could be anything,” Niles explained looking up and down disapprovingly at George. “I have met the girl two other times out in the grove"“

“What happened?” the old man interrupted.

“It’s a long story,” Livy and Niles said at the same. He looked over at her and smiled. She blushed once again and looked down smiling.

“Well, the other woman told us, supposesivly, how she got here. She said she came by time travel,” Niles explained.

She and George turned their heads, telepathically sending a message between them: There were more like her. She blurted out, “That’s how we came here too!”

“Time travel?”

“Yes! That’s how I’ve been visiting you here.”

“Don’t believe them Niles. They’re just from them. They’re trying to trick us again!” the man protested.

“I trust this girl and her friend. Just trust me father. Just this time,”

There was a pause with an eerie silence that filled the room. She could see the old man thinking of what to do with them. The wrinkled by his forehead and eyes displayed his intelligence and experience he had, even though he was trapped in this place. There was something about him that made him special, Livy thought to herself.

“Alright,” he determined. “But if your wrong"“

“I swear on our harvest,” Niles quickly said. The man gave a silent nod and excused himself out of the kitchen.

“Please sit down,” he said. “I’m going to get someone.”

He smiled one more time at Livy and left the room. Immediately George sat down and put his head down on the table.

“What the hell is happening?” She guessed it finally caught up to him on what was happening.

“We time traveled George!” she went on to say harshly. “Somehow we did! And now were in an old man’s house and you’re sitting on a future wooden chair! Is that enough for you! Oh, yeah! It’s really hot here too so you might want to use the sunscreen!”

He got up from the chair quickly and stood up straight, trying to look put together. It wasn’t working well.

“Okay. Yeah. I can do this. We’re just who knows how many years in the future. I’m fine. We’re fine. You’re fine.”

“Okay then, “she said giving him a strange look. “ We’ll just wait here"“

“Or we could leave or something,”

“No! We wait! That’d be rude!”

“They’re the future human race! Who cares?”

“I do"“

Before she could finish her rant, she heard footsteps, and she closed her mouth and turned on her heels, looking to see who is was.

“This is…” Niles started to say, gesturing to the woman next to him.

“Amelia,” she finished. She looked up from her small bag she was fidgeting with and gasped. Livy didn’t know why she gasped; well, maybe the fact that they time traveled put her off guard. The woman kept staring at her and she tried to look away, but it didn’t work. Amelia’s face looked aged, but it didn’t fit with her body which was fit and toned from the exposing skin she could see. Her hair was a mess"curly and frizzy"and she was tall and thin, only looking like she was in her late thirties.

“Yes, I-I’m Amelia,” she stumbled as she tried to free her hand from the backpack to shake hands. Livy and George shook her hands and then there was silence.

“So do you know each other?” Niles asked. She’s never met this person in her life, but somehow she thought she could answer that question with a yes.

“No, we don’t,” Amelia said, smiling warmly at Livy. “She just looks like someone I know. That’s all.”

George nudged her and she turned toward him. They conveyed: what was happening here?

“So, um, can you tell us what’s been going on?”

Niles gestured for all of them to sit down. Still, Amelia stared at her. She couldn’t help but stare back. She felt rude and intruding, but she couldn’t help it.

“So you guys are in the year 3000,” Amelia directed toward Livy and George. “And the government has the people,” gesturing toward Niles.” In a control as you can see. They can control their every movement and thought if they want. Anyways, the U.S. government is now set up as a higher set of people, which by the lower set of people, are referred to as them. The lower sets of people are referred as citizens and the citizens each have a specific job that all go into one big pile of things that they need, like food.”

Her and George just sat there while she explain how it gotten to this point and how there are some people who can resist the drug that is put into them.

“How do you know all this stuff?” Niles asked, looking just as shocked as they were.

“I just know things.”

“But I don’t even know some of that and how did you"“

“It’s just easier not to ask. Even too complicated for me to understand.”

George raised his hand, trying to catch their attention.

“So, do the eyes change their color with the drugs?”

“Yes, that’s why my eyes are distorted,” Niles explained, pointing to his peculiar eyes. “My father is one of the exceptions. But instead they put a tracker in his head so he can never leave the home.”

“That’s cruel,” Livy said. She got the feeling that she was dealing with something that was much, much bigger than her.

“It is,” Amelia cut in. “That why I landed here.”

“Landed?”

“Yeah, I somewhat wander around. Yeah you could say wander. And time travel.”

“I just time travel,” Livy said. “Just randomly time travel.”

“Hm. Interesting.”

There was silence in the room. Livy noticed that Amelia was awkward, well; she didn’t know how to put it. Like, as if, it hurt her to talk to people or she’d much rather want to be reading a book and drinking tea on a rainy day. She felt right at home though.

“So what do we do now?” George asked everyone.

Then, suddenly out of nowhere, she heard glass break and many poundings of heavy boots coming through the yard in the back. They all stood up and Amelia yelled, “Move!”

All of them ran through the living room, racing out to the front. Livy saw people in grey coming down the staircase and she ran even faster, trying to catch up to the others. Orders were being yelled by the attackers, but she couldn’t comprehend them. They were now outside the home, turning right, just following Amelia where she went. They were pacing through gardens with rose bushes. Livy yelled in agony as a thorn cut her leg on the thigh. She fell, trying to get up as fast as she could.

“Lavender!” George cried. He helped her up fast, trying not to cut himself also. There was blood gushing down her leg, also covering her hands as she tried to attempt to stop the bleeding.

“Come on! Don’t worry about it!” Amelia yelled back to her and George. Livy got up and started to run as fast as a person could run with a slash in their leg. She heard more and more yelling and it was coming closer and closer. She didn’t dare look behind her to see if they were right on their heels. Instead they stopped them in the front by turning a corner. All of the stopped in their tracks, out of breathe and cut up .Livy could see George had blood running down his left torso, almost making his white shirt red.

The grey suited people came running at them and they were surrounded; no escaping this. They had needles that almost resembled guns, but she knew they were something else. Hopefully not as bad. One of the people grabbed her arms, restraining her movement while the other shot something into her neck. Instantly she felt woozy and sluggish. Before Livy blacked out, she looked around at the chaos. There was Niles who was fighting to get free by kicking and punching, Amelia who was trying to help her by attacking the guards, but it was too late, and then George who was lying on the ground with a pool of blood under his frail looking body. Tears came rushing out of her eyes. How could she have done this?



She awoke suddenly with an awful headache. For just a mere few seconds, she thought she was dreaming, but after those few seconds, she realized she wasn’t. She realized she was actually in a lab kind of place with a cut up leg, and praying George was alright. Okay, she did want Amelia and Niles to okay also, but George was her responsibility and her friend. Friends don’t let friends get captured by futuristic people in grey Hamas suits and get dissected.

As her mind was still reeling from what happened, a woman came up to her and began to type on holographic keys, like on a laptop. When she noticed this, Livy started to come out of the daze and began analyzing the space around her. It was all white and silver with many beds around the large room. She looked at the doorway and noticed a man coming in. He arrived at her bed and whispered in to the nurse’s ear. She stepped aside and let the man come closer.

“Where did you come from?” he asked softly. She really didn’t want to explain it again.

“Where are they?” she said groggily, straining to put the words out.

“They are being interviewed also.” She laid her head back and closed her eyes to regain her concentration. “You will be reunited with the in a moment. Just don’t say anything for now.”

She was obedient and sat still. The woman let her out and helped her get dressed because the drugs were still in effect. Once she was dressed, the nurse directed her to another room, right outside the one she was in. Livy immediately spotted George and rushed toward him, still a little wobbly.

“George! Are you alright? Your side! I’m so sorry for brining you here!”

He turned his head and furrowed his eyebrows. He actually looked healthy, even healthier than before.

“My side?” he asked as he touched his rib cage. “I didn’t get hurt Livy, but how about your leg?”

She completely forgot about her leg. Livy reached down to her thigh, expecting a pain to come, but nothing. She pulled her pant leg up frantically and touched a faint scar about four inches long.

“How did they do that?”

But before he could answer, Niles entered the room and rushed over to them.

“Are you alright?” They both answered yes and turned their heads one more time to find Amelia coming through the doorway. She rushed to Livy and gave her a tight hug. She just stood there in shock. She really had no idea who this woman was, but she was hugging her. She became quite uncomfortable, just waiting for it to end. When she receded, her eyes were teary and she began to speak, but before she could finish, the man came and push them all forward out he doorway.

“Where are we going?” George asked.

“Escaping,” the man said. He directed them toward the door and in to a hallway. They got onto an elevator and pushed the ground level button. Once they got there, he whispered into Amelia’s ear and she nodded in compliance. She turned around and walked swiftly out the elevator.

“Let’s go people!”

They were now traveling in car that had no wheels. If she had time, Livy would think it through, trying to come up with answer, but today, logic was out of the question.

“We need to get as far away as we can,” Amelia said as she was driving.

“How did you know what to do? Do you work for them?” Niles asked harshly.

“I don’t work for them. He’s saving our asses!” she said defensively. “We talked before, that’s all.”

Niles just sat back and crossed his arms in disapproval. Amelia turned her head and looked at Livy.

“I really need to tell you something,” she said seriously. What possibly could this stranger tell her? She’s never met this woman in her life and now she “needs to tell her something important.” All Livy could say was, “What?”

“This is going to be probably impossible to believe,” she said. “But the reason why you can time travel is because you come from a line of very special people. These special people can create and control their own wormholes and travel wherever they want. I’m one of those special people. When I turned a certain age, I got the potential to receive the whole gig. But instead, I got an eye for an eye. There can only be one at a time. So I now know it’s time for me to pass it on to you, as did my mother to myself and onto you, my daughter.”

The whole car when silent except for the humming of engine. She just kept looking forward, not making any eye contact with anyone of the three people.

“No I’m not,” she finally spoke. This woman wasn’t her mother. It’s impossible. Completely insane! She doesn’t even look like her. Livy finally looked Amelia’s way and studied her carefully.

“But you are Lavender,” She replied, looking back her. But this time, when Livy looked at her, she saw it. All of it. Her eyes were the same deep blue Livy had. Her hair the big, frizzy mess as Livy had. The same chubby cheeks. The same long and graceful neck. The same demeanor. The same everything. She finally found who she was. A daughter. Tears started to come to her eyes and she tried to wipe them away, but they just rolled down her cheeks landing on her hand. Amelia smiled warmly and then the car suddenly stopped. The smile dissipated.

“They know where we are,” Amelia said. “Everyone, out!”

They all got out quickly and followed her away from the car. She gestured for them to run. They were getting into some rocky territory and Livy kept tripping and scraping her knees till they were raw. As they were coming up a hill, Livy viewed a raging battle going on beneath them. She stopped in her tracks and gazed out, trying to see what was happening. There were average looking people, like the people in the village, and the grey-suited people from that place. But she also saw Grey-suited people fighting their own kind and it struck her"the man let them escape because he must be part of a rebel group of some sort against the controlling government. She also thought maybe that the average looking people were the ones who weren’t affected by the drugs. As she was processing what she was thinking, Livy heard her name being called. It was George and he sounded distressed. She turned her head and looked down, revealing that Amelia was lying on the ground. The ground was already soaked with her blood. There was just too much of it.

Livy rushed toward Niles and George as they huddle around her. She got to her knees and grabbed her hand, rubbing it hard. She surveyed her body and located where the blood was: in the upper abdominal area. Niles took off his shirt and tore it to make a bandage. He directed Livy to press the wound. The wound felt warm and liquidly as the blood pumped out of her body. It took all her strength not vomit from the sensory overload, but she restrained herself. Niles wrapped the bandage around her torso and Livy let her hand fall from the wound and onto the ground. She needed to get the blood off her hands as quickly as she could, so wiped them on her t-shirt and capris, but it didn’t quite help her.

“Lavender,” Amelia voiced barely. “It’s your time now. I need to pass it on. It will happen once I die and"“

“You’re not going to die!” Livy cried. Tears were just rolling down her face now and she couldn’t catch her breath.

“I am sweetheart. It’s okay though. I have lived a long life. I’ll finally get to be with your father hopefully. I know you’ll be strong enough to do this. ”

She started to close her eyes softly and her breathing was getting slower and slower.

“You’re not going to die! You’re not going to die! I promise you are not going to die today.”

Amelia held her hand one last time as her final breath came to an end.

“You are not going to die, “Livy whispered. She dug her head into George’s chest and let the tears flow out, making his shirt wet. He wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back, trying to soothe her, but it didn’t work. She just met her mother and she just watched her mother die with her blood all over her body. Livy didn’t have the strength to look back again so she stayed there in his arms.

Then suddenly, it felt like a surge of electricity passed through her arms to her neck and then her head. Her eyes opened and she gasped. All these new memories flew around her mind, but they weren’t her own memories. Memories of places she had never seen before. Information she had never even heard of. Equations to mathematical problems were solved instantly and unknown theories were discovered all in milliseconds. Then after a few seconds, she let the air out and blinked, looking at a world she'd never seen before, at least not this way.

Livy kissed her mothers forehead and she knew what was going to happen: her mother would dissolve as her essence went into Livy. She wasn’t sure how she could know what would happen, but she saw so many possibilities now. They were endless.

“We need an explosion,” she said as she got up. “Does anyone have a bomb of some sort?”

“Livy, your mother just dissolved!” George said.

“I know that George,” Livy said as she became serious for a second.” but right now I’m trying to save people, so again does anybody have a bomb handy?”

She looked around, hoping to find someone nearby with a gun. Livy spotted one of the good people: the rebels. She ran toward him and discovered it was the man from the compound.

“Sir. We need to explode that tower,” she said pointing to it, talking quickly with confidence in her voice. “If we explode that tower, which is the huge, big main tower for the whole system that the ridiculous government is doing to control the people, then of a span of about a thousand miles ofcontrolled people will be lucid. Then which in turn will let another span of a thousand miles of controlled people to be free”.

“The woman told me you’d say that” he said as he called soldiers to him. “I’ll do it. Just run as far away as you can.”

“No, I can stay here"“

“That woman said you’d also say that and to not let you stay here. She said you’d be needed for more things in the future.”

She thought about it and it made sense. After all she did have her mother’s essence residing in her. Livy ran toward Niles and George, gesturing for them to run. They looked startled, but followed her anyways. She knew that the explosion was still going to be big and she didn’t want them to get hurt. Now that she knew how to time travel freely, Livy grabbed their wrists and thought of her home and of present time. Then there was pure blackness and then blinding light and then familiar surroundings.

They landed in downtown Seattle, in the middle of the street with people looking their way and giving rude looks as if they just ruined their day. Livy knew she was home. Rain pattered off her head and she looked up and closed her eyes, letting the rain soaked her through.

“Where am I?” Niles asked as he looked around frantically,

“Approximately May 8, 2015, at 1:37 in downtown Seattle, Washington,” Livy said fast with a smile on her face. She turned her head toward George and flung her arms around him. “I told you it would be okay.”

“You never said that,” he said flatly as he hugged her back.

“Sure I did!” She kissed him while cars honked at them, telling them to get out of the way. “Just say yes, George.”

All he could do was smile.

“So is anyone else hungry?” she said as she ran off the road and onto the sidewalk with all the rude people. “I hear 19th century France has great food”.