Can't Change HIstory

A Story by WeaverOfWords

Part two of my four(?) part short story science fiction collection.

The woman was afraid, not for herself but for the small, dirty girl she carried in her arms. She knew the child would be sent back to the time before Galbatorix had started the Rift War. The child had been specially selected out of thousands because the scientists had theorized she alone would have the skills necessary to convince the evil ruler that the events that he started would eventually destroy their planet.

And yet she was still afraid something would happen. Last time the scientists tried to use time as their plaything the man who they had sent had disappeared completely. Their trackers could not find him, and there were no records of a man of the same description as Stanley in their archives.

The girl in her arms was not her own but it very well could have been, brown hair, and black eyes, just as everyone else. The only thing made her different was the long, delicate scar across her cheek. The woman had heard that once there were people with hair of different colors, black as night, fair as gold and red as copper. And even more hidden in the myths were the people with eyes of ice, of forests and of soil.

“Time jump in T. minus ten seconds.”

The woman stepped forward and set the girl gently on the ground. As she stepped back the girl started to cry, holding her hand out for the small toy she had dropped. Though the woman bent and retrieved the toy she was unable to give it to the girl before the whole room was set in motion, everything shaking. The first thing that she did after the shaking calmed was to run to the library and check to see if there was any evidence that the child had succeeded. The only thing that had changed in all of the books about the Rift War were the pictures of Galbatorix. They showed a slender woman with a long scar that stretched across her cheek, rather than the usual stocky man with a long beard.