A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

The words flowed onto the paper from a place Sylvan’s consciousness had never accessed before, that she never knew existed. The pages came alive with tales both beautiful and tragic. There seemed no limit to her imagination. She was able to pick the pieces out of the air and combine them perfectly, a writer’s dream.

She was thrilled—blind exaltation, the demons had called it. Now she knew what they meant. Her purpose was clear. She was free to do what she was born for—to chronicle the worlds inside her.

For an unknown time, the inspiration continued. Though she filled page after page in the red journal, there always seemed to be more. Her pen flowed easily, the indigo cursive resplendent in its own right.

A red sheen slid across the sheet, painting it blood-colored and turning the pretty blue words black. As Sylvan pulled herself from her reverie, a deep red beam made a final pass across her vision, then diminished into the distance. The Event was receding.

Sylvan felt the loss with a well of mixed emotions. She couldn’t deny that something had happened to her as a result of the crimson effect. Would the creativity last, or would they vanish again, sucked down under lifelong layers of tradition and norm? Time would tell.

*  *  *

Sylvan blinked, the tracery of her words on the page still imprinted upon her vision. The phenomenon was gone, as was the dark roadway. Now her sight brought her only the dun-painted plaster of her room in the nursing home. The smell of antiseptic mingled with the scent of the violets in a vase by her bed. The ceiling with its one glass-shielded lightbulb floated above her, as it had for uncounted months since the stroke. She was back—really back in her own time, her own place. She didn’t know whether to weep or laugh.

Sylvan was, of course, paralyzed, but something had changed. The pain was gone—all the pain. Her body flowed with energy that soothed and comforted every nerve, every muscle, every ache. She realized for the first time since her catastrophic debility there was the potential within her to regrow, recover, and even to move again.

Was this insight a gift from the other places? Had she been given a new technique to help her live her best life, even in her final days?

For a moment, she felt the pinprick of fear, sharp as a claw in her flesh, but she drove it back from whence it came. Fear no longer owned her.

Sylvan closed her eyes, thinking of the people she had touched on her journeys through time and space. There had been life-altering revelations. She had learned that despite his aloofness, her father had always loved her. She knew now that the shock of witnessing her grandfather’s death at so young an age had eclipsed the influence of his kind and gentle nature. She had been allowed to finally ask her grandmother’s forgiveness, which her dear Anna granted easily. Most of all, she had made up with her estranged son.

But now she was home. Earth. Twenty-first century.

Had it been a dream after all?

Beside her on the bed, she felt a warm presence press against her thigh. She knew it was Brie. Whether real or ghost, it didn’t matter as long as the cat was there.

She fully expected Aron to pipe up from out of nowhere, “Not a dream,” but the room was silent.

END

For the complete story up until now, look here.