FIC: Time for the Past

This is the next part of the What Lies Between series. It's a really short part. I'd had several chapters written and then decided I didn't like the way it felt rushed. So I deleted them all and started again! You can read all of this series and the Another Life stories on the Another Life blog.

Title: Time for the Past
Characters: Sasha/Lennon; Greer
Series: Another Life; What Lies Between

Sasha lifted the piece he’d just found to the sky. With luck, the sunlight would help him identify what it was or what it was made from. Squinting a little, he thought it might be part of a bead. Beads were used in ceremonial dress. Sasha felt his heart rate increase. He hadn’t found much of the clothes the Osage had worn. For the most part, the leather and fur that they had used had disintegrated in the soil.

“It’s time! Sasha, it’s time! You must go now!”

The shout right behind him startled him into dropping the artifact. His eyes darted around until he finally found it. “Greer. You scared me! You have got to make noise when you are approaching someone!’

No matter how real Greer looked, he had no physical body. He was a ghost from the past. He’d told Sasha when they were first getting to know each other that he had to consciously think about his footsteps making noise.

“It doesn’t matter! You have to go. It’s time!”

Sasha stood up and looked at Greer as the panic in the ghost’s voice finally hit him. The young man had a wild-eyed look of fear on his face. “Time? It’s time for what?”

“You were told! You were told there would be a time you’d have to get things ready! It’s time!”

“What?” Then a memory of a long-ago conversation started to surface. It’d had been not too long after he’d met Greer. The young ghost had asked him to explain some of the new technology. It had been hard to describe cell phones to a young man who hadn’t even seen the invention of the telephone. Greer had looked sad at one point and admitted he couldn’t have lived in today’s world even if by some miracle he came back to life.

Sasha reminded him that Greer had skills that people today didn’t have. He had grown his own food, he could fish and hunt. Sasha told him of a great-uncle who had bought land in the mountains. He had lived in a small one-room shack, turning his back on all modern inventions. When he had died he had willed the land to Sasha’s father. No one in his family wanted to even try that kind of lifestyle, and Sasha’s father planned to sell. Sasha, ever fascinated with history, had begged his father not to. They didn’t need the money and the land sitting there uninhabited except by the forest animals would only gain in value.

At the news of his great-uncle’s land, Greer’s voice had taken on a distant tone. His eyes stared off into the sky. His body shimmered and became almost translucent. Then he spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own. “When the world’s end starts to accelerate, you will find your life and love in the mountains. At the right time, you will go there and make it a home for you.”

The voice continued telling Sasha that it would take time and many trips to make the shack a safe place to live. It told him to prepare for everything. The sun was setting when the strange voice became Greer’s again. Sasha tried to ask him more questions, but the young ghost explained that he would help Sasha as much as the universe would let him. Then he disappeared.

There were a few other instances when the strange voice came from Greer. The voice always talked of a time Sasha would have to start preparing the shack and that he would be told when that time was.

“Sasha, please. Please, it’s not forever yet. Just start. Please?” Greer’s voice, soft and pleading, brought Sasha back to the present.

Sasha looked at the site and then to Greer’s face. “But what about the site? What about Lennon?”

“Take Lennon with you. The site will wait. It’s been here over a hundred years. It will wait a week longer.”

Sasha looked toward the hill where Lennon was working. A week. He could go for a week, check out what was there and what would need to be done if he was to ever live there. He’d take the camper, and if Lennon didn’t want to go with him, then he could stay at Sasha’s house until he came home.

“Ok, Greer. I’ll go up to the shack.”

“I’ll ask him if he wants to go, but the choice is his,” Sasha said firmly. “I will not force him.”

“But you can encourage him! Make it seem fun, so he wants to go.”

Sasha sighed. “Greer. I will ask him. And if he wants to go, he can. If he wants to stay here, he can stay in my house.”

Greer stared off. “He’ll go.”


TBC