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Amelia always scorned the thought of immortality.
It’s been offered to her before, by demons and gods that offer it at a price or pity her limited life, but she’s always rejected them. There’s advantages to it, for sure; she’d have all the time in the world to tear away the strings that suffocate Ina, she’d be able to relight Kiara’s withering embers, she could give Gura back her home permanently, and with her soul eternally tethered to the Earth, she could prevent the end of Death.
But what after that? There’s still eternity, she can’t live forever without purpose, she can’t be like the Archiver, endlessly chasing knowledge with no foreseeable end, Amelia needs a conclusion. She’d be driven insane without one, so she never desired immortality.
Unfortunately for her, fate is iniquitous towards her.
She glides through the freezing reaches of space, clutching five ribbons in her fist, and her watch in the other, watching her world crack and crumble into dull stardust as her soul drifts further from tangibility. She’d never seen the thing responsible, and perhaps that was the most vexing part of the whole ordeal, she has no leads, nowhere to begin, it would be a pointless search for something that evaded her senses. There’s also anger and hatred towards the Council, who turned to her and cursed her with life unending. She’s petty in how she refuses, only for a moment, to wind back the arms on her watch, then there’s guilt when she remembers her friends were caught in that end, as well.
Reluctantly, she turns back time, cursing at the ribbons, begging them to reconsider, but what can a group of soulless corpses tell her?
She lays back on flowing verdant grass, not the bed she intended to wake up in, and startles up. She’s on an island, at the apex of a hill with a gentle incline down. Behind her is a lighthouse, the lamp turning with light that illuminates the night sky above her, where stars twinkle with vigor while stone and ivory ruins float without purpose all around. Gulls mew and squawk and fly away as she approaches the beach at the bottom, standing just far enough for the sea foam not to collect on her shoes, while it simultaneously struggles to climb a jetty of rocks to her right.
She only walks into the waves path when she notices a shine and glimmer in the water, allowing her ankles to be flooded for a better look. It’s a string creature, a collection of tiny orbs connected at a stem with an unusual swimming pattern, only the tail end of the structured creature moves, while the rest curls and spirals, though she recognizes soon that the other orbs assist, only curling their bodies to change directions. It floats at the top near her, so she reaches down to touch, only for every singular orb to detach themselves like a fountain firework and flee from her, though they’re slow enough that she manages to grab one of them.
She nearly drops it when she realizes what the thing is. It’s opalescent and ethereal, and when she stares inside it her entire stomach twists and threatens to vomit the nothing inside of it. It’s a pocket of time, a timeline that’s not her own, the Industrial Revolution of a world teeming with strife, on the verge of war. When she drops it back in the water, it rejoins with the rest of its kind, and Amelia can see, staring at each with focus, it’s all a singular world at different points in time. There’s several of the structured creatures around, glowing just as brightly or slightly more dim, each differing in size, marking how long they’ve lived, or how long that timeline lives for, Amelia can’t know for sure yet.
How was she meant to find her world in a sea with seemingly millions of the creatures? Hers is the only world she cared about, nothing else mattered to her. Climbing back up the hill, she only just now notices the shack between the beach and the lighthouse. The wood is fairly old, but still stable despite her best efforts to topple it. Inside is basic amenities; a bed, a wood stove, pots and pans dented and used, and a closet. The only article of clothing inside is a hooded robe, barely stretching past the middle of her back. It’s quilted with care and crafted golden, decorated only with four blue ribbons of varying sizes and a single brown one. She refuses to wear it. She’ll never accept it.
The lighthouse is far from polished, the striped colors have faded and are mottled with a paint-less rust. The inside fares no better, looking like something had crushed it from the outside, failing to complete its task. The metal stairs are warped more towards the top with no railing, and an open door fills the lighthouse with the rank smell of oil. Behind the door is barrels of the stuff, and a pool of black where one leaks from the very back. Even when she shuts it, she can’t escape the smell, using the cuffs of her shirt to block it.
The windows provide her a view bereft of life, and the balcony provides much more of it. It strangles her with loneliness, she doesn’t want to be here. The slow spinning lamp doesn’t burn her eyes, though she still shuts them from instinct, it only provides her a longing dread. The beams of light stretch into the yawning darkness, and the sounds of the gulls quiet in its light, even the flapping of their wings is silent in the light’s stare. It’s only when she begins to yearn for escape does she hear the piercing, wailing horn of a ship from the distance. It slowly approaches the jetty dock, using anchors it shouldn’t have to shore itself.
The unbidden ship is large and empty, much to Amelia’s dismay. There is no room other than the wheelhouse, surrounded by panes of glass and housing a screen, but no wheel. She’s looked, but there’s no door, no trapdoor, no hidden staircase, it’s just a hunk of metal with a computer. There’s only text on the flashing blue.
“Input World:”
She types without thinking.
“My World.”
The text disappears and the blue steadies for only a moment. The anchors bring themselves back to the ships side, and it slowly moves out to sea, the lighthouse shrinking as the waves grow larger and rock her transport. The boat stops, and Amelia can hear, but not see, something snap shut underneath her, and the screen says to her, still with no voice, “Timeline 2897 acquired. Please remember, the hourglass cracks under stress. Your sand is precious, Captain, take care not to lose the grains.”
A large glass cylinder filled with water is heaved onto the dock with a wench. In it is one of the structured creatures, swimming as if undisturbed. Unlike the others, this one allows her to graze it. The orb at the end, where she can touch and see space and stardust, is what she looks for, it’s instinct how she finds the mark five years before it and removes the orbs, it’s duty when she crushes the orbs beneath her heel on the dock, watching them bleed saltwater. Her world is unbound by imminent calamity, she can begin her investigation.