I turned to find Thea's eyes again, meeting mine and immediately snapped my head forward. Yeah smooth. Really smooth. You are an idiot, Ryn. A complete and total idiot! I could see her through the corner of my eye, staring me down. She's not an immediate threat. Your life isn't in danger. You need to chill out. My mind wondered as my sight shifted back to the window. It's like I don't even know how to talk to them, you know? Women. And this one? Sheesh. I don't know. She made me feel some type of way that was for sure. What kind of way? Not exactly sure. I'm sure she makes me wet. Thea let out a cough next to me. I shook my head gently to reframe my thoughts. I could see the sun coming up on the horizon. Darkness slowly receding, revealing what would soon be the blue sky.
Philomena didn't speak again after the introductions. She was probably exhausted, poor woman. I glanced at the clock. We'd only been driving roughly thirty minutes, but the white noise of the ride now made me way more aware of how exhausted I was. Our little community was just outside of old Modesto. We were about to hit the larger road they used to call I-5. I only know this because a few of the signs were still intact. It should be roughly fifteen hours to get to the old Canadian border if we don't stop off anywhere. There used to be separate countries that had different policies. At one point in time, there were over three hundred different ones. Could you imagine? People had to pass through checkpoints to pass an imaginary line that divided them, making it extremely difficult to travel to other countries on the same land mass. They used to be a novelty to traveling tourists. There were photo booths and tours, much like any other major border stop out there. Now all relics of the past. What's left of them anyway, if anything.
"Well..." Granny broke the silence finally, pulling me from my internal dwelling, "As I'm sure you already know, I've got witches' blood in me. More than that, I've inherited a gift or two..." This instantly got everyone's attention. Even Thea looked invested. She tried to give us her full attention, but because of her bad back, Granny had to turn back to face the front. Looking someone directly in the eyes was something she always made a point to do. She pulled down the visor to look at us through her mirror as she spoke, "I saw you coming quite some time ago, Thea. Tried to see if I might be able to change it but your awakening was a fixed point in time." She paused to take a few breaths while Lark and I exchanged glances in the rearview.
"A fixed point?" I had intended to wait and hear her out, but the question betrayed me and was out before I realized my mouth was moving.
The old woman's voice lowered to just above a whisper; her stare looked blank as she looked on in her mirror. "Immovable. Finite. It's entirely unchangeable."
Thea looked over at me, and her expressions were as soft as her voice when she spoke, "Think of time and events objectively on a spectrum. Every decision you've made in your life, there are always multiple options to choose from, yes? Most events are malleable... A simple decision could change the entire course of events to occur. Think of time in a line. Each decision available to you branches this line into a new path. You choose one, and the other paths are severed, leaving you with your original line stemming from that decision made. Very rare are points in time where no matter what course of action is taken, no matter which path is traveled, the end result and product of your actions will all reconverge at the same point on your original path. Some call this fate or destiny. Many are free to choose their own. Some must face a fate already chosen for them."
To this Gran simply nodded to her before she continued. "Saw every possible outcome. Tried my darndest to change it. Didn't want to alter anything in any major way... just wanted to try to pull Alaric and Raelynn's involvement. No matter which direction, always was these two. When I finally accepted that it was unchangeable, I tried to delay it, but that was also in vain." She shook her head after, no doubt trying to push back memories of the past that flooded her brain. "Always. Anyway, darling. Now that you're here, what are we to do with you? I could never see past you waking up. Not much, anyway. Bits and pieces but not enough to help I'm afraid. Might come in handy in the time they come to happen, but not much in the way of getting where we need to be."
Philomena was full of surprises, it seemed. A witch and a dang seer to boot. What other secrets did she have? This was news to Lark too. I could tell by the way he kept shifting his vision from the rearview to Granny and back. It was practically unheard of. If you were lucky enough to develop any kind of ability from your DNA, there was never more than one trait, and it was usually weak or superficial physical features. Plainly speaking, she shouldn't be able to see that far ahead, even if it was her only ability. A week or two at best and not entire events. This was way too much at once for me. So many questions were spinning around my brain that I didn't even know where to begin. Each question I asked was answered, but those answers kept leaving me stuck with a million more questions. There was a lot more she wasn't telling us, but I was too tired to care. I knew that she would expand on it eventually, and at the time, that was enough for me.
Still, the whole situation with Thea nagged at me. No one said anything else, and the silence was killing me inside. I had to get some kind of hold on what was going on around me. Put the future on the burner and the present on the table. "So." I turned to look at Thea, "You said to go North, which is a general direction. Can you elaborate a bit on where we're going and why?" It was a question we needed an answer to, and I'm sure everyone else was thinking the same thing. Everything had happened so quickly. We probably all felt the whiplash.
