What to do? She looked down at her communication device. With one word, she could have Dariux on a virtual call in seconds. She could show him the message. Try to reason with him... No, she couldn’t do it. He was sure to reject the idea outright. Might even laugh in her face. She was not brave enough to face his indifference. The wound was still too raw.
She had spent two weeks in her cottage. She had meditated, read, and walked through nature. Had drunk as much herbal tea as was possible to consume and practiced yoga until her body felt as flexible as rubber. Yet nothing seemed to help with getting over Dariux.
Last night she had dreamt about him. More like a nightmare. In her dream, Dariux was in the middle of what seemed to be a harem full of perfect parbots, all tall, blond, and curvaceous. They were all naked. And he was fucking one of them, standing over her supine form, while another parbot embraced him from behind. As she watched, he looked up and their eyes connected. She wanted to scream, but no sound came from her throat, wanted to run to him and tear him from the arms of the parbots, but she couldn’t reach him. The army of blond parbots closed ranks around him, impeding her access. All the while, he kept looking at her and smiling while he thrust into the parbot.
She had woken up with a gasp to find her cheeks wet. She was crying even in her sleep over the cursed man! No, she couldn’t call him. Not yet. She couldn’t face him and see with her eyes his indifference towards love.
Before she realized where she was going, she had walked halfway to her mother’s house. The house wasn’t far. Just a fifteen-minute walk through a forest. As she approached, she spotted the shadowy silhouette of her mother in the conservatory, bending over the potting bench. She entered the humid and warm environment with a greeting that made her mother look up from her task.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you today. Ran out of something?” her mother asked, looking up with a smile of welcome.
“No, I need to talk to you,” she said, going to kiss her mum’s cheek.
“Oh my, this sounds serious. I’m done here. Care to join me for a spot of tea?”
“Of course,” Kalli replied with a smile; every conversation was the perfect excuse for her mother to serve her favorite beverage.
Discarding her gardening gloves, Mum led the way out of the conservatory through a special passageway that connected it to the house.
“So tell me, what is it you want to talk about?” her mum inquired as she retrieved the perfectly brewed cups of tea from the tea maker and placed one in front of her.
As an answer, Kalli showed her the picture she had taken of the message in the ruin’s wall.
“Looks like a poem carved on the stone.” She looked up, bemused. “Is that what you wanted to talk about, an ancient poem carved on the ruin’s walls?”
“It is not a poem, Mum. It is a message. From a person we met in the past.”
“What?”
“Yes. And I am the intended recipient. See my initial? ‘Avondale’ signed it, and the date is just a few days after we left that time period.”
“Blimey!” her mother gasped as she read the inscription again. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
“I don’t know. How do you interpret it?”
“I think he is saying he wants to travel through time to be with the woman he loves. This is the duke from the nineteenth who fell in love with the woman from the twenty-first, isn’t he?”
“Yes, and that’s what I think, as well. It is not that hard to guess the meaning once you know the context. The problem is, what can I do? I want to help them, but I can’t travel through time by myself.”
“No, you can’t. It seems you need help from your man.”
“He’s not my man, Mum. That’s the whole issue.”
“You need to speak to him, child.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Kalli glared at her mother. “Do you need to ask me that? Do you think I want to feel the way I feel? You know what, I’m beginning to see his point. This love thing is hard, and it doesn’t feel good. I wish I didn’t feel it. I often think I was born in the wrong period. Nobody values love anymore. It is an outdated emotion, and that just makes it harder for those of us who still...” She trailed off because her throat closed up, choking her stream of words.
Her mother didn’t seem upset at her outburst. With infinite kindness, she stood up from her stool and came to envelop her in a warm hug.
“How does this feel?” Mum asked quietly.
“You know it feels good,” she mumbled against her mum’s bosom.
“That’s a demonstration of love. And that is what it does to people. It has the power to make us feel good. Yes, it is complicated. It hurts sometimes. But we need it. I would even dare say we can’t subsist without it.”
