Summus Terra

“What? What do you mean? We have to get home!” Chloe’s raised voice sounded oddly hollow in the stillness of Tempus Lentus. Color began to rise to her face as she prepared to defend her cause to the short little man in front of her.

She didn’t need to, though. The Gnome spread out his arms in an appeal of patience. “I know, young Human, I know, and that is why I am going to help you get back there. In fact, I may be the only Faerie in the Kingdom who knows what’s going on and how to return you to your Terra.”

Chloe relaxed a little and let her defenses lower.

“Are you with me?” asked the Gnome. Chloe studied his face momentarily. The Gnome was serious, dead serious. She had no way of knowing that anything he said was true, but he certainly believed every word of it.

“Alright,” she said, finally, “But what about him?” she asked, pointing at the Dryad. He had moved slightly since the last time she had glanced at him, which was curious, because that meant that time hadn’t actually stopped. She sensed a trickle of it flowing through her body.

“Meric? Why, he’s coming with us, of course. He’s the only Faerie who survived the attack on the Gate in the first place, and perhaps, he holds the key to all of this. In any case, our lots have been thrown together, so together we shall remain.”

“Well, then,” said the red headed girl from Gunnison, Colorado.

Drake waited for a more concrete response, but when none was forthcoming, he gave her a gentle push towards the other Humans. “Right. You can control the Flux?” he asked.

“The what?”

“The Flux. That which allows us to slow down time? I could sense it in your Lifestrand.”

“My what?”

Chloe wasn’t catching on very quickly.

“Too many questions! So little time! I’m sorry, all shall be explained in time. But for now,” emphasized Drake, his eyebrows flaring upward and his little hands gesturing the need of the moment, “can you or can you not slow down time?”

“I can stop it,” replied Chloe tentatively.

“Actually,” countered Drake, “it only appears to be stopped. In fact, time is still moving, but at a very, very slow rate. If you actually pay atten…”

“No,” interrupted Chloe. “I can actually stop time.”

Drake raised an eyebrow. “Prove it.”

“I thought you said that there’s no time,” said Chloe cheekily.

“Well, if you’re right,” smirked Drake, “then we’ve got all the time in the world. Show me.”

Chloe felt for that little tug inside of her, followed the stream of time that was little more than a steady flow of droplets, and cut it off.

If it was possible at all, the silence became deeper. Where there was once a faint background hum, unnoticed until the moment that it was gone, now there was pure nothing. And Chloe was the only thing that moved within it.

She took a couple of steps towards Drake, bent down, pulled his cap off his head, drew his blade, little more than a dagger, that hung at his side, pulled his beard away from his face and positioned the knife a few feet above it.

There, now if that don’t show him, I dunno what will. I could do this all day!

Realizing that she had plenty of time on her hands, she walked over to where Meric was standing, curious about the tall Faerie’s appearance. He stood a little over a head above Chloe, lean and muscular. His skin, while a little paler perhaps than Chloe’s own skin, wasn’t smooth like a Human’s, but papery and flecked with streaks of silver and black. She felt along his arm, and sure enough, it reminded her of the bark of the Aspen trees that she knew so well from the mountains of Colorado. The green in his hair turned out not to be so much streaks of color as something organic and living, trailing down from the circlet of twigs and leaves which adorned his head.

Chloe enjoyed inspecting this Dryad, similar to how she inspected the very life-like but perfectly still stuffed creatures at the taxidermist’s place in Gunnison. She was fascinated by his tree-ness, although this ‘specimen’ was far more impressive than the massive moose head that hung from the wall or the mountain lion perched above the door waiting to pounce. She was, however, disappointed that his eyes, while still the exact same in appearance, lacked that spark of life that had so amazed her the first time she had seen him. There were merely beautiful glassy orbs, no more or less beautiful than her own eyes, or the eyes of the mountain lion back in Gunnison.

But they’re definitely a mite purtier than those huge brown eyeballs in that bull moose. Jus’ makes him look dumb.

She giggled just a bit, and then with a sigh, turned back to the inanimate form of Drake. There was a strain on her body, emanating from the tug, or the Flux as Drake had called it, not an urgent warning, but one that was growing perceptibly stronger by the moment, like she was hundreds of feet from a edge of a cliff, but walking towards it nonetheless. Apparently the Flux had its limits.

So, she found the Flux, and nudged herself back towards Drake’s time. The hum reappeared, and Drake leapt back with a howl, grasped at his capless head, and then pointed at the knife, which was still suspended in the air.

Chloe couldn’t understand this last fact. Before, when she had released her hold on time, it had started to fall right away.

“You meant that to cut off my beard, didn’t you!” he accused, chuckling. “Of all the things to do, that’s what you decided?”

“Just the tip, honest.”

“It’s all right, young Human, I believe you, and I believe that you can in fact stop time. That was the merest instant, to me, but clearly, you got a lot accomplished in that blink of an eye. Are you seem perplexed about something?” Drake had noticed Chloe’s consternation.

“Well, it’s just that that last time I did this, everything started to fall and move normally. That knife is still falling, very slowly, just floating there in the air.”

“And you find this strange why? Think about it, Chloe. We are in Tempus Lentus, slow time. When you let go of that blade, being just an object, and not alive, it returned to normal time. And so to us, it falls very slowly.”

Realization dawned on Chloe, but very quickly raised another set of questions. Testing her thought, she jumped straight up in the air, and then returned to the ground, just like every other single jump she had ever made.

“Hold on then, how come I don’t fall as slowly as the knife. The only thing that’s making it fall is gravity, right? And gravity is related to time, so shouldn’t I fall more slowly in slow time?”

“I can see that you’re a bright one,” replied Drake. “And that’s the magic of it all. It is difficult to explain, but to the best of my knowledge, it works something like this. When you are in slow time, everything that you touch enters into slow time with you. That includes the force of gravity.  For one reason or another, we’ve never been able to leave that one behind. But the Faerie who work in the Scola, they would be able to explain it more fully.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Chloe. “As much as anything here can make sense. Reality is so different here from back on Earth.”

“We thought so too, when we first woke up to this world. The air here is so light, so open, so ready for magic, that our peoples had to learn to hold themselves back. The air back on your world was so heavy and thick, very difficult to use magic. Imagine spending your whole life underwater, learning how to run, to jump and fight, and then suddenly breaking free into the open air. That is what the Faerie felt when the awoke on Terra Fluxa for the first time. After many generations, we adapted, and perhaps we have lost some of the strength that came from struggling against the density of your Terra. There are still three or four Faeries who remain from that time, living in Tempus Veloxus, able to wield great power if needed. But they have not awakened in many generations.”

“Is that why I can stop time?” asked Chloe. “Because I’m from Terra Firma?”

Drake stroked his beard as he thought about this. “I suppose it could be, but there are many questions that I fear may go unanswered for a long time. This world has not seen Humans, ever, and so your presence and abilities are mystifying.  Still, we will see what we can learn. But now, we must go. We’re safe enough in Tempus Lentus for the moment, but we can’t stay here forever. I have a place for us to go – the home of one my friends, where we can talk in comfort and without fear. And then we can find a way to get you back to your Terra.”

“Thank you,” said Chloe. “And Drake, we’re with you.”