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StLQ Chapter 4 - New Reality
🕑 Added 2025-08-10 11:06:19 +0000 UTCMy sister was tiny. Her child-like pout made my heart rise to my throat. Back in reality, Nelly had been almost as tall as me. Four year old Nelly was barely taller than my waist.
“Mooom, Kai is acting weiwd!” Nelly said.
“What is it?” another voice asked from deeper in the house. “Kai, you’re home? Already?”
My mom peeked into the entrance hall from her writing work office, and my heart seriously gave up.
She looked much like my sister thirteen years from now. Dark hair that appeared blue with the right light, wearing a woolen sweater and pajamas—the outfit she considered most comfortable for long hours of writing in her office. There were slight lumps under her eyes from always overworking herself.
“Kai?” Mom asked. Her look grew more concerned as she looked at me. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing,” I said. My voice came out as brittle and wavering. A teardrop dropped from my cheek. My vision started to blur.
“Ah, Kai is cwying!” Nelly called out. “Mom, Kai is cwying!”
Mom rushed over to me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Kai? Is everything okay? What happened?”
“Everything is perfect,” I said with a laugh and wiped my face. This vision was starting to get cruel. Everything I wanted from life was right here. My family. Still happy and working hard. Everyone was alive. “Thanks, Mom. For working so hard.”
Mom was examining my face closely, “Your left eye is being lazy. Did you get hurt? You didn’t hit your head, did you?”
“A few times, actually,” I said, still speaking through my tears. Once when Nelly didn’t tie the rope to the chair tightly enough for lich sight. Another time when I fell down the fucking stairs to my cluttered lab.
I’ve missed you, mom. I never even got to say goodbye.
Mom observed me for a moment longer with a concerned look on her face. “I will call for the nurse. Go get some rest. I still have work to do. We have chicken and potato salad for dinner today. Is that okay?”
“That’s perfect,” I said. “Thank you, Mom.”
Mom glanced at me over her shoulders, studying me. She seemed to be smiling. Then she headed back to her office to continue working. My mom worked as a magazine writer, journalist, freelance author, ghost writer, accountant—her career was anything that paid money and included working with a pen and paper. She worked from home most days to take care of Nelly.
She often joked that she wanted to be a novelist one day. Novels just didn’t pay enough to keep food on the table, and she had stopped searching for a step-father to help us out. My mom had been rather unlucky with men. The first one, my dad, left when I was two for reasons I still didn’t know. The second one, Nelly’s father, cheated on another woman before Nelly was even born.
As a fourteen-year-old I never paid much attention to the amount of work mom put in. But thinking back, it was painfully obvious that my mom had given up her own dreams to accommodate mine. Ever since I’d learned of what the World Tree and the academy within were, I’d decided I needed to enroll.
I took off my jacket and boots and admired the house. Even our home itself looked so different. The furniture was slightly newer than it had been when I died, and the layout of furniture was mostly the same. The floors and walls themselves were still unrenovated hardwood. Frankly, not very pretty to look at. But that just made our carpets look even better.
The living room table was cluttered with books. Mostly textbooks about magic. Nelly sat near them with a suspiciously uncaring expression. She glanced at me, as if trying to hide something.
Ah, I remember now, I thought with a smile. Those are my books.
Memories came flooding back. Nelly always used to steal my books to study magic just like her big brother. I always got annoyed at her and tried to hide my books in more clever locations. Nelly somehow always managed to find them.
“Studying magic?” I asked.
“No,” Nelly said. “I don’t like magic.”
“Oh, you don’t? What about this kind of magic?” I flicked my fingers, and performed the same trick that had made my teacher gasp in shock.
Nelly had a similar reaction of shock. Her eyes were sparkling as she looked at my finger. “You’we burning!”
I flicked my finger again, and suddenly, the fire was gone. “It’s not very efficient to steal my books, if you can’t read anything on them, Nelly.”
Nelly stayed awed for a moment longer, until she realized I was arguing with her. “I study the pictuwes!”
I grinned. This was my sister, exactly as I remembered. Just a bit smaller with a confused brain in the middle of development.
“Want me to read some for you?” I asked.
Something seemed to break inside Nelly’s head. She slid back, as if trying to figure out what my trick was. “No?” she said. “I don’t like magic.”
I shrugged. “Well, if you say so.”
I turned around, and immediately, Nelly shouted. “No, read it fow me! Read this book!” She held out a rather boring book titled History Of Arcane Destruction; War Crimes And Codes.
I grinned as I opened the book from the page Nelly wanted me to read, and I started “reading.” As in, I made up a whimsical story of a magical unicorn and a princess on adventures. I used the pictures of war as inspiration, and I showed the milder ones to Nelly, saying how the princesses showed up to save the people from the harsh situations.
The evening continued. Admittedly, even if this was a vision, it was one of the most beautiful experiences that had ever happened to me. Nelly listened to my stories all the way until sunfall, when my mom finally paused her work to start cooking. The scent of Mom’s cooking almost made me cry again, and I think I shed a few tears from the taste.
For a few hours, I forgot all about time travel. I shoved the fact of my fate in the real world aside and just enjoyed my life. Whether the present now was an illusion or a new reality, this could have very well been the last time I experienced time together with my mom and sister. I made full use of it.
I played with Nelly deep into the “night”. As in, we played until eight in the afternoon. The outside world had been pitch black for many hours now. Winters in Lokora were brutal, sometimes making four in the afternoon feel like midnight. Mom took Nelly to bed and switched her pajama pants for her full night pajama.
I sat in the living room, doing nothing at all. Mom paused at the door.
“Is everything going well in school?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t slack off now down after all the work you do for me.”
My mom crossed her arms at me. “Kai… Something is troubling you, isn’t it?”
“Just the regular nonsense any ordinary fourteen-year-old feels,” I said, giving her a smirk. Then I looked down, a more serious look on my face. “Nothing serious. Something just happened lately that made me think about life.”
“That’s new,” mom said.
I raised my eyebrows.
“To see you thinking,” she said with a smile. “I’m proud of you, Kai. Regardless of how well you score, as long as you work hard, I will remain proud. Good night, Kai. If you still feel unwell tomorrow, I’ll take you to the nurse.”
“Thanks, mom,” I said.
She left the lights on for me, trusting me to shut them off when I went to sleep. The house didn’t have bright light bulbs yet. We used alchemical glow sticks, which were more unreliable, less bright, and probably more expensive.
One hell of a vision… I thought.
It was fun…
Like a dream come true.
I let out a long sigh. This was all just too good to be true. I had a hunch that if I fell asleep, I’d never wake up. I was most likely already dead. The liches had taken over Lokora for a second time.
Wherever I was now was probably just a fake illusion…
But what if? What if it was real? Could I really start my life all over again, from a time when it wasn’t all ruined?
Luna would transform anywhere from a week or a month from now. The academy would burn down alongside the disastrous attack, the culprit of which investigators still couldn’t agree about. I’d fall into a coma for three years, only to wake up to find out my mom died of a heart attack. Nelly would be the only family I had left, until she, too, left me, dying in an accident a few weeks before my own death.
I still needed to confirm what date it was. I’d kind of slacked off today. If I didn’t do anything, the past would repeat itself. I was the only one who could stop Luna from transforming, and to catch whoever had ruined my dreams. If I’d actually gone back in time, I could change things. I could stop everything going to shit.
Goddammit, I thought. I got up from the couch and switched on my pyjamas and snuck into my own bed in my private room. I still slept in the same room thirteen years later, just with a slightly less creaky bed.
Don’t take me back, I thought. My real life is trash even if I hadn’t died. I don’t need it. Leave me here. Back in time.
I closed my eyes and waited for myself to fall asleep.
Please let this be reality, I repeated to myself. Let me wake up in this same bed, and I promise to do things properly this time.
