Author: Maxwell Pearl

I cackled. It was easy to cackle. It seemed right, somehow, now that I’d arrived here, now. I looked down and saw the dress was different and hung a bit more loosely than the one I’d put on just a few minutes ago. Well, that was unexpected.
The black kettle stood over the roaring fire in the fireplace, and I could smell the sickly sweet, pungent brew. I didn’t know what was in it, but the man lying on the bed in the corner seemed to be the one for whom the brew was intended.
When the brew’s smell reached a peak, I pulled the kettle off the fire, poured the brew into a cup, and tasted it. It was astonishing how something that smelled so bad could taste so good. As the sweet, smooth, syrupy liquid eased down my throat, I felt my vitality grow, my heart slow, and my muscles strengthen.
I poured more and walked over to the man on the bed. I had no idea who he was, but I put my hand on his arm, and he stirred.
“Here, drink this.”
He raised himself up on one arm, took the cup, and downed it all in one gulp. He seemed to know what he was doing. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat, looking at me.
“Where’s Gida?”
“Who?”
“Gida. You wear the dress she just meticulously sewed. I watched her. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s wearing the dress I meticulously sewed.”
He frowned. “When?”
I looked around. The rough stone fireplace, the sod walls of the hut, the iron implements, the hand-hewn furniture. His very strange accent.
Sewing the dress had been an idea I’d gotten one night, after a game of Spacetime, Inc. VR Dungeons and Dragons. No one sewed anything anymore since you could 3D print anything you wanted. But the idea had been implanted in my head and wouldn’t go away. So I sewed.
“1000 years from now. Maybe more.”
“How will she fare?”
I thought about it. “Depends on how long…”
Blink, fade, sweep. My room reasserts itself around me, my own dress on my body again. I look around. Well, at least she wasn’t here long enough to break anything.