Cave Warp part 5/10

By Teepwriter on 01/08/2024

A short science-fantasy about parallel times and lives – starts at part 1/10

Eventually April's knees wobble, and the slight vibration brings her back to the present. She moves in a daze through the souvenir shop. A colleague calls out that the visitor missing the kagoul found he hadn't lost it after all. April waves vaguely and drifts out to the lane. Mindlessly she stumbles along, unable to get past feeling completely disturbed.

After twenty minutes she comes to a cottage. She hears a rhythmic snipping of secateurs. She glances across the garden, full of autumnally browning plants, and sees an older man pruning. She raises her hand and calls a greeting, imagining that simple niceties might alleviate her despondency. The man straightens and turns. She recognises him from outside the cave ten years earlier.

As April tries to articulate the recognition, he wordlessly ushers her to his sun porch. She notices a tiny embroidered cushion wedged into a wicker chair and seizes it.
"This! I found one just like it in the cave today."
"My mother made it; only the one."
She stares at the older man.
He drops onto the other chair and waits for her to sit. "I'd left it in there—the cave. I was always in such a rush."
For a few moments she tries to merge this creaking elder with the ditzy guy on the tour earlier. She closes her eyes to the bright light. Only then does she properly hear his voice.
"I was so absorbed by the work, I would forget everything else. I was quite startled when I heard your voice."
Her monologue; the life-plan that never happened. Her mind spools frantically, trying to make sense of impossibilities: this is not the ditzy guy; this older man is the younger man she has met thrice over the past ten years, and also met outside the cave ten years ago.