Ep I Ch 14

1A tear came to her eye, but she righted herself and sniffled.

2“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked, not understanding the situation as a whole.

3She laughed, then wiped her face. “It was a long time ago; there’s no need for help over it. The debacle finished recently, though. 4Do you understand the conditions here, now? In regards to Qui-Gon Jinn and my uncles.”

5I scratched my head, then shook it. “Why would a man have a child, anyway? 6The practice is quite unorthodox to me, and I’m sure others would agree. Never in my wildest dreams would I ever think of it.”

7“That’s not what matters,” she snapped, “in all my years, I’ve found no principle to it. It just is. Now would you hear me out on another story? Please.”

8At this time, I wondered where Qui-Gon Jinn had gone. So I asked, hoping he was nearby. She had no answer.

9“If you listen to my story, I will tell you where he is.”

It was a hard bargain, but I eventually caved in and agreed to another story. This time, I hoped it made sense.

10She cleared her throat, then sat upon a boulder by the babble. “This one is about a man named Colton Hargreeves. Not quite as old as me, but quite old, nonetheless.” And at this time, I shuddered to think about her age. 11“He was young at the time; a mere teenager. He went against his father’s orders and time traveled without formal training. As an older man, he traveled back in time but went too far — at this time, he retained his older body and destroyed the life of a man.

12“Then he traveled to the day his father’s death was announced, but the older body had transformed back to his younger self. It was a simple error of the operator. He was on a quest to stop the world from ending.

13“Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop this event due to a number of actions taken, which he could not stop on his own. He enlisted all six of his siblings’ help to stop it from happening,

14“only to find one sibling was at fault for the major event foretold through a newspaper. The paper kept changing on him, and he and his siblings tried everything to correct time and space on his planet.

15“They ended up in a farm city named… Dallas, I believe? I may be wrong about this. There, they tried to stop an assassination attempt, but they failed at that, too.

16“They found out secrets no one should ever know, nor should have this… organisation ever have existed, in my opinion. But I digress. I was there for few seconds. 17As it turns out, the day he was born, I went to bed with a stomach ache and woke up seeing a light shine over me. It left so suddenly.

18“When I came to, I had no inkling, aside from a strange dream. It’s still so strange today, and I don’t know why I had it, when I’d never visited fountains at this point in time.

19“We met a long time later. In fact, it was very recently. He didn’t have the same name, nor did we recognise one another. In fact, he was quite suspicious of me, but I’d have adopted him whether he was my son or not.

20“He and I share a connection with another, but I dare not speak their name here. Who knows who’s listening so intently as to harm an innocent person?”