I woke up this morning to find myself back on the empty lot that was my home back when I first moved to Oasis Springs. My house, my wife, my children… everything was gone and I had no explanation for why. Just an impending feeling of sorrow and deja vu.
I was barely there when Dawn stopped by and embraced me. She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“Silly,” she told me. “You moved out and I miss you so much.”
Mom stopped by and kept me company while I was fishing. It felt familiar, but I was so emotional because my parents both died years ago. I let looking at her and my eyes would tear up.
“Are you okay, son?” she asked… and I had no way to tell her how I was feeling.
“Just… sad because I’m not on the beach…” I lied.
“It will get better,” she promised.
With no house, no kitchen and no food, I was so hungry. I don’t even remember being that hungry the first time around. I actually picked some lemons off the nearest tree and ate those. The sour fruit left an ever more sour taste in my mouth.
What was going on? Where was my house? My family? My life?
With nothing else to do and no other explanation, I did the only thing I could think of… work. I spent hours fishing and collecting plants, just like when I first started out. It was hard, hard work. At the end of the day, I was so exhausted, I just collapsed on the nearest bench and fell fast asleep.
And then… I began to dream… at least, I thought it was a dream… in which a Celestial being appeared to me. It was my Aunt Diana, who has been long dead.
“Hello, Caden,” she said to me.
“Aunt Diana. But… you’re dead.”
“Yes,” she said sadly, “though a part of me, the part that isn’t quite human, has lingered to watch after my family. I promised my father – your grandfather – that I would.”
“Do you know what’s going here?” I asked her. “My house – my family – my children –“
“They’re gone.”
“Don’t you think I don’t know that?!? I want to know WHY!”
“Caden…” Aunt Diana said. The way she said it was so sad that it shook me into silence. “You died, Caden.”
“I… what… how…”
“The cow plant…” I said as the memory came flooding back to me. I’d gone out to check on it and found a piece of cake hanging from its mouth. Not that I was hungry, but as a Conservationist and quasi expert on plants, I was curious. I’d reached for it.
“The cow plant…” Aunt Diana echoed. “I tried to warn you. The journals. The notes. I tried to warn Dad, too, so long ago. Cow plants and volatile and unpredictable. Not safe.”
“Is this heaven, then? Some kind of limbo?”
“No Caden… this is a second chance. You cannot fail. Our family cannot fail in our Mission. You get a do-over. A chance to do it better this time.”
I did not want a do-over. “What about my family? My children?”
“No longer exist. I’m so sorry, Caden.”
“Aleah?”
She sighed. “If you and Aleah are meant to be together, you’ll find each other again.”
But would it be the same? If I changed anything, would they still be born? Would they be the same kids? And what if I never found Aleah again? What then? I tried to ask Aunt Diana, but she had vanished, and I was being awoken to a light rain falling over Oasis Springs.
As it fell, I began to cry.
Comments
2 responses to “Drifter Challenge – House 3, Ch. 5”
Awesome!
Thanks! Poor Caden has had it rough, hasn’t he?