After the scene at the gyro shop, the two of you decided to call it a day and head to the motel. The walk to the motel and to your rooms was continued in silence. You didn’t think much and let Lucien fall behind a couple feet from you, you know she doesn’t want to answer the thousands of questions you have right now so you make the decision to wait until after you wake up the next day. When you arrive at the building, Lucien once again goes into the office and picks out your rooms. She takes the lead this time and walks to the rooms with you following. She doesn’t say anything but points to your room and hands you the keys, and as soon as you turn away from her, she slips into her room without muttering a word. Before you open the door to your room you take a second to stare at hers, you want to knock and ask her if she’s ok, if she’s upset at you, and most importantly, where she went earlier.
You walk into your room and fall backwards onto your bed. You don’t move from that position and close your eyes, breathing in a meditative state. When you open your eyes you stare at the popcorn ceiling for a minute before letting out a sigh and sit up. You reach down into your backpack sitting at your feet and dig through it to find your pajamas. The sweat pants and hoodie feel comforting, like an inanimate hug from someone you don’t need to explain yourself to. You wrap your arms around yourself and walk over to the mirror. The person staring back to you looks sad, his curly hair is ruffled in the back, and his eyes are empty when they meet yours. You continue to hug yourself as you inspect him and naturally he does the same. A small chuckle escapes your lips. You turn around and crawl into bed, the mattress is cold and the blankets are hard but today has been a rough day so it’s comfortable in the weirdest way.
You wake up to the sound of a knock on your door, you don’t think you’ve been asleep for very long but who knows. The blankets fly through the air as you pull them back and you grudgingly sit up and walk to the door. As it opens, you can see Lucien wearing her oversized tee shirt, her hair is down for the first time and it falls just above her waist, she’s holding a blanket that’s been drug behind her, “I, uh, I can’t sleep. Do you think I could maybe stay with you for a little while?”
Your brain is still trying to wake up so you grunt out a small ‘sure’ and open the door wider for her to squeeze past you, her blanket slides across your bare feet. She sits on the edge of your bed and looks at you while you close the door. You sit down, your eyes don’t want to open and your body wants to lay back down to sleep but you continue to sit next to her.
You’re not sure what to say because your brain’s still foggy but you ask, “You ok?”
She doesn’t say anything back and instead sighs and leans her head against your shoulder. You wake up at the feeling of her weight leaned against you and turn your head to look at her, you can see she has her eyes closed and her blanket draped across her lap, part of it is covering your foot. You're not sure what to do but can feel your arm moving on it’s own up to wrap around her shoulders. She doesn’t see to mind so you leave it there.
“I’m sorry I made you so upset. I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t.”
It’s unclear to you how to respond, you don’t want to say it's ok because it wasn’t, “I, I’m s-s-sorry for getting so mad” You stare at the curtains covering the window.
The two of you sit in that position for a couple minutes before she sits up, takes a breath, and falls back onto the bed. You turn to see that she’s staring at the ceiling. She points upwards, “There’s a bug on the ceiling”
You look up but don’t see it, “where?”
“Here, I’ll show you,” She grabs the back of your hoodie and pulls you backwards, you have no choice but to fall and land next to her. She points right above your eyes, “There,”
It takes you a second but you can see a small bug of some sort stuck in place above you. You can feel her eyes looking at you so you turn, which places your noses just inches apart from each other and she gives you a soft smile. Your face starts to get hot so you look back at the ceiling. Neither of you say anything else and before you know it, you can hear small snores coming from beside you. You sit back up and stare at her. Her blanket is laying across her lap and draped over the edge of the bed to cover the rest of her legs. Her hair is scattered around her face and her hands are sitting on top of one another, placed above her blanket and on her stomach. She looks peaceful and you’d hate to wake her. You don’t know how to move her so you pull back the blankets on the bed, whisper to her, and tap her shoulder, “Lucien, scoot back onto the bed. Lucien” She grunts and her eyes twitch but she does what you asked. She immediately starts to snore again so you pull her blanket up and finish covering her with the motel comforter. There isn’t another bed or even a couch so you lay next to her, it’s a little chilly in the room and you don’t think she’d mind if you also used the comforter, after all, she’s the one who fell asleep in your bed and she has her own blanket that she’s also under. You leave a big space between the two of you before closing your own eyes and drifting away into slumber.
When you wake up you can feel an arm cross your chest and a leg intertwined with yours. Your heart starts to race as you look over and see Lucien asleep on her stomach, you have no idea if you should get up, wake her, or stay perfectly still. You choose the latter and let your heart beat out of your chest while staying in that position. After a couple minutes your heart still pounds but your body is in need of a stretch so you wiggle ever so slightly. Lucien groans and moves closer to you, she places her head on you and hugs you tighter. You freeze in place and hold your breath, she’s not awake is she? No, you can hear the same snores from last night so it’s safe to assume she isn’t. You stretch out the arm and leg that she isn’t holding onto. Though your heart’s still beating fast, the feeling of her holding you has a calming effect and you start to feel tired again. You reach your free hand under the blanket and use it to hold her hand before letting yourself drift off once again.23Please respect copyright.PENANAe1NDNoaisZ
23Please respect copyright.PENANA2nzyVXbmgF
You wake up again and this time Luicien is already up, it doesn’t look like she’s in your room anymore so you take a minute to lay in bed and think about yesterday: the melt down at the gas station, when you found Lucien again, and last night. It’s hard to believe that just 3 days ago you had never even seen Lucien before and now she had cried, slept, and cuddled with you. Time really flies by when it doesn’t exist. You get out of bed and walk out of your room. You never checked if they had continental breakfast but you might as well go wonder around to see. Lucien’s door and curtains are closed when you walk past, that could mean she’s still in there or that she also went to see about breakfast but you decide to leave her be and continue on your own way.
Front and center of the motel office is a floor sign that says, “Breakfast Room” with an arrow pointing around a corner. Thank God, you’re starving.
When you walk in, Lucien looks up from her plate of mini muffins, “Oh hey, goodmorning,”
“Goodmorning,” You continue walking and get a big bowl of lucky charms before sitting across from Lucien at the tiny table. You start eating and ask yourself how it is you want to bring up yesterday, you feel like it’d be weird if you just blurted out ‘So where did you go when you left me for 4 hours?’
Like she read your mind she starts talking, “About last night,” Lucien doesn’t look up from playing with her food as she talks, “I hope I didn’t overstep any boundaries. I didn’t actually mean to fall asleep,” You look at her with a mouth full of cereal, you’re unable to say anything so she continues, “It was really nice of you to let me stay with you, I liked being able to wake up next to you,”
You choke on the last bit of you food and clear your throat, “Yea, it, uh, it was nice,”
Wow. What a smooth talker you are.
She giggles before going back to playing with her food, “So, I think I own you an explanation,”her expression drops and she stabs her plastic fork into a blueberry muffin, “about why I ditched you again.”
You start to get both excited and nervous at the same time, you’ve wanted to know what she was doing since she first left but the thought of finding out something you potentially didn’t want to know is a little scary. “Yea, that w-would be nice”
She takes a deep breath, “Ok,” She reaches into her pocket, pulls out an amulet looking item and sets it on the table in front of you, “This, this thing, I think it has something to do with why time is stuck. I know you have the power to freeze and unfreeze time but the same time that you last froze the world the marking right here cracked,” she points to a small corner on the marking where it is in fact cracked.
“Where d-d-d, where’d you find this?”
“Long story short, the beach. I was visiting a cousin in southern Oregon and it washed up on the shore. I took it home and it didn’t do much but about two years ago it started to glow this strange red color. I also noticed that right after it glowed everything felt sorta like deja vu. Knowing you and the little power thing you got going, I think it glowed when you froze time. That’s my theory at least. Anyways, remember how I said I was at a coffee shop when things first froze? Well, I felt it glow in my pocket -it gets a little warm when it glows- and after I saw that things weren’t normal I looked at it and there was that crack right there.”
“That doesn’t explain why you ran off those two times though”
“I’m getting there. Anyway, it glowed twice since we started this journey. Once when we first stopped for gas and second while you were in the bathroom at the gyro shop. I’ve tried lots of things during the time that I’ve had this thing to try to get it to glow, warm up, or just respond to me in some way and one thing that I’ve noticed is that if I hold it in my right hand with my left hand under it and concentrate really hard, basically meditate with it in my hands, I can hear things, voices. They always sound too far in the distance for me to understand what they’re saying though. BUT,” she sits up straight, her eyes widen and her smile spreads across her cheeks, “If I meditate with it within like 5-10 minutes of it glowing, the voices get louder! That’s why I didn’t say anything to you before disappearing, I didn’t have time to.”
You’re dumbfounded. You don’t know what to think of this thing, you don’t know whether to be excited that you’re one step closer to figuring out why time is stuck or angry that she didn’t tell you all this earlier, “Why didn’t you tell me about this before? Why w-wait until you basically had no choice but to t-t-tell me?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” She looks you in the eyes and frowns, “Maybe I was afraid you’d blame me for this whole mess. Maybe I just didn’t trust you yet. Maybe both.”
You sink into your chair, unsure of how to handle all this information, “Have you heard anything from the voices?”
She smiles again at your question, “Yea! Last time at the gyro shop I heard the word ‘Oregon’ and ‘red’. I’m not sure what those mean but I get the feeling that we’re on the right track”
“Well that’s good to hear”
“I know right? The sooner we get to Oregon the sooner we’ll find out more and possibly fix everything!” She reaches over the table and grabs both of your hands, “Everything will go back to normal soon”
You don’t say anything in response and instead give her a small smile. You really hope she’s right.
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