Story Jumpers — Chapter 6

Find the first five chapters here

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

…small, pink, claw-like hand holding a mint-green mug. The eyes behind it are deep and calming, the steam rising is inviting, and the fragrance comforting.

“Come,” they say encouragingly and although the disorientation was making them nauseous, Finn managed to haul themself up from the ground and lurch in through the door that opened wide to them with the steam rising from the tea providing the pathway.

Finn glimpsed through the now closing door the crown rubber stick gliding away to pick at other detritus deposited by the flood of people who had passed through. A nimble hand darted out and retrieved the placard as the door clicked closed and the cave-like shop embraced them with silence and a dim light, barely enough to see the over-stuffed green velvet chair and mismatched ottoman with the fragrantly steaming mint-green mug of tea waiting on a small side table.

“Sit, sit,” invited the Hedgehog patting the back of the chair.

“Yes, sit,” affirmed the nimble Otter depositing Finn’s ‘No Planet B’ placard against tall shelves holding all manner of nick-nacks embossed with ‘Live Laugh Love’.

Finn flopped into the chair trying to make sense of it all. Their brain felt flooded and was trying to find purchase with which to anchor and observe and assess, but the flood continued to sweep through and around and over them where the past, the present, and the future were one. Where they were one with the land, with the autumn leaves that covered horror and devastation, with the animals who had survived, and in amongst it all, Finn was aware of the missing button and wondered if they could just find the button if everything would come into focus again.

“Close your eyes, FOLLIS” Hedgehog encouraged.

The name tickled the edges of his memory.

The quick voice of Otter followed, “Drink your tea, you’ll feel better.” And with that, the tea was placed in Finn’s hands and guided to their lips. The now calmed steam again brought the fragrance to them. A fragrance that drew the threads of Finn’s fractured self together and as they sipped, Finn, or was it FOLLIS, tasted the floodwaters which had come before and would come again and felt a connection to all things.

Finn, who was FOLLIS, started to remember. In fact, they started eight rememberings from the eight Beings encountered in the library. They slowly brought out the Bonsai tree, eight branches of FOLLIS’ being and journey. Finn had a vague sense of what each branch had activated in them but for now, could only concentrate on breathing and sipping tea. Finn remembered the angered gaze of the librarian as they chose to break the rules and borrow the Bonsai tree and all eight beings. With the revelation of FOLLIS, each part could go with one being.

“That’s not how it works,” the Librarian cautioned.

“But I need them all to see the future,” Finn had insisted. “We are working with limited fragmented knowledge, but we need it all. There’s no planet B.”

And with that, FOLLIS had scanned out the Bonsai tree and the Beings, wrenched open the door, and descended into a fractured reality that Finn’s brain could not hold on to nor comprehend.

Now they were here. With a Hedgehog who makes good tea and an Otter who is comforting, in a shop which is more like a cave with all manner of Live Laugh Love paraphernalia and although Finn knew that none of this could be real, they were acutely aware that in fact it was real and that maybe what had once been real for them was in fact what had been fiction.

Finn’s tea was finished. The over-stuffed green velvet chair and mismatched ottoman were very comfortable and if they squinted, they could imagine that that hedgehog was a rotund shopkeeper and the Otter their nimble assistant. The shop was just that, a shop full of cheap nick-nacks. They were Finn with a concussion from falling over during the protest.

But FOLLIS didn’t want to squint.

They wanted to look at reality with eyes wide open and with all of the fragments coming together.

“More tea?” asked Hedgehog.

“Another cushion?” inquired Otter.

“I think I’m ready to make sense of what is happening,” Finn replied.