Chapter Text
232 BC
Aspasia was notorious for getting into trouble, but this was impressive, even for her. What was intended as a little innocent grave robbing, ended up awakening a powerful Goddess whose glowing curse was currently chasing her in the form of a golden leopard. She didn’t know what would happen if the curse caught up, but she knew it couldn’t be good.
And all I managed to get is a few coins and an ugly pocket-sundial. She kept running down the winding cave that, surprisingly enough, indeed housed an ancient cursed burial for some forgotten noble. Shame that the one time the town gossips are right, they are right about the entire-
She almost tripped while ducking out of the way as the translucent golden leopard apparition jumped overhead, and threw two of the golden coins behind her as a desperate distraction. It was getting brighter now, she must be nearing the exit. Surely the curse has a physical boundary? It can’t possibly reach outside this cave? It was all she could hope for as she ran the last stretch, the curse catching up behind her. In her frenzy she didn’t notice that one of the silhouetted rocks at the exit was actually a human. When the human made a move towards her, the shock was distracting enough for her to take a wrong step and fall. Just before that very moment, the leopard made a last desperate leap, and with that unexpected fall, instead hit the standing human right in the chest and disappeared in a golden explosion. The impact pushed the person into the ground, which now appeared to be an unconscious woman that Aspasia was only vaguely familiar with.
The stillness was unnerving. Aspasia slowly lifted her head, and moved her dark hair out of her eyes. She stared in terror at the unmoving person, before she saw the small but unmistakable rise and fall of her chest, and prematurely sighed a breath of relief.
The woman was stirring now. Aspasia’s mind was running for an acceptable apology or explanation, and came to the conclusion that she best leave.
Then a booming voice shook the walls of the cave, “the thief stole the teller of time, as she stole your mortality. I am sorry Elpis, for punishing you with an irreversible curse of immortality, I shall relinquish my own.” The pressure in the cave seemed to drop, like rising from the deep sea onto land in the span of a second, then everything became still.
Aspasia looked at the woman, who the ominous voice just referred to as Elpis, with terror. If the voice was telling the truth Elpis was now bearing an irreversible curse that was meant for her.
“What have you done to me?” Elpis stared up at Aspasia in anger, laced with growing fear.
“I- I’m sorry-”
“You’re sorry!” Elpis lunged at the small sundial, “give me that. She said something about this stupid thing- Maybe I can make a trade with her or- or another God!”
Aspasia’s arm shook while holding the sundial out of reach. This thing was clearly worth something. Maybe she could bring it back and sell it for herself and her sisters. Besides, she thought selfishly, I almost died trying to get this. The Goddess was pretty clear that the curse is irreversible. At least this way someone can get some use out of it.
As she made a step back her fist tightened around the sundial, accidentally pressing on four moving parts. Elpis lunged again. She heard a soft click. Everything disappeared.
132 BC
In a blink, she was standing in the exact same spot. She almost thought nothing happened, but things were different. The air was drier and hotter, a strong wind was ruffling her hair, and the sky was suddenly cloudless.
Most noticeably though, Elpis had disappeared. Odd weather phenomena aside, Aspasia could not figure out how an entire human could simply disappear.
She took a closer look at the sundial. Save for the centre piece which could tell the time using the sun, it wasn’t like a regular sundial at all. Outside the centre piece, there were four rims on which you could select a number. The numbers weren’t consistent, the first rim read 0-24, the second 0-31, third 0-12, fourth 0-100. Aspasia wondered, twenty-four hours, thirty one days, twelve months and one hundred… years?
At the moment, the four movable segments were currently pointing at hour ‘0’ day ‘0’ month ‘0’ and year ‘100’, even though the sun indicated that at the moment was 3 o’clock. It was like the sundial was just a decoration in the centre, and the outer four rims were the important part.
What did the Goddess mean by calling it the teller of time, Aspasia wondered.
She searched around for any signs of Elpis. There was no indication she had ever been there. Aspasia was starting to question her sanity. Lost and unnerved, she headed back to the town.
Initially, the way looked the same. The sandy expanse grew greener and rockier as she neared the coast. But when she got to the edge of the cliff with the path that winds down to her town, something looked wrong. She couldn’t place it at first. Looking down, all the buildings were there, but they seemed dull. There was no colour. No clothes were hanging out to dry, no people in bright blues and reds could be seen mingling in the streets, no market stalls with their colourful sunshades were lining the major pathways.
Aspasia felt her throat dry, confusion and panic growing with every second.
She started rushing down.
The empty buildings gaped at her as she walked down the street leading to her home, and eerie silence followed.
As soon as she got to her home, it started feeling terribly real. The block she lived in didn’t fully belong to her, just the part upstairs, but as she walked down the abandoned halls of her childhood she felt a growing sense of despair.
She burst into her room. It was small and sunny as usual, and oddly enough, it still seemed to have some of her belongings. It felt as if the entire town up and moved during the two hours she spent away without telling her.
Frantically, she started searching her things for clues. Pushing past some items on her desk table, she accidentally knocked over the chair. The sound startled her, and overwhelmed, she began to cry. Her quiet sobs echoed in the otherwise silent home. Vision now blurry, she continued her clumsy and desperate search. It seemed that all valuable things had been taken, no clothes or jewellery left behind. But the most sentimental things were missing too, there used to be a wooden owl figurine she had carved out herself when she was eight. The same day she carved it, a sweet grey kitten had wandered in and joined their family, and no one was able to stop Aspasia from naming him ‘Owl’.
As she stared at the empty spot, she thought she heard footsteps.
She turned around, simultaneously hopeful and afraid. The person came into view.
“What are you doing here?” Elpis stood in the doorway, staring at Aspasia as if she were a ghost.
“What is going on?” Aspasia’s voice shook in desperate need for answers.
“Nothing is going on.” Elpis responded in anger and confusion. “Where did you disappear to 100 years ago that made it take you this long to visit your own home again.”
“100 years?”
“To the day.” Elpis’ eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “That's why I’m here. Why are you here, if you don’t remember the date.”
“No. It can’t. Where is my- Where are my sisters- Both of their things are gone!”
Realisation dawned on Elpis. “You’re not immortal.” She looked away. “So it is just me after all.”
“What.”
“But that means you time travelled.” Elpis started forward with renewed vigour. “You time travelled! Where is the sundial?” Elpis grabbed for her arms while Aspasia frantically hid it away, tears forming in her eyes again.
“No! You can’t have it, I need it to go back! I have to figure out how to get back!” Aspasia broke from her hold and made a run for it, realising she didn't have time to adjust the settings she pressed down on the four moving parts again and disappeared just before Elpis caught up.
82 BC
Elpis knew she should move away. It had been 50 years since her brief encounter with Aspasia, 150 years since she was made immortal, and 82 years since everyone abandoned the town due to the massive drought that starved half of the people to death.
Yet, if she was to find her anywhere, it would be here. And if she did manage to find her, and finally retrieve the sundial, she could try going back to see her family again, or reversing the curse altogether.
Because it was a curse. Elpis had categorically come to that decision relatively early on. It took 5 years to notice something and 10 to declare it undeniable, so even before what would have been her natural lifespan, Elpis began hiding away. The loneliness that came with immortality grew into a loyal companion. In the end, half her family had died in a famine, and the other half moved north, with the oldest generation taking the secret of her true identity to their grave.
She hadn’t followed.
Year by year, she walked the empty streets and reminisced about a time long gone. It felt wrong to her, that she didn’t get to live out her life with everyone else. That she had to witness the slow destruction of her home, and remain the last one standing. The conditions of her curse seemed particularly evil to her, as she was forced to experience the hunger alongside everyone else, but knew it couldn’t kill her. Because of this, living through that famine meant constantly choosing between pain or guilt.
It was nearing the end of the day, and in accordance with her well established routine, she sat on the cliff overlooking the town with the sun setting into the ocean.
She sat, she watched, and she felt nothing.
32 BC
Aspasia looked around, and was relieved that Elpis was nowhere in sight. She was standing in front of her home, or so she thought, as the walls were crumbling now beyond recognition.
She spent half an hour messing around with the settings on the sundial. The very first thing she did was set the year from ‘100’ to ‘0’, to avoid any more massive time skips, but with everything set to ‘0’ the whole thing stopped working. Experimentally, she changed the month number to ‘3’ and pressed down again. She felt the soft click and a shift around her from day to night, as if someone had just blown out the fire of the sun. When she looked up, the moon was looking down at her instead.
The house seemed even older.
There didn’t appear to be a way to make the numbers negative. It didn’t seem to matter what exact method she selected the numbers in. All she could do is select how far forward she would go.
Aspasia shook her head in desperation, why would a time travelling artefact only work forward?
31 BC
She had officially tried everything. The sundial would not take her to the past, even if it was just an hour ago. Realising she was no survivalist, she started to make her way to the nearest town, hoping it still existed. About an hour into her trek, which despite the gentle morning sun was relatively unpleasant without any water, she noticed a trading ship swimming parallel along the coastal cliffs.
She started waving at it, but quickly realised it wouldn’t just stop for her. She weighed her options: she could keep going down this deserted path to a town that may or may not exist with no food or water, or she could…
Aspasia jumped off the cliff.
It may not have been a completely reasonable choice, but absurd circumstances called for absurd responses. Or so she told herself as she swam forward, fighting the downward pull of her clothes and the accompanying panic of her situation. The boat got bigger and bigger as she got closer, and she started worrying no one would even notice her. She thanked all those above, except the sundial’s Goddess, when she was finally spotted by a man on the ship and eventually got pulled out.
Aspasia leaned heavily onto the edge of the ship. Breathing hard, the taste of salt still in her mouth, she let out a soft laugh at the shock of making it out alive. Her clothes, heavy with seawater, dripped onto the wooden floors. She looked back out onto the land with the small cliff she had jumped off, and suddenly stilled. Someone was standing now where she had stood earlier. They were too far to make out any details, but she knew who it was. Her fist tightened around the sundial, she wasn’t going to give it up. If she couldn’t use it to travel back herself, she would find a God or Deity that will bring her back home in exchange for it. She didn’t belong here, and she would do what is needed to see her sisters, her cat, her home , again.
Unfortunately for Aspasia, it was indeed Elpis standing atop the cliff. Additionally, Elpis had been alive and present these hundred years, and she knew where most boats passing through here were headed. So she tore her gaze from the blur of a person she knew held the sundial, and marched on purposefully to the nearest port. She marched despite the distance, the weather, and the lack of water, as waiting a whole century to do one thing didn’t leave room for hesitation.
The sunny walk was torture. Elpis felt like she was dying.
Ironically. She tried to laugh at the thought but with the dryness in her mouth she started coughing instead.
Another hour into what felt like something that she shouldn’t be able to survive, hands and knees down on the sand, she felt something course through her body and revive her. That was the first time she felt the specific mechanics of her immortality in action. When eating, drinking, and sleeping, her body functioned how it used to. It didn’t age, but it used familiar means to fuel itself. Once that fuel ran out though, like it did now on the dry sunny cliff, the curse kicked in and provided all the energy she needed. It was like flipping a switch, and Elpis found that her body was capable of living on the foreign energy of the curse, without hunger, thirst or tiredness. She would later find this would last until she ate, drank or slept enough to trigger her body to switch into surviving on natural means again.
Bewildered, she looked around. She didn’t feel good per se, but she didn’t feel bad either. Her hand reached to her throat experimentally; the thirst was fully gone. Elpis looked up and gazed into the distance then, new energy to fuel her motive, and spotted the port she had been trying so hard to reach. The boat had been faster than her, of course, but unloading takes a while and there was a chance Aspasia was still there.
Elpis started running. And while she couldn’t run faster than usual, she could run longer. Far longer.
So she ran, and before long she was pushing through the clutter of people at the port in order to get to the trading ship. She walked onto the ramp with so much purpose that she wasn’t questioned despite not being familiar to anyone, and only seconds later ropes were flying overboard and the ship was beginning its slow departure. Elpis was looking around frantically, she wasn’t even sure Aspasia was still here. She started pacing around the upper deck, eyes scanning across the crew that was entirely made up of men. The ship was slowly but surely increasing its distance from land now. Elpis was torn. One of the men shouted something and pointed in her direction, which was certainly making land look like the more favourable option now, before someone very familiar rose from the lower levels. Elpis started running. Aspasia was facing the other way towards the distant horizon, gaze focused on the golden artefact in her hand.
By the time Aspasia noticed Elpis approaching, there wasn’t much she could do to defend herself from another attack. They both ended up on the floor in an inelegant fight for the artefact that kept switching owners every few seconds.
A man approached, pointing a weapon aggressively enough to momentarily pause the fight, and the two women got up. The sundial was now in Aspasia’s hand again.
He eyed them both angrily. “Stop this right now or take this fight off my ship.”
Elpis snapped her gaze to Aspasia, who had a brief moment of simultaneous understanding and disbelief, before Elpis was running at her, pushing them both overboard, and plunging them back into the Sea.
Aspasia broke the surface first. “What is wrong with you? You’re insane! Are you trying to kill me?”
“If that’s what it takes.” Elpis seethed back. For the first time, Aspasia truly felt afraid of her.
“If I lose this here, you’ll never find it.” Aspasia tried to reason.
“Never? That’s awfully long for an immortal.”
It was true, Aspasia realised. She might not find it in ten years, but in a hundred, a thousand ?
Elpis was wasting no more time talking, and went under the water with the new knowledge that she wouldn’t need to breathe. Aspasia knew she was cornered again, so she did the only thing she could, and blindly pressed down on the moving parts once again and disappeared.
Despite wildly looking around in the water, Elpis knew that if Aspasia was gone, the artefact was too. The anger and frustration was all consuming. Elpis swam back to the nearest beach. As soon as she was midway out of the water, heaving, she screamed in frustration and hit the ground until she bled. It healed within minutes, which almost infuriated her even more. How long could she keep playing the waiting game? How many centuries would she have to endure for a brief encounter with someone that could disappear at will? And if she never got it back, was she truly doomed to live forever?
918 AD
Aspasia was getting desperate. Every time she got into trouble, whether it was Elpis or someone else, she jumped forward a few decades, maybe centuries. Though for her it had been little under a year, she was living now over a thousand years after her birth. Slowly but surely, the major and minor Gods and deities were retreating from the mortal realm and thus impossible to contact. She had travelled all around, begging, threatening, praying to any powerful being she could still find. But none of them would bring her back.
Eventually, desperation grew into acceptance. She had no hope left. She decided she was going to find Elpis, and finally do the right thing. Luckily , she thought for the first time, I know where to find her.
919 AD
Aspasia looked at the secluded house. It was at the end of a long winding dirt path, supposedly only ever trodden by one person. She knew Elpis lived here somewhere, and this kind of small but well-built and isolated house was exactly her style, away from the main street where the other houses were clumped together, which is where she was currently standing. She steeled her breath, reciting the amends she intended to make in her head.
Hi, I’m sorry I made you immortal- No
Greetings archnemesis- Nope
Hi, this is a gift, an apology gift, to say sorry- Yeah no
Then her resolve immediately shattered when she saw the woman in question exit the house, and she hid behind one of the houses clumped around the main street. Although she couldn’t see her face from here, the long dark hair had always been a surprisingly consistent identifier.
Elpis made her way down the dirt path and walked past where Aspasia was hiding, Aspasia held her breath, but Elpis kept walking. Aspasia was just a few steps away from her, no longer hidden, staring directly at her back. She was carrying a bag of something heavy in her arms. Then Aspasia had to breathe again and Elpis stopped walking.
Elpis turned and dropped whatever she was holding. “It’s you.” She breathed as recognition dawned on her face. Her features quickly hardened. “It’s you.”
“Wait please I-” before Aspasia could finish her sentence Elpis lunged at her with a dagger that seemingly came out of nowhere. And just like that Aspasia’s will to make amends entirely evaporated.
“Where is it.” Elpis pushed her forward with her left arm, while the right arm held the dagger that trapped Aspasia against the wall. The sharp end threatened to pierce the skin of her throat. Aspasia, though terrified, was fuelled by anger at the unjust treatment and spat in her face.
Elpis didn’t flinch.
“Where.”
To Aspasia’s shock, she wasn’t bluffing and pressed the dagger further. When the sharp sting of broken skin came, her reckless anger was embarrassingly overshadowed by her will to live.
“Pocket. It’s in my pocket. Get off me. ”
Without stopping her unwavering glare, Elpis searched her pocket, and gasped when her fingers touched the cool metal of the pocket sundial. It’s actually here.
She removed it, her dagger slipped from her grasp to the ground unnoticed. She let go of her hold on Aspasia and took a few steps back, never looking away from the artefact that condemned her to this life.
“I want to go back.” Elpis instructed Aspasia, her gaze daring her to argue.
Aspasia scoffed, “me too.”
“Show me how.”
“It doesn’t work that way-”
“Show me!”
Aspasia sighed and neared Elpis, shaking a little. She reached for the sundial, but Elpis moved it away. Frustrated, she started pointing instead, “there’s moving parts around this sundial. You have to select a number on each rim, then press the four buttons around its edges at the same time. The numbers correspond to how many hours, days, months and years forward you will go. It cannot go backwards.” Her voice became quieter near the end. Despite her best efforts, a small wave of sympathy was rising in her for this awfully familiar situation.
This tonal shift was unnoticed by Elpis, who was half way through arranging the strange sundial to the maximum number of years, which was a hundred. When all rims were at their maximum numbers, she ignored Aspasia’s explanation and focused her intention on going back, breathed in shakily, and pressed the four small buttons surrounding the edges.
They made a soft click.
Nothing happened.
“That’s odd.” Aspasia knew Elpis wouldn’t go back, but she hadn’t anticipated that the sundial wouldn’t work at all.
“No! No, something is wrong,” she said while pressing the buttons in different arrangements, “what are you not telling me?”
“I don’t know. But I’m telling the truth. If you have an hour, I’ll prove it. Go on. Set it to one hour, and zero on everything else.”
Elpis could feel the awful combination of her rising panic and sinking heart. She reluctantly changed the hands to one hour into the future, but tried to press it herself again. “It’s not working.” She looked at Aspasia with a resentment that made the other nauseous.
“Let me see it.” This time her reflexes weren’t fast enough, Aspasia grabbed the sundial, clicked the four buttons and vanished.
Elpis looked at the remaining empty space in despair. It doesn’t work, she thought, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. She walked back to the wall of an abandoned house to lean on for support, and slowly slid down into a sitting position.
It doesn’t work. It was all pointless.
She sat there, her system slowly draining from shocked to hopeless. Heart too heavy to cry and gaze emotionless and unfocused, she completely lost track of time wondering what could possibly come next.
An hour later, Aspasia reappeared and Elpis was gone. She started looking around, wandering in between two closely built houses which faced what appeared to be the main path of this village. It wasn’t busy. On the left a donkey pulled a carriage with a tired looking man. On the right two older women, backs facing Aspasia, were slowly walking away. Then two men stumbled out of the pub on the opposite side of the road. One of them, broad shoulders, bald, noticed Aspasia, and she felt a cold wave of fear.
He shouts something at her. She tries to understand before remembering her language is not spoken by anyone anymore. Well other than…
The man gets the attention of his friend, a slightly shorter but equally strongly built man with dark hair, and nods at her, so she runs back around the building. She takes out her sundial, should she skip again? But where is Elpis?
I’m sure they already forgot I’m here .
She listens for any sound of approaching steps from her right. A few seconds of nothing, she starts retreating to the other side of the abandoned house, the side furthest away from where she saw the men. When she reaches the opposite end, eyes glued to the area that they could have followed her from, a rough hand heavily falls on her shoulder from behind. The man who noticed her holds her against the wall, and snatches out the sundial from her hand. She cries out in protest, but the man in question grins. He has a terrible smile. He gives Aspasia a once over and she feels dirty. She tries to lunge for the sundial so she can skip again, but he laughs and tosses it to his friend, then that same arm returns to her throat. She panics and bites him as hard as possible. He drops her for a second, but before his surprise can turn to rage she is sprinting off.
He starts running after her but the dark haired friend doesn’t follow. Aspasia is uncomfortably aware that normally he would’ve caught up in seconds, but his chase was being slowed by his inebriated state. She doesn’t know where to run. Without her sundial, she feels the reality of the threat coming after her for the first time in a long time. Elpis’ house then came into view.
Better the enemy you know?
Now she’s running up the path, shouting Elpis’ name, wondering if this is the worst plan she’s had to date or if jumping off a cliff that one time still takes first place.
She starts banging at the door. He is getting close. He starts to slow down into a walk, taking pleasure in her desperation. Now he is standing over her, and she notices the knife in his belt and comes up with an even worse plan. She lunged for the knife and actually managed to get it, but being within reach, the man grabbed her upper arm and was using it to keep her in place. She swings the knife around in a way that would make the average person reconsider close proximity to her, but he doesn’t budge. So she swallows hard and tries to stab his arm. He catches the wrist of the hand that’s tightly bound around the knife, and redirects the stab into her own abdomen.
She lets out a cry, the adrenaline of the escape not enough to dull the blinding pain in her side. Slowly her thoughts start moving away from escape plans and begin to resign into desperation.
Is this how it ends?
Then the door opens. It’s her.
Elpis says something to the man that Aspasia doesn’t understand. He drops her and scoffs. Whatever his response means, Elpis is not amused, and repeats the last short sentence in clipped tones. The man sways a little and looks back down at Aspasia with that eager anticipation, and she feels about as optimistic as a flightless bird stuck between two cats would.
Suddenly, Elpis is done talking and breaks the two people apart. Aspasia, hand clinging to her bleeding wound, is using her newfound freedom to stumble up to the open door of the house. The man makes his case with a persuasive swing to the head, but Elpis is not drunk and dodges it easily. Aspasia, watching from the base of the doorway, now realises she’s got a dagger or knife, a big one. She’s pointing it down the path, as if telling him to go. He’s furious, seemingly more offended than threatened by the weapon, and he’s not backing away. Elpis sighs as if disappointed and stabs him in the chest. Aspasia stares in shock. He tries to grab at the weapon but Elpis kicks him down to the ground and removes it herself.
Aspasia watched Elpis deliver a second, decidedly lethal, stab and let out a scream in terrified protest. Elpis looked over at the unexpected noise, and the other quickly covered her mouth to prevent any further noises of fear. She then watched as Elpis stepped on the dead man’s neck to keep him in place, removed the dagger in one swift motion, and started walking back towards the house. As Elpis was purposefully coming back, Aspasia crawled further indoors across the stone floor until her back hit the wall. Elpis then stopped in the doorway.
“Relax. If I wanted you dead I simply would have kept my door closed.” Her tone was neutral, if not mocking. Aspasia didn’t respond. Elpis dropped the dagger in a bucket of water, then placed the bucket above the fireplace for reasons unknown to Aspasia.
Despite still being in fight or flight mode, the hot searing wound in her abdomen was becoming impossible to ignore, and Aspasia let slip a low sound of pain. Elpis looked up, this time her face seemed to be doing something else, but Aspasia wasn’t sure what. Her eyes locked on the red seeping into the tunic and widened a bit, and she started rifling through some kind of container at the back of her room with what appeared to be some kind of white cloth and a bottle of? Something? Aspasia was equally freaked out to be in the same room as this woman as she was to find that her thoughts and actions were considerably slowing. She slowly blinked and flinched to find Elpis kneeling in front of her.
“Drink this.” Elpis handed her a wooden bowl with a clear liquid and Aspasia eyed it with distrust. “For God’s sake- It’s water. I would prove it to you by taking a sip but someone made me immortal.”
Aspasia drank the water. Very eagerly, actually. Elpis eyed her with mild discomfort.
“Now this. It’ll help with the pain.”
“That’s not water.”
“No.”
Aspasia drank the bitter not-water, albeit less eagerly. Then Elpis did the most bewildering thing and took her hand. She moved both their hands away from the wound up to her chest, right above her sternum, and sort of held her down to the floor that way. Aspasia looked at their joined hands, stunned. Then the massive wave of pain came and she tried to writhe away, but the hand on her chest was solid and strongly pressing her to the floor. She started shouting out a string of apologies mixed with ‘please’s, and the pain stopped.
Elpis was looking at her weird. “You’re acting like I’m torturing you for fun. I'm trying to help here. You know this right? This?” Aspasia could kind of make out the mysterious bottle through the blur of her tears. “It’s to clean your wound. Did you think-”
It seemed that only now Elpis actually realised this woman is genuinely terrified of her, and that she might need to take it down a notch if she does intend to help. Did she intend to help? She supposed mercy was one of the few things she still believed in.
She decided to try her best attempt at gentle.
“I’m sorry that hurt, and I know it hurt a lot because the injury is pretty bad. It’s over now, and I promise it was to help. I’m trying to help you here. The herbs should help with the pain soon. Now we need to wrap this up so it stops bleeding.”
“You killed him.” Aspasia whispered, afraid to process what she just saw. Elpis looked away, was that shame? Anger?
“I did. You act like you’ve never seen anyone die before.”
Aspasia looked back at her in bewilderment, and Elpis wondered if indeed Aspasia hadn’t. Surely, even in such a short mortal human lifespan, death appears everywhere just the same?
“Not really, not like that.”
Elpis was struck by how different they are now then they were that first day they met. How much more she’s had to endure since then.
“Okay. Well. I’m sorry you had to see that then.”
“But not that he died.”
“No.”
Elpis almost groaned in frustration when she saw on Aspasia’s face that her answer is not helping.
“He was going to do much worse to you. At least save your pity for those who somewhat deserve it. His death was quick and almost painless, a mercy my family did not get.”
Aspasia had nothing to say to that.
“Look. For some reason you decided to come here for help. For some reason I am helping. If you want to leave, the door is open, I’ll walk you right up to it just so you can collapse a few steps after, giving me not one but two bodies to deal with. But if you intend to trust me here might as well go all the way, no? What do you have to lose? I can’t use the sundial anyway.”
At the mention of the sundial Aspasia almost started crying. “They took it.”
“What?”
“They took the sundial. There was another man, he- I got away- I just bit him. Like really hard. He let go, whether it was from pain or surprise, and I ran for it. I couldn’t understand what they were saying.” Elpis could barely understand what Aspasia was saying, it seemed that a combination of stress, fatigue and blood loss was taking its toll. “You killed the one that went after me, the other one has the sundial.”
“Okay. We’ll get it back.” Aspasia looked up at Elpis in confusion. “What? The sundial doesn’t belong to us, but it belongs to that man even less. Anyways. You’re shivering. That’s not good.”
Aspasia did a self assessment and realised indeed her hands were trembling, then again, she wasn’t sure if this was a physical or psychological situation. Probably both. When she looked up Elpis was adding wood to the fireplace and laying out some animal skins on the floor near it. Elpis returned to her side, and for the first time in her life, Aspasia thought she just seemed somewhat awkward.
“Can you walk or-”
Aspasia frowned in confusion. Elpis pointed to her wound, then to the makeshift bedding in front of the fireplace. Oh, that’s nice of her. Then her mind caught up to the implication that Elpis might want to help her walk or worse carry her and she scrambled up onto her feet.
“Yes, I can walk.” She said sternly, ignoring the white stars clouding her vision. Then she purposefully stumbled towards the brown and white animal fur skins. She gladly collapsed on them when she got there, and closed her eyes to appreciate the warmth of the fire for a second.
Just one more second actually. Okay surely a quick nap is alright.
Elpis watched the tangle of skinny limbs that was currently passed out on her floor. Years of anger began to drain away. Being a time traveller had clearly not treated her well, and it was hard to feel hate when overwhelmingly she just felt pity.
With resolution, Elpis tamped down any budding feelings of protectiveness she might have felt. Instead, to distract herself, she knelt down to straighten out one of Aspasia’s arms that was angled in what looked like a very uncomfortable position. Then, to her horror, the other turned over and leaned into the touch. Now the combination of the sleeping woman’s delirious affections and her own non-negative feelings towards her were incredibly overwhelming and confusing, so Elpis stood up and left.
It was raining, but that only fueled her subconscious need for drama and misery. The door shut behind her, and she looked down at the body of the man she’d killed earlier. She supposed she could deal with that now. She thought back to the terrified scream Aspasia had let out earlier and felt uncomfortable now. Had she always been cold like this? She didn’t think so.
Generally, Elpis appreciated anything that broke up the monotony of immortal life, but this? Aspasia, the only survivor of the home she longed for, and a person she had religiously hated for a thousand years, was currently sleeping on her floor. A week ago she would have been willing to kill her for that sundial, but that’s when she still had hope she could go back.
Perhaps this was some kind of new development to her divine punishment. Be nice to the person who cursed you. Forgiveness and stuff like that. Or maybe it was a test from the Gods, and if she passed she’d age like a normal person again. Ultimately it didn’t matter, Elpis had already decided she’d help Aspasia. Whether her motives were selfish or selfless is something she could figure out later.
So after dealing with the body, Elpis headed back to the house with this new purpose in mind. A decidedly bad start to this endeavour was opening the door to find Aspasia crying.
“Where were you?” The words were accusatory but Aspasia just looked afraid.
“I just needed to think- what happened?”
“You just left! How was I supposed to know. You just left. And I thought- that’s it. No sundial. Surrounded by strangers I don’t understand. Left to die.”
“Woah calm down, I’m not leaving you to die. I said I’m going to help. I meant it.”
“Why?” Aspasia was asked angrily, and it was unclear if the slight tremor in her voice was from that or the fact she was barely conscious.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m bored.” Elpis wanted to leave it there but Aspasia was looking at her with intense fear and distrust, so she tried again. “It looks like neither of us can go back. But in some ways, you’re the last part of my home that remains. Even the tunic you have on now. It’s from there. From then. I want to know what you remember. I mean- I haven’t spoken this language in… Aspasia, how long has it been for you?”
“I don't know. About a year I think, since I first touched that stupid thing.”
“A year.” Elpis laughed in disbelief. “That’s like yesterday. Do you know how long it has actually been?”
“No. And don’t tell me-”
“1151 years.”
Aspasia stared back in disbelief, first at Elpis, then her gaze drifted to the dying fire. After a few seconds of silence she just lay back down on the furs and curled in on herself, watching the fire without really seeing it.
“Aspasia?” Elpis thought if she had a stick she might have used it to poke the other experimentally. “Hello?”
No response, but she was shaking a little again. Elpis weighed her options, and after adding some wood to the fire, she settled on awkwardly lying down behind her.
In this relative calm and safety, Aspasia’s blood loss, emotional exhaustion and sleep deprivation was quickly pulling her back to sleep. Distantly she felt how the fire warmed her a bit from the front, as well as the presence of another body behind her. Her own body remembered still what it was like to huddle for warmth in the colder months. It would usually be with one or both of her younger sisters. These memories are why in a move she never would have done consciously, she turned around and searched blindly until her cold hand grabbed onto Elpis’ arm.
Elpis froze. She did not like this at all. Like at all. But the other’s hand was really cold so she figured she’d let her hold on until it warmed up a bit. Then Aspasia shuffled in even closer and Elpis didn’t know what to do. Every part of her was screaming to move away, but she had promised to help, and wasn’t this something she could offer?
So she forced her body to relax, and Aspasia continued sleeping none the wiser.
920 AD
“I don’t understand why you’re still here.” Elpis stated, in the process of her morning house chores.
“I can be more helpful- I’ll trade in the town square where you don’t like to show yourself or-”
“I’m not-” Elpis sighed. “I’m not going to kick you out. I’m just confused. There’s nothing for you here.”
Aspasia looked down. “There’s not really much for me out there either. Not in the present anyway.”
“Alright,” Elpis kept moving forward, not entirely confident in continuing the conversation she started, “help me with moving this fabric to the carriage, make sure not to damage it.”
Aspasia smiled and eagerly stood up to take the fabrics to the horse pulled carriage waiting outside, grateful to finally be trusted.
Just as she was exiting the house, a grey kitten jumped out to playfully tackle her leg. The pile of cloth was so large Aspasia could not see her legs, and at the sudden feel of tiny sharp claws, slightly overreacted. All Elpis ended up seeing was Aspasia in a tangle on the floor.
“Can’t trust you with anything huh.” Elpis commented with mild annoyance.
“That wasn’t my fault.” Aspasia felt shame creeping up.
“Sure.” Elpis’ dismissive tone managed to get directly under Aspasia’s skin.
“It wasn’t! The cat attacked my legs.” Aspasia looked down at the admittedly shallow scratches. It wasn’t that they hurt a ton, it was the surprise that caught her off guard and caused her to drop the fabrics. Unimpressed, Elpis gave the minor ailment a quick unconcerned glance.
“Aww should we put you on bed rest? Should I ask the town children if they want a job in your stead?” Even though Elpis knew Aspasia had just wanted to help, her tone was decidedly mocking.
“Kill yourself.” Aspasia bit out without much thought.
“I’ve tried.”
“Just once?”
“Nope.”
“Twice? Try again, maybe third time is the charm.”
Elpis pulled out a dagger from who knows where, and holding on to the sharp end, offered the hilt to Aspasia.
“Go on then.” Elpis smiled unnervingly, and Aspasia looked uncomfortable now.
“No. Stop it.”
“Please, I insist. On the five dead generations of my family I personally watched die, I swear I give you full permission to kill me right now.” Elpis took Aspasia’s hand and placed the dagger in it, then stepped back with her arms wide open. “Go on. You know how the Gods are, they love a good story, maybe it is indeed only you who can kill me. Or maybe you’ll come up with something new. Maybe the thirty-something time is the charm.”
“Stop it Elpis, you know I didn’t mean it.”
“Shame.” Elpis rolled her eyes and put the dagger away. “Coward.”
Aspasia felt another wave of anger in her and chose to storm away instead.
“Aspasia?” Elpis called after her, but the other was resolutely ignoring her. Elpis groaned in resignation. “Aspasia come back! I’m sorry!”
Elpis ran after her and grabbed her arm, turning her back around so they were facing each other. “I’m sorry. I was being mean. It was uncalled for.”
“No, I deserved that.” Aspasia couldn’t look Elpis in the eye. “Did you really try thirty times?”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” Elpis looked at her in surprise. They shared a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Yeah, thirty or so. Depends on your definition I guess.”
“What could that possibly mean.”
“Like, whether putting myself in deadly danger because I don’t care counts. And if about a five hour session of intermittent drowning attempts counts as one or the total times I went underwater. You look ill. I’m going to stop talking.”
“Elpis I shouldn’t have said that-”
“It’s fine. Please don’t apologise, watching you struggle through emotions makes me uncomfortable. Here, let’s go back and sort through the fabric. Put the clean ones on the carriage and the dirty ones in one pile to deal with later.”
They went back to sort through the fabric inside in silence. After they finished, one neat pile rested on top of the wooden carriage. Another stood ready to be washed near a water filled basin at the door. A few untouched piles were still inside, waiting to be moved. Suddenly, they both saw the accident for what it was, a completely minor mishap.
“Just so you know,” Aspasia said after a while, “I would never hurt you.”
Elpis knew she was referring to her challenge to kill her earlier. On one hand, she doubted Aspasia could seriously physically hurt her, on the other hand, she found the words quite endearing.
“That’s very sweet,” Elpis picked up another pile of cloth from inside the house. “But it’s okay, I don’t really care if you do.”
Aspasia wanted to respond with some kind of disagreement, but Elpis had already left. She sighed in resignation, and wondered how she could simultaneously feel so close and so far to a person.
921 AD
"You washed my cloak." Aspasia looked at the drying fabric, no longer tainted by the red fruit that she had foraged earlier that day.
"I mean I was already cleaning my own, and yours had that stain from earlier..."
Aspasia started tearing up at the physical evidence that she was cared for in some way. Elpis became uncomfortable as soon as she noticed this. "Sorry, I won't touch it next time-"
"No! No it's fine it's great it's- thank you."
"You know it's going to be hard to be nice to you if you're going to be so weird about it."
Aspasia broke the pretense, "alright I definitely thought you might secretly still hate me."
"What? Why?" Elpis looked, kind of sad actually. Aspasia immediately felt bad.
"I'm sorry. I don't know. You don't smile a lot. Also I condemned you to immortality. Also I always use up the olive oil way too fast."
"Just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm not enjoying your presence. But you do use up the olive oil really fast."
"So are we- I mean- are we like, friends then?"
Elpis was smiling softly now. "Yes, Aspasia. We're friends."
922 AD
“I win,” Aspasia declared triumphantly, gesturing at the dice, “you’re really bad at this game.”
“It’s literally a game of luck.” Elpis replied indignantly.
“Sounds like something the loser would say.” Aspasia started putting the die back into the pouch.
At that moment a grey tabby cat wandered slowly into the house. Aspasia gasped.
“What?” Elpis looked back and forth between her and the cat in concern.
“It looks just like-” Aspasia looked away in embarrassment. “Sorry. It looks just like my cat. I forgot for a second- Sorry it’s nothing, they just look really alike.”
“Oh.” Elpis looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry.”
Aspasia looked up at her in surprise. They didn’t talk about the past, and they certainly never openly empathised about their situations, afraid that blame would return into the equation.
“It’s ok. Well it’s not ok, but I- Thank you.” The cat had slowly made its way onto her lap. “Can we keep it?”
“Well you can’t just ask me that after-” Elpis looked at Aspasia again and sighed. “Yes, of course. But I take no responsibility for it.”
“You don’t have to. I took care of Owl, and I’ll take care of this little guy too. What should I name you?” She rolled one of the dice, and it landed on a five. “I’ll call you Five. Cute little Five.”
“You are terrible at naming pets.”
Aspasia covered the cat's ears in dramatic offense, but it simply continued purring.
“Don’t listen to her Five, she’s still hung up about the game.”
Elpis was not, but of course any response here would make her sound like she was, so she simply sighed in defeat. “Alright Five, welcome to the family.”
924 AD
“You’re ageing,” Elpis stated.
“Good morning to you too,” replied Aspasia, slightly affronted.
“I’m not.”
Aspasia’s shoulders relaxed with understanding. “I can’t help it.”
“I know. But I think about being here 100 years from now and-”
“What if,” Aspasia sat down next to Elpis at the dining table, “I skip to meet you in the future?”
Elpis looked at her in surprise, “but then you won’t be here…”
“I know. But you will wait for me, and I’ll visit you for a year, and maybe after that I’ll skip forward again. That way I can experience so much more of the world, and each time you can tell me all about it.”
Elpis thought about waiting 100 years to see Aspasia again. Then she thought about never seeing her again in less than these 100 years. “Ok. Ok, let’s do it.”