Chapter Text
The world has changed, but she has not.
She wakes up in Africa, ostensibly a different person, but she isn't. She's still wearing Angel Grove clothing. She opens her wallet, sees a new ID: the name written upon it is the same, but the address, different. She walks home through high, unfamiliar grasses; tries (and fails) to decode street signs that are written, unhelpfully, in Swahili.
She stumbles home, gradually, thanks mostly to a British girl who is visiting Kenya; she takes pity on her fellow anglophone, and leads her directly to the home of her family. Her hair is brown and her eyes browner still; Aisha thinks of Kim, in Florida, and her heart heaves, knowing that she will likely never see her again.
She bumbles into her father at the doorway; he says something incomprehensible to her, full of sounds and letters she does not understand. Even his demeanor is different; the father she had left in America was always in suits and generally grimacing. This father is wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a smile on his face; he looks happy, then puzzled when she shakes her head and bumbles upstairs to where she hopes her bedroom lies.
She collapses onto what must be her bed and cries, cries hard until she falls asleep, and prays that Zordon's time-line will fully change itself in the morning. She will awake a new girl, with a new background; new parents, new land, new language.
* * *
The timeline changes, but Aisha does not.
She spends two days in her bedroom, feigning ill whenever her mother or father come by her, their concerned sounds flitting in and out of her ears. Her mother leaves strange foods at her bedside. She eats them, quickly; some sort of grilled meat, a soft dough ball with the consistency of porridge, and a sort of stew. She learns quickly that the food is more delicious when combined, and eats well. This is, she thinks, the reason her parents spare her from the doctor.
Between meals, she studies this new language, as much as she can. Her room is full of books, a different Aisha's books. She flips through some children's books still left on the shelf, manages to learn a few words. Ndio is yes; la is no. Paka is cat, mbwa is dog. Yellow, she learns with some pride, is njano, and bear kubeba. Mama, happily, is mother, and easy enough to remember; dad, however, is slightly different, baba. Painfully, she manages to fit sentences together after a couple days: Baba, nilikuwa mgonjwa.
With this rudimentary knowledge, she is able to convince her parents that she was merely ill, and is recovering. She points to her throat, and she thinks in their pleased expressions that her parents have deduced she has a sore throat, and is able to falsely lull her way through a family dinner. Her mother, her true mother, in Stone Canyon, was a lousy cook. This one, this Kenyan-born and bred mother, makes even simple flour taste unbearably good.
If her mother notices the small tear of mourning that slips from her eye unbidden, she does not comment on it.
* * *
The timeline has changed, but Aisha feels stuck between two worlds.
She learns Swahili quickly enough; she has always been clever, and bright, and after a few weeks she acclimatizes, the once-strange words tasting sweet on her tongue. Her parents are pleased to see her return to normal, or at least their Aisha's version of it. She is fun, and popular; this Aisha has many friends, and few responsibilities.
But that doesn't stop her from freezing as she passes a television on a shopping trip with her friends. A monster attack on Angel Grove, again; she watches, in powerless terror, as the megazord fights. It is not a megazord she recognizes; there is no sign of her great bear watching from its chest. It's far too blue, and different; she wonders if the yellow ranger there is Tanya, if she is doing alright adjusting to Angel Grove.
The old Aisha still lives in her in those moments, frozen as if transfixed. Her friend Barika grabs her arm and leads her forward, but Aisha's thoughts remain on the Rangers. “Do not worry, Aisha,” Barika says. “Such things – they cannot happen here.”
Aisha is unconvinced. She too, had thought that once.
* * *
Aisha adjusts to her new life, but misses her home.
She thinks of it often, her true home – all high-rise towers, quarries, and parks. She thinks of the ocean, of scuba-diving with Kim in deliciously calm and salty shores. She thinks of Adam, and Rocky, and misses them horrifically; they have been her friends as long as she has been able to walk, present for every moment of her life. Without them, she feels adrift, loose. It is as if her arms have been cut off.
Even with Barika, with Gathii, with Wamai, with all her other friends – there is a pain in her, dull but unending.
Aisha succumbs to temptation after a couple months of pining. She still remembers e-mail addresses, and writes Rocky and Adam in the computer lab in her new school. She writes Kim too, a different email, one asking how she is and where she is and how she likes her training. She does not mention that she is living in Africa now; does not know how to explain why she has done this.
Adam writes back right away, his e-mail full of ALL CAPS and exclamation points. Yes he is enjoying Angel Grove, yes, Rocky is ok, and Tanya is doing alright, too. He will try to get her to sign up for an email address so she can talk to Aisha. He mentions Tanya frequently, and she wonders if Adam may, perhaps, like her. How are the animals, he wants to know; how is her family. He mentions the ranger business in the most general of terms; that he is fond of green now, that Rita and Zedd are out of the picture, that there is a new power on the moon-base and that they are machines.
It's not the same, he writes back at the bottom of his email. I miss you.
She reads it hungrily, guiltily; she reads it over and over again, prints out his letter so she can bring it home. She writes back instantly. Rocky writes her too, with news much the same – he, too, is a new color, blue, and he's taken to wearing blue over red, isn't that funny? He will ask Tommy if he has gone through the same thing, and if Tommy could perhaps write Aisha, too. He doesn't write as frequently as Adam, despite being the bigger computer nerd between the two of them, but she understands why: Rocky has always loved to keep busy.
Eventually, Tommy does write her. His writing is cool, calm; how's it hanging. We miss you. Do you like it there? He asks; then, he seems to anticipate all her questions: Billy's taking retirement okay; he helps out at the CC sometimes. Rangers ok. New powers. Getting driver's license next week. Hope to talk to you soon. He is a born leader; direct, but not unkind. He will always be a leader, she thinks.
Even Tanya writes her; she is well, though she misses home. She asks if Aisha has tried ingokho with ugali yet, her favorite meal. She says that Adam is very nice, and kind, and reminds her of her good friend Bakira. She is living with Kat's family, and Kat is very happy to have the roommate. She says that they are good, and asks her to look after the people she left behind. Aisha promises she will.
It is only Kimberly and Billy who say nothing to her. Billy she is not surprised by – she remembers Kimberly complaining, through a scratchy line in Florida, that Billy often forgot to call. But Kim? Her friend, her team-mate, a girl so close to her she called her sister?
Kim's willingness to ignore her is a stab through her heart.
* * *
She does not change her life without purpose.
She is seventeen when she is admitted to the veterinary medicine program in the capital; her parents are proud. Bakira buys her a stethoscope and hugs her as she bids her goodbye from her small, country home.
She moves to Nairobi, which reminds her more of Angel Grove than her parent's hometown. There are McDonald's here, and quarries, and high-rises. She still feels isolated, alone; she misses her friends, both old and new. Most of her new friends aren't going on to college; their way remains the way of their forefathers, and they are content to follow hundreds of years of tradition. They only understand that she is leaving so that she can come home.
She writes to her Angel Grove friends more frequently, watches their exploits as rangers on the television. She doesn't dwell on the ones she's lost contact with – Billy's gone to Aquitar, evidently to marry a fish, which seems very...Billy. She doesn't dwell on Kim's radio silence, forgets her dear friend blocking her out until the very moment she sees her on the television in her small dorm room.
She's in the Pan-Global games, the event she's been training mercilessly for. She'd recognize Kimberly even without the small sign at the bottom of the screen, bearing Kim's name, age, and hometown for all to see. She watches, mesmerized, as Kimberly turns and pivots; watches the way her powerful thighs straddle the balance beam, watches with her hand on her cheek as Kim does a running jump onto the pommel horse.
There's such a confidence in the way her friend moves; Aisha watches, powerless to resist. She watches every event, sees Kim win three gold medals. She'd always known Kim to be an attractive woman, but this Kimberly is bewitching. She watches, and smiles, and wishes her well despite the silent treatment. She is beyond proud of her.
She writes one more email congratulating her, but does not hear a response back. She throws herself into her studies so deeply that she almost fails to notice.
* * *
Aisha is a fish out of water in Nairobi.
She does not make as many friends; colleagues, she has plenty of, and acquaintances, but mostly she devotes herself to her studies. She feels a pressing need to solve the crisis she gave up her own time-line for; feels a need to absolve her parent's homeland of its curse.
After that, she does not know what she will do, but she does not dwell on it. She keeps her nose to her books, her hands upon the animals she's been tasked with caring for.
She dreams of Kim, sometimes. She sees Kim leaning toward her, watches her body bend and move. She is supple, quick. Aisha is a bit in love in her dreams. Once, she had thought her worship of Kim to come from a place of admiration; Kim had been a ranger longer, was more talented, more beautiful.
Now she knows there was more to it than that. There are dreams where she dreams of Kim leaning close to her, dreams where Kim's pink lips press against her own.
It's at this point that Aisha knows something she's long suppressed: men don't interest her at all. She keeps quiet about this, studies. Kenya is not California, and such things are not looked upon kindly here.
Still, she thinks of Kim, sometimes, the sun glittering in her hair, and smiles.
* * *
Her hard work pays off. She graduates with honors.
It feels somewhat hollow. She doesn't save the animals in her family's new-found hometown, doesn't understand the source of their plight even after four years of hard work. She needs more education. Her parents do not understand. Her friends at home do not understand – Bakira has three children, and wants to know when Aisha will make some of her own. Aisha dances around the subject, and spoils her friend's children instead. Gathii has two and has lost her first husband, and married again, and wants to know when Aisha will come to see her new husband. She promises she will, but she does not give a date. Wamai has taken over the local grocery, and is doing well, and wants to know if she would be interested in running it with him. She promises she is not.
It is made worse by the fact that Rocky and Adam have vanished, abruptly. Their correspondence had been getting thinner and thinner as they neared their graduation, but they stopped, almost instantaneously, after finishing school. Two years later, Aisha still does not know why and with her studies done, it feels like a more burning question than ever. She looks at the rangers on TV who wear strange new outfits with strange new zords and she can tell, by their voices, that she knows none of them. She has even tried to reach the command center on her communicator, but receives only silence.
She is scared for them, but she is powerless. She goes home to her parents, for the time being, and studies the animals, as if the secret of their aggression is locked inside them.
* * *
Her mother is putting pressure on her to marry. She does not want to.
“What about Wamai?” Her mother asks, as Aisha folds their clothing. “He is a good boy, a grocer. You will never go hungry.”
“He doesn't like me like that, mama,” she sighs. They have had this conversation before. Aisha does not want to have this conversation again. “We are like sister and brother, not like husband and wife.”
“What about – “
“Mama, enough,” she says. Her mother's mouth is a pursed line of displeasure, and she says nothing else while Aisha finishes folding the clothing.
This is the night she starts applying for her doctorate.
* * *
She is accepted at seven institutions.
Three are in Africa; two in America, and two in Europe. She does not apply for Angel Grove University; she is too afraid to see Adam, or Rocky, or any of their friends. She is a coward, she knows, but she does not want to live in a town with Rangers she does not know, with a villain she does not fight. She does not want to see Adam or Tommy or Rocky leading new lives, lives that were born and molded without her.
Instead, she applies for a veterinary school in Florida, and another in Illinois; she applies for one in France, and another in Germany, and three in Kenya. She expects to get into all of them – her grades are good, her passion undeniable – but unless she can get a scholarship, it is unlikely that she will be able to go to any of them. The letters come, in a few weeks, and they do not bring a scholarship.
They do bring her mother's anger. Her mama is so furious she won't speak to Aisha, not for weeks. So it's surprising when she walks into Aisha's bedroom as she pages through another veterinary journal, and says: “There is a woman outside to see you.”
Her mother says this disdainfully; Aisha does not know if mama does not approve of the woman, or does not approve of Aisha as a whole, but she is grateful enough for the end of the silent treatment not to press her mother on it. “Thanks,” she says, standing and walking toward the door, but mama stops her, places a hand on her wrist.
“There is a man with her.” Mama's nose wrinkles. “There's something… not right about them.”
“Do you know who they are?” She asks, suddenly concerned. Mama is more superstitious here than she ever was in Stone Canyon, but Aisha has lived a life filled with enough danger not to take the warnings seriously.
“I think they're...” She hesitates, her hand tightening around Aisha's wrist. “Watchawi.”
“Witches?” Aisha's blood runs cold, and she moves her arm away from her mothers before her mother notices the goosebumps running down her skin. “Mama, you are being silly. Witches don't exist.”
“There's something in them not human.” Mama insists. “You be careful.”
“Do you want me to turn them away?” She wanders how they found her, who they are. Zedd and Rita? Divatox? Some other enemy of the Rangers? She does not know, and she does not want to imagine what they might have in store for her. She knew they'd never messed with Trini, Zack, and Jason after they had left the rangers, but – perhaps there was a first time for everything.
“No, binti. You cannot offend aWatchawi. unless you want to be chosen the next time they need a blood sacrifice.You must listen to them, and be polite, but – Do not take anything they offer lightly. Go now; we have already talked too long.”
“Alright, mama,” Aisha says, folding her into a hug. Her mother clings back to her, the silent wall between them fully dissolved.
Despite her mother's warning, she climbs down the stairs slowly. She sees her mother watching her from the hallway, but she does not follow, no doubt afraid of the watchawi. Her Kenyan mother still believes in many of the stories of her childhood; perhaps, if Aisha had been the Aisha who should be here, she would believe as well.
* * *
Aisha relaxes a bit as she sees the couple; they sit on the couch, nothing about them looking particularly magical.
Mama, she decides, is being foolish, and with that thought in mind, she bounds down the stairs.
“Ms. Campbell,” the woman says, getting up. The man quickly stands behind her, his arm moving to sling across her shoulder. He looks more ill at ease to be here than the woman, who smiles warmly at Aisha. The woman is medium-skinned, almost but not quite dark enough to belong here, with long, auburn hair trailing down her back. Despite the bump that indicates that she is expecting, and quite soon, the woman is nothing but graceful. Her husband is considerably paler, with shorter, darker hair; he has a regal manner to him, but an awkward one, like a Hapsburg prince.
She shakes her hand, and feels nothing amiss. But then she looks into her eyes, and the eyes -- she knows, instantly, why her mother had called the woman a watchawi. Her eyes are deep brown, unfathomably deep, with brilliant pinpricks of starlight. Her eyes are old, and look like they have seen too much.
“I'm sorry,” Aisha says, frowning. “Do I know you?”
“You did once,” the woman says, “in another life. Please, sit.”
Aisha heeds her mother's advice, though the part of her that had once been a power ranger sulks at it. But what can she do? Her communicator is upstairs in a drawer, and has not worked since she has arrived in Africa; her yellow bear ninjetti is long gone. Last she has heard, the power rangers had even gone off into space. She can't count on her friends to save her – and she doubts the new rangers will turn around and come all the way home just for her sake.
The man and the woman sit down, almost as one. She raises her eyes toward the man's face and sees that he, too, has old eyes, with stars in them. She thinks on the riddle they had given her; surely they mean her life in Angel Grove, but she does not recognize either of them.
“What is this about?” She asks, the closest to impertinent that she dares to be. She watches as the woman looks down, and the man braces a hand on her back, as if to give her strength.
“Let us call it...restitution,” he says. He has an old voice; a rich one. It reminds her of Zordon.
“Restitution.” Aisha shrugs. “I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're talking about.”
The woman glances about the room, then clicks her fingers. The doors slide shut. Aisha swallows. Whatever they are going to say, they don't want witnesses. Her hands ball into fists. It has been many years since she has been a ranger, but if the situation calls for it, she will go down fighting.
“Please,” the woman shakes her head. “We mean you no harm. We know in this time-line that your family does not know about your...ranger...activities.”
“What?” Aisha tilts her had, staring at the couple. The couple who knew she was a ranger. Who had wronged her in some way. A couple she had fought against –
“Oh. My. God.” She says. “Rita and Zedd?”
“Now she understands,” The man says, turning to his wife, and the mannerisms are all too clear now: the way he signals his speech with his body language, like a man too long used to wearing a mask; the oldness of his eyes; the way they had made her mother afraid.
“We don't use those names in public anymore,” Rita, who evidently was no longer Rita, says. “We have renounced them, along with our claim in the United Alliance of Evil.”
“Okay.” Aisha blinks. No one said anything; evidently, that was supposed to mean something to her -- but it did not. Aisha tried to process what this could mean, failed. “I guess...that's good for you?”
“Perhaps,” the former Zedd said. “But we are not here to talk about us. What we have come for, Aisha Campbell, is to talk about you.”
“You don't have to give me anything.” Aisha might not have been raised in Kenya, but even she knows enough of the local folklore to be wary of accepting gifts from witches. It is common knowledge that every time you accepted a gift from a wizard, there are strings attached – and that had definitively been true enough in her life as a ranger.
“We do.” Rita rubs her belly, grimacing; Zedd moves, instantly at her side, holding his hand over her belly. Bolts of white light shoot out from his fingers, doing what...Aisha did not know. Aisha says nothing over the strange display, but is definitively glad that Rita has keep the door shut, even if she knows her poor mother must be fretting on the other side of it. She'ssure this would be even harder to explain than how, in high school, she somehow forgot swahili.
“Sorry.” Rita shakes her head. “As I was saying, we are attempting to right the wrongs that we caused in our former lives. Including your lives. You were only children...”
“No time to think about that, my sweet,” Zedd says, then turns toward her. “It is also a gift from Zordon, whose name you perhaps trust more than our own.”
“If that's the case, then why wouldn't he tell me that?” The mention of Zordon puts Aisha on edge. This was too much; they were over-sweetening the honeypot. Aisha could suspend a lot of disbelief, and had in her life, but even she finds it hard to even try to believe that Zordon has abandoned her, has sent Zedd and Rita over to sit in her living room without mentioning it to her, a little oh, by the way....
“Because Zordon is dead,” Rita says softly, and all the air whooshes out of Aisha's sails at once.
“What? Dead?” That is bad. Unthinkable even. “And the Rangers? Is that why -?” She swallows, unable to voice her most secret fear. Is that why they all disappeared? Why they all abandoned me?
“No,” Zedd says, shaking his head. “The Rangers live on, in their own way. We have visited many already. You were harder to locate.”
“I don't believe you.” Her hands ball into fists. Aisha stood. Was this why Kim had never answered her emails? Why Rocky and Adam had faded away? She might not be able to make up much of a fight, but she'd die fighting them both if it came to it, lightning-bolt fingers or no. “Did you kill my friends?”
“No, child.” Rita snaps her fingers, and a small screen appeared before Aisha – a sort of magical ball, like the one in the Commander Center. She watches, spellbound, as it lights up; Rocky and Adam swim into view, walking in a park together, laughing. Her heart aches, just at the sight of them - it has been so long. They have both changed. Adam has cut his hair short; Rocky has grown his long. Adam slings a hand over Rocky's shoulder, and the image fades away. Tommy replaces it, studying, with new and ill-fitting glasses almost taped over his face. Another image ripples; Kat, teaching swimming lessons; then another – Tanya, singing into a microphone. It changes again, and she sees Billy, walking down an oddly-shaped boulevard, chatting with an alien woman who holds onto his hands with surprising intimacy. And then it ripples one more time; Kim.
Kim is sitting in a doctor's office, an unhappy look on her face. She doesn't need her medical knowledge to recognize that there are x-rays on the wall of two legs, nor does she miss the way those legs are badly fractured.
“You haven't talked to her yet, I hope,” Aisha says, weakly. She feels torn, simultaneously relieved that her old friends are alright...and hurt that all of them had, seemingly, forgotten her. Moved on. It might have been inevitable, but it didn't make it sting any less.
“No, we haven't.” Rita snaps her fingers again, and the viewing globe disappears.
“I can't believe it.” Aisha says, shaking her head. When had they decided, that she no longer mattered? When had her friends - people who had held her very life in her hands - turned against her?
“Oh, come now!” Zedd shouts. She should be concerned about angering him, but isn't; whatever he can do to her, it's not going to hurt as bad as this does. “Look, child, we've come to offer you – “
“I can't believe it,” she says, ignoring him. “They really just abandoned me.”
Zedd stops, mouth still open; Rita looks over at him, then leans forward, taking Aisha's hand.
“Did Zordon not explain this to you?” Rita asks, frowning.
“Explain what?” This answer is evidently not to her satisfaction; Rita turns to Zedd, gives him a look that Aisha can't read.
“Zordon and his child soldiers,” Zedd mutters, before looking up at her and sighing.
“They have not abandoned you so much as...” He waves his fingers. “Forgotten you. In a manner of speaking.”
“Forgotten – ?”
“The time-line corrected itself,” Rita offers. She speaks slowly, as if to a child. She'd be offended, if she understood any of this, at least. “When the Zeo crystal was put back together.”
“Yes, I know that, but – “
“You changed the time-line. There were two time-lines in play when the Zeo Crystal fractured; only yours did not fold back into the original universe.” She holds up a finger. “Humans can only perceive one time-line, generally.”
Rita pauses for a moment, as if expecting a question. Aisha did not ask any.
“You were born here instead, in this time-line. The Crystal changed your history, and the human world with it. While your ranger friends were in the morphing grid, through the power they gained from Zordon, they remembered your original time-line. But once your friends were removed from the morphing grid, gradually their memories were...rewritten...to mesh with the time-line where Aisha Campbell never attended Angel Grove. At best, they may have a flash of a girl they once knew – but by now, I doubt they could even remember your name. And once Zordon was killed, what minimal connection your friends had to the morphing grid simply….disappeared.”
“Then how come you remember me? No, not just that, if I changed the time-line, then how come I don't remember this timeline?” Aisha says, her voice wavering. “Why do I still remember Stone Canyon, and the rangers, and – “
“The morphing grid was upheld between Zordon and myself for millennia. It is now exclusively my charge,” Zedd says, a small smile on his face. ”And as Rita was born as a seer – you'll find we are mostly isolated from such small fractures in time.” Aisha doesn't know what a seer is, or what upholding the morphing grid would entail, but she says nothing, only biting her lip as she tried to come to grips with this.
“As far as you, you are the epicenter of the time-line fracture,” Rita says gently, patting her hand. “You will forget in time, but it will take you far longer than most.”
Aisha winces. The idea of it – of forgetting Adam, and Rocky, and Kim, burns; it is not at all acceptable. “I don't want to forget.”
Rita and Zedd look at one another. “We can arrange that,” Zedd says, slowly. “We've come to offer you a favor, Aisha. A way to try to help you regain what you lost to us.”
“Is this what you wish us to do? We could cast a spell that will stop the Zeo Crystal from exerting its influence on your personal time-line.”
“What's the catch?”
“No catch.” Rita squeezes her hand one more time. “You have already paid in your childhood suffering.”
Aisha hesitates, for a moment. She thinks of her mother, anxiously waiting above her stairs. She thinks of all the old legends, of her old life; of Zordon, and Alpha, and Zordon being gone, and her friends forgetting. And she knows, now, that she must take the leap and trust them – someone had to remember. Aisha did not want to forget. And, according to Rita, there was no fee to be paid.
“Then yes.”
Zedd nods, leaning forward, and takes her other hand. “Close your eyes, Aisha. This won't take long.”
She obeys, feeling a spark of what felt like lighting touching her palms. It did not hurt, and, true, to his word, it did not take long. She feels power instantaneously, yellow lightning coursing through her veins, and she thinks of her days as a ranger, and smiles.
When the transfer stops, she opens her eyes, but Zedd and Rita are gone.
A thick manila envelope is left on the table, her name written out in an elegant, gothic script. She opens it only hesitantly.
* * *
Aisha,
Please use this to help you reach your goals, whatever those may be.
- Z. & R.
There is what looked like a credit card attached, from a Bank in Switzerland. On the second page, there is an account summary of an account set up in her name. Her eyes bug out as she sees the amount listed – she's never seen that many zeroes in her life.
Her mother bursts through the door at that moment, wrapping her in a tight hug. “What did they do to you, binti? Are you alright?”
“They're from the university,” she lies, pocketing the money before her mother could glance at the tell-tell note on top of it. “I got a scholarship.”
Her mother did not rebuild the wall between them, but she sees the sadness in her mother's eyes as she sadly claspes her hand. “Congratulations,” she says, even though it is clear that she does not mean it.
* * *
In the end, she chooses the French veterinary school at St. Moineau. They've done a lot of studies over the Savannah, and in the end, seem to be the best fit for her goal. It's a prestigious university, and one that does a lot of charity work in Africa. Her parents cannot fault the institution for its connection to their homeland, but they will miss her.
And she will miss them. She clings tight to both of them, memorizes every curve of their face, every fleck of light in their eyes as she boards a plan that will take her towards France.
She has elected to live in the dorms, both because it is easier and because she is eager to make friends in her third foreign land. She received the envelope with her room and board assignment on it weeks ago but does not open it until she is on the plane, for fear that it will vanish before her eyes.
She glances down the continents quickly; Aisha Campbell—dortoir des filles intentionnelle, 11 rue Paradis, 314. Colocataire: Kimberly Anne Hart.
“Is this a Joke?” She wonders out loud, startling the old man next to her.
Always catches, her mother's voice whispers, always fine print.
She swallows, not sure if this is a good thing - or a bad one.