“The representatives will be arriving soon and they are to be greeted with cordiality and polite respect, no matter what they look like. We need this, we need what the Alliance can give us and anyone who interferes with the process will be incarcerated. This meeting was just to make sure that everyone was on the same page. Gathering dismissed.”
Just like that, the Tival gathering broke up and folk started to leave.
A voice called out, “Where do we volunteer?”
The crowd froze.
The man on the podium scowled toward the speaker and Aura looked at the man in the crowd, still facing the podium.
“I don’t think you understand. Our volunteers will be hand selected. They are volunteers in name only. Now, disperse.”
The crowd turned and dispersed, leaving Aura, Randr and the man who had wanted to volunteer.
He looked at them with surprise and Randr inclined his head before he opened a portal for anyone to see and pulled her back Home.
Aura was shocked, “Why did you do that?”
Randr smiled, “Check your memory of the timeline.”
She closed her eyes and ran through the images and the bright flash that encouraged the only Tival champion to force his way into the Tival Volunteers was indeed caused by two unknown folk who were never seen again.
“Wow. This is tricky stuff. I don’t know if I am going to get the hang of it.”
He smiled. “You will. We have appeared at a million points in history, holding up a ticket, knocking a child from the path of a carriage, directing a scanner to a so-called empty point in space that finds a floating shuttle or life-pod.”
“That is a heady responsibility.”
“It is not ours, it is the Orb. We are simply its hands and feet.” He smiled.
She blinked and her stomach growled. “I am going to get some lunch. Coming?”
He shook his head, but there was a sly look in his eyes. “No, you go ahead.”
Shrugging, she powered up and opened the doorway to the refectory. A second after she came through, Randr was at her side.
“I thought you weren’t coming.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. We are tied together. Where you go, I go and vice versa. I just wanted to test it out and it really worked.”
She winced. “A good thing you weren’t using the lav then. I am assuming this only happens when we are using the gateways.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have never seen a bonded couple like us before.”
She wandered to the food selections and then found a table. To her surprise, Tavik sat next to her and inquired as to her day.
“It has been fine, Tavik. Here is your power back.” She exhaled and released his ability to use his power to move in time and space.
He blinked and smiled. It was a shy smile. “How did you come upon such control of your abilities so early?”
Randr sat across from her and nodded for her to answer.
Aura ate a few bites and then explained, “I have been trained to compartmentalize my mind. This apparently was very attractive to the Orb and it moved more of its consciousness into me than is normal. This gave me the means to control the influx of power and in that manner, yours.”
He stared at her, eyes wide. “Where did you get that training?”
“From the Alliance. I was a Terran Volunteer and I received training to welcome other minds into my mind at the Citadel. It took two years and was very painful, but I managed it.”
Tavik blinked. “You had to study?”
“Of course. No thing achieved is valued unless there is work involved to acquire and master it. If you spent more time working on how to manage your new power and less on how to gain mastery without working at it, you would be a much better Nameless and you might even be tapped for a witnessing moment.”
Tavik smiled, “You think so?”
“When you prove that you have an interest in time as a whole and not simply your place in it, yes. We are all here because we have the potential to be so much more than we were born to. Prove it and then gain the respect of your peers. Start by asking your tutor every question you are too embarrassed to ask. There is no place for embarrassment here, many of the moments that we witness are consummations that begin lines of dynasties reaching from thousands of years ago to modern times.”
A polite smattering of applause broke out from the nearby tables and faces that had once looked at her with fear now grinned at her grasp of the Nameless purpose.
Randr smiled at her and reached out to take her hand. “I believe that you have captured the heart of our existence, my love. We live not because we are too great to die but because our lives could be more useful than our deaths.”
Aura smiled at her bondmate and squeezed his hand with hers. “I never thought that getting stabbed in a museum would be the best thing that happened to me, but here I am and I couldn’t be more pleased with how things have turned out.”
* * * *
Tavik watched them look into each other’s eyes and while he felt a vague jealousy that they had a bond he wished for himself, a tiny flicker of power within him gave him the image of a bondmate of his own.
She was tall, strong and of the same species as Aura, but if he could wait for a decade, she would be his.
He left the couple alone and went off to beg his tutor’s forgiveness and to begin again. If he was to get a mate of his own one day, he wanted to be worthy of the woman that time was showing him was meant for him alone. He had a lot of work to do, but as he walked toward the council hall, he grinned, time was on his side.
Author’s Note
When you hear about the big bang, some folks think of it as a beginning, but I have to wonder, what was there first? When one thing begins, another ends and this set of five books covers the universe that didn’t want to end and the measures that it takes to keep its hand in.
Aura has lived a tangled life. She has saved herself several times and has interfered in the lives of others. In the following four books, we will find out exactly what happens when women who barely have a grip on their own reality start monkeying around with time.
Thanks for Reading
Viola Grace
About the Author
Viola Grace was born in Manitoba, Canada where she still resides today. She really likes it there. She has no pets and can barely keep sea monkeys alive for a reasonable amount of time. In keeping with busy hands are happy hands, her hobbies have included cross-stitch, needlepoint, quilting, costuming, cake decorating, baking, cooking, metal work, beading, sculpting, painting, doll making, henna tattoos, chain mail, and a few others that have been forgotten. It is quite often that these hobbies make their way into her tales.
Viola’s fetishes include boots and corsetry, and her greatest weakness is her uncontrollable blush. Her writing actively pursues the Happily Ever After that so rarely occurs in nature. It is an admirable thing and something that we should all strive for. To find one that we truly like, as well as love.