The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

“Come with me,” Paul said, smiling. “You’ve told me before how much you’d love to explore time and now is the time to do it.”

Vanessa looked at Paul. Their eyes met and she bit her lip. Time travelling wasn’t something anyone did without careful planning or the agreement of at least one of the officials in charge of controlling who went where. He was holding one of the stones in his hand, that she knew couldn’t be bought, so he must have gone through the official channels, but she was still unsure.

“I don’t know,” she replied, glancing at the stone and then back at Paul’s face.

“We’ll be there for two weeks and then we’ll come home. I know you’re on holiday, so it’s not as though it’s going to be a problem getting time off, and I really want to show you my favourite time period.” Paul reached out and touched her hand. “Please, Nessa.”

Paul was saying the right words, but Vanessa had a feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her. They’d known each other since childhood, even though they hadn’t always been friends, and there were times she knew him better than she knew herself. She was certain this was one of those times. In his eyes, behind the convincing smile, was another emotion.

“Why now?” she asked.

“It feels like the right time.”

“Is there something that you’re not telling me?”

When Paul shook his head Vanessa knew he was lying to her, but there was no evidence. It was just her intuition telling her that she shouldn’t go with him, not right then, because he had another reason for travelling back in time. At the same time she couldn’t help thinking that she should go with him. He wouldn’t have asked her if he didn’t want her with him.

“I know it’s short notice and I probably should have at least mentioned the idea of us going time travelling together, but I wanted it to be a surprise. This is something you’ve always wanted to do.”

Nodding, Vanessa glanced at the stone again. “How did you manage to convince someone to let me go with you?”

“I’m not going back in time to do anything in particular, just to check a couple of things are going the way they’re meant to be, and when someone outside of one of the organisations goes time travelling they have to have a chaperon, so I thought I’d combine the two.”

Vanessa realised she was still chewing on her lip and told herself to stop, as she attempted to think things through. Paul had been with one of the secretive time travelling organisations for five years, since they had left school, and she couldn’t imagine him turning his back on them, but she knew he wasn’t always comfortable with what he was asked to do. They’d never been able to talk about exactly what he did, because everything was confidential, and she couldn’t help feeling relieved. It was too easy to imagine what he may have been asked to do.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.