Now, I’m not seriously planning to actually write stories about either Multiverses or Time Travel, but I’m at least half-seriously considering the implications. On the one hand, I hate the mechanics of Multiverse and Time Travel stories, but on the other, I do see the appeal of how they allow for playing around with the established world in novel new ways.
“Katherine!” Amara exclaims, upon find herself suddenly attacked. “Help!”
There is a blur of colour, and arms grasp Amara, wrapping around her and pinning her in place.
Honestly, what is the world coming to?
Amara decides that she is going to have to words with somebody at the Musketeer Guard about this egregious lapse in Porthaven’s security.
Amara looks down to find that her attacker is both shockingly well-dressed and shockingly young. Amara expected some big, burly, hairy, unwashed brute. She most certainly did not expect such a brazen daylight attack from a small, slim teenage girl.
Amara looks down at the brown-haired girl with wrinkled nose and narrowed eyes. The girl looks up at Amara with wide-eyed innocence.
“Goodness, Mother,” the brown-haired girl mutters. “What have you been using on your skin? You look at least twenty years younger!”
She glances over Amara to look at Kat.
“And Aunt Katherine! I do believe you’ve been slacking off, if I may say. You look rather less… muscley than usual.”
Kat stares blankly.
“Mother?” Amara repeats. “I do believe you are mistaken.”
“Nonsense,” the girl continues. “You are Amara Valda, are you not?”
“I am,” Amara answers. “But do I look like I could possibly be your mother? Why, we’re almost the same age! Furthermore—” Amara trails off at she glances down at her attacker’s neck. “—Where in the world did you get that?”
The sight of her late mother’s precious emerald necklace around someone else’s beck sends her into a rage. Amara fulminates in her fury, unleashing every scathing insult she can think of, “Thief! Scoundrel! Brigand!” “Return my necklace this instant, you baseborn little—”
Kat grabs Amara by the shoulder and pulls her away.
“Amara,” she says gently.
“Not now, Katherine. I need to thrash this reprobate,” Amara answers, struggling against her friend.
“Amara. Look,” Kat says, pointing to Amara’s neck.
Amara glances down at her neck. Her mother’s necklace is still safely hanging from her neck. Yet her mother’s necklace is also hanging from the brown-haired girl’s neck.
“I do apologise, my young friend,” Amara declares. “But you’ve clearly been taken in by a cheap counterfeit. My mother’s necklace is one-of-a-kind.”
“Indeed,” the brown-haired girl answers. “You made that quite clear when you gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday. Father gave you an absolutely lovely sapphire necklace on your wedding day — really, it is just utterly to die for. Why, it’s the envy of all Porthaven.
“Anyway, to get back on track, when you got that necklace from Father, you always said that you decided to keep your mother’s necklace to give to your firstborn daughter.”
Amara’s eyes go wide and she glances at Kat. “It’s true,” she mutters. “I have been thinking that I’d like to give Mother’s necklace to my own daughter one day.”
She wheels back towards the brown-haired girl.
“But how could you possibly know that?” She feels herself frowning. “Unless—”
“—Unless I am, in fact, your daughter?” the brown-haired girl offers.
“But you couldn’t possibly be my daughter!” Amara protests. “Look at you! You’re… big!”
“Ah, yes,” the brown-haired girl mutters bashfully. “Would you mind terribly telling me what year it is?”
“The year?” Kat mutters. “Why?”
“Well, you and Mother do look younger than you should. So, I do believe I’ve come here from the future,” the brown-haired girl mutters. “Slight mishap in my magological studies, I believe.”
“Ah,” Amara says. “Yes. That would do it, I suppose.”
“So, uh,” Kat ventures, “we can’t just keep calling you, uh, You. Wanna tell us your name?”
The brown-haired girl curtseys. “Well, since we haven’t met yet — and it seems we won’t for another two decades or so. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dulce. Named after—”
“—My mother,” Amara concludes for her time-displaced daughter.
If this ever gets written into a full story, it’s because I was unable to resist the appeal of writing, essentially, two Amaras – whom I’ve gone on record as being my favourite character.
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