Aevum of Itero

Chapter 20

Strands of light pirouetted along the stone enshrouded in darkness. His hand grazed its rim, brushing off the blackened sand that obscured writing. His fingers traced along the uncovered name.

A name not engraved, but rather etched in handwriting.

Male handwriting, it seemed, judging by the slant of the letters.

He crouched in the emerald grass that grew along the stone. The operetta of his heart drowned out the still night.

Liam Walsham. Born September of 1892. Died same month, same year.

Same day, he thought, but there lacked an indication of a date.

He felt compelled to perform against his forehead and shoulders the sign of the cross, though as an agnostic, it surprised him that he knew the gesture.

He spoke in a language foreign to his ears.

"Mo mhac."

My son.

How he knew the words and the translation, he could not be certain.

He turned towards a whimper, a shadow of a woman with a babe strapped to her chest.

A woman repeating the same words he had just spoken.

Mo mhac.

He knew that woman.

"Brenda!" he called.

She turned to search for the voice. Just before her eyes met his, a man stepped between them.

Mo shíoghrá, said the man. Mo mhac.

No, he heard from his lips. Mo shíoghrá, he insisted. Mo mhac.

Ye are alone, said the man. And our Brenda is here.

I am not alone, said Dylan. Brenda is with me.

Brenda is not in yer time zone.

I know that. She's back in the future with fucking Monaghan, but she's also here.

Who is this Monaghan? Brenda and her son are with me.

Dylan threw his pillow at the wall.

Fucking hell. It had happened again.

It had happened numerous nights since finding the letter at LAX.

It hadn't been his letter. It hadn't been his son, studying in Cork.

So why had it felt as if it were?

He didn't always see a grave. Sometimes, Dylan would see Brenda hunched over on all fours, dressed in the garb of multiple eras with her belly jutting out. He would try to run to her, to catch her in time before the child came.

Every time he drew near, he was deterred by an ocean he couldn't cross.

And every time, he watched the distant figure of his Brenda, weeping over the bundle in her arms as that man, that other man, held her.

The other man, who even in his shadow appeared nothing like Monaghan.

He needed to see her. Properly see her. Needed to talk to her. See if she knew the meaning of his nightmares. He didn't know why they couldn't connect as they had in the summer, and it was driving him crazy.

They had known a Liam, a close friend of Brenda's from RADA who possessed such a vigor for life that he had quickly persuaded Dylan to loosen up around Brenda's London gang. Dylan had seen Liam's name listed amongst those injured in the 7 July attacks on the London Underground. He had attempted to find an email, phone number, some kind of contact for Brenda to share his condolences. Notoriously private by that point, Brenda's contact had been untraceable until the creation of her Facebook. An email to Brandon went unanswered and, he assumed, unread. Dylan had resorted to emailing Jim, hoping Jim's email address had remained the same and that Jim would pass on the message to Brenda.