Maybe I should’ve paid more attention to the pyramid, or the desert we were standing in, or the fact that if I didn’t find my way to that rift in time it could end up giving the Fomorians all the powers and strength of a Dragon-Heretic. There were a lot of things for me to focus on. But in that moment, right then, all of that completely left my mind. The only thing that mattered was that my mom and dad were there. I was lost in that realization, forgetting everything else. Hugging my mother as tightly as possible, while my dad embraced both of us from the side. Safe. I felt safe right then. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else even registered, not for those few precious seconds. I felt all the tension and fear that I’d been holding in for so long wash out of me, which only made me hug my parents tighter, my right hand slipping around to grab my dad’s side before gripping him firmly. I never wanted to let go. I never wanted to move from this spot.
In the end, of course, I did have to let go and actually explain what was going on. Or try to. Staring at my parents as they in turn gazed at me with looks of mixed incredulity and awe, I opened and shut my mouth a few times. God, where was I even supposed to start with this? There was so much to try to get through. “I--um. I guess I should explain what’s going on.”
Mom was looking around, finally actually taking in the area we were in. Her hand moved to take mine, squeezing a bit while she asked a simple, “We’ve been brought back in time, haven’t we?”
“Back in time,” Dad echoed, clearly reeling somewhat. He turned to stare at the structure in the distance, making a soft, disconcerted sound under his breath. “Oh, that’s just a little uhh… oh.”
I wanted to explain everything, wanted to get into what they needed to know. It was important, after all. One of the most important things of all time, literally. If we didn’t solve this problem, didn’t find the rift and send me through it, that would pretty much be the end of everything. The Fomorians were already an almost insurmountable problem even without having Dragon strengths. If they were empowered that way, it was just… over. We absolutely had to stop this, and the first step of that was to actually explain the situation so my parents could understand.
And yet, no matter how much I tried to tell myself to start talking, all I could do was stand there and stare at them. I felt… I felt a flurry of emotions I couldn’t explain. Yes, it had been awhile since I saw my parents. By my estimates, almost six months. That was a pretty big deal. But the level of emotions I was feeling right then, the sheer rush of love and longing, was so staggeringly overwhelming I couldn’t force any more words out. My body trembled a bit, a soft, somewhat incoherent and almost animal-like noise escaping me. Tears came to my eyes, half-blinding me.
“Felicity.” Mom was right there, hands gently cupping my face as she immediately seemed to understand. Her voice was gentle, though slightly shaken by barely contained emotion as she asked the most relevant question. “How long has it been? How long have you been away?”
“I--” My mouth opened to give the obvious answer. It had been six months, roughly. Which was a long time to be completely cut off from them as well as almost everyone else I cared about, but not nearly long enough to completely account for the sheer level of the reaction I was actually having. But that, as I started to respond, was when the truth struck me. This wasn’t just about my reaction. It wasn’t just about how long I had been cut off from them. Because I wasn’t the only one in this body. I wasn’t the only one whose emotions were suddenly taking over right then. I had company. So much company. There were dozens of other versions of me, all of whom remembered our parents, and all of whom had been cut off from them for so much longer. Some for centuries or more. Yes, many of the longest-lived members of the Flique were asleep, taking their much-deserved extended break. But the ones who were still conscious collectively held incredibly intense emotions about the parents they had been cut off from for so many years. That was what had been overwhelming me so much. My own feelings and relief about seeing our mom and dad were strong enough on their own, but in that moment I’d been feeling everyone’s reaction, completely unfiltered. No wonder I’d barely been able to stand, let alone talk.
It’s our mom and dad, Story murmured in my head, her own voice choked with emotion. Mama and Papa. They’re right there. Right… there… She made my hand rise, barely touching our mother’s face even as I felt her tears take over once more. She couldn’t speak anymore.
Feeling our father’s hand brush down through my hair--our hair, I looked that way as he met my gaze and repeated Mom’s so-important question. “How long?” There was worry in his voice, terror that he seemed to have missed so much of my life if I was having this much of a reaction to seeing them. Both of my parents had already picked up on that, because of course they had.
Now that I understood where all that was coming from, I was able to straighten up a little bit and actually make myself talk. It wasn’t exactly easy, to say the least. I could still feel the overwhelming emotions, though it was obvious that the other Flique members were doing their best to keep themselves under control. Still, between all of that, I managed to get a few shaky words out. “Mom… Dad… we need to explain. We need to tell you everything, and there’s--there’s so much to get through. I can’t even--but I need to--we need to--” Realizing I was letting myself start to babble, I caught it and closed my mouth before taking another deep breath. One step at a time. I needed to get through all of this, but how could I actually tell them the part that was leaving me so completely… like this? How could I explain exactly how many of us were actually experiencing this reunion? Was I just supposed to start from the beginning and try to make it through the whole story before getting to that? Because the way every version of me was feeling right then, the desperate urge pushing for all of us to talk to them at once, made that almost impossible. They needed our parents to see them, to talk to them, to understand them.
I felt… something deep inside taking over just then, something I couldn’t explain or control. It was like an urge to hiccup or burp, something in my stomach that welled up through my chest and throat. There was a strange sort of pressure, something that desperately needed relief. It was going to escape, but it wasn’t air, and I wasn’t sick. This was something else, something much more useful, even if I couldn’t understand why or how it was happening. I realized what was coming a second before it did, but all I could manage was a quickly blurted, “Hold on!”
My warning didn’t exactly help. There wasn’t time. The second it came out, the thing that had been trying to burst out of me managed to escape. A wave of mixed sound and light erupted, swallowing up both of our parents. They vanished from view, a sight I managed to absorb very briefly before my vision started to blur. The horizon in the distance began to drop, as my body collapsed, landing heavily right there in the sand. My eyes closed then, vision going dark.
It came back immediately, of course, as I found myself standing in the middle of the park on our Ankou-Archive island. My parents were there as well, having somehow been drawn inside. I had no idea how we managed that. We certainly hadn’t done so intentionally or consciously. We had just wanted so badly to see them in person, to let them see us, that it simply happened on its own. Or rather, we had managed to subconsciously trigger the ability to pull people inside. We knew it was possible, or at least assumed it was, but had no idea how to do it. Apparently, in this case, the answer was just to want it badly enough. We were so deeply desperate to bring our parents into the Archive so we could all talk to them together that it just happened practically on its own.
Needless to say, our parents were… a bit confused. Understandably so. Two minutes earlier, if that, they had been in the present day, probably up at the Fusion School just having a normal day. Or as normal as they could have. Then they were whisked back to stand in a desert sometime far in the past with the daughter who had gone off probably a week or two ago by their timeline. Then, before they’d even managed to find out what that was about or get more than a couple words out of me, they were suddenly taken away again only to find themselves standing in the middle of a grassy park in what looked like a modern town. Oh, and they were surrounded by what appeared to be a few dozen basically identical copies of that same daughter. All of whom were staring at them the same way I had been back in the regular world a moment ago.
Stolen novel; please report.
“What--” Dad managed, turning in a slow circle to take everyone in. He saw me standing there. Then he saw me again, and again, dressed differently, with different hairstyles or levels of fitness, some with more dramatic changes that came in various ways, even a few male-presenting versions. But they were all, under the superficial differences, very much me. He was staring at dozens of different iterations of his own daughter, repeated over and over again.
Mom was taking all that in as well, clearly having just as much trouble understanding exactly what she was looking at and how. I could see the way her mouth moved as she tried to come up with the right words, or any words at all. In the end, all she managed was a weak, “Who--how?”
“Yeah… I guess I’ve got a lot to explain,” I murmured, giving a glance around at the others. At least now that we were all in here, I was only really feeling my own emotions. That helped somewhat. Even though I could still tell how much the others were feeling just by glancing at them, I could at least finally think straight and push through that to start to tell our parents what was going on. And honestly, beyond all the emotions coming from everyone, I was actually excited about this. Yes, I was nervous too. We all were. But these were our parents, our mother and father. They were going to understand. Complicated and confusing as it was, they would get it. They would accept us.
“Mom, Dad,” I started after letting all those thoughts and feelings wash over me, “I want you to meet… the rest of me. I know it’s confusing, and I promise I’m going to explain. We all will. I think normally I’d start with the earlier parts, but this seems like the most pressing thing right now.”
“The rest of you,” Dad echoed. He took a step forward, not toward me but to where Extra was bouncing up and down on her feet while staring at him with a mix of fear and eagerness. His hand rose, halted partway, then extended out to her hair, which was cut much shorter than mine. He gingerly brushed his fingers through that and over her cheek before giving an audible gulp. “You. They’re all you.”
“Hiya, Dad.” Extra’s voice cracked slightly, before she reached out to embrace him. It was tentative at first, but our father wouldn’t stand for that. He immediately pulled her in much more tightly, lifting the other girl--my sister-self--off the ground with a choked noise of emotion from both of them. Almost immediately, he reached out to take the hand of another one while continuing to hold Extra off the ground with one arm. A third member of our little group joined them, followed by a fourth.
When I looked over my shoulder, the same thing was happening with our mother. Both of them embraced, touched, or simply smiled adoringly at everyone here, all of us. They didn’t need to wait for an explanation, nor did they take the time to ask all the questions that were absolutely rushing through their minds. What really mattered, the only thing that mattered right then, above all else, was that we needed them. They saw us, they saw who we were, and that was enough. They accepted us, all of us, immediately and without needing any other answers.
Seeing that, realizing that, I had to close my eyes against an entirely new, entirely different flood of tears. After everything that had happened, all the stress, the confusion, the pressure, this was just… almost more than I could deal with. My hand covered my stomach as I lowered my gaze to stare at the ground. Some part of me thought I should feel like an intruder right then, but I didn’t. I belonged here, with the others, with my siblings, all of them. There was a lot to do, a lot to take care of to make sure all of reality didn’t fall apart. But right now, for this moment, this was right.
Mom, still holding as many of the Flique as she could, looked over as my hand held my stomach. “Felicity,” she started in a soft, worried tone, “are you alright? You look like you’re in pain.”
“I am,” I acknowledged quietly, before giving her a reassuring smile. “But that’s okay. It’s a good pain. It’s good, I--it--” The words wouldn’t come out, so I didn’t try to force them. Instead, I walked that way, even as a couple of my sister-selves scooted to either side, giving me room to embrace our mother once more. Then the others fell in around us. Dad and his assortment of daughters found their way over, and just like that, we were all in one big pile.
Eventually, all of us--the ones who were awake and active anyway-- were laying on the grass. Two hundred of us, altogether. That was counting the twenty or so who were prepared and willing to actively assist in fighting and day to day life, along with a bunch more who were awake, but just wanted to live quiet lives here on our island as much as possible. They had been through a lot to get to this point, and trusted the rest of us to handle things in the regular world.
Then, of course, there were the ones who had been active for even longer or had memories that were simply too hard to get over this soon. They were ‘retired,’ sleeping in our hospital for as long as they needed. Once we’d explained enough to our parents, I would take them over there. Even if those ‘retired’ siblings wouldn’t wake up right now, I was sure some part of them would appreciate the visit. Because I knew I would have.
But for now, laying there with all those sibling-selves, while our mother and father were on either side of me and had everyone else as close as they could get, I felt safe. Sure, that was weird. There was too much going on, too many incredibly urgent problems we needed to deal with. And we would, as soon as I explained everything to our parents. They deserved to know who we all were, and what we were, before we got involved in whatever was going on in that desert.
So, I told them. But it wasn’t just me. As we laid there on the grass, each of us took a turn telling part of the story. We started from the moment I had gone with Ehn, and went through the entire thing, leaving nothing important out, and including plenty that probably wasn’t important. There were enough of me that we all managed to come up with details that were inconsequential. Yet through it all, our parents quietly listened. They asked for clarification now and then, but for the most part, they were silent as they absorbed the entire story. I heard them both gasp when we told them about what had happened with Godfather, and when we started getting into the real details of what had led to the entire Flique existing.
Finally, I sat up, looking over at both of them before letting my gaze pass over all my other sibling-selves. “We’re the Flique. F-L-I-Q-U-E. Like clique. And if you pronounce it wrong, it rhymes with Flick. But hey, if you pronounce it right, we’re ‘on fleek.’ So it works. And, bonus, pronouncing it wrong makes Story break out in hives.”
That made several of us giggle, others protest in defense of Story (particularly Story herself), and still more argue about how it should be pronounced. All of that came before Dad grumbled something about how he taught me better English from the moment I understood words, damn it. Which just made most of us giggle even more.
“You’re all beautiful, and handsome, and--and I can’t even…” Mom looked helplessly toward Dad, shaking her head in wonder. “This is so much. And there’s even more, isn’t there? You still haven’t gotten into how we ended up here with you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “we need to get into that too. But first, we need to tell you about... about Liam.”
“What did he do this time?” Mom immediately demanded, pain evident in her voice.
So, we told her. Which made both of my parents let out some very creative curse words. By the time we’d finished, Mom was promising to find a way onto that island so she could strangle him. Or worse. Which made me wince. “I mean, I kinda thought Ehn was going to deal with it. But with him…” I trailed off then, realizing we’d gotten to that part, finally.
“With him what?” Of course Dad had immediately picked up on that. “What happened? Why did we end up being brought back to the past?”
Giving a long, slow exhale, I exchanged looks with all my sibling-selves. Then I turned my attention back to our parents. “Well, that’s kind of a long story too. And it all starts with how we met Odysseus.”
Dad choked immediately, coughing repeatedly before muttering, “I swear, every time I tell myself you can’t surprise me anymore--” He looked around at all of us pointedly. “--you find a way to take that as a personal challenge and do something even more incredible.”
“Well in that case, could you stop telling yourself that, please?” I immediately put in.
“Because quite frankly, I’m not sure where else our lives can escalate to from here.”