Freebie Mondays: The Nature of Magic (Prompt Novel Chapter 23)

For 2024, I decided to devote my prompt writing time to a novel. The twist is that the novel plot will be generated entirely by the writing prompts I chose to use for the project – which were rolled randomly using my trusty dice and a few online prompt lists. You can find the Table of Contents here.

For Chapter 23, the prompt was: “past and present timelines begin to merge.”

This is part 2 of a 3 prompt sequence that began in chapter 22 and will serve as the ultimate climax of this strange little novel I’ve been stringing together over the course of the last year.

This chapter picks up directly where the last one left off, still as part of a dream sequence, which gave me a lot of room to play with this particular concept. There are a lot of revelations here. Certainly it isn’t light dreaming material. I had a lot to say, and I tried to say it in some very subtle ways – but I hope even as a dream it speaks to true life experience.

If you’d like to see this chapter come together, you can watch the VoD on Youtube!
. . .

“Of course I will marry you!” Nala declared as if her answer had always been a foregone conclusion and the world had simply been waiting for the moment a date and time would be imparted to them. She fingered the velvet box that held Delmar’s precious cargo, but didn’t pluck the ring from its mooring, evidently waiting for her new intended to lift it free and slide it on her finger.

She did not mirror his smile when she glanced up to meet his gaze, however, and that left an odd feeling in the pit of Ira’s stomach – like the first dissonant chord of a song ringing warning to those who listened.

“But we’ll have to wait, won’t we?” Nala continued without pausing to draw breath. “We’re both doing different college programs. We didn’t even apply to the same schools.”

“I don’t care about that,” Delmar replied with breathless delight. “All I care about is knowing the two of us have a future. Together.”

The way his voice caressed the words made Ira shiver. She knew this Delmar intimately. He had walked at her side for a full decade and half of another. She recognized his bright sunny smile as preceding a burst of excitement just barely contained within his chest. If he hadn’t been fighting so hard to maintain decorum, he would have vibrated with the joy imparted by his companion’s words.

Gently, he pried the box free of Nala’s grip and slid the ring out of the rigid slit that held it. Nala presented her hand almost expectantly, and Delmar gripped it with the infinite and tender care that Ira recognized from his proposal to her.

A diamond glinted in the moonlight. Given the age of the two lovebirds, Ira could only assume it was fake, or of low quality. But what it represented cut like a crystal knife through the core of Ira’s soul.

This wasn’t how it happened. Ira only met Delmar because Nala had rejected him, trampled over his heart and sent him on his way to forge an adult life on his own. He had long since gotten over his high school sweetheart when the two of them finally met, but that didn’t change that this moment had set him on that trajectory.

Did wishing for one change cause a series of others like ripples moving outward from a pond? Did the world adjust everything it would take to make the new reality happen?

Because Nala would have had to agree to Delmar’s proposal long before Ira first met Alyial.

“We’ll figure it out,” Nala promised as she lifted her finger and stared transfixed at the glimmering gems set into the white-gold circle that rested snugly against her knuckle.

“I’m sure we will,” Delmar agreed, and Ira’s heart twisted in her sleeping chest.

This was the life he originally wanted. Ira worked hard never to think of herself as second best or even as her husband’s second choice. Life had conspired to bring them together, and she assumed it happened for a reason. Not that it was always meant to be, simply that it was the best way for things to work out.

Would Nala have treated him better?

The answer came in a series of flashes that moved so rapidly, they were hard to follow. Ira felt less like she was dreaming and more like specific knowledge was injected directly into her head. It was her attempt to make sense of it all that formed snippets of images that flitted across the backs of her closed eyelids.

“I don’t like seeing you out with those girls all the time,” Nala declared coldly as soon as her video call connected with Delmar.

“They’re just friends,” he insisted, his face crestfallen.

“They’re all over your social feeds,” Nala pressed dourly. “I don’t like that you’re so far away all the time.”

Ira got the impression from her tone, Nala meant because I can’t keep an eye on you. But as she anticipated, Delmar chose to interpret her words in a more optimistic manner.

“I don’t like it either,” he insisted. “I’d rather be close to you. But you’re not here, and I can’t live like a monk. It just wouldn’t be healthy.”

Don’t say it, Ira prayed silently as she watched the events unfold. But no sooner had she thought it than did she hear the words.

“One of us should switch schools.”

The scene shifted again, and Ira understood with the certainty of a dreamer all that had taken place in between each of the visions she witnessed.

One portion of the young couple had to give up their program in order to move closer to the other. Delmar agreed to that in a heartbeat, his wretched misery driving him to toss aside every seed of rational thought. But who should it be?

Why, Delmar, of course. Because Nala needed to be at the most high tech school in order to fulfill her dreams. Delmar, she declared, could go to business school anywhere.

Was that what she reduced his dreams to? Business school?

Forget that not all of his credits transferred. Forget that it meant an extra year in order to complete his program. He would do just about anything for love. Ira knew that and had gone out of her way to never take advantage of it. But what she watched made her soul wither with sadness and writhe with barely contained outrage.

As Nala’s program progressed, she transferred. She was always chasing the best of the best, the golden goose of computer programming. And she dragged Delmar with her. His studies suffered, but he said nothing, simply changing with the rapid flow of the tide.

They married the same week they graduated. Nala demanded the two of them use all of their savings on the ceremony – there was to be no honeymoon after. And Delmar did everything she asked without question.

The dazzling smile he wore when she walked down the aisle almost convinced Ira that she was wrong to worry. There was love in his eyes. She recognized it. And though it made her weep, she adored it for him.

Perhaps the hardships didn’t matter if the two of them were happy in the end. And Delmar certainly seemed happy when he scooped his bride into his arms and planted a kiss upon her lips.

Ira hadn’t entered into this timeline yet. She didn’t see herself among the crowd. And perhaps that was for the best.

The happy couple settled in a small apartment in the heart of the Silicon Valley while Nala started chasing grant approvals. Delmar quietly finished certification classes on the side, scraping together the money from the two jobs he worked to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Delmar had done something similar at the start of their marriage, while he was trying to get his business off the ground. But he had been two years ahead, having graduated top of his class from the university of his choice and having all the savings they hadn’t blown on a destination wedding to sink into the enterprise as seed money.

Ira, after all, had been content to be married among the flowers of an open park. They set up a white pavilion, invited a friend’s band to play and danced beneath the stars. The reception dinner had been a potluck. Her dress had been hand-made. Her veil had been held in place by flowers, and all the fancy trappings of a modern wedding had been done away with.

The beginning of their life had been modest – as the beginnings of all lives were. But as she watched him toil beneath the strain of two failing dreams, she wanted to claw into this twisted version of the universe and dash it to pieces.

The fighting started when Delmar finally scraped together the funds he needed to start his business – and Nala demanded use of half for a project she was on the cusp of funding.

Or so she claimed. She seemed to claim it every time they were at a crossroads.

And every time, Delmar gave her what she asked for.

Every time but this time.

“Sooner or later, some part of our life has to be about me,” Delmar growled. Anger wasn’t an emotion that came easily to him. Displeasure seemed to roll off of his figure in most situations, as if he wore impenetrable armor that dazzled and confused the misfortunes the world tried to throw at him.

But this time, the sentiment had taken root deep within his chest and refused to let go. When Nala presented her impassioned pleas of desperation and impending failure, Delmar stood firm against them all.

“Perhaps it’s time you were the one to suffer,” he snarled and stalked from their bedroom without waiting for a reply.

Nala, Ira was quickly learning, did not deal well with setbacks or hardship. She wanted the world to follow a certain pattern – neat and orderly, and exactly according to her desires. She simply couldn’t swallow a no. With Delmar’s help, she turned a lot of her early nos into narrow successes. Without his safety net, she floundered.

Ira knew little about Delmar’s high school sweetheart. The woman barely said two words to her at their wedding, and she had been just as content to let the woman stew over her loss. But she knew Delmar. She knew how resourceful he could be. He had built himself a small but successful business empire from basically scratch. She had contributed designs to his early days of activity, but the bulk of the work had come from him.

Success was a momentary thing for Delmar. He solved the problem of the moment in a way that would serve the moment, then he moved on to the next thing and the next, always looking for a way to move ahead with what he had.

No wasn’t a word that occupied his lexicon very often either. But instead of stomping his feet and demanding the universe roll over for him, he shifted to fit between the curves and jump over the obstacles set in his path.

As his business flourished on the small successes he scraped from the mud, his new wife fumed. What she could claim for herself, she stole with wicked smugness. But even the resources she drained from her husband’s burgeoning business couldn’t stem the flow of rejections that piled in her path.

She ranted. She raved. She blamed everyone but herself.

Then one day she spoke the words that sealed her fate.

“You should shift your operations.” It seemed like an innocent enough request out of context. The gentle fluttering of her eyelids was certainly meant to convey a sense of flattery. “If you build and market my designs, we could make a fortune.”

Delmar responded like a cat that has just encountered a chill wind through an open door. If he had fur, it would have stood on end all along his neck and down his back. He clutched the fork he held in his hand so tightly the tiny instrument trembled and replied through clenched teeth, “What?”

Nala stumbled on. It was what she always did, haltingly suggesting that she apply for patents and he serve as the cornerstone and gestalt for the research she couldn’t get grants for anywhere else.

“Do you even know what I do, Nala?” Delmar retorted midway through her grand speech.

That shut her up. It seemed she did not actually know what he did aside from move money back and forth from their bank account.

“Do you care about anything beyond your own ambition?” Delmar went on when it was clear Nala couldn’t produce a satisfactory answer to his first question. “Do you care if I’m happy? If everything I’ve built comes crumbling to the ground? Do you know how hard it has been to do anything with you stealing bits and slivers of my hard work to piss away on a project that clearly isn’t working?”

Nala quailed. For a moment, she seemed like a tiny thing, a child hiding under the table while her parents eviscerated each other. It was a posture Ira never imagined a woman as strong and confident as Nala adopting. She seemed for a moment entirely uncertain of the world she occupied.

But the emotions vanished in an instant, replaced by the quietly quaking outrage that seemed to be Nala’s response to everything. “How dare you?” she growled and launched into another overblown speech about the work she was trying to do and how she intended for it to save the world.

The next image that formed in front of Ira’s eyes was Delmar walking out of a lawyer’s office, divorce papers in hand and in need of merely a signature.

What a horrible and wretched life she condemned her dear beloved to if she flung herself into the arms of another man! She simply could not bear the wretched sadness that occupied his face as he trudged down the street toward his now empty home.

Yes, he could be successful no matter the circumstances thrown at him. That was Delmar. It was the heart of who he was. But without someone to share those successes, without someone to celebrate the little victories, he seemed like a diminished thing, a ghost of his former self.

As if summoned by her thoughts of the divergence she herself created, Ira saw herself flit into this lonely Delmar’s life. They met one night at a bar while she was celebrating the display of her latest design work and Alyial was busy speaking with his publisher about his next project.

As they had in the real world, in the timeline Ira lived, she and Delmar hit it off instantly. They connected on a primal, instinctual level that allowed them to instantly become comfortable with each other’s company.

In a scene that much mirrored her experience with Alyial inside the computer simulation, the new Ira and Delmar stayed up all night talking. First, they lingered at the bar until last call. Then they stumbled out into the chill night air and retreated to Delmar’s apartment.

And drawn by the heat of his inner passion, Ira soon threw herself into the familiar arms of the man she loved in another life.

Is it me? she wondered. Am I simply unfaithful? Doomed to condemn whatever man I love to the sting of heartbreak?

She saw the computer simulation again. Saw the digital rain falling outside the wide glass door that led to Alyial’s back garden, so similar to real rain it was impossible to tell the difference. And she felt that light tug, that gentle push that urged her to ignore all sense of consequence, because it could all be dealt with later.

She saw herself moving in with Delmar. Not the Delmar she married, but the Delmar who had suffered the sting of a life with his high school love. She saw herself designing for him, as she had so often in her true life.

She saw Nala and Alyial stumble into each other in a pub – much as she had stumbled into Delmar in this new version of their life. They commiserated over drinks, then stumbled back to Nala’s tiny apartment to complete their revenge affair – for surely Alyial couldn’t see anything else in a woman like Nala.

But once again, as if summoned by her thoughts, the dream images shifted. Ira saw Nala and Alyial in a different setting, curled in the bright illumination of two computer monitors that barely held back the shadows of the deep office she recognized as the place they currently worked.

Tears streaked down Nala’s face as words tumbled from her lips, words of love and regret. And a soft sigh slid past Alyial’s lips as he rose from his station and crossed the room to lay a hand on her shoulder.

The two were in full control of their faculties when they emerged from the office to head to a restaurant down the street, yet Ira couldn’t deny how the two scenes mirrored each other.

Is it less that each of us is doomed by our own nature and more that the universe finds ways to make certain events happen no matter the circuitous route it must take?

A new image formed before Ira’s eyes, and this one she was certain had not been summoned by her musings. She watched Nala march into her house, almost smug as she perched on the couch in her living room.

She watched Delmar play diligent host, providing refreshment for his old friend. Until she declared with a great air of certainty, “I’m pretty sure your wife had an affair with one of the guys in my office.”

Ira’s blood turned to ice. Was this a prediction? A possible future? Or had it already happened in one of the timelines?

“What the fuck, Nala?” Delmar exploded. But the ferocity of his reaction made Ira cringe.

How could she ever face him now and tell him the truth?

Her mind flew back to that moment in the car when the man she now knew to be Alyial cut her off. The moment her power had awakened.

The moment the witch warned her away from.

While it was true that she could reverse that moment, recall her wrath and direct that curse toward some other poor soul whose life she didn’t know, she didn’t think she could prevent the disaster likely to flow from that altered event.

Someone, was going to end up cursed. And somehow, she would end up involved in it. Even forewarned, that didn’t mean she could prevent her life from crumbling around her.

Her thoughts returned to the moment in the computer simulation when she suggested that she and Alyial should go upstairs. She had to choose a moment. And she could only choose one.

If she chose that one, life would proceed largely as it had. Alyial would free himself from the simulation. Ira would prevent any potential damage to her marriage, and no random stranger would have to suffer the sting of her magic’s awakening.

But she would unmake the life inside her that hadn’t yet had a chance to live.

Every option seemed equally bad. Every set of ripples flowing outward from the origin point contained some form of disaster or heartbreak. Without testing, she knew she could observe a million of those divergences and come to the same conclusion.

No decision can be made without consequence.

She wasn’t sure where the thought came from, if it was some inner voice reflecting on the lessons she had learned throughout this whirlwind dream or if it was something the old crone had told her when she prepared her for this crazy experience.

She supposed it didn’t matter where it came from. It only mattered that it was the truth.

She watched her transgression in the simulation play on endless repeat. Sometimes the events moved so quickly she could barely follow, and sometimes they moved in slow motion, allowing her to contemplate every thought that led to her agonizing decision.

She had been drawn to Alyial’s passion, to the unspoken desire that drove him to pursue a side project that was unlikely to make him money until well after the time and energy were spent.

It was the same passion that had drawn her to Delmar and his talk of starting his own business. And that passion had never dulled or cooled between them.

It wasn’t that she no longer wanted Delmar that drove her into the arms of Alyial – it was that she recognized another kindred spirit, another soul on the same path she ever followed.

Which brought her back to her nature and the inevitable heartbreak it would visit upon her and whoever she chose to spend her life with.

Should she choose then to love Alyial first and break his heart so that she spared Delmar’s? But if she came to him late, would she not mourn the pain she caused Alyial as much as she mourned now the pain she might cause Delmar if she had to admit the wretched truth?

Maybe it isn’t our nature that drives us at all. Maybe it’s desire.

The universe would push her toward Delmar no matter what she chose because she longed for him, even if only in her subconscious.

She had chosen Alyial for a brief moment, but not because of him or even because of her husband.

She had been drunk on the sensation of impermanence created by the computer simulation – by the knowledge that anything and everything she did would evaporate the second she left.

Only she hadn’t counted on her memories or Alyial’s.

She had gone into that strange non-place only because she realized the prison it created had been the result of her mistake. She felt responsible for Alyial and his wellbeing because she had ultimately driven him into that strange digital corner.

And even as the thought occurred to her she realized the child growing in her womb existed for the same reason.

She had gone into that computer simulation guilty and she had emerged guilty – though the sources of the emotion differed.

Had she wanted to, she could have dismissed everything that happened between her and Alyial. She could have denied it, or sworn her companion to secrecy – even bought his silence if that was what it took.

It would have been too easy to sweep her actions under the rug, or even to beg forgiveness over something that had been unreal and imaginary.

She wanted to suffer for the choice she made. Just as she believed she should suffer for the position she’d put Alyial in.

And so the universe had provided a way to force her hand. She couldn’t ignore a child. She would have to explain it.

Just as she could never have predicted the consequences of throwing a random phrase into the universe, she never-the-less had to live with the results her emotions summoned.

That’s how it works, isn’t it? The revelation would have left her breathless if she hadn’t been deep in the realm of sleep.

The curse exists because I willed it.

The child exists because I willed it.

But if that was how magic worked – if the universe created effects because she willed them into existence – then the baby could be Delmar’s.

She could will it to be so.

She simply needed to find the right moment to make it happen.