Timeless
It had been thirty minutes since Audrey had last seen civilization and she was starting to miss it. She had never seen the appeal of hiking. Sure, it was a nice time to ponder the mysteries of the universe and appreciate the natural world. But after about ten minutes, every tree starts looking the same and one begins to realize that the mysteries of the universe are unsolvable by mere mortals.
After months of planning, Audrey and her friends had been preparing a camping trip in the Alrose Forest. They had signed up for the trip and reserved a camping spot. However, Audrey, being Audrey, had accidentally signed up for a birdwatching camp in the Ambrose Forest and only realized her error once it was too late.
Who puts two different tours in different places on the same page? She scowled to herself.
Audrey sighed, barely regarding her tour guide babbling on about the wonders of the migratory blue jay. The rest of the tour group whipped out their cameras and oohed and aahed as the bird flapped its wings and crouched, about to burst into flight.
Take me with you, Audrey pleaded.
Instead of flying, the bird turned to the group. And fixed its beady eyes on Audrey.
She blinked.
It didn’t.
It narrowed its eyes and launched off the tree canopy straight into the crowd of people below. The bird seemed to grow in size as it zoomed toward her. What was once barely a foot tall from a distance enlarged to over the height of a giant man. Cameras were forgotten as the group screamed and dived in different directions.
“STAY CALM, BIRD ATTACKS ONLY LAST A COUPLE OF MINUTES UNTIL THEY GET BORED,” the tour guide screamed.
Audrey felt like she was fixated on the ground. Her muscles begged her to run but her feet felt like they were being held down by invisible bonds. She scanned her mind for anything anyone had taught her about how to avoid a rabid bird attack. Unsurprisingly, nothing popped up.
By now the bird was a few feet away from Audrey’s face. She didn’t know why it was taking so long to fly down but she wasn’t complaining.
Death by a giant bird. Audrey thought, What a way to go.
She lifted her arms to shield herself and accepted her fate.
Suddenly, the bird stopped, suspended in midair by flapping its wings just inches from Audrey’s face. Her breathing quickened and her heart was pounding loud enough to start an earthquake. She could feel its malicious eyes X-raying her soul.
She furrowed her eyebrows, something was wrong.
Is this normal bird behavior? Audrey thought.
She felt her eyes start to water and realized that she was subconsciously holding a staring contest with the enlarged blue jay.
Out of the corner of her eye, she swept her surroundings for the rest of her group. They had vanished.
Audrey gulped. She was still rooted to the spot
The bird was incredibly beautiful up close. Its blue plumage seemed to reflect the afternoon sky, there were even wisps of white scattered across its wings, like clouds. Audrey opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. Her hands and legs still felt useless, like sacks of flour hanging off her upper body. She felt its talons dig into her shoulder and shocks of pain shoot down her arm, her vision swam. The bird opened its beak and everything went dark.
---
Audrey woke up to complete silence. She blinked out the black spots in her vision and glanced around.
She was still in the Ambrose Forest, in the same clearing she remembered, but the blue jay was nowhere to be found. Audrey saw a shadow fall over some trees. Was it about to rain?
She looked up at the sky and almost passed out again. The afternoon sun was still overhead but the night sky was behind it. It looked like a lightbulb in front of a thick, black blanket. Audrey could faintly see the horizon in the distance that blazed sunset-orange and pink, only, no sun was setting.
It looked like every time of day was being spattered on the blank canvas of the sky. As she peered closer at the trees, Audrey saw that the trees were completely still. Not a single gust of wind blew, no squirrel raced up the branches. It was ominously quiet, like the calm before a storm.
Audrey staggered to her feet and assessed herself. The last thing she remembered was being impaled by the talons of a gargantuan bird. She touched her shoulder, bracing herself for at least an array of scratches.
She felt nothing.
I’m so numb from the pain that I can’t even feel a scar. Audrey thought despairingly. She pulled her shirt over her shoulder and stared in disbelief at the unblemished caramel skin. She scanned the rest of her body for any signs of her scuffle with the avifauna.
Is this a dream? Audrey thought Or is this what heaven looks like?
Audrey sat up and shakily got to her feet.
She did her best not to glance at the sky again, it was too chaotic and a vivid reminder of the nightmare she was stuck in.
Audrey glanced at her watch but the hands were paused. She took it off and shook it vigorously, but nothing happened.
Suddenly it clicked. She looked back up at the sky. The sunset was still glowing even though it should have been dusk by now. The afternoon sun was still high even though she was sure at least a few hours had passed. She noticed a leaf a couple of trees down. It was orange and yellow, even though it was summer. Also, it was suspended midair.
Time, that’s what’s different, Audrey furrowed her eyebrows.
Time doesn’t pass here.
Audrey gripped a tree to help steady herself as she worked on breathing. She was in a forest, but it was a forest where time didn’t pass. And the sky…
The sky was a reflection of the times of day and night, like an overlapped picture in Photoshop
The trees weren’t moving, no animal was in sight, and everything was utterly silent. Time was paused.
“I’m in a forest of frozen time,” Audrey whispered while pinching herself.
She giggled, “I’m in a forest of frozen time,” it sounded like a Disney Movie.
Then, reality came crashing down. Audrey was in an enchanted forest of sorts, with nothing but a backpack, no cell phone, and no way to get home.
She sat down.
“I’m in a forest of frozen time,” Audrey groaned, “With no way out.”
She heard a chirping sound behind her. Audrey yelped and turned around. It was a vaguely familiar enlarged blue jay.
“You,” Audrey said venomously.
“Me!” it exclaimed.
Audrey felt like she was about to faint for around the fifth time that day.
“Y-y-y-you can s-speak,” she stammered.
“Better than you,” it replied, “and stop referring to me as ‘it’, that’s incredibly demeaning. My name’s Blu and that’s what you’ll call me.”
Audrey blinked.
“Okay…how do I go home?” Audrey asked, praying for a straightforward answer
Blu ruffled her feathers, “Oh, you’re stuck here, sweetie.”
Audrey took a deep breath, feeling her impatience rising.
“How. Do. I. Go. Home?” She enunciated each syllable
“Well...no that wouldn’t work,” Blu shook her head.
“What?” Audrey demanded.
“There is a way but you’re much too underprepared for that,” Blu fluffed her feathers self-appreciatively.
Audrey glared, “Try me.”
Blu hummed nonchalantly, “This forest is not exactly normal,” she gestured around.
Oh gee, I hadn’t noticed. Audrey was seriously regretting her life decisions by this point.
“The Ambrose Forest has always been a haven for creatures who don’t fit in any particular time. Creatures like me.” Blu looked down.
“Time exists in a fourth dimension and so does this forest. Time flows in your world but is frozen here. Everyone sees the forest differently. For example, I found this forest in the afternoon so this forest used to look like the afternoon all the time. But my friend found this forest at night, so it would have looked like eternal night to her. “
She’s speaking in the past tense, Audrey noted.
“But for the past 14 years, the sky has been like this. I can’t find any other creature in these woods and–,” Blu choked back a sob.
“Whatever it is. You, for some reason, have some sort of control over this forest.” Blu eyed Audrey distastefully. “That’s the reason I brought you here, you may hold the ability to make this forest right again.”
“What do I have to do?” Audrey asked, bracing herself for a quest that would inevitably end in her demise.
“Oh, not much. Come to think of it, you just have to figure out why the forest is acting up and thus ponder the existence of time itself.”
Audrey gaped at Blu.
“Once you have that answer, you’ll save the forest and everything will return to how it was.” Blu hopped around cheerfully.
“Well, good luck!” Blu lifted one of her wings in a salute and vanished into the night/afternoon/dusk/dawn sky.
“WHYYYYYYY MEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!” Audrey screamed and kicked an innocent young apple tree. Her foot went right through.
She frowned and crouched down, her curiosity getting the better of her previous temper tantrum.
Tentatively, she reached her hand out toward the plant and touched it.
Before her eyes, the tree dissolved into thin air. Audrey gasped.
What the heck?
Audrey shook her head, it was probably just another little surprise from the forest that she didn’t have time for. She had more important things to think about. Like the meaning of time.
Audrey sighed and took notice of her surroundings. She was standing under the shade of a huge ash tree whose roots seemed to extend around 50 feet in every direction.
I might have a better idea of this forest if I’m higher above the ground, Audrey reasoned.
The branches looked sturdy enough to support her weight. She shrugged and launched herself to a lower limb of the tree. Audrey continued climbing until she felt her legs start to give away. Using a smaller branch for support, she propped herself onto a bough of the tree. She swung her legs around until she was comfortable and scanned the world beneath her.
The forest went on for miles. The trees ranged from vibrant green, fall colors, and a couple even had some snow sprinkled across them.
Audrey had never thought about time as anything but a nagging reminder of everything she was losing. Whenever she had less time, she wished for more. When she had time to spare, she wasted it. The cruel fact made her head hurt.
Audrey gazed at the stagnant sunset and then at the stars in the afternoon sky. She had read somewhere that the light from each star traveled for years until it reached our eyes. Every single photon of light is needed to make the star visible like how every moment in time counted to make the bigger picture.
But what’s the bigger picture?
Audrey vaguely remembered a time in fifth grade when she had written an essay with incredibly advanced vocabulary, with words that Audrey had not learned how to use, to impress her teacher.
Her teacher had smiled and said, “You have to understand each word to understand the sentence. And each sentence to understand the story.”
I have to understand each part of time to understand time.
From Audrey’s fourteen years of experience in life, she had learned that time was divided into three parts: the past, present, and future. She had also learned that the line between each division was blurred to the point where no one knew when the future began or when the present became the past.
At this point, her head was throbbing.
Is this what Socrates feels like?
Audrey felt the aches in her head multiply and wash across her entire body. Her back started to hunch and her hands began shriveling up.
She didn’t need to look down at her feet to know that, it too, was being covered in wrinkles. Her hair felt a lot lighter on her head as her once-brown hair frayed and turned silver.
She glanced down at the forest floor. She couldn’t remember why she was there. Something to do with a larger-than-average bird and contemplative questions?
Audrey needed to rest, but for some reason, she had a feeling that if she closed her eyes, she would not open them again.
This is the future, Audrey deduced.
Normally, she would be panicking and screaming like an idiot, but Audrey felt a strange sense of calm like there wasn’t a point in worrying about anything.
But it still felt like the present. The sky was still the mess that it had been moments before, she was still sitting on the same branch of an ash tree. The only difference was her.
Suddenly, she felt every bone in her body tightening and squeezing. She felt her hair get heavier, her skin getting softer, her excitement growing.
Audrey didn’t want to sit down! She wanted to climb another hundred feet of this tree. She felt like frolicking around this beautiful forest, maybe she would find a castle and some fairies and they would live happily ever after.
THIS IS THE PAST!! Audrey thought, beaming with joy.
Again, the feeling came: her limbs were lengthening, her smile was fading, and she was back to normal.
She had just gone through her life in less than five minutes. But with every change she went through, Audrey still felt like herself. It was like a dormant side of her had decided to make an appearance.
Audrey puffed out her cheeks and let out a slow exhale. She felt the answer she needed was just at the edge of her mind, trying to push its way through her mental barriers.
Ugh, why can’t the universe’s deepest questions be multiple choice or something, Audrey grumbled to herself.
Okay back to contemplation. She started pacing down the bough, balancing on the branch.
I feel like a mixture of my past, present, and future.
All of them layered together to make Audrey who she was.
But if I feel like my future, that must mean that my future has already happened. Audrey scratched the back of her head; did she just discover time travel?
If my future and my past already happened, that means that the past and the future make up the present…
That means that the past didn’t happen in the past and the future isn’t yet to come.
So the division between the past, present, and future isn’t real?
Woah, Audrey, slow down, Audrey told herself.
If there’s no past, present, or future; then how can time be paused?
How can this forest exist?
Audrey felt an unpleasant tingling sensation down her spine as her train of thought skidded to a stop.
“This forest is an illusion,” Audrey muttered and the ground started to shake. The sky brightened and the sunset and stars disappeared, leaving just the afternoon sun glaring down at her. The trees began to rustle again and familiar forest sounds greeted her ears. Audrey closed her eyes for a moment, relishing the sound of sounds.
When she opened them, she had been transported into the clearing that she woke up in. Audrey wasn’t even surprised at this point.
Is it bad that I’m getting used to magic? She asked herself.
“…these jays are sometimes incredibly protective of their young, looks like this one decided to give us a little surprise!” The voice of her tour guide faded into earshot as Audrey looked around. She had her backpack on and her tour group was still around her, it was as if no time had passed.
Audrey found herself smiling slightly as she learned about the strange migratory path of the sandhill crane.
Time was a mysterious force and she wouldn’t even pretend to know its secrets. Every moment was complex and precious, so she might as well enjoy the time she had.
She looked up at a nearby tree where a blue jay was nesting.
The jay turned toward Audrey. And she swore the bird winked at her before flying into the afternoon sky.
