Abernathy looked over his shoulder and saw me peering at him behind some branches. His eyes, warm, knowledgeable, mystical, and magical looked at me and reached down into my being touching my soul. Aber was beautiful, innocent, and quizzical, like a newborn opening their eyes and seeing the world through their gray eyes for the very first time. He nodded. I smiled. His hands and lips moved, and I found myself mimicking his gestures without thought. We mouthed words older than the dirt we stood on. I found myself moving towards him then standing in front of him. Faster and faster our hands moved, and the words of yesteryears tumbled out and around us creating this juggernaut of elemental movement. Through all of it, he smiled. Magnificent and beautifully wicked. I smiled back but had no way of knowing if it matched his. Though it didn’t matter. The air was thick and ripe with the magical lines of energetical air. He broke the movement of our hands by raising a finger to his pursed lips. I stopped. He smiled behind the finger and winked his left eye. A pressure began building inside me. And bubbles of laughter burst forth from me. I couldn’t contain it. Abernathy’s laughter joined mine. And together our laughter was superbly exquisite.
Until our sound froze and everything stopped.
A brake pedal slammed into the earth stopping its rotation. Lightning fast. Most wouldn’t even know it happened, but it did. It was the only way to get where we needed to be.
The other side of time.
When it unfroze, we were in another place, another grove of apples. A place where turvy was topsy and below was above. A place so similar from where we left you’d swear it was the same. But, it wasn’t. This is what Abernathy shielded. Everything here was different than the world we left. Here the things you saw in the corner of your eye were real and walked (or flew) nearby. The icy touch that scared you in the night, blew here - bringing with it the thing that made it, and it was frightening. The "thing" was different to all that saw it, because here everything in your mind was here just for you. But also, everyone else’s things were here too. And, all the things together needed to stay here. That was Abernathy’s job and it would be mine someday too.