Living in the Loop: Life # 64 – the unexpected
Disclaimer: see previous chapters.
8-1
The alligator lay in the shallow waters of the Everglades, doing its best to pretend to be a log, hoping that it was doing its best to fool the black bear that was prowling the shores nearby.
"You're not fooling me, you know," Moiraine said placidly as Angelika had the good graces to look sheepish.
"Sorry," Angelika had the good graces to look sheepish (though it was hard to tell with her current condition). "So how are things at your end? Finally escaped from the Towers of Midnight?"
"Yes, over and over," Moiraine grumbled. "I swear that the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn – they are in on this-"
"Very likely – the so-called Fair Folk was never friendly towards humanity and they've been reputed to have some tricks regarding time as well," Angelika nodded sagely as she moved closer to the shoreline. "Anyways-"
"Help, help!" Evan Cross ran past them, pursued by a medieval knight.
"Who was that?" Moiraine blinked in confusion.
"That was Evan Cross, my now-occasional boss," Angelika on the other hand was more upset than confused, "and apparently he started to loop. Oh dear. You might want to go and see what happens next."
"Why me?"
"'Cause I'm an aquatic animal – again," Angelika pointed out the obvious.
"Oh. Good point."
8-2
Helen Ambroise-Cutter blinked as the memories of this particular chronological clone of hers hit. Interestingly, in this particular version she was not married to Cutter or even knew him that well – just a marginal scientist who stumbled onto something great and was now in over her head...
"Well, shave my head and call me Sinead," Helen chuckled dryly – she has been here before. "Guess Fire and Frost are getting creative – but what to do about it? They want something different – I'll give them something different!"
She smiled and went towards the nearest time anomaly, rubbing her hands – she had a plan.
8-3
"Excuse me, but can you help us out?" the woman asking Angelika for help was one that she'd never seen in all of her loops until now, and that was interesting. The fact that she was dressed in some very unpractical dress – unlike her boyfriend – was more on the bizarre side instead.
"Now why would I want to do that?" Angelika raised her eyebrow, fishing for more information than anything else.
"It won't take much," the man insisted. "Just take us to your Ash, and-"
Angelika never really had a good poker face and it showed right now. "Ok, what is the leader of the light Fae is called on the West Coast?" the man tried to amend his statement but only made it worse.
"You're not human, either of you," Ange said flatly.
"And you are?" the woman asked before her companion could. "I'm Bo, and this is Dyson-"
"Angelika Finch," Ange replied. "So you two are Aelfinn or Eelfinn?"
The woman – Bo – blinked and stared at her companion.
"Aelfinn? Eelfinn? These are terms I haven't heard in a long time," Dyson mused. "Can I ask how you learned of them?"
"A friend of mine knows them really well – sadly she's not in the city right now," Angelika shook her head. "Anyways-"
"I'm a succubus and Dyson's a werewolf," Bo interrupted the other woman and regretted it, because Angelika immediately turned hostile.
8-4
"And there we go, Helen Ambroise," Connor Temple finished searching online. "Hm. Cutter, it seems that she's well-established in our time – in fact, she's a relatively well-to-do artist, got her own page in the Internet and all, see? Not exactly a crackpot paleontologist or even a paleontologist at all."
There was a pause as the ARC team crowed around Connor's computer to look at the website in question. "You have a point," Nick Cutter admitted rather reluctantly. "Though maybe it's a different Helen? The woman I knew was really passionate about paleontology-"
"Well, this one has some paleontological drawings... but I doubt that that indicates anything time anomaly related – I mean, no more than Charles R. Knight's paintings indicate..." Abby spoke up.
"Good point," Nick nodded. "Ok, does anyone have any other ideas?"
"Yes," James Lester spoke up suddenly. "Everybody gets back to work!"
The ARC field team groaned.
8-5
"So, let me get this straight – you're an ex-follower of Ishtar, a love goddess that claimed that the succubae – such as me – are abominable demons of lust?" Bo said carefully to Ange who still eyed her in a rather hostile way.
"More like a lapsed one, but yes," Angelika admitted promptly, "and you haven't denied the demon part."
"Well...err," Bo rubbed her head. "Um, could you stop attacking Dyson?" she turned to Ange's cat as Dyson's screams of pain became really loud.
"Sorry about that," Ange apologized almost despite herself as she pull the feline off Dyson's head. "I got a first aid kit in the bathroom."
"Thanks," Dyson growled. "What are you feeding this thing?"
Angelika just smiled.
8-6
"In other words," Evan asked Moiraine, "there are times when we wake-up and find ourselves in another universe, or back in ours, but in the past and with knowledge of the future, or in a different version of our own universe?"
"Exactly," Moiraine said brightly.
"So why am I a bone-headed dinosaur of some kind? I'm reasonably sure that I'm not a Pachycephalosaurus, but still..."
"Because you've travelled through a time anomaly," Moiraine shrugged.
"Oh. Well, that is ironic," Evan confessed. "So what am I supposed to do know?"
Moiraine exchanged a look with Ange (who only know caught up with them). "No idea."