She stared at the message on her phone. Half a dozen explanations popped into her head half-formed. It was impossible. There was no way it could all be happening again.

She scrolled through her address book and automatically landed on the familiar name. It had been months, at least a year since they had last talked, and before that, only a few short messages back and forth. But there was no one else she could talk to about this, and whatever it was, after all they had been through together, her old friend deserved to know.

She stared at the last message they had exchanged, vague pleasantries about life, years out of date. The cursor blinked in the new message box. She typed, erased, and typed again.

Finally she sent, "Hey, sorry it's been so long, time really got away from me, how's it going?"

Then she buried her phone and swore not to look at it until the next day.

When she finally opened it again, she found a reply: "Hi, doing fine! Something up?"

Her friend had always been too perceptive. Her insides squirmed. She hadn't meant to fall out of touch like this, and just reach out because there was something up.

She typed back, "Want to meet up sometime?"

"Sure! This weekend?"

"Sounds great, a cute coffee shop just opened up nearby, I've been meaning to go."

"With the cats?"

"Yeah."

"Sure!"

She didn't mean to arrive at the cafe so early, but she didn't want to be late, and she didn't really have that much else to do. However, her friend was already there when she arrived; a long wild mane of frizzy hair with a person hidden somewhere underneath, staring curiously at a cat that had curled up on the bench next to her.

"Hey!" she called out and hoped it sounded casual.

Her old friend and the cat looked up at the same time, and watched unblinking as she sat down across from them.

"How have you been?" she continued, trying to keep up the conversation.

"Ok. What's up?" Her friend watched her with those wide curious eyes.

She faltered under the scrutiny. "I swear I didn't mean to lose touch and come back all business, but I thought you should know, I got this text the other day."

She passed her phone across the table so her friend could see it.

Her friend stared at the phone for a long minute.

Finally, her friend handed back the phone. "It's the same."

She grimaced. "I know. I'm not sure what it means. It's not necessarily all happening again; it could just be a coincidence, or a copy-cat."

"Or an echo."

"Yeah, or some kind of echo of whatever was left over. I don't know if there's anything we can do about it, but maybe it's worth looking into."

There was a pause before her friend mumbled into her coffee cup, "Thank you for telling me."

"Of course! I couldn't just not tell you after everything we went through together the first time, and I mean it, I didn't mean to go silent like that."

"It wasn't just you," her friend mumbled. "I'm happy to see you again too."

She grinned. "And whatever it is, we'll deal with it together this time too, right?"

Her friend nodded with a small smile of her own.

Writer's Month - word: echo | setting: future AU/post-canon

AUgust - Coffee Shop

Flufftober (catch-up August) - Text Messages