Right Place, Right Time

by sherwoodfox

Over the centuries, Hob had dreamt plenty of dreams about his friend from the tavern. All good dreams, of course. But until the talking bird told him otherwise, he hadn't considered that those dreams might be real.

1. Prologue

As the years went by, Hob found himself thinking often of the morning after.

(After the first night- 1389- back when he hadn't even known that it was the first night.)

He remembered how he had woken in a stable, head pounding and stomach churning, the smell of animal dung and human sick on the air. Hardly an unusual place to wind up, oh no, at the time he had thought nothing of it. The straw in his stall had tickled his nose and the wind had pulled at the wooden walls, making them creak. The sunlight, where it brushed across his eyelids, had felt almost unbearably gentle in its warmth. Something like the kiss of a lover.

Had he known something was different, even then? Had he felt the birth of it, somewhere low in the base of his spine? Or was that only hindsight, tainting the memory?

"Then, meet me here in one hundred years…"

So much of human life was made by luck. He had asked himself a thousand times already- what if he hadn't gone out to the tavern that night? What if his friends hadn't prompted the conversation they'd had? What if they'd left an hour earlier, come an hour late…?

Would everything have been different?

" ...we'll see how you fare then."