Mohinder woke up to a beautiful day. The clouds were gret and covered the sky, and even though he was in New York City, everything seemed strangely quiet. The rain would stop tourists from entering the city that day, and would keep all others preoccupied on their destinations. He wondered why noboby likes the rain.
He took the book "stole"from the shop and began flipping through the pages. There were spells and incantaitions, but those things all seemes foolish to him. He was searching for something deeper. Something more tangible, something scientific.
And then he found it. A section of the book devouted entirely to Alchemy. All his life, it was understood that Alchemy, in essence, was the early formings of what is know called "chemistry". But there was so much more to it than that. This was, for Mohinder, was a way to change his life, or what he dragged out everyday presuming it was his own life.
But first things first. He looked through the list of concotions that he could brew. It was like recipes in a cookbook. There were potions for good looks, for luck, for death. After perusing the list, he decided to start simple: a love potion. He opened to the page he needed and rad the ingredients: Four leaves of dwarf lotus, one elecampane bulb, half a pint or dragon's blood. Mohinder gerw a tad discouraged seeing the need of dragon's blood. Where would he find that? Was this book serious? Mohinder decided to go look for the plants that were needed anyway.
The streets,of course, were busy, but not as packed as they usually were. In the phone book, Mohinder had found three stores that seemed promising. The first provided the elecampane blub, the second turned out to be a strip club, the third was just a block away from where he was standing. When he arrived, he asked the saleswoman if they any dwarf lotus, and was pleased to find that indeed they did. His horticultural expedition had ended in just an hour and twenty two minutes. He knew how long it would take him to find the dragon's blood, though.
Mohinder began racking his brain, when it hit him. There was a pet shop not far from where he was. He would buy a lizard, a chameleon-anything of "dragon" descent. And that's exactly what he did.
He ran home, gleeful and terrified of what he was gettig himself into. He hurried up to his apartment and locked the door, drew the shades. Pulling out viles and bowls from the cabinets, he followed the directions the book provided precisly. He diced the dwarf lotus, crushed the elecampane. Everything was in order, except the lizard. Mohinder looked at the small creature sitting motionlessly, save for its eyes-which were twitching back and forth, studying the new environment-in the plastic cage. He pulled out a knife and slit the lizard's throat over a large pasta bowl. And now he was just holding the lifeless body in his pulled the garbage pail out from under the sink with his foot and dropped the dead lizard in. After washing his hands, he lta flame on the stove to boil the blood. Once it started to bubble, he added the plants. The two plants let off vulgar colors as they liquified in the pot. And as excited by the experiment as he was, Mohinder almost had to force himself to continue, to go on and not slide down onto the kitchen floor and cry. The mixture began to turn orange, then yellow, then green, then blue. A dark blue. Mohinder's uneasiness began to dissipate. He took it off the bowler to cool and the second it left the flame, the potion turned clear and colorless. He smelt it. It smelt like peaches. Perfect! According to the book, this was exactly the desired result.
But who to test it on? The last he had any sort of contact with the female variety was back in India, and that was more than a year ago. He had not had any experience with the lady folk in America. And then a most brilliant idea came over him. He walks out of his apartment, and knocks on the door across the hall. The door opened and Mohinder was confronted by his evercharming neighbour. Her apartment smelt like feet and asparagus.
"Mrs. Beard!" Mohinder greeted her."How are you?" he asked, but before she could answer, Mohinder was talking again, his impulse made him forget all his manners. "Great, now I recall you asking me to take your niece out for dinner one day. Well, I just wanted to make it known that I'm avaiable." the woman's face broke into a great big smile, revealing two missing teeth.
"Oh, wonderful! I'll talk to her!" she said excitedly.
"Thanks. I'll see you late then, Mrs. Beard." Mohinder smiled. He turned and began to cross the hall.
"Okay. Bye now, Maximus" she said. Mohinder turned around.
"No, it's-" he began to say, but she shut the door already, so he did not geta chance to finish.
Hiro looked at his calculator watch. It was 2:24 a.m., but who knew if that's what time it was here in England in 1504. He could not sleep. It was not because of Amelia, who twisted and turned in her sleep, but because he was afraid he would never get home. He glanced over at Amelia. He could have sworn her hair looked darker, but it was probably just the lack of light. But she was definitely asleep. He decided to give his powers another try. He tried to transport himself outside the tent, but couldn't. He tried again, but it wasn't any good. He tried-concentrating very hard-a third time, and it proved to be the charm. He turned around in a circle and found he was standing outside the tent! He wanted to shout "YATTA!", but knew he couldn't. Instead he flailed/danced excitedly and whispered yatta. He was about to go back into the tent and to go back to bed (which was on the ground), when he heard someone around the corner of the tent approaching. Afraid of the prowler, Hiro picked up a stick, and hid. once the prowler got close, he jumped out in surprise attack.
"Stop, thief!" he whispered threateningly and pointed the stick out. The thief let out a gasp of fear, and Hiro noticed it was Kerishma from the dim lantern she was holding. "Oh. I'm sorry I thought you were a criminal." Hiro says, lowering the stick.
"Nope," Kerisma smiles. "You frightened me, though. Lady Adaline should hire you as Amelia's bodyguard." she joked. "So...what are you doing up?"
"Just...couldn't sleep."Hiro tells her.
"Yes, neither could I. Not after the dream I had." she whispers.
"What was it like?" Hiro asks. Kerishma pauses for a second, then speaks.
'Have you ever heard of autoscopy, Hiro?" she asks. He shook his head. "It is a word used for disembodiment, the soul seperating fom the body, I often experience it while asleep.
"I will see myself asleep as my soul departs, and then I am just soul and I fly to other places. Usually I fly home to India to see my family. Other times I'll be floating and seeing others I know, like Sebastian, who stays up late writing his own plays instead of learning his lines...
"But other times I find myself flying to Russia. I see this family...I don't know who they are, but they are good people. Although, through the times I have seen them, there is some secret they keep from the rest of the world; something they don't even talk about with one another. However; the it seems the father is sick and he may never get well again...I just feel worried for him, and upset for his family..." she says.
"I understand." Hiro says.
"It is strange though, usually I have some sort of connection to the people I see, but I haven't a clue as to how I might know this family." He had to tell Kerishma, but would Amelia be mad if he did? Just then Amelia came out of the tent Her eyes looked to be a very dark color, which was odd because normally they were a very bright blue. But Hiro dismissed it. It was dark out, and he hadn't slept, and his glasses needed a good cleaning.
"What's going on out here?" she questioned sleepily, looking back and forth between Kerishma and Hiro.
"Nothing really." Kerishma smiled. "Hiro and I just ran into each other on midnight strolls."
"Oh, I see." she replied yawning. "Well, carry on then."
"Wait," Kerishma says and held the lantern up close to Amelia's face.
"What?" Amelia asks in an odd, deep voice.
"The strangest thing...your eyes are a darker shade than usual...in fact they're brown; they are not blue at all!" Kerishma notices, puzzled. Hiro realizes now he couldn't have been seeing things. A worried look strikes Amelia's face.
"What are you playing at? Why, that's perfectly absurd! They are blue-just as they're always been." Amelia says and turns to reenter the tent, but Hiro grabs her arm and pulls her so he can look at her face. He stares into the strangely dark eyes. Kerishma stands behind Hiro and looks hard at Amelia, and comes up a revelation.
"They are the eyes of your father, are they not?" Kerishma asks. Hiro lets go of her. Amelia looks over his shoulder at Kerishma with a look of secretiveness, but says nothing. "Oh, Amelia! You must go to him! He is sick and I fear he may not recover!"
"How do you know of this?" Amelia asks almost angrily, her voice still sounding deep.
"I have seen him and the rest of your family in my dreams, just as I've seen my own! I know they are your family, those eyes are unmistakeable!" Kerishma replies.
"You have not a clue of what you are saying, Kerishma. Now I'm going back to bed." Amelia says, still angry.
"Amelia Bershadensky." she says. Amelia turns around. "That was your name, wasn't it?" Amelia's face has a worried look on it.
"...You say he's ill?" She asks quietly. Kerishma nods.
"You must go to him."
"But I can't! I am opening the show soon, I've been waiting for this!" Amelia says. "To go from here to Russia; by the time I return I will have been replaced! And who knows if I will even make it there in time?" She sits on a nearby bench. "But you are right, Kerishma, I miss them terribly: my sisters, my mother. It was because of my father that I left but, I can not just leave him with him thinking I do not love him, without him even seeing me once more. This may even be the last time I see him, if what you say is true. You are right, Kerishma. I must go. I thank you greatly." The last few words are even deeper, almost masculine. "Now, if you'll excuse me. I must pack.
There is a knock on the door. Mohinder gets his coat and opens the door. It is Alice, his neighbour Mrs. Beard's neice, just who he was expecting.
"Alice." Mohinder says and shakes her hand. "It's nice to meet you."
"Yes, nice to meet you too, Milton." she says.
"Actually, it's Mohinder." he corrects her.
"Oh, I'm sorry! My aunt said otherwise-"
"It's quite alright" Mohinder smiles. "Now, shall we go?"
"Yes, let's." she says. Mohinder grabs his keys off the table next to the door and also the vile containing the love potion, and slips them both into his pocket. As he and Alice leave the building, however, they do not notice a small cockroach crawl out of a sewer in the road.