They sat there, at the edge of time, the universe, and everything, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without the peanut butter. Gold-orange and yellow light glowed brightly behind them, illumination of their trials and triumphs, like the sunsets of home. And while it wasn’t a sunset, they were very much at home there, smiling and chewing, legs dangling off the jagged alien platform, swinging freely.
In these moments, these few, precious moments, time really does stop. It really does. There is a sense of joy mingled with great sorrow, in the knowledge of its rarity and transience. It comes so rarely, painfully so, and it will pass, painfully so. And though this knowledge is seasoned with age, it is felt in the soul of the youth as it is felt in the soul of the elder, and for a time, it joins them and makes them alike. Undergirding this joy, enmeshed in this sorrow, is peace, a peace that is noticed and felt, and one awakens in surprise, as though buoying up, head bursting out of the deep ocean swells to find — aha! — it was there all along.
Finally, in that same moment, as though lost before it was found, it is gone, just like that. The scalp begins to tingle. The ears itch. The neck is sore. Birdsong is once more of birds instead of fae. The wind is made of air, and not sighs. And in the case of our heroes, for that is what they now are, the hum of the Symnion engine is merely a feat of technology, the daughter of magic no longer. But all is not lost. No, not all.
“Mom’s probably getting worried by now.”
“I’d say so. You’re going to be in trouble.”
“I’m in trouble? You’re in trouble!”
A sharp inhale, a tilt of the head as if to say ouch.
“Yep. Yep yep yep.”