The Memory: A Claxton Flash Fic
I met Ezra nineteen years ago, when the realm was destroyed. His emerald-green eyes showed signs of horror and hope. We swam between island and island out in the Ocean, until we met him—a wizard who took Ezra on a trip through time. I could not go with him. I just had to wait on the fluffy white sand, with the active volcano rumbling behind me, until he returned.
***
My friend was jealous that he could not accompany me, since I had saved him after the calamity, but the great wizard told me that my destiny lies in time and space, not in the past. He gave me a temporary power, where I took on the form of an emo human. That was kind of a strange choice, if you ask me, but I guess it was the best way to blend in with the humans. The first place I went to was one year in the future. I saw the wizard hand me the fairy child and ask, “Ezra, can you please do this? He is dangerous, and we need somebody to look after him.”
Now, the hesitation was beyond compare. I mean, who wants to raise a little baby who destroyed his realm only one year prior? To this day, we still consider him the “K.T. Magic Murderer.” Do not stress him out, or he will kill you. It’s as simple as that. Even with these grueling thoughts flowing through my gray, tubercle-covered head, I saw myself follow through with the act. I took the child to Charleston.
Whoa! Suddenly, it’s seventeen years in the future! The child has grown into quite a handsome young man. Yet, he has doubts about his past.
“Ezra, Ezra, am I evil?” he asks in his deep, yet not too deep voice.
“Of course not,” I reply. “You just have a confusing set of powers.”
Boom!
The wizard changes the setting again. It is now another year in the future and nineteen years since the realm was destroyed. My fairy wants to find his homeland in Nova Scotia, and I see myself accompanying him. Why? Is it because I secretly like the child? Well, he’s hardly a child anymore, now, is he? He’s been adopted by a wonderful older couple from a haunted island near the Triangle, but I am still tasked with looking after him, in case he loses himself to his powers.
“Ezra! Ezra! We’re here!” he calls. He’s riding on my head and points at a towering rock structure buried in the cool, murky water. It’s just off the coast of Prince Edward Island and about halfway to the Titanic. That structure is the entrance to his realm. A dragon guards it, but the boy and I work together to push past her riddle so we can enter Atlantica. And then… There he is! My old friend, frozen in time as a stone structure, with chips of stone falling off his head and shoulders.
My fairy swims to him, his legs waving as gracefully as a merman’s, and he asks, “Dad?”
***
Ezra is back. He’s brought my son to me, the heir of Atlantica, all thanks to that wizard. Ezra, do not worry about me. I am willing to endure this beastly curse as the centuries continue, but as long as I have my son again, that’s all that matters.
***
Tamesis, Tamesis, I’m glad to have helped you. Your boy is special, and he has a great destiny in front of it of him. Oh, great and powerful wizard, thank you for taking me on this trip to see his full potential.
But now I have a secret of my own. I am not real. I am a memory conjured from a writer’s brain who painted a wooden carving of me and decided to display it in her house as a childhood trinket. I did not create mine, Tamesis, nor did I create my fairy’s journey, buts he did. She takes one look at me and says, “Ezra, it’s time for another trip through time… to the time where this series is finally on a bookshelf in a bookstore. Thank you for making this possible.”
