That night, Aggy instructed me on her usual nightly routine, which included checking on the golems and making a cup of herbal tea. After making the tea, checking on the golems while it steeps, then drinking the tea, which as absolutely delicious with flavours I don’t have the words to describe, I checked on the peacefully sleeping children, then finally I laid down in Aggy’s plush bed. I wasn’t expecting it to be nearly as comfortable as it was, but I should’ve expected it after the rocking chair. I felt like I should have been knitting while I was rocking in front of the fireplace, I thought at Aggy, with a small kitten on my lap or something.

[“Kittens tend to play with the yarn to much,” Aggy replied, “I do miss having one around though, such sweet little things. My children used to bring me home strays and wild animals all the time. Then when they grew up and had children, their children did too. Cats, dogs, squirrels, raccoons, all sorts of things.”]

I could feel the deep sadness in her voice, the nostalgia and longing, but I could tell it was an old feeling. An ache not as fresh as I thought it was. Which was an insensitive thought.

[“it was well over a century ago,” she seemed to sigh, “it doesn’t hurt any less but its more bearable for lack of a better word. Anyways, I’ve learned more about my situation while you’ve been busy sitting on my furniture and worrying about things. Turns out there’s more privacy than expected for me, but not so much for you.”]

I’m sorry, what do you mean well over a century ago? Weren’t you already old when that war was fought? I thought it was recent. I could feel my growing confusion coating the words I was sending her, and why can’t I have more privacy?

[“You can’t have more privacy because you’re essentially ‘in my house’,” she explained, “you get the privacy I decide to give you, whereas I can put up walls to keep you out.”]

Your house, your rules, I thought to her, that’s not unreasonable.

[“Now to answer your other questions, I clearly stated it was well over a century ago, so not recent on a normal human scale, and yes, I was already ‘old’ when the war started.”]

Exactly how old are you? I felt my curiosity bubbling away, it’s just difficult for me to comprehend, well, anything. Your age, your strength, magic, all of it is foreign to me and it’s like I’m living in a dream.

[“I think I may have some answers for you by the morning,” she said with a slight chuckle, “I’ll answer one of them now before you go to sleep but it may cause more questions than it answers. I’m nine hundred, ninety-two years old.”]

Nine hundred? And ninety-two? Years? Like just shy of one thousand. I could feel the incredulity pouring through the thoughts.

[“yes dearie,” she said in a sweet but slightly tired voice, “now go to sleep and we can talk about how I’m older than many countries in the morning.”]

Good night, I thought back, silently apologizing for the thought floating around about Canada being less than two hundred years old. I squished myself further into the plushness and tried to shut off my mind and drift into sleep gently. I could immediately feel the fogginess of sleep start to come over me despite the thoughts still roiling around. Just before I succumbed to the sandman’s gentle yet insistent tug, I thought of my son.

Then I was dreaming. I dreamt I was walking on the sidewalk with my wife and son by my side. It was a nice day out, sunny with a gentle breeze, none of the stifling heat we’d been experiencing all summer. We’d just got back from a shopping trip and Alice had suggested we take Tommy out for a walk to tire him out some more before we made some dinner and relaxed for the night. Tommy was perfectly agreeable so long as he could bring his favourite car, a knockoff hot wheels in a glimmery purple paint that never seemed to fade no matter what he put it through. He was running circles around us pretending it was flying or going off big ramps and just generally having a good time. He was a very happy little three-year-old. Alice was telling me about a design project she was working on, how excited she was to be able to express her artistic talents, the way her face lit up as she talked almost made me forget to listen to what she was saying. She was passionate and her art was beautiful, although I may be biased.

It was a great afternoon.

It was this afternoon.

Her voice was slowly drowned out by the roar of an engine.

My eyes locked onto Tommy as I saw his car go flying towards the road.

The car landed inaudibly, and tommy’s face contorted in despair, his building cry completely drowned by the engine.

He launched himself onto the road and I could feel myself reacting, watching in slow motion as he runs into the road and the box truck hurtles towards him.

I make it in time, firmly shoving him back as the sound of the engine is replaced by white noise. He trips over the curb, Alice already there to catch him. I wait for the impact.

“I’m so sorry, dearie,” I hear Aggy say, her voice full of sincerity, “I know this is private, but I couldn’t bear to see you like that, to see your soul like that.”

The scenery shifted and I found myself in a room not unlike one of Aggy’s. Aggy was sat in a rocking chair, gently swaying as she knitted what looked to be an incredibly long scarf. She smiled at me sadly.

“Welcome to the boundary between our souls, Jake,” She said to me softly, “I wasn’t sure I could even get you here, but here we are.”

I took a moment to look around and saw a messy but cozy looking room directly attached to what appeared to be Aggy’s parlor where she sat now. Is my soul really that messy and small? I thought to Aggy, looking at it a bit closer. It seemed to be full of random bits of junk from throughout my life as well as some actual garbage, like an empty chip bag beside the cozy looking recliner my grandpa had when I was a kid. I turned to look at her with an eyebrow raised, waiting for a reply.

“We aren’t sharing a head right now sweetie,” she said in an informative matter, “so any communication will most likely have to be verbal given our current physical representation in here. You look like you’ve just asked a question.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Is my soul really that small and messy?” I asked, out loud this time. Aggy’s parlor looked to be several times the size of the small room I assumed to be my soul.

“It could use a bit of spring cleaning,” she said kindly, “but it’s got lots of character.”

I shrugged and turned to face her fully, another rocking chair had appeared beside her, and she gestured for me to sit down.

“The beard suits you,” she gestured to my face, “the reddish tones really bring out the blue of your eyes.”

“Also distracts from the baldness of the top of my head,” I said with a half-smile, “but thanks I appreciate it.”

I sat down into the rocking chair and immediately sank down into a plush cushion that I could’ve sworn wasn’t there before I sat. I wasn’t about to complain though, it was a really soft seat and distracted me from the strangeness I was currently going through. Aggy set aside her knitting and it seemed to just vanish away like it was never there to begin with.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, I’m not sure I have a lot of answers. So, I’m going to go over some of the things I do know so that you aren’t completely lost.” She frowned at me briefly, “you look like a lost puppy, but that’s probably because you are, and I genuinely don’t know if giving you more information will actually do you more good than not. That being said, I’m going to give you some of this information now so you can regurgitate it to someone else if the need arises and I can’t help you.”

“At this point, I think I’m in shock,” I shrugged at her, “I haven’t broken down yet from everything that’s happened, I’ve just been so painfully confused, so what’s a little more. Even better if I can use it to help us.”

“that’s a good attitude to have,” she nodded at me, “your soul most certainly is in shock, I could feel it when you were in control.”

“How does that work?” I asked.

“Well, it’s basically like I’m in this room and I’m watching one of those big screens you like, the movie or whatever it is, it doesn’t translate well, except I can also feel everything and when I yell at the guy on the screen he actually listens. Theres also a dozen other screens variously playing out memories and random thoughts, which is how I learned about the movie. I can also put things into the screen to have you learn about it, like language. I can give you a bunch of information, although I can’t make you understand any of it. Thankfully you already understood language. I can have privacy basically by muting myself, although at the start that didn’t work so well, and some things leaked through. I am a fast learner though so luckily you didn’t have to put up with that too much.”

The way she talked reminded me of the nice older ladies my grandma used to hang out with at bingo, you expect slow and kind of creaky, but then it comes out fast and nonstop almost like she knows how to stretch one breath into a paragraph. She continued.

“The reason I was able to do anything like that at all is because of where we are right now. This is our soul, young man. A link between two individuals that makes one greater.”

I nodded like it made sense to me, but she could see my confusion.

“If it makes it easier for you, think of a soul like an egg. It has a shell and inside is the white and the yolk. You and I are yolks, ad this is the egg white that we’re sittin’ in now.”

that was something I could understand so I asked, “so does that make your body our shell right now?”

she nodded, “you got it sonny, one of the first steps to solving our problem will be putting your yolk into a new shell.”

“That sounds dangerous and terrifying,” I said as calmly as I could manage.

She smiled widely, “it probably will be, but the alternative is worse.”

“How bad is a lich, exactly?” I asked, imagining a final boss from a tabletop rpg.

“The world is in danger, not just the continent or country.” Was her resolute answer, “if I fail, life ends and a new age of unlife begins. Everything dies, and then it’ll move from this world through the universe, consuming all. When it’s done it’ll move on to another dimension, to another world like the one you came from.”

“Oh,” was all I could say.

“It won’t come to that dearie,” she said, reassuringly patting my arm, “I’ve got a plan.”

I nodded to her. She didn’t cut an imposing figure, but she was still incredibly reassuring. I believed that not only did she have a plan, but that she’d take care of the lich then go home to bake cookies or pie.

“the first step will be breakfast with those adorable little children, then if they want to come with us, we take them on an adventure to go see an old friend of mine, Billy, he’s an absolute sweetheart of a man, powerful wizard though, pretty sure he had a thing for me long ago but then him and bobby got into a big fight and…” she trailed off looking wistfully into the distance, before snapping back to focus, “Anyways, we see Billy, he’ll fix our two yolk one egg problem, and then I’ll go find bob and his apprentice and put this business to rest.”

“Yes ma’am,” I agreed. She fully led this conversation ad I was probably more confused now than I was at the start of it but at least I kind of had a solid plan. Feed kids, go see Billy. After that, Aggy should be free to save the world and I’ll be free to take a few minutes and figure out what the fuck is going on. This whole soul link thing made no sense to me, and Aggy’s movie analogy kind of worked, although I’m sure she’d have been better off if she saw a memory involving VR. I have to say though, this did pull me out of the gut wrenching feeling I had in my dream and put me back in a place of more confused complacency where I still basically believed I was in a coma so none of this really mattered.

Aggy seemed to check a clock I couldn’t see for the time, then turned back to me. “There seems to be a little bit more time before we have to wake up if you wanted to ask a question or two now.”

My mind rattled about for a moment, trying to figure out what I could use this time to ask about. I simultaneously had too many questions and not enough. The best I could come up with, or more, the one that came out of my mouth was, “how did you live that long?”

“I surpassed human limitations long ago,” she smiled, but it was full of sadness, her eyes started to look misty, and she stared into the distance, “magic, training, and genius can take you to near divine heights. Robert helped me reach those heights even though he himself kept falling short. He was the most talented person, and the most prodigious wizard I’d ever met. I had magic and talent, he had genius, and together we were supposed to live forever”, she shook her head, “lots of the magically inclined tend to live longer than normal, the more powerful the person the longer the lifespan, both through sheer vitality, as well as rejuvenation rituals. Rejuvenation only wors on those with a soul strong enough to handle it, to handle the mana.”

I nodded my head, understanding a bit better. It was similar to enough tropes I’d seen in media.

“So is a thousand even considered that old then?” I asked.

“Yes,” she chuckled, “most human adventurers, the ones that survive their profession and retire, tend to only live to just over one hundred and fifty. Extremely powerful wizards have been known to live hundreds of years. I think Billy is one of the oldest humans I know and is considered one of the oldest in general and he’s only seven hundred years old.”

We continued to chat about ages for a short while longer before Aggy warned me that we were about to wake up. She wasn’t sure what to expect as soul boundaries like ours are beyond rare. Not unique, as she does know of there being another case like this, but close enough to that only Billy, her old wizard friend, might be able to deal with it. I also learned a bit more about Billy, who apparently set up a tower not too far away so that she could visit and have tea without having to go too far. It was greatly convenient for us as Aggy was confident the children were going to join us, and it was a lot safer to make a short close trip than a long far one.

We figured out what to expect when suddenly, with a falling sensation, I woke up.