In a non-descript, nearly empty bar on south side of town, Stella watched a skinny well-postured barman pour four glasses of wine, each one from a different bottle. He lined them up in front of her, then gave her a polite nod. “There you go madame, miss.” He corrected himself, noting that the woman was far younger than he had initially assumed when she’d requested the secret wine list.
She was about to wave him away, when an image of someone joining her popped into her head. “Oh, and can you bring me a bottle of the Chateau Musar 84’ please? And two glasses with it. Thank you.”
The barman’s eyebrows went up and he momentarily opened him mouth as if he wished to warn her of the hefty price tag that came with such a bottle, especially one which had been sourced from the human world. But something in her cool blue eyes stopped him. She sat so still and poised for one who otherwise looked so young. He really was having trouble pegging her age. But any guest who knew about the secret menu knew the prices that went with it. So he simply nodded and returned a moment later with the requested bottle.
Stella slid 4 gold and 7 silvers across the table for the entire lot. She did not open this new bottle straight away. Instead, she sniffed, swirled, and occasionally sipped her other four glasses. It wasn’t until another woman slid onto the bar stool beside her that Stella reached for the new bottle.
Bambi, as the other woman was called, placed one hand gently on Stella’s forearm. “Now, now, don’t open that on my account.”
Stella glanced over her friend. Bambi was a reasonably non-descript woman, with brown hair and dark eyes, which revealed themselves to be a shade of green if you looked at them in the light. She was smartly dressed in office attire, a standard black suit jacket and pants, no fancy tailoring. She was a similar height to Stella, although she was curvier which made her look shorter unless they were standing side by side. Bambi was 10 years older than her, which was also almost as long as Stella had known her. On the last day of the last year of Stella’s high school education, right out there, in front of the school, Bambi had pulled over and offered Stella a ride. She hadn’t said to where. She hadn’t needed to. In her visions of the future, Stella had seen the paths that lay before her, the options she could take. In a way, she had known Bambi even before she’d met her. She’d gotten in the car and she’d never looked back, well she’d tried not to.
Her parents hadn’t even noticed she’d been gone, their perfect darling child who was going to achieve all their dreams for them, dreams Stella had had no interest in. Bambi had wiped their minds and sweet Stella had considered herself rescued. After that Stella would have followed Bambi almost anywhere.
Bambi had become a surrogate mother of sorts. For a whole year she’d taken Stella under her wing and taught her everything there was to the world, taken her places that Stella had only seen in her mind. That year had felt like a lifetime. But when that year had come to a close Bambi had put her parents minds back as they had been, with a few alterations. From their point of view, Stella had never left and nothing was changed. To Stella the world was an entirely different place. But Bambi had made it clear that a cover was important and so Stella had returned to her parents and then she’d set off to University to pursue at least some of their dreams.
And now she and Bambi worked together. If one could call it work. It was more like a life calling really. A life calling reserved to those only with the very best of magic. And that was something Stella was very much a natural at. She was after all, quite possibly the only person alive who had been gifted with more than one power.
“But I’ve already bought it,” Stella replied, “And I am going to drink a glass anyway, whether you want some or not.” It was the truth in a way, although Stella already knew that Bambi would have a glass. She knew this because she had specifically picked one which she knew Bambi would like.
And Bambi, reading Stella’s mind with her own powers, knew the same. She sighed. “You’ll get me addicted to the stuff and that’s not a cheap bottle.”
Bambi had her mouth open to continue but Stella already knew what her next line was going to be. “It’s not wasted on you if you enjoy it. I can get you more of that, I like it too you know. And you never spend money on anything anyway, well hardly anything. What are you saving for?” Stella asked as she picked up one of her other four glasses and gave it a sniff. With a sly sideways glance so common in the young she added, “The apocalypse?”
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“Careful now,” Bambi warned. A hint of smile played at her own lips but there was a serious note to her tone as well. She watched Stella sip and compare the wines for awhile and then she gave the room a cursory glance.
“No one’s listening,” Stella told her.
“The barman was.”
Stella paused in her swirling and looked up in surprise. With a glance at Bambi she asked, “I take it he’s not anymore?”
“The thoughts have slipped his mind,” Bambi replied with a straight face. She reached for her own glass and hesitantly sniffed it. She took a sip. “Mmm, not bad.” She smiled and took another.
The pair were silent awhile. The barman paid them no mind.
Eventually Stella asked, “Did you drop off Murphy’s box?”
Bambi nodded. “He had me leave it in a law office in the middle of the day, in a restricted area. I had to wait for someone to swipe me in.”
“You didn’t just make someone do it?”
“Active mind control is harder to hide. You know that. Making them just not notice me however...”
“I don’t think you would have had trouble there.”
“Well Murphy seems in a muddle. You know how he gets when he’s been through several loops and nothing’s coming out right. I didn’t want to take any extra risks.”
“What do you think happens to us when he loops? Do you think it’s the same us but with different memories or do you think it’s a different dimension that he jumps to with different versions of us?”
Bambi reached for Stella’s current wine glass. “Alright, I’m cutting you off.”
Stella pulled her glass out of reach. “No, no, no, no, no, I was just wondering.”
Bambi withdrew her hands. “You get too philosophical when you drink.” She shook her head, “And I decided a long time ago not to think about questions like that. He has memories in his head of me that I don’t even remember living through. Like this one time, apparently we got married.”
Stella nearly choked on her wine. That was something even she hadn’t seen coming. “What?!” She knew Bambi and Murphy had been a couple. They’d been dating proper when she’d first met them. She wasn’t sure what they were now, but she did know they’d never been married and she'd never seen a future where they were.
Bambi wasn’t looking at Stella. She had one elbow on the bar and her chin resting on her knuckles while she stared toward the shelves of different coloured bottles, filled with varying levels of delicious liquids. Her eyes were unfocused. “I’m not even sure how recent the memories are. They’re strong but sometimes that’s the case with memories that are well-liked or revisited often rather than because they happened recently.” A small smile graced her lips briefly before she took another sip of wine.
Stella smiled as well. She had her chin resting on her palms now, mimicking Bambi’s posture slightly, and she was giving Bambi her full attention. She liked seeing Bambi happy.
Bambi put her glass back down on the table and continued, “I’m just glad that if he’s picking timelines, at least he's choosing ones where we still have kids.”
“What do you think keeps going wrong in this one?” Stella asked, trying not to think too much about the topic of children.
Bambi glanced over at her. In the low light of the bar her eyes looked more brown than green. “What do you see in the future?” It was an honest question. Even though Bambi could just pick and choose to read almost any of the thoughts in Stella’s head, it was far easier to read those that lay on the surface, the ones that a person was currently thinking. Asking a question made those thoughts more prominent.
Stella sighed and stared at her own glasses. “I don't know. I need to go meditate for a few days. I’m been so busy lately. All Murphy’s little missions, and the wine business, and my parent’s business, and-”
“Coal?” Bambi finished for her.
“He’s good for us. He’s well-placed, easy to influence. He’s not too greedy, not like some of them. And he is nice, actually genuinely nice. He is!” Stella insisted as she noticed skepticism appearing on Bambi’s face.
Bambi sighed. “I know he’s better than the others. Just don’t get too involved. We can’t meddle Stella. It’s the golden rule. You know that.”
“I won’t.” Stella said it sadly as memories of a possible future flashed through her mind. Thoughts she’d been trying to ignore. Thoughts of a child, Coal’s child. One rare child who could actually survive her body’s excessive healing abilities. One who would almost certainly bring about discord and destruction. Almost. But almost was enough for Murphy. Almost every future scenario she saw ended in the child’s death or the world’s end.
“You know what Murphy will do,” Bambi emphasized, as she read Stella’s thoughts.
Stella nodded solemnly.
“There might be other options you know,” Bambi reminded her gently, knowing the one thing Stella wanted more than anything was a child of her own. The one thing her healing powers wouldn’t let her have.
But Stella barely heard her. She was fixated on that future, and that was the trouble, when all you could think about was one thing, sometimes you forgot to look for the other possibilities.