Hope

Colette sat on her bed with her hands pressed on her bed and her head facing her room door. She kept staring at it, barely blinking, u shaking. Her mind mused at different thoughts in its perplexed state. She got up and went to the table at the left corner of her room. She picked up her phone and put it on; she checked the date and saw it was the 28th December, 5:50am. She raised her head and thought for a moment. She then sat on the chair beside her and rested her head in the table while still holding the phone.     Soon enough, silent tears started rolling down her closed eyes. She removed the hand holding her phone from supporting her head with the other still doing so on the table and unlocked her password. She opened her social app and saw all the chats she had on the 27th – the previous day. The tears now flowed even more when she opened Chloe’s chat and scrolled through all the funny messages they both sent themselves. She closed the chat and checked other chats. She saw her junior brother’s, opened it and saw a message telling her to ‘come home early cus of The Pink House'- a show they watched together.     Her sobs were now getting louder as she hit her hand carrying her phone on the table. Her room door opened and her mother peeped into the room. She turned to her right when she heard sobs and saw her daughter lying desolate at her desk. Her face suddenly fell sullen.     “What’s wrong Colette?” She said as she approached her daughter.     Colette didn’t respond. Her son’s only kept on increasing in intensity.     “Colette! Colette? Come on, talk to me, what’s wrong? Why’re you crying?”     Mia sat on the table beside Colette and raised her head slightly to let it face hers. She then wiped the years from her daughter’s face with her two thumbs as she pitifully looked at her face, perhaps wondering why.     “Come on, talk to me Col, I’m your mother, no need to suffer alone.”     Colette withdrew her face from her mother’s grip and wiped out the excess tears with her left elbow, still sniffing from crying. She checked the time on her phone again to confirm what she had seen and then looked up at her mother and smiled wryly.     “I’m…it’s nothing, I’m better now, don’t mind me,” she said as she waved away her right hand.     “You sure, you don’t need to follow us to work today if you ain’t feeling good,” her mother said with a worried expression on her face.     “Really mum, it’s good, no need to worry, I’ll come along…”     “Don’t tell me not to worry child,” her mother retorted. “Just moments ago you appeared in the dumps and now you’re okay, is that how it works now? Hell no!” Mia stood up from the table and had a confused expression about her face. “You’ll stay home, and recover from whatever it is you’re suffering from. I’ll have Clement stay with you, your dad and I will manage today. Ok?”     “Ok,” Colette replied.     “I’ll let your father know about all this,” Mia said as she folded her arms.     “Just…take care, Ok?” “Ok mum,” Colette replied. Mia walked out of the room and closed the door. Colette sat down on her bed and started to think to herself.     ‘I’m back in time, how? I mean…how, just how?’ She turned her hands and looked at them. ‘I’m sure I have super powers, or what’s going on here, who did this…' Just then, another thought crossed her head. There had been a bomb blast, and most people in the square had lost their lives, including her parents, and her junior brother was on the way to a hospital in critical condition. She was also in the van. She remembered talking with a police and a paramedic especially, and remembered her dressing her wounds.    She touched where she was supposed to feel pain, but only felt her warm fingers on her temple. She beat her head twice, as if checking if she was hallucinating, or of her brain was playing tricks on her. She shook her head and stood up from her bed and went to the bathroom attached to her room. She looked at herself in the mirror.      She stroked her pixie hair and looked at the tap. She then put the tap on and began rinsing her face. She looked again into the mirror at her damp face and smiled, then broke down crying again. After about two minutes crying in front of her mirror, she took her brush and applied toothpaste before brushing her teeth rather aggressively, and then had her bath.     Colette came out of her room wearing a brown coat with a blue jeans. She also wore a purple beanie and purple muffler around her neck, with brown boots and black cotton gloves worn over her hands.     “Hey sis, thought you weren’t feeling well?” Clement asked.     “You’re mistaken Chris,…a lot seems though,” Colette responded as she looked at the ceiling of the house.     “Hmm, just don’t stay long, mum said she won’t.”     “Relax Chris, it’s just ten,” she said as she looked at the TV. “Today’s unusually cold compared to the other winter days we have been getting, at -10 degree Celsius,” Colette said. “And show showers are gonna be raining down, perfect day to go out isn’t it?” Colette asked rhetorically.     “Well if you’re that sarcastic, perhaps you really are well,” Clement said.     “Am I now, ha-ha,” Colette giggled. “Well, off I go then,” she said as she put her gloved hands into her coat’s pockets. “I’ll buy a doughnut or two to eat outside,” she said.     “k,” Clement replied.     The snowfall’s intensity was starting to increase as Colette made her was through the housing district. The cloud was already forming a cumulus congestive to signify some heavy snow showers.     “Just as predicted huh,” Colette said to herself as she continued walking. She had been in deep thoughts since she left home. How could she go back in time, what exactly happened, what caused it? Colette had always believed that what had happened had happened, that one could only move forward. Now she found herself sucked into the past, and living it all over again, almost four days before the bomb went off.     She walked towards an open space and looked in the direction of the clock tower. The top of the tower was visible from where she was. She continued her walk for a while, hands in pocket all this time, and stopped by a mobile shop and bought two doughnuts, both wrapped in paper bags, and a warm cup of coffee, all put in a bigger paper bag. She turned and headed for a different square not far from where she was. The square had a small river flowing through it. The river wasn’t fully frozen be a use the temperature wasn’t low and stable enough to freeze it completely – in past winter’s, it was always frozen solid. She saw a vacant bench nearby in front of the river and went to it. She took out a small towel from her jacket and dusted the hoarfrost that had fallen on the bench and put the food bag down, before sitting beside it.     She brought out the warm coffee and held it in her hands, looking at the swans gliding across the unfrozen part of the river as the coffee warmed her hands. She took out a doughnut and started eating and drinking the coffee, all while still musing at what was happening. Suddenly, it hit her. Just before she disappeared from the ambulance, she remembered herself say she wanted to save those in the explosion, but she then strained her face and stopped eating. ‘Wasn’t it actually a wish, although I wanted it,' she thought to herself. She looked forward at the river again. ‘Perhaps she sent me to the past to save people? Why did she ask me what I’d wish for?’ she thought to herself.     As she kept trying to understand what made her go back in time, she continued with her food. After she finished with the first doughnut, she brought out her phone and called Chloe.     “Hey Chloe!”     “Oh hi Colette, what’s up?”    “Haaa, girl do you know how relieved I am to hear your voice again?”     “Huh, whataya saying?...you smoking crack?” Chloe replied with a light laughter.     Colette gave out a yelp borne out of crying and laughing at the same time while she held her mouth with her free right hand. “Wish I was,” she replied, sniffing.”     “You sure you Colette? I could come around you know,” Chloe replied.     “No, no, it’s alright, just wanted to hear your voice is all.”     “K,” Chloe replied, with some bit of uncertainty to her voice.     “Chloe, tell me something; what do you know about time travel…like, in physics and all?”     “Haa,” Chloe laughed. “Well, that’s rather interesting, coming from you girl.”     “Hmnm, anything you could tell me?” Colette asked.     “Well, all that except you want to know more about philosophy and physics, you only just wasting your time.”     “Hmm, then tell me about going back in time,” Colette said.     “Well…”     “Come on Chloe, thought you were the best in physics,” Colette said while winking to herself before sucking in her lips.”     “Ha, you know our highest level of physics is barely A-levels right, but seeing as you want to be amused, well…time travel is usually associated with special and general relativity, which, of course you don’t know.”     “Care to expatiate, Chloe darling??”     “Nope!” Chloe retorted, “well, I don’t fully understand it either, first has to do with speed of light being the same for all observers in vacuum and second for geometry of gravity, really what do you need this stuff for anyway?”     “He-he, continue darling,” Colette answered.     “Ya, stop teasing me with the darling thing, Col!”     “Ok then luv.”     “Haa,” Chloe sighed.     “Well, some scientists do believe that travelling back in time may be more difficult, if not impossible cus of the problems of casualty.”     “Hmm? That so?” Colette asked.     “Ya Colette, casualty has to do with causes and effects, like the grandfather’s paradox, atleast you know that – so you?”     “Well…?”     “Sigh Col, sigh, hope you ain’t joking around, else you’ll have to bring me flasks of latte!”     Colette froze for a moment, she’d being enjoying Chloe’s speech, until she remembered she had only recently served Chloe latte on new year’s eve.     “Colette, you still there?” Chloe asked.     “Yeah, sorry. Continue.”     “So the theory states that what happens if I, for example, go back in time to kill my grandfather before my father was conceived, what then happens or happened to me? Will I die, or should I even exist? You see, requires some deep thinking, and more questions could yet spill out of it.”     “Hmm, so, what if I dreamt of a future I didn’t like, and it was happening, atleast until I did something to change its course?” Colette asked.     “Well…it technically never happened, so you never know what would actually happen if you didn’t change anything, but the flow of time itself is always subject to changes you know, it’s why we have our seasons and days, and why we grow old, our decisions are always changing, so you could still have done something different you know, to what you dreamt.”     “Well that’s compelling!” Colette retorted.     “Then again, a Russian theory tries to counter this problem, and says that if an event exists to change the past, then the probability of it happening is zero, this impossible to create time paradoxes. But, according to Parmenides, time’s an illusion, the present, past and future are timeless and unchanging, as opposed to Heraclitus who believed time was in a state of flux, the B and A theorists debate. But that shouldn’t concern you though, my only wonder is your sudden interest in time travel though.”     “Is that all you’ve got to tell me, Chloe?” Colette asked.     “Well, there’s also a theory, of presentism, that says the past and future are changes that occurred or will occur to the present and they have no real existence of their own, so from this view, there’s no past or future to travel to.”     “Hmm.” Colette drank from her coffee and realized it had gone cold, then looked at the container in disappointment. “Welp, there it goes, and the snow storm seems to be coming,” she said as she sighed.     “But Colette, I believe there’s a story of time travel of some sort from your mother’s tribe ain’t there?” Chloe asked.     “You mean that on Elise and the Budu dog, yep, grandpa told me that one.”     Suddenly, Colette recollected the story her grandfather had told her and her brother seven years ago on his Seventieth birthday. He hadn’t finished the story because they were running late and their mother interrupted their grandfather as he finished the story, but Colette had recollected as much as she could from that day. She took a huge bite of the second doughnut and hurriedly ate it.    “Goobye Kooe, we test you larer, love!”     “Wai…!”     Colette hung up the phone and quickly ate the remaining doughnuts before managing to gulp down the remaining coffee. She stood up looking revitalized, and disposed the paper bags and disposable coffee cup in the recycle bin nearby. She stretched her arms wide before flexing her waist, and looked up at the now dark cumulus cloud. The temperature had really fallen now, and the winds were picking up. She checked the time on her phone and saw it was 12:49pm.     “About time,” she said as she stuffed her gloved hands into her coat’s pockets and made her way home from the square. The blizzard was starting to get more intense. She drew her hoodie over her beanie as the cold increased. This had been the peak of the winter so far.     The snow covers on the ground and trees were starting to thicken as the snow coming down increased greatly. Then a snow burst swept through the streets of the district as Colette began to struggle with the visibility, having to rely on her experience with the road’s path. It would have been hard to believe it was only afternoon. She reached her doorstep and dusted her snow-packed boots on the balcony floor at the entrance. She knocked on the door three times and her mother opened it for her.     “Heh, where have you been now in this snow young woman, it’s freaking cold you know,” her mother said with a worried look on her face. “Come in now, your father bought some chocolates for you,” she said as she handed Colette a nylon packed with bonbons.     “Awww, but you’re quite early mum, dad’s gonna be lonely there.”     “Oh I’m glad I’m early, with you wondering off, besides, the snow storm was coming, only for you to be in it…”     “Ya sorry mum,” Colette interrupted her mother.      Well, highly doubt your father will feel lonely, his football fans already filled the restaurant, no better chance to run I guess, or it would have become a personal nightmare humph,” Mia said.     “Well, I’m gonna go coil up in bed after some hot tea, looks like I’ve got some thinking to do,” Colette said.     “Ok then,” her mum replied.     “Hey, you surely aren’t eating them all are ya?” Clement, who had been playing video games shouted to Colette. He looked back to see Colette leaving to her room. “Please!”     Colette threw three bonbons at him, much to his delight. “Ya thanks, hope there’s more though,” he said as she left, with the mother laughing at them both.