ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

Iris could tell something was amiss.

For starters, she always went to bed with her hair down, her mom's voice echoing in her head as a reminder of the disasters that could befall her if she didn't.

Though Iris was the furthest thing from vain (as evidenced by the lack of will to hop in the shower), her hair had always been one of the aspects of her appearance she made an effort to keep minimally presentable. She didn't want it to break, a curse her mom insisted would follow her around thanks to her genes and to a prolonged lack of proper nutrition, not to mention the damage caused to her scalp if she were to wear it up to bed.

(Plus, Lyra had always liked her long hair. Iris had chopped it all off when they stopped speaking, but had been growing it out for little less than a year in hope the universe would somehow get the hint she was reaching out to her soulmate. Needless to say, it didn't work.)

(Lyra was still buried six feet underground. It wouldn't be the length or the health of Iris's hair that would ever bring her back. Even in death, Lyra Sinclair still had her wrapped around her finger, was still so present in her life it felt as though she was physically present in the room.)

Iris felt pretty pathetic whenever she realized she was pining after the same girl after all those years. In spite of her recent—and unfortunately premature—death, Iris was still there, longing for her, awaiting her return, wishing she could turn back time to fix the unfixable, but it was all she knew how to do. She remembered, she waited, and she ached for Lyra Sinclair. It was no way to live, she knew that, but at least she was alive; Lyra wasn't fortunate enough to be able to say the same.

So, as Iris checked her email inbox with a furrowed brow (she was certain she'd already ignored and swiped away the notification regarding the meeting), there was no way of shaking off that gnawing feeling in the back of her head that something wasn't quite right. It was one of those uncanny situations, where you can't pinpoint exactly what feels strange about your current circumstances, but there was still a certain uneasiness in her stomach.

The notification sat there, taunting her. She opened it, albeit reluctantly, and, sure enough, it had just arrived, she hadn't replied to it (what did you reply to a Zoom link sent to you through someone's iPhone?), and there were no signs of any interactions on any folders of her inbox—not spam, not trash, not even in drafts.

Could she have imagined the whole thing? Had it been nothing but a prophetic dream, warning her about an oddly specific email, or was it just her overactive mind, powered up by anxiety, that had seen it coming?

Unless . . .

She remembered her wish—vividly so. Way too vividly for it to have been a figment of her imagination.

She remembered wishing to be able to mess with the laws of time (the laws of space felt a touch too complicated for her poorly rested brain to comprehend) for entirely selfish reasons—to understand Lyra, to understand what had drawn her back to Emelle Bay, to repair the damage she'd caused before the storm hit—but that had been nothing but wishful thinking.

Iris couldn't ignore the hollow ache left behind in her chest, though. She blamed it for dragging her back to Oregon after she thought she'd moved on from it, moved on with her life there after she and Lyra had stopped talking, but then Lyra had gone ahead and died.

Even in death, she was forcing Iris' heart to make wishes out of desperation, like it would be possible to go back in time, change the course of history, or erase entire events from history—their falling out, Lyra's spiral and subsequent death, Iris' decision to return to Emelle Bay—and, realistically, Iris knew better than to allow herself to dwell on delusion.

It was far easier and wiser to trust the possibility that made logical, scientific sense for the sake of her dwindling sanity, even if opening her heart to the ridiculous, whimsical fantasy of second chances and time traveling to the past would be healthier for her heart and soul. It sounded absurd just to think about it, and she ought to believe she had dreamed the whole ordeal.

A butterfly landed next to one of her potted succulents, one of the few she'd managed to keep alive. It flapped its cerulean wings once, twice, before resting.

It was spring. Butterflies thrived during the spring. Normally, Iris wouldn't have bothered paying any attention to it, but the succulent was right next to a framed photo of her and Lyra from college—both bright-eyed and happy, smiles brighter than the sun.

When she got out of bed, hair now down, Iris flipped down the photograph so the glass rested against the desk underneath it. The butterfly immediately flew away, the ripple of its wings carving a vortex in the suffocating air in her bedroom, and Iris' heartbeat came to a halt.

There were no open windows in the apartment.

ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

The following morning, Iris had almost successfully managed to shake off any stupid ideas about going back in time.

As evidenced by her present reality, the only thing she'd wanted to redo remained unchanged, and dwelling on whether or not the most absurd thing her mind had conjured being real or not wouldn't be helpful to her in the slightest. Though it only worsened the unwavering sorrow pounding against her sternum, the reminder that Lyra was never coming back was better than trusting some sort of supernatural, magical possibility that would never come to fruition.

Thus, she dove into her work responsibilities, as time waited for no one, and she needed to remain employed. She'd always be welcome back in Providence to stay with her mom, but she'd have to bid farewell to her beloved New York City—which would never be a cheap place to live—and her ego could never take such a blow.

She made an effort to appear normal, too; not only had she showered that morning, she had also straightened her hair and put on a pretty blouse, even though she was still wearing her pajama pants. No one would ever know. They'd be focusing on her face, the main thing on display, so she put extra work into looking presentable—concealer, mascara, even blush. To the distracted eye, she almost looked healthy and well-rested.

Looks weren't everything, however. With how preoccupied Iris had been about mourning, missing, and loving someone, she had neglected to properly prepare for the work meeting.

Though Mango Press wasn't one of the Big 5, it still held some weight in the publishing industry, and Iris didn't want to be known as the editor who consistently got books mixed up with each other because she hadn't bothered to prepare her notes in advance.

Unfortunately, it had happened, the words slipping out of her mouth before she could stop herself, and then she ended up spending ten whole minutes discussing the edits for the wrong book. They weren't remotely similar in genre, plot, or even in the hand they'd been penned by, yet Iris still carried herself with the confidence of a mediocre man while discussing the wrong book.

For some reason, her coworkers sat there, blank-faced as she described edits to an adult thriller when, in reality, the book they had to explore during the meeting was a seaside, steamy romance. They waited for her to finish talking to hit her with a "uh, Iris, see . . . that's not the right book" comment, which made her want to bury herself under hundreds of layers of dirt in sheer embarrassment.

They could have interrupted her as soon as they realized she'd made a mistake. They could have been gentler. They could have done so many things to make it better—or, at the very least, not as terrible—yet they hadn't. Yes, Iris could have not allowed her struggles and obsession with Lyra to get in the way of her job and responsibilities, so everyone involved had failed in some way.

She felt mocked. She felt both ridiculed and ridiculous, especially with the tears scorching the corners of her eyes, especially because it was something that could have easily been avoided had her heart and brain not been so laser focused on and shattered by longing for the same person for so goddamn long. Because she was nothing but sensitive and stubborn, she couldn't even allow herself to stop all of that from happening, but she could still wish she had gotten the book right, at least.

She dug her fingernails deep into her legs, feeling the sharp pressure through the thin fabric of her pajama pants, and wished to take it all back. The condescension in her coworkers' voices as they spoke to her to remind her of her humiliating mistake had been the last straw and, since she couldn't start bawling in front of them, she refocused those emerging negative feelings and emotions into changing the trajectory of the approaching tornado.

The tornado was the only thing she was certain she'd experienced the previous day. Though she couldn't quite explain or describe it, she knew, deep in her heart, there had to have been something happening—even if not even science had a plausible justification for it—and something had shifted in the balance of the world.

Something had shifted for her. It could have been Lyra's influence or maybe it was just grief, but she knew that. She knew. So, when the whirlwind sucked her in and enveloped her in its chaos, she was certain things were different then although everything appeared unchanged.

". . . the book edits," her colleague, Charlie (Charlene, not Charlotte), concluded, in the same way she'd done moments prior. Iris exhaled, suddenly struggling to catch her breath, and there was no doubt she had, somehow, gone back in time. "Iris?"

"Yes," she blurted out, just as the butterfly from the previous day timidly approached her, wings flapping softly, like a caress. She'd rewound time. How was that even possible? "So, with Eternal Summer . . .

ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

wc: 1716 (docs) // 1695 (wattpad)

total wc: 3518 (docs) // 3459 (wattpad)