Anna Sherman slides between the beat up cars parked in the cobbled driveway. Stumbling out of the alley, she breathes heavily and knocks on the peeling red door. Several moments pass where she studies the house in all its shabbiness and drawn curtains. The scrape and drag of multiple locks overlap in her ears, and a shaft of dim light leaks from inside. A small man with dull green eyes, bright white hair, and a tired face peers out suspiciously. He speaks in a foreign tongue, eyes narrowed at Anna. When she doesn’t respond he sniffs and speaks again, words blanketed by a thick accent.

          “Are you Ms. Sherman?” 

          “Yes...I am here to see...well...”

          The man scoffs again, and mutters bitterly in his language. 

          “You had better come in.”

          He shuffles aside and Anna hesitantly steps through the doorway, eyes flicking about the house curiously. The grimy walls are papered in what once must have been vibrant lilac and fuschia flowers, and the carpeted floor is riddled with water stains. In front of her the man hobbles down the claustrophobic hall, periodically glancing back and relapsing into his muttering. Anna wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans.

           They enter a room with its windows boarded up, fabric couches squared around a single threadbare rocking chair. A tiny woman with stringy grey hair, infinite wrinkles, and firmly shut eyes lies burrowed in the chair. A young woman with curly red hair tumbling down her back kneels in front of the occupied chair. 

            “Hello…” Anna says quietly.

            The kneeling woman murmurs a stiff greeting.

            Ignoring them all, the old man relaxes into one of the couches and promptly begins fiddling with an antique radio, replacing the previously thick silence with static.

            Anna slowly crouches beside the young woman. 

            “I...well...I am here to see her...about, you know...” The two women watch their elder silently for a moment. 

            Suddenly, Anna whips her head around and says firmly, “Vanessa, I need to know.”

            Still staring ahead, Vanessa speaks in a clipped voice. “She sits upon the same seat for hour upon hour, never shifting, never twitching, never moving a single muscle. You already know all that you can; she is still trapped.”

            Anna bites her lip, attempting to hold in words, but they burst out anyway. “Yes, but we have communicated with her in the past! It is possible to speak with her beyond our current realm, and I desperately need to!”

            Vanessa finally looks around at Anna, flaming steel injected into her bones. “We cannot risk it. You should know better. And it’s besides the point, for we exist in the present and it is too dangerous to journey into the past, especially only for personal gain.”

            Anna glares. “That’s awfully hypocritical of you.”

            Vanessa flushes and hardens further. “I have learned from my mistakes and would never venture into the planes of time again. You would be wise not to repeat my same missteps.”

            “I do not wish to speak with her for ‘personal gain.’”

            But Vanessa was already shaking her head. “No. It does not matter, I will not let you.”

            Anna straightens. “Well. It’s not up to you.”

            Vanessa straightens as well. “So it will go down like this. Let the Heavens witness I have tried.”

             Anna scoffs, remarkably resembling the old man. “I am sure the Heavens will not care.”

             Anna surges towards the ancient woman floating adrift through time. Vanessa leaps after.