We Won't Give Up On Love [Romance/ Slice-of-Life]

[Rarified Time, Lost in Darkness]

Behind the old estate, there was a garden. Behind the garden, there was a small copse of oaks, which stretched to a steep depression of land — not a cliff, but rather a ridge of loose earth that led to a more concentrated expanse of wood beyond the perimeter of the property. These woods weren't quite isolated, as a public road bisected them about a thousand feet from the edge of the estate, but they were large and dense enough to get lost in.

Pascal often got lost in them, and that was his pleasure. It was a way to occupy the time for the precocious child. At an early age, Pascal had discovered that he had an excellent sense of direction. When his mother took him to the supermarket, he never got confused by the aisles. When his father took him for a drive up to the beach of the peninsula, he could remember precisely the roads that had been taken on the return journey, memorizing street signs or landmarks to recall where exactly the car was to turn or to advance. So "getting lost" was only an operative term in this case. After an hour or so scrambling over the grass and hills, Pascal would return to the estate, knees dirtied and face red from the summer heat, guided by his superior sense of direction. Upon returning, he would usually get himself a glass of cold water from the smart fridge, plop down on the sofa in the lounging room (cooled by the automatic climate system installed in the house), and reach for whichever book he had been reading and deposited on a side table.

It was always a few hours that these adventures lasted. Any longer than that, and his absence was in danger of being noted by the housekeeper, Matilda, a short, heavyset woman with a round face, acne on her forehead, and tight-knit blond hair. Technically speaking, childcare did not fall under the list of Matilda's duties around the estate, but because of the work schedules of her employers, Matilda ended up being the only supervising adult in the home for more than nine hours a day, and she felt an obligation— a fact that she did not appreciate in the slightest. It wasn't that she disliked Pascal in particular, even if she found his peculiar way of speaking slightly off-putting, but Matilda was a young college student of twenty-two. She already resented having to work the summer at her mother's maid service on behalf of a snotty rich family, and she certainly had no plans to babysit a little kid, especially when she was already missing the parties and summer romances peers her age were enjoying. So she assumed her unofficial caregiver role with a resentful energy, checking in every handful of hours to make sure the kid was still alive. Besides that, she spent her day "locking in."

This was a familiar term that Matilda used with Pascal. All it meant was that she didn't want to be disturbed from her duties of cleaning, folding laundry, wiping windows, etc. She would place a huge, expensive pair of headphones over her head, shout over to Pascal (who was usually watching her curiously from his typical place on the sofa or in an adjacent room): "Little man, I'm locking in!" and crank the volume on her seventh-generation smartphone to as high as the technology would allow. Matilda was a music connoisseur, not like her friends back at the local community college, who only enjoyed the new, superficial pop stuff that was half made by computers anyway. Matilda liked Finnish heavy metal. She liked tasteful Chinese indie-rock that incorporated traditional instruments. And she liked pop too, but the good old stuff, from the 2010s, back when popular recording artists knew how to properly make good music.

Pascal didn't mind these "locking in" sessions — he was used to staying quiet or out of sight. He would take the opportunity to either go adventuring in the woods, or sometimes, if he felt lethargic or there was rain, he would watch Maltilda in silence as she went about her housekeeping duties, following her from a dozen or so feet away as she made her way through the many rooms of the estate. He knew she didn't mind as long as he didn't bombard her with dumb questions, like he usually did. Besides, Pascal liked to watch Matilda at work: watching her hands move in practiced ways as she attended to dust, grime, dirt, and clothes.

"It's not so bad, little man, work like this," Matilda admitted to Pascal on one of her breaks. She was always more willing to talk when she was halfway through a satisfying lunch. "It's quiet, and the place is climate-controlled. I can listen to my music while I do stuff. There's also a comfort in the routine, you know? In the repetition of the tasks. You can really just concentrate, day by day, and forget everything."

At the time, Pascal was hanging on the back of a chair, his eyes wide. "Forget, ma'am?"

"I'm not old enough to be called that, twerp! Yeah, forget."

"Forget what?"

At the time, Matilda hadn't said anything for a dozen or so seconds. She had been thinking. She had lost her father six months ago to a brain aneurysm, a fact she had not told any of her friends at college. A fact she was certainly not going to tell to a rich, pampered kid like this, who came back to the estate every other day with sticks in his hair and looking proud of himself. More than once, not willing to give the little brat a bath herself, she had wiped down his bare, sweaty face with wet paper towels and dish rags she had just pulled from the dryer.

"Adult shit." She replied finally, with a dismissive tone. "You'll find out when you're older, when you're doing things over and over again. Now leave me alone and let me work, yeah?"

Then, she had donned her headphones, indicating the conversation was over.

When he wasn't having awkward conversations like this with Matilda, Cal would wander the house, alone, making his own entertainment. He had no siblings or friends. His mother was gone five months out of every year doing important business stuff that Pascal didn't really understand. His father was a structural engineer contractor — buildings and transportation had to be reimagined for the changing climate characteristics, after all — a job which kept him out of the house until late at night. Pascal would typically make himself dinner after Matilda had left for the day. Not a problem, he had long learned not to be picky or take much pleasure in food. All he had to select from were the microwave dinners that his parents had stacked by the dozen in the fridge, meaning that if he wasn't careful about the order in which he ate the meals, Pascal would eat the same dinner a few days in a row. Sometimes, there wasn't any choice. If Pascal's father only got the Chicken Fingers and Mac' n' Cheese dinners while at the store, that would be what Pascal would eat for the week without complaints.

Pascal would eat dinner with a comic that he borrowed from the library, or sometimes a book he got from his father's study. The latter always were far too difficult to read for Pascal, but he liked to look at the long words or confusing terms and imagine meaning for them all on his own. Abutment, linear elasticity, monocoque, bearing capacity, topology optimization. Confusing, mysterious words, but pretty to look at. He would try saying them aloud, tasting their unfamiliarity. There were also sometimes pictures of bridges or buildings in his father's books, or complicated-looking diagrams. Pascal liked looking at those, too.

Sometimes, he watched television, the cartoon channel. He liked long-running shows like Super Duper Space Rangers and Magic Canine Poppy! Sometimes, he would experiment with making sandwiches with whatever ingredients were available in the kitchen, trying to find combinations that tasted okay. Sometimes, he would do nothing at all.

One day, at the height of the summer heat, Pascal was in the woods. This wasn't unusual in itself, but today, merely by chance, he has decided to descend from the right-hand corner of the property, in the opposite direction of where the asphalt road bisected the woods, in a section he hadn't explored much before. There were many interesting things: moss, bugs, and funny-looking stumps left behind by fallen trees.

But the most interesting thing was a small statue. It was by itself in a small clearing of trees, overgrown and so green that it almost blended into the grass around it. It was about two feet tall and appeared to be in the shape of a small stone planet, with a crown around it decorated with small stripes that ran around the entirety of the corona. Pascal remembered seeing something similar before, maybe in picture books or in motion pictures. Pascal sat in the sun-warmed grass before the statue, his legs criss-crossed. It was funny looking and out of place, enough to catch his interest.

"You can see it," said a soft, feminine voice. "A clear-sighted child. I ought to take advantage of this chance."

Pascal flinched, his small body quivering, and he looked around himself apprehensively at the deserted wood, searching for the origin of the voice. "Hello?" he called.

"I'm here, but you cannot see me," said the voice. "Rest your hand on the statue, child. It will change your life."

Pascal was shaking from a sudden onslaught of fear, but he did what the voice said, resting a small hand on the top of the planet. The voice sounded like an adult, and he never disobeyed anything an adult said.

There was a sound like air being pushed. Then a laugh. "And like that, it's all determined."

The space above the statue shimmered, like air above hot concrete. A woman emerged, and her appearance made Pascal's jaw drop. It wasn't only the fact that the woman had appeared from thin air, but also her appearance itself. Her skin was unnaturally pale, like it had never seen sunlight. Her hair and eyes were dark — completely and perfectly — like black paint. Her body was thin and lean, twisting in the air almost grotesquely, the white robe that clung tightly to her chest and hips swaying slowly.

Pascal wasn't yet at an age where he could truly understand what a beautiful woman was or represented, but something in his chest lurched in self-abasement, and he instantly lowered his eyes. The way the woman looked, the way she was looking at him with her dark eyes, there was something within him that instinctually knew that it was wrong, and it was such a strong impression that it overpowered the logical part of his brain, young as it was, that knew a woman appearing out of thin air shouldn't be possible. The impossibility of the event wasn't even something he considered in comparison to the strange anxiety building in his chest.

But Pascal couldn't move. It was rude to run from adults without saying a word, so instead he began shifting in place, dragging his dirty shoes through the grass. The woman detected this embarrassment from the child, and smiling, tilted her floating body until her bare toes rested on the earth. She looked down on Pascal. She was very tall, over six and a half feet, at least. She smiled.

"Look at me, child."

Pascal swallowed heavily. His throat felt dry. He looked at her.

"My, what a cute boy," the mysterious woman said thoughtfully, laying a bent finger on the cleft of her chin. "Yes, you'll do just fine in a few years."

Pascal stayed quiet. He didn't know what the woman was talking about, and besides, the authority and strength of her voice, though she was still speaking at a soft tenor, was enough to make him squirm.

"What's your name, child?"

Pacal straightened up and did his best to look the woman in the face. Here, at last, was something he knew how to reply to. "My name is Pascal Bourdet… um, ma'am. I'm five years old."

The woman laughed. "My, how polite. So manners are still alive and well in this age. Nice to meet you, Pascal."

She extended a pale hand towards him. Pascal swallowed again. He was curious to touch the woman, but making physical contact with a complete stranger worried him somehow. Eventually getting over this feeling, he took the woman's hand and gasped. The grip was strong and extremely cold, like the woman had been locked in a freezer. "Ah!"

He tried to pull away politely, but the woman didn't let go. Instead, she ran her chilly fingers up the expanse of Pascal's arm, prodding at his skin. It was a gesture that Pascal would usually interpret as somewhat hostile from an adult, but the smile on the woman's face seemed to indicate that nothing was wrong, and so, caught between these two intuitions, he decided not to react at all.

"Good," the woman said, as she ran a finger over his elbow. Her voice seemed to have a hypnotic quality. "Just go limp. It'll make things easier. Let me ask you an unusual question, Pascal. What year is it, currently?"

"U-um," Pascal's voice trembled. He was actually shivering from the coldness of the woman's touch, and it was making it hard to remember the dates that the people on the news would mention sometimes. Pascal liked watching the news and listening to the people speaking on the screen; it was one of the only activities that he did with his dad. "I-it's 2028. Um, in the summer. It's June."

"June 2028?" the woman pondered out loud, finally letting go of Pascal's arm, which he drew back to himself protectively. "About fifty years since that bastard sealed me, hmm? I got unlucky this time around. So many decades passed before a clear-sighted child found my place of rest."

Pascal raised a hand, like he was in class. "Ma'am, um… are you… a witch or something?"

Pascal had seen a witch in the comic he had read yesterday.

The woman laughed, and it sounded genuine, like she was actually amused. "A witch? Well, I've certainly been called that once or twice in my life by men. No, little Pascal, I'm something far more impressive than that."

She curtsied, her toes bending in the warm grass, her long black hair bouncing slightly. "Greetings, child of the new century. My name is Freya. I am an aspect of Chronos."

"Koronus?"

"Chronos," Freya repeated in an annoyed tone. "It means I have control over time."

"Wow," Pascal could think of nothing else to say at first. "So if you wanted to go to the end of the day, you could? O-or if you wanted to go back to the beginning, you could?"

Freya shrugged. "That's a little elaborate, but I could if I wished." Her dark eyes narrowed, as if seeing Pascal properly for the first time. "You believe me?

Pascal broke from her gaze, again uncomfortable. He kicked at the grass. "I-I don't know. Maybe. Um… you did appear all of a sudden. I've never seen anything like that before."

"You have a pliant child mind," Freya said, thoughtfully. "That's convenient for me."

"W-why?" Pascal didn't know what 'pliant' meant.

"Why?" There was something swimming in Freya's dark eyes — a particular concentration — something that indicated she was thinking about a great number of things at the same time and choosing the precise one that needed to be focused upon. "Because I want to be your very best friend, Pascal Clermont."

"What?" Pascal blinked.

"Pascal Bourdet," said Freya. "That's what I said. I want to be someone whom you can rely upon and talk to, Pascal Bourdet."

These words uplifted Pascal's spirit, enough to make me temporarily forget his shyness. He had never heard anyone speak them before. "Friends? Really? Are you sure, ma'am?"

"Why not? You seem to be a polite and respectful sort of child."

Pascal smiled widely, happy at being complimented for once. "Thank you very much, miss!" Then, his enthusiasm seemed to deflate. "You don't mind… the way I…"

"The way you what?" said Freya, in an encouraging voice, attempting to form an expression that indicated she didn't know what Pascal was talking about. "Speak up."

"Oh!" In anxiety, Pascal pressed the tip of his fingernails into his palms, as if in a meditative practice. "They saw… I talk weird. My words are weird. I don't know what they mean. So I try to talk normally. I even made cue cards. But I guess that makes me even weirder to them. That's why I don't want to go back to school. "

He stopped, licking his lips. "Dad thinks so, too. He never says it, but he thinks it. I can tell. He doesn't like to be around me very much."

Freya smiled. This part was important. "I like being around you. I like talking to you. I want to be your friend."

Pascal stared at the woman. She was bending over him, her body in the shape of a twisted branch. Her face was the color of chalk. "That's…" His voice was hopeful but skeptical. "You can't… you just met me…"

"But you forget something, little Pascal." Freya tapped her temple playfully. "I can see the future. And in the future, we're the best of friends. We spend every day together, every moment. We hide nothing from one another."

"The future?" The child was fully engrossed now. He couldn't seem to tear his gaze away from Freya's dark eyes, which seemed to be expanding slightly in a hypnotic fashion. "...The future? What happens in the future?"

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Freya stooped down in front of Pascal. Her body obscured the hot sun, and the air cooled instantly. "In the future, you will have many friends."

She reached out a hand again, laying it on his cheek. "In the future, you will be loved by many."

Her nails gripped the end of his jawline, not quite painfully but with enough tension to cause discomfort. "In the future, little Pascal, you will look back on this day as the day everything changed forever. How does that sound to you? Would that be something you would like?"

The child didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say. The words the woman was saying were words he wanted, but there was something about her aspect that made him feel intuitively nervous. What was she? She said she wasn't a witch, but she had appeared from nowhere, which was certainly something a witch could do. Chronos sounded vaguely like something Pascal had read in a book once, but he couldn't place it. What was she, then? A ghost? That would explain the sudden appearance. But that didn't seem correct, either.

Her body felt real.

Her body felt cold.

He shivered.

Eventually, Pascal's polite personality overtook his instincts. The behavior he had learned to gain acceptance from others, from his classmates and his parents, had been acquiescence. Therefore, the only thing that would be normal to do in this situation, as a child being asked to do a favor for an adult, would be to say yes.

So he nodded, despite himself. "That sounds nice, Miss Freya."

Every day was different. Every day was fun.

Pascal finally had something to talk to. Practically as soon as he got up and made himself breakfast (almost always a bowl of sugary breakfast cereal), he would throw on his boots and race outside over blades of grass, still wet from dew, and dive into the forest. There he would find Freya, sitting on the strange statue, her white dress wrapped around her thin body. She would turn her dark eyes, happy to see him, though a chill would always flow into the air, like a warning that Pascal would always ignore.

He was simply too delighted to have someone to talk to, about his life, about his interests, about the incidental observations or questions that children love to share with adults. What this is, or that is. What does this word mean? What his father's behavior indicated, or what he could do to make his father spend more time with him. Sometimes, Freya would sit in the warm glass of the clearing and offer her lap for Pascal to sit on as he talked. He would sit on her thigh, and she would stroke his dark hair, playing with the tangles and curls. They would spend hours like this. Pascal was happy, despite his reservations. Sometimes he would see an expression on Freya's face that would disturb him. Sometimes she would say a word or phrase that hit his ears sourly. But he didn't want to admit these doubts to himself.

As a compromise with the contradictory feelings swirling in his young mind, he tossed out the idea to bring his father to Freya. Or even Matilda, the caretaker, any other adult who could confirm or deny his doubts, and after all, maybe Freya could make friends with them, too. But Freya shot down this idea immediately. Her fingers gripped his hair and forced his chin backward, so that Pascal would look directly into her black eyes.

"No," Freya said, forcefully, her tone cold. Then she seemed to realize what she had done and released Pascal, standing up and dusting off her white dress, her voice now unnaturally chipper. "Oh, it's not that I'm angry with you, little Pascal. But you can't tell anyone else about me. This is our little secret. If you do, I'll be very mad, and I might not want to be your friend anymore."

One day, Pascal was sad. His face was troubled. He rejected this when Freya asked him about it, but eventually the truth was coaxed out of him by Freya's soft yet commanding voice. "Summer is almost over. School starts again tomorrow." His voice was shaking. He was clearly upset. "We won't have as much time to play together."

Then, his face perked up, like another thought had just occurred to him. "But! But… that's okay. I can just come after school, later in the day. It won't be for as long, but…"

His voice trailed off. He was looking at Freya's face as he began to talk, and what he saw there made him unsure whether to continue. It almost seemed like she was smiling, which didn't make sense considering what he had just told her.

"Re~ally?" Freya responded in an almost sing-song voice, in a pantomime sort of tone, like she had been preparing what to say in response to Pascal's words for a very long time. "How awful. Little Pascal, I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"What?" Pascal's eyes widened, and his lower lip trembled slightly. He hugged Freya around her stomach, a gesture Freya encouraged by placing a cold hand on his back. "Why? Why not?"

"You see," Freya bent her head down to talk into Pascal's ear as he clung to her. "I'm not like you, child. I don't exist in this world unless someone wishes for it. I was summoned and imprisoned a long time ago by a very bad man, but it was through his wish that I was able to exist here at all. And now he's been dead for a very long time. So I'm not long for this place, I'm afraid. I'll go back to where I came from. That place of spirits and elements."

"What?" Pascal repeated, holding Freya harder with his short arms. "I don't… I don't understand. Go where? Why?"

" I don't exist in this world unless someone wishes for it," Freya repeated in a soft whisper, patting Pascal's back.

"I wish for it. You're my friend. I wish for it." He was almost crying now.

"That makes me very happy to hear, little Pascal."

Because of the position of their respective bodies, Freya's face was hidden from Pascal's view. He could only hear her voice, talking gently in his ear. She didn't even feel cold at this moment. Being in her arms brought him a feeling of safety and security. There was a scent to her body he hadn't noticed before: a maternal floral smell.

"That makes me very happy…" Freya repeated. Her lips were less than an inch from his earlobe. "I would want to stay with you forever, if I could. However, it's simply impossible. Unless…"

She paused just long enough to make it seem like an idea had just occurred to her, prompting an expected response.

"Unless what?" Cal said urgently, squirming in her embrace, trying unsuccessfully to look at Freya's face.

"Unless…" Freya whispered. 'You could replace that man, Pascal. You could anchor me. You could become my lodestone. Then I can exist in this world for as long as you wish. We could be together forever."

Pascal blinked away the tears that were forming in his eyes. "How? How can I do that?"

"It's very simple," Freya said, holding him against her even more tightly. "You just have to swear something."

"Swear what?"

Her voice dropped to an urgent hiss. "That you'll love me more than anyone else."

There was something about the words that broke the spell. Suddenly, Pascal didn't feel so safe in Freya's embrace, but the strength in her arms was so great that he struggled to break apart from her. Instead, his face was pressed more insistently into her belly. "L-love you?"

Pascal had heard the word before on television and in books. Sometimes, his parents said they loved him. Yet, he couldn't quite fathom the cavernous expanse between those two examples and what they seemed to mean.

"Love me and I'll save you," Freya said. "It's as simple as that."

Pascal opened his mouth. He began to say he couldn't possibly love Freya more than his parents, but he stopped when he realized he didn't know if his parents sincerely loved him. If you love someone, you're supposed to take care of them, smile at them, and do fun things together with them. Pascal's parents didn't do any of those things. Neither did the kids at school, nor the teachers. Freya was the only person in his life who liked to spend time with him, it seemed.

"Can I tell you a secret, Miss Freya?" Pascal asked.

"Of course."

"Sometimes I get really mad at my parents. Sometimes I wish they weren't here. So I think I like you the most of all."

Freya chuckled.

"Okay, then, that's enough for now." She winked, speaking with a loud and performative voice, as if she were speaking on the radio. "Five years later."

She snapped her fingers and disappeared. Pascal never saw her again that summer, or the handful of summers that followed.

[Rarified Time, Lost in Darkness]

He was suspended in eternity — his body hanging horizontally against the straps of the seatbelt, the car vertical, nose down, halfway through colliding with the earth. Things floated in the back-seat compartment: pebbles and rainwater and specks of blood. In the front seat, the metal had begun to fold in where the car had collided with the earth, and with it, the bodies sitting there.

Pascal blinked. He had long run out of tears and screams. He couldn't move his body. It was suspended like everything else, locked in place a millisecond before the impact of the car colliding with the earth would have propelled his momentum downwards into instant death. Instead, he hung weightless, midway between air and gravity, only able to move his mouth and eyes. Therefore, because of the angle of his head, which was facing forward between the car seats in front, he couldn't look away from the things that used to be his parents.

His father was in the driver's seat. Because of the odd suspicion of time, it looked like he was halfway through being consumed by the interior of the car, cascading inwards to escape the earth. The window, dashboard, and far-too-late detonating airbag were pressing against his father's body, into his body. His father was being sliced apart, the interior of the car going through his stomach. His father's face was still intact. Strangely enough, what was caught there in the frozen moment didn't appear to be fear or pain, but a kind of accepting solemnity. But it was an illusion, a temporal trick, like pausing a movie halfway through a character's monologue and expecting their expression, itself only a thread of yarn constituting the movement of their face, to reflect any truth in what was really being manifested.

Pascal's mother, for reasons only known to her, had undone her seatbelt as the car had gone off the side of the road — perhaps she hadn't been thinking of anything. Pascal had known his mother, inasmuch as he had known her, as a calculated woman who did everything with a cold, pragmatic demeanor. So maybe she had been thinking she had time to undo the strap and roll out the side of the car through the door before it toppled downward over the cliff edge.

I guess I'll never know, thought Pascal. After hours of screaming and crying in horror and confusion in this never-changing place, he was too traumatized and exhausted to even attach emotions to the things he was now experiencing. I'll never know what she really thought of me, or father. Whether she actually liked us, and just couldn't express herself well. Or maybe she hated us both, and that's why I almost never saw her. I'll never know. I'll never know. I never want to know anything again.

Because of the undone strap, his mother's body had vaulted forward at the time of impact an instant sooner than his father's. Her head had jerked forward like a ragdoll, colliding with the dashboard as the vehicle hit the ground, and shattered open, a moment which was now captured in time like a photograph and from which Pascal couldn't turn away. Her eyes had popped out. Pascal could see one suspended a few inches away. Her skull had come apart like broken antique china, propelled in every direction from a meaty red balloon that Pascal knew was the inside of his mother's head. He suspected that if he were a little closer, and if the blood that was hanging in the air like a red curtain was gone, he would be able to make out the shape of her brain, undoubtedly halfway through being eviscerated by the force of the impact. Below all this was his mother's body, still intact, in a bizarre position, bones sticking out of the limbs at weird angles.

Pascal blinked. Those were his parents: those two abstracted forms. They both barely looked like anything real, as if the entire scene was something that could only exist in stories or on television.

The woman who couldn't exist, who had only ever existed in bizarre childhood memories, whispered in his ear. Pascal couldn't turn his head, but he knew she was there. He could feel the cold air of her presence seeping into the side of his body. He remembered the voice, the way it had made him feel as a child, and it was almost as distressing as the display of his parents' destroyed bodies.

"I don't get to use this power very often, only with those who have sworn their loyalty to me, like you, little Pascal. Otherwise, I tend to just skip ahead. It makes getting to these events and crucial moments I foresee much more convenient. Being an aspect of time doesn't mean omnipotence, you know, little Pascal. There are a lot of rules involved."

"Mommy… Daddy…" Pascal croaked. "Mommy…"

"Are you still going on about that?" Freya looked disinterestedly at the macabre scene in the front of the vehicle. "You've been in this space for a while. You ought to accept they're dead already. Kids take a long time to calm down, I suppose."

Pascal didn't answer. He was looking at his father's face again, trying to imagine that somehow everything would be fine if he could just manage to fall asleep and dream.

"You should look on the bright side of things," Pascal could feel a cold arm rest on his back as she spoke to him, though he still couldn't turn his head to look at her. "I saved you, like I promised. I can see that stuff like this will happen to those I try to get close to. I knew from the first day we met that I needed to prepare for this moment if I was going to save you. Well, you're not saved yet, strictly speaking. If I wished, I could unpause this moment and leave you to your fate. What do you think? From the look on your face, it seems like you might prefer that."

"This isn't…"

"What was that?" said Freya, brightly, delighted that Pascal was finally trying to speak with her.

"This isn't real. You're not real. You were something I made up. My mom and dad aren't…"

"It's real. Everything that happens in a person's childhood is real, even the things they imagined."

"Help me… help mom and dad…"

"They're dead already," responded Freya, callously. "I would just be helping two mangled bodies."

A minute passed, an hour, a day. It was impossible to tell in this world where nothing moved or changed. Pascal was looking at his mother's left arm, which was more intact than any other part of her body.

"Are you still there?" said Freya's voice. Her hand gripped the back of his shirt more tightly. "You haven't broken on me, have you? Earth to Pascal! Hey kid, I promise things will get better in the future. You just need to listen to what I say, and do what I say. Okay? And then I'll make you feel good and everything will be better."

This time, when Pascal didn't respond, Freya's nails dug into his skin, and her voice dropped to a hiss. "If you keep ignoring me, brat, I will let events proceed unaltered. Your body will become meat dappled with rain. You will become one with the earth. I will stop the world every millisecond of the process. You will feel the pain of time eternal."

There was another moment of silence, and then, without looking away from his mother's arm. Pascal responded softly. "You can't kill me. You can't do anything to harm me."

There was a second, and an intake of breath behind his head, as if Freya was sincerely stunned by the words. Then her voice dropped even lower, dangerously so. "What was that, brat?"

"You can't," repeated Pascal, slowly but deliberately. Memories he had long sought to bury were reappearing in his mind with startling clarity. "That was what you said back then, right? I remember. I'm the lodestone. Without me, you can't exist in this world for long."

Freya laughed. It was a horrible sound, like cold wind whistling through the gaps in a cabin door. "You really are something, aren't you?" The nails on Pascal's back loosened their grip. "I suppose that is technically true. However, you're not irreplaceable. I can find another, if I wish, though it would take a very long time. But hell, we swore our love to one another, didn't we? So I'll stick with you for now."

Freya's form wrapped around Pascal's body, like she was a snake uncoiling. He could see her face in the corner of his vision, blurred, indistinct, yet glinting with a sort of sinister light where the dark eyes would be. "Yes, I've established the lodestone. And now I only need one more thing from you. Consent. Swear to me you'll give me everything. And I'll save your life."

"I can't…"

"You can."

Pascal began to weep again, and icy fingers reached forward from behind his head and wiped them dry. "Hush, now," Freya cooed. "Everything will be alright."

"My mom and dad are down there," he said, his voice shaking. "Can you… can you please help them?"

"I am. I'm saving their only child. That's the least parents like them could hope for."

"I don't know what to do. I'm sorry…."

"Then don't think. And just say yes. Otherwise, you'll be here, in the moment of your parents' deaths. Perpetually. Forever. We don't want that, do we, little Pascal?" She was biting his ear, her words coming out in an animalistic growl. "Accept my love, with the entirety of your being. Love nobody else but me. Before, you simply gave a child's confirmation, which was enough to sustain my existence — now, I need the substance of the matter. With your love, I'll be able to do anything I wish with you, to help you, to improve you."

Tears were starting to leak from Pascal's eyes again. He was ten years old and scared beyond anything he had known in his life. "I... don't know what that means. I-I don't know…"

"It's simply words. Everything in this world is simply words, including love." Freya said. "Here's a familiar story. If you love, you will find acceptance. If you love, you will find peace. If you love, everything will work out, one way or another. These are lies. An anthropological tool. Here's the truth of it: if you say the correct, comforting words in the name of love, in just the right order, you can compel every betrayal and every atrocity. There's no need to feel with sincerity. There's no need to reveal yourself. These words are just an engine that turns the world. Do not attach so much importance to the elements that are mechanical. Now, say yes."

"I-if it doesn't matter, why do you need mine?"

She sighed. "Just because it doesn't matter, doesn't mean I don't need it. Don't we all rely on the rain, even if it sometimes infuriates us? Now say yes. Give all of it to me."

"I don't know what… I can't think! Please, help me!"

"Say yes say yes say yes say yes say yes say yes say yes."

He shut his eyes, trying to block out the world, but Freya's voice continued to ring in his head. "In the future, they'll offer you pretty words and pretty looks. They'll think their emotions of love are real and use them to trample over your own wants and desires. They'll try to touch you when you do not wish to be touched. But if you swear to me, I'll give you an iron shield. A guarantee, written in blood. I love you, and you love me. And so nothing will ever be scary or harmful again. Don't worry about others. Don't worry about yourself. I will take care of everything. Have I ever broken a promise to you? Remember, when you were so small, and you had nothing, and I gave you my companionship? Well, this is like that moment."

He held his eyes closed. "Like that moment?"

"Indeed. Recall how you felt. How easy and fun every day was. You didn't need your parents. You didn't need anybody but me. The years between have been difficult, haven't they? They've been difficult and gray and sad. Your parents would never stop yelling, and your peers would never try to understand you. You're tired, aren't you? You're tired of things being like this. You want a normal life that you can enjoy. Now say yes."

He breathed out heavily. Crystals formed in the air.

"Yes," he said quietly.

Freya laughed again. The noise seemed to last for hours. Then, something reached into Pascal's chest, cold fingers going into his physical body, and clutching at his heart. It was a unique and utterly disturbing sensation. He felt like throwing up, but couldn't.

"Another for the tabernacle," Freya said, almost comfortingly. The hand retreated from the inside of Pascal's body, clutching something beating. "Close your eyes again. Think of something happy. When you open them, you'll be alive, lying in the mud and rain. And you'll be alive. Be strong. I love you. And you love me."

There was an odd sensation on Pascal's lips, like air was being pulled through his mouth. Freya kept speaking. "Now. Then. Forever."

There was a sound of someone snapping their fingers. Time stopped. Time skipped. Time disappeared and never returned.